This is the last part of my Forge Guard feedback. I wanted to run a few more monos using both my online and offline Forge Guards before I formed my opinion on the skills as they currently stand. I don’t have feedback for every sentinel skill but wanted to give as much feedback as I could on the skills I have been testing and building with.
I’ll start with 2 larger discussions dealing with secondary skill scaling within the skill trees, and forge weapon production. Afterward, I’d like to look closer at several skill trees individually. The skills I will discuss will be:
- Vengeance
- Warpath
- Rive
- Rebuke
- Multistrike
- Ring of Shields
- Forge Strike
Secondary Skill Scaling
Secondary skills within skill trees can be found all over. Examples would be Iron Blade, Energy Wave, Fire Burst, and Shrapnel. My main issue is they all have scaling tags that correspond with the skills they are attached to but never seem to do any damage. For example, my Rive’s first slash will do about 500 damage but Energy Wave does 50. They scale off the same stats, have the same damage effectiveness, and Energy Wave has 25 base damage vs Rive’s 2 yet Rive’s first slash does 10 times the damage.
What is causing this discrepancy? Do secondary skills not get the base damage from equipped weapons? Are more multipliers for the skills not global? I can’t figure it out but every secondary skill I’ve tried scales horribly. It’s usually 10 times or worse in value than the skill it is attached to. This makes investing points into the skill feel worthless. The only exception is Iron Blade in the Vengeance tree which looks to do roughly 50% of a Vengeance hit when skilled for damage.
Forge Weapon Production
Forged weapon production has come a long way since the original Forge Strike. The builder/spender relationship between 0 cost attacks and Forge Strike has never been better, and the way they interact with each other is both varied and fun to use. That being said all methods are not created equal.
All methods can maintain maximum forged weapons single target fairly well, but when mapping their flaws start to show. Currently, you can produce forged weapons with Forge Strike, Rive, Warpath, and Multistrike. If I were to rank production speed from best to worse it would be:
- Multistrike
- Warpath
- Forge Strike
- Rive
Multistrike
Multistrike is the golden standard for production. It hits sword cap the fastest vs single targets and maintains maximum swords while mapping very consistently.
Warpath
Warpath takes very long to hit sword cap but once it does it can do single target or mapping without dropping a sword. Slightly upping the forged weapon production could go a long way in making this skill feel just right.
Forge Strike
Forge strike is erratic. With skill points in proc chance single target sword production is easy to maintain, but forged weapons amounts are variable when moving from pack to pack. I would still advocate for 100% sword spawn chance after spending points into proc chance. Multistrike and Warpath are 100% consistent and haven’t seemed to cause any problems.
There would still be friction between Multistrike, Warpath, and Forge Strike even if Forge Strike went to 100%. Using Forge Strike as your main summon method means 3 fewer skill points to use for your minions, but opens up a new skill to specialize in. Using Multistrike or Warpath means 1 less skill you can specialize in, but you get 3 more skill points for Forge Strike.
Rive
Rive, even after its buffs has not really smoothed out its production going from pack to pack and production time is swingy when fighting single target. I propose 2 buffs to make the skill perform better. First, let the on-kill effect linger for a few seconds. When your minions really get rolling they can compete for your kills. There is also multiplayer to consider where you may or may not get the most last hits. With a lingering effect, you just have to tag the mobs for them to have a chance to spawn a sword.
Second, drastically increase the kill and hit proc chance to create a forged weapon. I personally feel it would have to be at least double to compete with other methods.
To help visualize the difference between each method I put together some clips demonstrating the single target and mapping performance of Multistrike, Warpath, and Rive.
Multistrike
Warpath
Rive
Skills
Vengeance
My main gripe with vengeance is the iron blade section. Iron blade in itself is an interesting way to build the skill and the effects all seem to fit. The problem is that the overall theme is bloated. There are simply too many nodes spread everywhere to make the build functional. Proc chance on hit, Proc chance on kill, and Projectile modifiers all need to be condensed into 3 separate nodes.
Warpath
The nodes leading up to the forged weapon spawn chance feel pretty bad. Forge Guard minion builds don’t really need armor shred as the swords + manifest armor can produce 100+ stacks easily with any weapon that has an armor shred affix on it. Damage on low-health enemies is nice but you need some damage to work with first and nothing along the path for a minion build actually gives warpath any bite.
The best you can do is grab around 64% more damage on the other side of the tree which just isn’t much compared to other options. Swapping out more damage for armor shred would go a long way towards making minion-based warpath feel beefier damage-wise.
Rive
I love the overall changes to Rive. The new penetration node that eats ignites feels great to use and does something new with the DOT design space. It reminds me a lot of the Reap mechanic in Torchlight Infinite that also spices up how DOTs are used for damage. However, double-slash builds still feel fairly underwhelming. Every time I tried to lean into a double slash build I found using the 3rd strike made it better.
In general, the tree heavily supports 3rd strike builds. With the current changes, I would like to see the top tree nodes converted from 3rd strike nodes to first and second slash nodes. Those nodes include Outburst, Reclamation, Brutality, Massacre, and Coup de Grace.
Flame Drinker’s Blade, Triple Threat, Lacerate, and Focused Strike are all more than worth building around. I don’t think 3 strike rive will be without options.
Multistrike
Mutltistrike is another solid skill but I feel it has some wasted space when it comes to AOE nodes. At its base, Multistrike has great clear. Extra swords are available early and only for 1 point of investment. Because of this I can’t see any reason to ever use Sweeping Blows or Victory Strikes. 5 points to give an already great AOE skill more AOE just seems pointless.
Bladestorm falls into the same category. Stacks are not hard to maintain and extra swords aren’t really needed. Turning your 0 cost skill into a skill that chews through mana while giving such little benefit just isn’t worth it.
Ring of Shields
I feel Forge Guard got the short end of the stick when it comes to support / buff skills. Sigils, Holy Aura, Volatile reversal, and Abyssal Echos are also incredibly strong supporting skills with low cooldowns and long durations. Ring of shields on the other hand barely does anything in comparison.
For example, I can have permanent blind, 20% more damage, and 25% attack speed using Abyssal Echos. Offensively RIng of shields can give me 15 flat fire damage and 90% fire damage for 4 seconds out of 15( most of Forge Guard damage is physical). Defensively you get low heals more suited for a paladin and a low-damage shrapnel skill (I haven’t seen it hit over 10 damage per explosion).
The only unique thing it has going for it is that it can block projectiles, but the most dangerous ranged attacks (meteors / lobbed AOEs, etc) can’t be blocked. This skill still needs serious work to compete against skills like Sigils and Volatile Reversal.
Forge Strike
Forge Strike does a lot of things well. It can do both physical and fire builds utilizing direct damage, crits, and damage over time. It has a support section that offers great buffs. Lastly it has the iconic minion portion. The part that still sticks out like a sore thumb however, is the ward section.
Forge guards don’t have ward support. It doesn’t really make sense for their niche and they already juggle a ton of stats. There is no room to try and force intellect, ward per second, or ward retention ( what little you have access to). If anything the bonus should be health based. Regeneration and health regen % could go a long way in helping forge guard form its own defensive niche.
Conclusion
That’s it for skills. Secondary skills don’t scale nearly as well as they should and forged weapon production could still use some tweaking. The skill trees in general feel at least 70% there if not more. Plenty of build-around nodes exist and feel good to use. Regardless I still think there is more that could be done.