So i started a Forge Guard, I am still on leveling phase. My initial plan was to create a tanky build base on one hand weapon, a shield, and a lot of armor and reflect damage. Till now I like the game play but oh my god this class feel very cluncky. It’s so hard to make a lot of basic skill work (maybe they are more end game skills and not for leveling), the dev need to balance the sentinel and the forge guard in particular. I didn’t wanted to to turn on my self till the end of time, or to hammer or javelin everything, and it’s hard, the rest of the skill need so much more point investment or good gear to be effective. If you take the hammer, like with 4 or 5 point, you can roll on the campaign, the skill can clean the map and kill the boss even with bad weapon. In the over side you have bunch of skill who require so much just to usefull. I really try for exemple to make shield bash work, I think I already respect 4 or 5 times to try different things, nothing were really effective ( like the damage part of the skill, without cooldown just suck your mana for no great result… tried the opposite, having 2 charge, very long cooldown and normally massive damage, in the end the skill like that cannot kill a single group of Normal enemy and have a massive cooldown of like 8 or 10 second for the 2 charge… I don’t excpect the skill to make a ton of damage but seriuosly having like 11 point invest on it and 8 seconde cooldown and cannot kill a group of “white” enemy, not even an elite. I will try to make a build arround stunt with that skill, because I like the concept of the shield bash, I will even try on late game maybe with a Legendary shield, to see i can obtain better results.
My point is can you balance the basic skill of the class to make them at least work in leveling phase. I don’t want to hammer everything till the monolith with my sentinel.
I’m using Rive, that also feels pretty good to play imho.
Yep I switch to the same, it work very good. Use it with My giant Anvil ^^. It’s not shield bash but a Giant anvil falling from the sky it’s still funny and effective, especialy when you take the node who keep the mobs on you and forbid them to move.
But the shield bash is still awful.
Yo! Welcome on the forums, firstimer.
Forge guard needs indeed a bit of love… and I think he will, now that the 2 last masteries are done!
It’s not a shield bash build but if you want to try something still very forgeguard-themed, there is a fresh Manifest Armour-Forge strike build with insane armour (6k at rest, 12k at work) here, from the content creator Jorgen.
Many people would argue that the insane thing about this build is the overinvestment in armour even with the strong diminishing returns… but it seems to work pretty well at a decent corruption level. I will probably try it at some point, when i’ll sacrifice my hardcore runemaster to the altar of Arena and leaderboard.
Before launch, I was also interested about trying a shield hero, taking every shield-related skills, but I never took the time and the community feedback about FG in general was a bit of a turn off.
I will test the shield bash skill in the campaign and write my feedback here. Maybe I’ll have a few tips too. ^-^
For leveling, Forge Guard really either needs to use Warpath with the node that summons Forge Weapons, or Multistrike with the node that consumes armament stacks when you use forge strike. And then basically your forge weapons just kill everything.
It’s not the most exciting and it’s a little clunky.
There is a simple reason for hammer throw to be that effective in early game. All the damage is built-in the skill already, like all throw attacks, unlike melee or spells. Those two benefits from flat damage from implicits on weapons, so you really need a good one and you feel the difference each time you switch to a new weapon base. It’s not the case with throws, the damage is already there BUT doesnt benefit from better weapons and the affixes that modifies it (mainly Throwing damage, prefix that can apply on belt, glove, relic and amulet) are a bit scarce early game.
Hmm, I don’t think shield bash is “that” bad, even if it’s clearly not designed to be the main source of damage early on with that very long cooldown (or big mana cost, which is another type of cooldown).
What weapon and shield were you using ? You need a weapon with a good flat melee damage and a shield with high block chance. You can add “Physical damage increase (%)” on top of that… but you really want flat damage first.
Here’s what, in my opinion, an ideal weapon&shield combo should look like at level 18-20, if you really want to get good damage on Shield bash. Of course, you need crafting resources to get something like that, and a little bit of luck. But, if you focus on those affixes, you will see a drastic improvement on the damage. You can improve it further elsewhere on your gear simply with Strength and Physical damage increases.
But like I said, I don’t see shield bash like a damage dealing skill. The value resides in the automatic stun, which can be very powerful against bosses. You can interrupt any skill that the boss is starting and even if the stun is short, the boss will need to restart his ability (or switch to the next one). It makes bosses a looooot easier if you time it right.
I am agree with you it’s not a main damage skill. But there was couples of nodes who were looking promising fun for building something fun arround the shield ( not opti necessarly but thematic and fun) , but it was like I said very too weak. I was arround 40/45 when I give up on the skill just before/at the north snowy city. It’s sad because I really tried to make it works. And if It was a chore and not efficient during the campaign, it was not a good sign for the rest of the adventure. I was using the same shield that I still have now if I remeber well, one big bulwark shield made in wood, with 28% of block chances.
I am still play a very defensive build full armor, mace+ shield with the ring of shield, really tanky with a little of reflect damage (maybe later I will try to focus on it but right now I am little afraid to invest 100 % into it, so I mixed a little to keep a good amount of damage.)