Coming from BM Squirrels and Necro last cycle and trying to main FG minion build and it feels too clunky. Forged weapons specifically are a pain point, why do they take so long to spawn and then why do they even de-spawn? It’s such a drastic power swing without the weapons and feeling super weak and then trying to spawn weapons. I am at 50 and still can’t use warpath to spawn them, I just don’t have the mana efficiency and I also rather not play spin to win playstyle either, even if it does work better (which it doesn’t me for). During this time my friends have killed everything leaving me without enough forged weapons and nothing to kill with forged strike to generate them. Can forged weapons drop their de-spawn time? so I can eventually spawn enough and keep them for the run? better yet, can I just have all my forged weapons out at all times? like the armor minion, or even like all other pet class?
There’s no way to have Forged Weapons stay up permanently.
If you don’t like the playstyle, maybe don’t try to spawn Forged Weapons with Warpath then?
There’s a passive in Forged Strike that raises the chance of spawning a Forged Weapon, which makes it a 100% chance to spawn Forged Weapon on hit vs. rare or boss enemy.
There’s also a passive in Multistrike that converts the Armament buff into Forged Weapons.
If your friends are deleting bosses too fast, you can simply wait until your party reaches the more difficult fights. They probably won’t be deleting Harbingers, so you’ll have plenty of time to spawn your Forged Weapons.
You answer highlights the problems even more. You right, there are skills that are broken and don’t work well. And then the answer is don’t fight things and wait. That really sounds fun and enticing doesn’t it. “Gamers have patience, don’t kill things and have fun. Just walk around following your friends”
lol. Okay sarcasm off, as I actually want to give feedback about this class. It IS a minion class, its baked into the skills and the passives. So if your gearing towards minions on you rings, neck and the rest of your gear when you can. This means you do less damage since your focus is on buffing the minions and not yourself. But they de-psawn so quick, all those stats that make you weaker and your minions stronger are wasted. Since your minions fade away. I just can’t wrap my mind around why they are temporary minions when the class is based around minions. That is what feels clunky, my effective damage drops to the bottom of the barrel and then ramping it back up with RNG feels clunky.
I’m about the park my FG, maybe even this cycle. But I don’t want to, I enjoy this game and D4 doesn’t have my interest very much right now. I just want feasible A tier pet builds, summoner style. I know what your going to say, play another class, but doesn’t that mean this minion class still has problems? Are you seeing OP forge guards at the top of the leaderboards? me either. Just looking for some buffs to the minion playstyle that is currently super punishing to play.
It is a different playstyle and fantasy compared to “regular” Minion type builds.
Actively needing to keep spawning Forged weapons is cool.
I really like that all these different minion builds across Acolyte, Primalist and Forge Guard play very differently.
If you don’t like that playstyle maybe it is just not for you.
There are countless of ways to basically haveaximum forge weapons up all the time, so that should be an issue if you really want that.
“Actively needing to keep spawning Forged weapons is cool.” wrong, this Is not cool, temporary pets are never cool to minion playstyle, as you lose effective damage. It’s like making crit chance have to build stacks to get any crit and you only keep stacks for a few seconds, your obviously always weaker without those stacks.
Anyways, sounds like I’m done with cycle 1.1. See you guy’s next cycle as I hope for a decent pet build with permanent pets and way less clunkiness.
I can’t disagree more.
I personally absolutely hate permanent minion playstyle.
The only type of minion builds that I like are things like Wraith or Forged Weapons, because they incentivice and active playstyle.
No you don’t. These type of minions are balanced around that and are usually a lot stronger than permanent minions.
You as the player just need to come up with clever solutions to make the summoning/spawning of those temporary minions as effective as possible.
But there are dozens of permanent minion playstyle.
Manifest Armor, Skeletons, Bone Golem, Abomination, all Primalist Companions.
You can have almost 100% up-time on 12+ forge weapons easily using Rive and Forge Strike. I think FG feels amazing to play.
I also can’t disagree more, temporary pets are the worst, I dislike that active playstyle immensely. I’m not getting sucked into a argument with kids online. Just posting feedback that the class feels clunky to its core if your playing it as a minion build. It’s going to need a lot more changes for the minion playstyle.
That really depends on the player. Some like it, some don’t. It’s not a bad thing in itself. But if you really dislike temporary minions, then you should just switch to a class that has permanent ones, like necro or falconer.
It should also be noted that even necro has plenty of temporary minions. This is also true in PoE. It was also true in D2.
