Hi there, I didn’t want to start a labelling war with this thread. Are there minions in forge guard? Sure. Can you buff and emphasize them to decent affect. Yes. Does that make them like beastmaster or necro? I don’t think so.
What we would all like to see is a forge guard rework, on-par with other reworks (like Druid). All I’m suggesting is that when that happens the Devs build a sliding scale from fighter ↔ minion master, and allow players the flexibility to put their character somewhere on that line with skill and passive choices.
Let some of us favor the heavily armored tank aspect, while others favor the weapons and pet, and others mix-and-match.
But there is no sliding scale for a Necromancer. It’s a Minion mastery. Why would anyone call for changes to Necro to make it a better caster when there are 2 other masteries in the class that have that adequately covered?
I see no problem with FG being the Sentinel equivalent.
If anything we should be calling for more Minion passives and skill nodes for the FG mastery (and less armed tank stuff) so it is considered a “proper” Minion mastery.
Falcon was literally announced as the first immortal minion.
It’s why he has no HP scaling (only 160 Base purely for the UI, I guess) and a wooping 0.01% threat modifier compared to Weapons at 40%
You’re assuming that sentinel is to acolyte as forge guard is to necromancer. Just because they are parallel in your head does not mean we all view them in the same light.
I think the sentinel class is the natural location for the dumb heavy fight fantasy, and that forge guard is the most fitting for that with its focus on armor. It’s honestly not horrible that way, it just needs a bit more support and synergy.
I started with lunge, warpath, manifest armor, forge strike & smelters wrath with a 2Hander. Super fun until I got to boss fights then I had to change. Now I am using Shield Rush, forge strike, smelters wrath and healing hands and rive. Damage is very low but I can facetank pretty much anything unless I go AFK.
Lunge needs to be able to move without a target. That’s the only reason I got shield rush. To move out of the way of big bops from Lagon, etc. I am pleasantly surprised how fun shield rush is though. I would rather play with the Iron Giant pet, but living is fun too. I can’t find a balance between tanky and effiecient dps in boss fights. Maybe just the dps for forge guard is too low compared to other classes?
All this bickering back and forth is evidence that Forge Guard needs a serious rework.
Im currently level 91 as a Forge Guard focused on minions. Its lacking a lot of synergies that should be there… and some abilities are just wrongly tagged (like Manifest Armor Forgebreath being spell based when the entire class is forced towards Attunement and Fire Damage).
It feels more like things are were overlooked, or simply mechanically changed as the game was developed towards 1.0.
I love this class. I love how it plays, how it feels, the aesthetics, and all. But the passive tree and skills need more interactions and Smelters Wrath (and all channeling abilities in an arpg) need to never be channeled.
All that combined with the fact that there are only a handful of items that are FOR a forge guard - makes it damn near impossible to scale. Fun fact - Sunforged set is the only set that exists - and sets dont have LP so is already gimped - provides +3 to Forge Strike and Smelters Wrath, but not manifest armor ? So the items in the set take the slots of gear that those class shards are restricted to, so to use that you cant boost those skills.
Lastly, there are no idols that really focus on helping forge guard core stuff. You can only get some tangential benefits especially compared to crap like “Proc Smite % chance on hit”.
It needs serious TLC to bring it back to how the game shaped up for 1.0 launch.
I’m having a lot of fun playing now that I figured out how not to die thing, lol. The biggest bottleneck is damage output. I am loving mixing together all of these shield skills (shield rush / ring of shields) and would love to include shield throw in there somewhere if the damage was better.
Idk man, the comment and dude’s other comments looks to me as: “FG is minions only and you should play VK or Paladin for player damage builds”. Anyway don’t see the point for more argument on this.
Beastmaster is really underrated for player damage/support minions IMHO especially with the buffed Howl.
Well I am that guy and yes this is absolutely my thought. Why do we need to push FG further as a heavy melee tank when there are two other Sentinel masteries that have that style more than covered? Same reason I cited Necro. Why would we push Necro to be anything other than the Minion mastery of that class when there are 2 other masteries that have the caster role covered? Why would be push Bladedancers to be ranged, it’s covered by MM. Etc etc.
I think it is GREAT that FG breaks the expectations and is a heavy armour Minion mastery, it gives the mastery real identity. It just needs a little more support and skill interaction on the Minion front.
As for why discuss any further? That’s the whole point right? I 110% agree that FG needs more love and more synergy in its skills and passives, but I feel that it needs those things enhanced specifically for the Minion aspect, to further make it stand out as the Sentinel Minion class.
So yes to rework, absolutely, but more Minion stuff and less heavy fighter stuff imo.
Well start with addressing my argument? Why does the Sentinel class need another mastery for heavy fighter style when it has 2 other masteries that can do that quite nicely? That’s all I’m asking.
I’m just disagreeing that FG in its current state is a minion focused class. Look at its passives, it has 15 passives in the right side of its tree, out of those 8 passives specifically affect PLAYER DAMAGE only, 5 passives are generic stats/defense, 2 passives work for minions… How do you call that a Minion mastery? What’s the point of those PLAYER melee damage/throwing damage passives then?
You WANT it to be made more into a minion focused mastery sure, but in its CURRENT state I don’t think its designed as a Minion mastery.
Fair point I never approached in from that angle. I like Minion builds over most. I saw a FG Minion build, looked like fun, tried it, found it was not only fun but strong too, and never looked back.
I still think it would be better pushed further into Minion land and further away from heavy fighter land, at least to give it more identity and reduce overlap with the other Sentinel masteries.
I would be the first to agree it needs more Minion synergy. The only reason it is a fun/strong Minion build is that it uses Warpath as main spam (always fun) and its Minions are extremely strong compared to most other Minions in the game, and NOT because it is a well-designed Minion class.
At the same time, we need to be careful asking for endless synergies in the mastery design. I almost feel the 2 newest masteries have gone too far in that direction, and it has made the resulting builds a bit blander than masteries that do not have such synergy. Example:
I was building my new Warlock…
You take Fissure because it looks cool
Fissure can proc Chaos bolt, so you take those
Oh wait! Chaos Bolts can proc Rip Blood and Bone Curse, so I’ll take those.
Ended up building itself. That’s too much synergy in my book. Put me right off the mastery. Only one to date I sort of gave up around level 50-something. Might go back to it one day, but right now I think of it as a dull class due to that.
