Season 1.2 brings many changes and improvements to ST and with it also comes many options. Should I 2H my weapon? What amulet should I use? How many small idols with damage reflect do I use? Should I go crit multi or increased damage? There’s going to be infinite amount of variations. So I can’t possibly look at all of them but I will do my best in this post.
Disclaimer My math might be imperfect, but it should be pretty close. I am ignoring armor / res shred chance as it will be too challenging to include all the calculations. I’m also ignoring the small amount of phys flat throw damage. DPS is per throw / hit, so it DOES NOT take into account the blender effect from using RoS.
Link to Chart Images: https://www.reddit.com/r/LastEpoch/comments/1k1fi0t/forge_guard_shield_throw_min_maxing_and_what/
Setting a Baseline First I’m going to test if my math is working out. Here’s the 1.17 build planner (incomplete as the server shut down before I could change and swap out everything) https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/oRW2K8YA
Spreadsheet shows 216K dps, which seems about right and close enough to the tooltip dmg I’d see in game. Let’s proceed.
To avoid looking up all the variations, I’ve created a baseline template for 1.2 that would be a good starting point.
https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/olGawWkB
This version wields Monument of Protection as its weapon of choice with Logi’s Hunger as the amulet to provide the much needed flat crit chance and leech. It has max block and pretty good DPS of 693K. This will be our new baseline.
Gloves - Li’raka or Exalted Gloves? Li’raka gives a huge boost to Crit Multi. Exalted glove will be much easier to gear for tankiness. There are pros and cons. Using Exalted glove with double health, T7 throw attack speed and T5 flat damage, DPS goes down by 1.3%. Negligible difference for a significant boost to tankiness.
Which roll on Amulet? T7 Flat throwing damage wins out here vs. Fire Pen and Crit Multi. Flat Damage increases DPS by 5%.
Nihilis vs. Logi’s Hunger? Using Nihilis requires further gearing changes because we’re now without a source of leech. Add the T7 flat damage and we swap out the blessing for throw leech instead of crit multi. Oh, we also lose 3% flat crit chance so we need to add that back in via crit chance or Dex. I’ve swapped out crit multi in the Relic for Dex roll to still cap the crit chance at 100%. Using Nihilis gives more skill points so there are added benefits here and you’ll be able to plug in additional more damage multiplier nodes in ST. Overall, Nihilis should give +8% DPS increase.
Other Mods like Shield Block Chance vs. Damage Reflect, Glove Flat Dmg vs. Attack Speed, etc. T7 Block Chance vs. T7 Damage Reflect gap is negligible, with variance under 2%. T7 Block Chance is probably best for survivability. In the gloves slot, T7 attack speed is better than T7 flat damage roll by about 5%.
Overall, using Nihilis is the way to go.
Weapons There are now several different weapon choices, from Exalted Katana, Rainbow’s Edge, Monument of Protection, and 2H weapons.
Overall, Merophage with a good T7 crit multi, T5 fire damage, and T5 fire pen will give the best boost to the DPS, an almost 50% DPS boost vs. the baseline.
Volcanus, which is easy to farm and reasonable to assume that you can get a 3LP, is also a great option at 40% DPS boost. Volcanus comes with innate fire damage leech, so you can compensate by retaking the crit multi blessing.
Rainbow’s edge is also easy to farm 3LP and gives 20% DPS boost over Monuments of Protection.
Hakar’s Phoenix is harder to get high LP on and for a 2LP version, only gives a 11% boost.
The downside here is that we are no longer block capped, at 93%. 1 handing a 2H weapon is a good choice here because the base attack rate of the weapon does not impact throwing attacks.
Idols So now, using Nihilis and Merophage, let’s figure out what to do with idols. Should you be using 20 small idols? Or not? If you take a look at the 3rd graphic, 20 small idol with damage reflect rolls is better than mixing in a large idol with crit multi and crit chance and block effectiveness.
If you swap out block effectiveness for Shared Fire Damage, it is a bit better but still worse than using all small idols.
HOWEVER, throwing in a throne of ambition will further improve the DPS. I only used 10 stacks in my calculations too, so the real DPS will be even higher.
Final Skill I think this is a flex pick. You could take volatile reversal (and take the node that removes it’s traversal tag) for more mobility, or Forge Strike for even more DPS and Armor. You could also go for Shield Bash for 15% block chance.
Summary To Min-Max Hit based ST, you want to use Nihilis with a 2H weapon, and use small idols with 1 Thrones of Ambition.
Final Min-Maxed Build Planner: https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/oz5lrdrB Spreadsheet (not cleaned up but for reference): Last Epoch - Forge Guard Shield Throw Min Max Analysis - Google Sheets