Temporary minions have always been a staple of ARPGs and even RPGs in general. Much like permanent ones.
So if you really really don’t like them, either respec FG away from minions or make a necro/falconer.
But the class itself should not be changed just to please you and displease everyone else.
The play Falconer. It’s the only class that has a ‘truly’ permanent minion. 
I didn’t play FG all of cycle 1 because I was hoping 1.1 would bring some great changes.
I leveled my forge guard and from lvl 7 until about lvl 55 I took the path to the node that reduces mana cost by 10.
I’ve had zero problems with my mana. And I have shields on ‘numlock’ (I hold the key down) and I pop off several Forge Strikes at the beginning of a mono to get my minions up. After that throughout the entire mono I’m never more than 1 or 2 forged weapons below my minimum (12 weapons).
Having a blast.
My only issue is that FW in particular seem to be really spastic about attacking stuff. They don’t seem to stay ‘focused’ on something when I use the Minion Attack Command.
This community is just surprising, my last post. Apparently, I shouldn’t enjoy this game. cya boys.
I mean… These folks are trying to help you enjoy the game more, by taking time out of their days to provide info and advice … I’d take their suggestions under consideration, they’re not here to bother you lol
And you wonder why.
The first part is absolutely your choice and good to know you have your limits. Forged Weapons probably aren’t a good pick for you. No problems with that.
But that second part, dude, if you’re going to be derogatory because you can’t face some people who disagree with you, please, do make it your last post.
Nobody devalued your feedback. It’s great feedback. Maybe they will add a Node or unique item to make Forged weapons permanent.
But you have to understand that there are different kind of players enjoying different kind of play styles.
Also EHG is very keen on keeping classes and especially Masteries distinct and give them different identities.
I am not sure why you feel attacked by people providing different perspectives and insights.
I never said anything about skills being broken. Don’t make up random bullsh!t.
You can Lunge or Shield Rush into mobs and smash them with no cooldown Forged Strike. But for some stupid reason you decided to have no Traversal skill on a melee character. So it’s no fkin wonder another player can kill the monsters before you can reach them.
When you make stupid decisions, it’s not a problem of the class.
No.
When you select Sentinel and take a look at Forge Guard, it tells you what the class is about. “Master of weapons, armor and molten metal.” Not a word about being a minion class:
Forged Strike description is available on this very screen and tells you that Forged Weapons have 20 second duration. If you didn’t read it, it’s not a problem of the class.
You can scale both player AND the minions with Physical and Melee. It says so on the skills. If you CHOOSE to only scale the minions, and you CHOOSE to only proc the minions you scaled when your friends let you hit something, it’s not a problem of the class.
To be fair, it has been said for years that the Forge Guard has a bit of an identity crisis, the passive tree has bonuses for 2h melee, shields, minions & throwing & several of the skills have nodes that support minions/forged weapons at a minimum, in addition to 2 skills (Manifest Armour & Ring of Shields) out of 5 being actual minion skills. So i don’t think it’s unreasonable to call the FG a minion mastery.
I don’t think having supporting passives for various builds means the class has an identity crisis.
Looking at the available skills and the available passives makes it quite clear Forge Guard isn’t anything like your standard Minion class. If you search “minion” in the passives, you get 8 hits:
- 2 only provide bonuses for the player, and only their threshold effect does something for minions
- 6 provide bonuses for both player and minions
Manifest Armour is available to all Sentinels, and Ring of Shields also isn’t your standard Minion that attacks enemies 
PS: It’s probably better to look at it this way:
How many FG builds need minions to function? And how many don’t? That should tell a story if the class is a minion oriented class.
Yes & no, most other passive trees are focussed into one or two areas (plus defences), the more different areas you try to spread your passives over the more of an “identity crisis” the mastery has compared to masteries that are more narrowly focussed. Though the flip side of this is that the additional support lends itself to more diverse or more hybrid playstyles/builds (assuming those are “viable”).
Yes, but if most minion builds sucked balls compared to non-minion builds then few builds would use them to the mastery wouldn’t be minion oriented. Conversely, if yhe minions were brutally overpowered then most builds would use them & the mastery would be considered minion oriented.
“How many FG builds need minions to function” is not the same as “how well FG builds perform”.
Not to mention that Manifest Armor build already is OP and can easily go to high corruption, but I never see that mentioned when someone asks about a minion build. I wonder why 
Because people are fundamentally Magpies & Manifest Armour isn’t (new &) shiny enough.