This skill is kind of a weird skill to begin with. It is some hybrid minion summoning/buffing/direct damage use skill. It is trying to doing a lot and it kind of shows. I am focusing on the direct damage portion since I was doing detonating ground this season. The skill can do Vision pretty consistently and hits range from 2-4 million. So it isn’t ‘bad’. But it feels bad to use and gear for.
First off it feels kind of dumb to even try to use this skill as a main dmg…when you can just go erasing strike, which has the same ADE, similar cooldown (4sec/5sec) and similar mana costs (25/30), and honestly kinda want the same weapon. However, erasing strike does its damage in such a larger area, its actually pretty hard to miss with it, compared to forge strike which actually can miss a good bit since it’s area is really small and the higher bosses tend to move a good bit. And FS has phys base but adds a lot fire nodes in the tree which make it feel like this half fire/phys hybrid. Where ES shines as a big one shot skill, FS struggles.
Then you get to detonating ground, with its giant 1.5 second delay. Which most mobs can simply just walk out of before it goes off with its small area making it feel pretty useless. There isn’t a whole lot of nodes after detonating…a lot of more damage which is nice, it effectively doubled my damage but it felt kinda…boring? Part of this might also be that there is no noticable SFX for detonating ground or FS in general, and its VFX feels very old and lacking. It kinda looks like a mage glyph, doesn’t really feel like there is anything of substance there looks or sound wise. Feels a little out of place.
FS also feels pretty point starved as well when you are building for selfcast damage.
What I think Forge Strike needs : an actual overhaul. The tree feels disconnected for self cast, and as a mastery skill for FG, needs to be more than just a minion skill (unless you want FG to be the actual minion class for sentinel with the other skills in FG that also need help ROS and MA). Each branch should be its own ‘weapon’ and then another branch for forged weapons. Each branch can have its own thing. Spear-crit. Sword-bleed. Hammer - forged weapons. Anvil - stun. Its already there, its just jumbled together without a lot of interplay. Could have the smaller ‘weapon type’ branches small and connected with some of the global mods that are lost on the long branches that don’t connect. Or honestly even better…have this skill change depending on what weapon i have equipped (kinda like weapons master from FG passive tree). And really give the tree something actually fun and unique.
Middle right/minion branch in the middle is actually pretty fine. I would leave that alone balance wise. Maybe add in an AS node from lightforge.
Top branch:
- Lightforge - 4 points for 100% reduced CD, attack speed (which FS doesnt care about much since its mana gated anyways) and forged weapon attack speed. Really could just move the CD stuff elsewhere, combine it with beneath solarum, and move the FW AS to the FW branch.
- Beneath Solarum - 1 point for no CD and +10 mana cost. Fair trade off and honestly near mandatory for FS direct dmg, but its locked behind a 4 point bridge that gives it nothing but AS that it doesn’t really care about. Wrap it together with lightforge. huge waste of points just to get here.
- Arcane Welding - 3 points for 75 ward per FW creation. On a class that has no real access to int/ward. Kinda useless unless there is some weird INT scaling FW detonating build out there…but that would also ruin the next node…
- Rewarding Craft - 1 point for 15 ward/sec/FW. with 12 FW that is a lot of ward per second. But without actual access to INT or ward retention…still feels kinda useless. And the FW dont move…which makes keeping the full 12 pretty hard.
Top left branch:
- Ironbound - 3 points for 3basecrit and 45% multi. Wonderful Node
- Singular Craft - 1 point for 5basecrit and bleed chance. While amazing for crit…100% bleed chance on a non spammed skill feels out of place.
- Spearforge - 1 point for less area, more crit multi. Fair tradeoff.
- Put to the sword - 1 point for 35% more AS, crit disabled, and phys pen for bleed. Would be fine if you could actually spam the skill to make use of the bleed on it, but the AS is wasted because the skill is mana gated, and there is only 1 stack of bleed available in the tree. This needs the smelters wrath treatment where the bleed stack scales with something. Maybe scaled with AS since its already there and needs to be used for something.
- Serrated Blade - 4 points for 100% pen with bleed, 40% bleed duration. Again, would be good if there were more than 1 stack of bleed in the tree.
-This branch needs to be split up into a dedicated crit branch, and a dedicated bleed branch…putting dot a crit together just seems weird.
Bottom left branch:
- Heavy Strike - 5 points for 75%more dmg, 75% stun, for you and FWs. Its fine. A bit pricey though at 5 points. And forced into stun when the stun in the game actually hurts players cuz it messes with enemy cooldowns, doesn’t feel great.
- Goliath strike - 1 point for 25% more HIT dmg. It’s ok. Cheap enough to spend on but only does hit dmg.
- Bellows - DoT dmg from stun chance, while interesting scaling, doesn’t really do much since most stun is on anvil, but bleed is on sword, and we can’t have both.
- Rending Decent - 5 points for 5 stacks of armor shred, 25% duration and 25% effect. This would actually be pretty ok, if it wasn’t 5 points, and points were so sorely needed elsewhere. Needs more effect.
- Eagle Strike - 1 point for targeting. Lovely node. The one thing that really sets it apart from ES and judgement…and its locked behind a 4 point node that is just ‘ok’.
- Reinforce Weapon - 3 points for 12% global more dmg. While i like the idea of buffing…12% just isn’t enough for 3 points in this tree. Needs bigged numbers, and/or combine it with fan the flames.
- Reinforce Armor - 4 points for 100% inc armor, its ok. FG doesn’t really need it much though.
- Fan the flames - 2 points for 30% more FIRE pen. While a decent enough ratio…it being only FIRE when the skill is base phys…kills it. Combine it with reinforce weapon for global more.
Bottom right branch:
- Engines of war - 5 points for 100% more area…its ok. A bit pricey for something FS needs a lot of to feel good.
- Anvil blow - 1 point for 100% stun chance and duration, 50% more phys, 20% less AS. Fine if you want to stun, but, do we really want to stun with how it works on boss cooldowns? Also this is locked behind a 3 point bridge…while the other weapon types are just one.
- Temper - 5 points for 20 flat fire and 50% more fire dmg. A bit expensive for the amount of flat you get, which then also makes it a split dmg skill and makes it that much harder to scale. BUT mandatory to get to detonate ground.
- Detonating Ground - 1 point for a new subskill and 300% ignite chance. Somehow the subskill can stack more ailments than the sword can. Det ground is OK. It needs some sfx/vfx love, and some more nodes to make it special…like void beams from ES. And the 1.5 second delay is should be criminal.
- Ignited Grounds - 3 points for 300% ignite chance and 30% duration. Pretty ok, if there wasnt a 1.5 second delay on it and things would just walk out of it.
- Lava Burn - 4 points for 160% more dmg for det ground hits. Lovely node, its a shame is buried so far down the path and doesn’t match the scaling on FS. Would really like to see one of the weapon nodes make FS a pure fire skill.