Been playing Forge Guard a bit. My feeling is that people who approach this class do so from two different perspectives - the heavily armored warrior vs the master of forge minions. I think the 2nd part is well-represented in-game, and while it could use tweaks (I think it’s a bit slow), it’s certainly viable.
Trying to go w/o minions so-far seems difficult. I think a part of the problem is that there are so many paths for this (throwing, shields, 2-h, dual-wield) that it’s difficult to find a set of passives & skills to support one clearly. Shields obviously have good support, but the skills (shield throw, maybe bash) seem lacking.
I strongly urge the devs to consider a rework of the forge guard, and consider those that approach this game looking for a plain old fighter class. Don’t get me wrong, I like all the bells-and-whistles too, but sometimes I just want to, say, grab a spear and run around slapping things silly. No pets, no magic, just steel.
I guess, yes, there are niche builds in both cases, but in general, Necro and Forge-Guard are the masteries you take from the two base classes involved if you want to run Minions. I can’t think of a single instance where your non-Minion FG would be better than rolling a Paladin or VK instead.
VKs and Paladins are magical fighters, and have passive bonuses to support that.
Forge guard’s bonuses are simply fire/phys res and armor.
If we want to play a minionless, heavy armor, non magical fighter, Forge Guard is the closest.
Again, I’m talking about class fantasy here. I play plenty of different things, like everybody else, but sometimes I want to just take steel and defeat the world without a magical light show.
Forge Guard (together with Shaman) is one of the oldest Mastery designs.
It’s definitely on their to-do list and I suspect with the Healing Hands now having a tree as well as the Storm & Tempest reworks on Shaman, they are currently working on it, they just don’t wonna promise any ponies.
I could definitely see Forge Guard being a bit more towards weapon master, with a focus on melee, throwing or minions, and mostly a physical or potentially a split phys/fire focus. (like Warlock Chaos Bolts are Fire/Necro)
I would personally like to see less fire DoT stuff, that’s plenty in Paladin, and more ways to convert the Forge Weapons into personal damage, like the Rive Scraps mechanic.
You could probably still run HH Ward as Forge Guard if you don’t like minions. You won’t be able to get away from magic, though, because Forge Guard is still a Cleric, not a Fighter. You would probably be better served with a Bladedancer than any of the three Sentinel masteries.
I dont think a minion class should have 3(its actually 4) passives that do something with minions. Two of those those four also are only side things for minions. The attunement node has a little extra armor for minions, but isnt a strictly minion node. And the bleed/ignite chance node is not useful because minion ailments are terrible especially since they cant convert the bleed to ignite to double dip that node like players.
Forge guard is a nothing class. Minions happen to be on it, its official theme is “Equipment” hence why all of its skills deal with equipment in some manner. Forge strike takes the shape of weapons, and forged weapons/manifest/ring of shields all take stats from your equipment more then normal minions/skills. Heck even shield throw has specific buffs based on the block stats of your shield.
Forge strike has more support for non minions then minions imo. And RoS is a utility buff that you cant use as a traditional minion cause it does no damage and just does minor buff shit for you.
The class is def in need of a full overhaul, like start from the ground up type of overhaul, but I really dont know when and if it will get it.
Im currently running this Build after trying out alot of things. Im in the process of farming blessings and upgrading my gear currently and than i wanted to start grinding corruption higher.
My issue is damage, i feel like it takes to long to kill stuff, while i never rly see my hp bar move. But thats something u cant even change cause the stats are seperated into offense/defense on items.
But thx to ring of shields and healing hands travelpassiv where u heal an ally it gets 75% cd reset i can travel fast arround. Still looking for some means to get me perma haste or frenzy somehow, im not familar with all the uniques yet to know what to aim for.
Just keep farming Exiled Mages. Experimental affix on boots can give ~2 secs (up to 4 on a T7) of either Haste or Frenzy after using a Traversal skill, such as Rahyeh’s Chariot. This is, however, mutually exclusive with the minion teleport affix, which also gives %minion damage.
Thx well i redid my build quite alot from yesterday and kicked the minions out. I did my first boss on 100 and they just died all the time in black sun timeline. So i took the node wich gives u more damage and armor in rive and the one who gives flat 1 damage per dex and i put dex on my gear and the passive node from forgeguard for 20 dex and dodge gets into armor. Currently farming now Dragon Timeline to get the Physical Sword.
And it’s Mastery ability is a minion skill, and 2/4 of the tree skills are Minion skills.
