I think it’s the perfect time for this thread having seen 4% of sentinels and 1.1% of over all characters play FG.
Personally I hate a sentinel class has minions - manifest armor/ring of shields. They’re both really clunky and they can assist with shield throw but they shouldn’t be needed. It should ricochet off terrain and objects like in POE (sorry hate referring to it)
People look at Forge Guard and like to think it’s the tank class of the sentinels when really it’s just got a few extra armor nodes which really don’t amount to anything. You have the ability to face tank just as well with VK due to its crazyyyy life leech + max resistances and very high armor due to strength stacking. You can face tank even better with say a judgement pally due to self healing, a few points in VK’s life leech and max resistances. Both of these classes give people the ability to do a crap load more damage with skills that have much large clearing on them.
When you added forgemasters might it sounded so exciting until you also added the haste to block so FG is the slowest class, you shaved off 20% of the damage on a class that already does the least damage (by a long way) and then you shaved off attack speed - again destroying more damage output.
The channelling of smelters wrath makes it an awkward skill to use vs abberoth/uber or in high corruption. The quickest I’ve seen it vs Uber was about 13-14 minutes, saw one streamer known for good builds take 21 minutes. When you compare that to a sub minute Warpath or 1-2 min Erasing Strike (post nerf times) it’s actually crazy.
Ok so I think floor is open to any/all ideas of people who would want to play forge guard but probably don’t due to many reasons. If it was re-worked what would you like to see?
My main point of re-work - Shield Throw - have a node for “ricochet of terrain/objects 1/1” in its tree.
- Shield Barrage shouldn’t be a node it should be standard shield throw behaviour.
- There are 7 fire related nodes and only 1 “throwing damage” with 0 nodes for +phys dmg etc so Iron Monger should branch off Spiked plates. Replace where Iron Monger is with a physical node the same as Forge Born but +phys and +phys pen
- Branching off the Forge Born like node a node like Molten Toss. 25%+ phys per point
I think if Void Knight is void and Pallys are mostly fire then FG should have a heavy standing in pure phys as it is now it seems like FG has some fire, some phys, some bleed. Passive masteries for VK and Pally - damage. Mastery for FG - some resistances and armor in a game where it’s all about speed, moving and killing.
As for the other skills - RIng of Shields, Smelters and Forge. Personally just find them super lack luster and don’t add much to the class. They’re unique but they just don’t perform and obviously by the fact 1% of your over all player base choses this class then surely that’s telling you something. If you’re in that 1% I am sorry but hopefully they make this class even MORE enjoyable than you already find it because y’all are being ripped off right now.
I’ll prob come back and edit this a bunch but that’s it for now x