So yeah, it’s somewhere between Shaman (0 skills, 3 passive nodes that actually buff Totems) and Falconer (7 passive nodes, but minion is mandatory to do anything class-related) as a minion class, but it’s still the clear minion choice for Sentinels.
Shaman has access to Storm Crows, Wolves, Bear, Scorpion, Vines(Spriggan form) and Spriggan. That’s not counting Storm Totem and Coldstone elementals(Avalanche) which are exclusive to Shaman and Thorn totem(totems also minions). Also other totems such as Claw, Healing(Spriggan form) and Upheaval totems. As well as 8 passive skills affecting minions (some strong like penetration and flat spell dmg while some weak like stun chance/freeze multi) and the totem nodes you mentioned. Not to mention it’s adjacent masteries also have minion support in their passives which Shaman can leverage.
Compare that to Forge guard’s minion options, Manifest armor, forged weapons and Ring of shields(How can you not consider totems as a minion skill but the useless shields are?) any other minions I’m missing?
Yeah, Forge strike is a minion skill… more than 50% of its own skill tree doesn’t affect the minions in any way.
I don’t argue with that (well actually now that I think about it isn’t Manifest armor paladin better than Forge guard?), but I DISAGREE that it is a minion focused mastery like Necro.
Saying Shaman is a minion class because it has access to Bear, Scorpion, Vines & Spriggan is like saying Forge Guard is a buff class because it has access to Healing Hands and Sigils.
And I did only look at “Totem” skills rather than Minions, true. As my point was actually that Shaman was the most “Totem” class of all but outside its mastery skill has 0 Totem skills within its tree, and virtually no passives that buff Totem specifically.
And if you’re dismissing Forge Strike because it’s not a pure minion skill, you really can’t argue Claw, Healing & Upheaval Totems either, because aren’t totems unspecced, Forge Strike is always a minion skill.
I could also argue that any defensives in the tree allow you to go 2H or DW vs Shield, so that’s all minion scaling, right?
Honestly, I think it’s a bit more hybrid than the pure minion classes like Necro or Beastmaster, exactly because of that weapon synergy (or gear for the Manifest Armor)
But my response was to your argument saying that it can’t be a minion class because it doesn’t have enough passive nodes for it or its mastery bonus is not minion-focused, which isn’t a strict requirement for it, imho, nor does it acknowledge any of the points where it is hitting the minion theme.
Not only does Shaman have access to more minion skills than forge guard but also more minion support so I would still say it is more of a minion class than forge guard.
Bladedancer has really good 24% damage reduction as low life and 20% while moving which do not specify a weapon is that also minion scaling by this logic?
Even if you dismiss those 3 minions Shaman still has more minion choices and support. I am not saying Forge strike/manifest weapon is NOT a minion skill but it is a very poor one with little variety compared to choices as a Shaman, Beastmaster, Necro (I’ve only argued with Shaman here since you brought it up as comparison).
Even Falconer has only two minion choices(Ballista and Falcon) and they have more variety considering mainly minion focused builds. Falconer is even strong as non-minion focused though using the bird for support.
My response was to the person saying Forge guard is a minion class like Necro and you should play other classes if you don’t want to use the minions.
For me though, even though Fudge Gurd has a few minion builds that work, I don’t think it delivers on the minion theme(in terms of skills, passives, the whole thing) especially compared to any of the other minion masteries.
Technically, the person you replied to said that, like in Acolyte, if you want a minion build, Forge Guard (resp. Necromancer) is the clear choice within that Base class.
In that sense, they are alike.
Is Forge Guard the worst minion class in the game? Probably as much as Shaman is the worst caster in the game, but that’s due to them being old classes and just not having the synergy built in like Falconer has. Ironically, it does do the “me among my minions” better than Beastmaster though, simply because of it being so lacking.
Absolutely not. FG is a very strong Minion class that fields arguably the best Minions in the game - they are flying, indestructible and can be boosted to absolutely stupid damage levels through proper skill choices. Hence the Minion FG avoids two of the biggest weaknesses most other Minion builds have:
It’s Minions can never die (other than Manifest Armour which is easily re-summoned); so zero need for Minion Health
It’s Minions do no suffer from the terrible AI of ground-based Minions
It that “indiscovered” Minion class in the game that is actually very good, very fun and very strong, but no one bothered to try because they expected some kind of throwing-based Paladin, so it gets over-looked.
But anyone who likes Minion builds should absolutely try a FG; it’s great.
