YouTube Build Guide + Gameplay : Forged Minions Warpath Forge Guard 2.0 Tankiest Summoner In The Game Last Epoch Build Guide 8.4 - YouTube
Timestamps :
00:00 - Intro
03:18 - Skill Rotation
05:44 - Warpath
07:11 - Void Cleave
08:19 - Forge Strike
10:08 - Manifest Armor + Ring of Shields
11:22 - Passives
14:17 - Gearing
17:28 - Monolith Gameplay
20:13 - Elder Gaspar Kill
Build Summary :
Hello, this is Dr3ad from Epoch Builds, in today’s forum topic we will go over Forged Minions Warpath Forge Guard 2.0. Normally I do not go over builds twice a patch, but much like Judgement there were some outside factors that cause me to update this build.
So back when patch 8.3 dropped, Forged Minions Warpath was completely new thanks to the reworked warpath allowing us to summon Forged Minions in a way that wasn’t terrible (i.e. Forge Strike), through the new nodes inside Warpath. The problem was, as intelligent as Dr3ad was at the time, he did not realize the forged minions scale their HP off of attunement. Why is this important? Well to explain, minions generally gain base HP per level, which is usually about the same they gain per point of attribute they are based on. So for reference on my current ingame character sheet, my forged minions gain 11 health per level, equaling 1100 when at level 100. They also gain 11 hp per Attunement (which was unsure before due to the UI being buggy, thank god they fixed that.), which means if I have something like 41 attunement (which I have now), they have an extra 451 HP on top of the 1100. That’s almost 50% more HP just by stacking a single stat, and its multiplicitave with % increased minion HP. Before I was unsure of the viability of Forged Minions in endgame due to them being squishy, but turns out they are much tankier when they have 50% more HP. This on top of the devs nerfing Chapter 9 mobs (still overpowered btw, some of the base stats for chapter 9 mobs have been leaked and woooo boi are they nuts), this l leads this build to be so much better than before.
This on top of having all the nice benefits of Warpath, i.e. having stun immunity and being able to constantly move while summoning minions, it makes this into a much tankier summoner build. The insane strength of Void Cleave always carrying us, with giving us close to 150+ flat minion fire damage to all of our swords, allows us to focus our weapons on more important stats like Critical Strike chance and critical strike multiplier, on top of attack speed, and of course the critical strike vulnerability stacks it gives meaning we don’t need to worry about flat % crit at all, all of this combined just makes the build a lot stronger than a lot of its necromancer counterparts.
Hopefully this archetype isn’t changed too much in Patch 8.4, as with the crafting changes slated to make this kind of build even stronger, thanks to 5 affix weaponry, allowing us to have an additional prefix, which could be either flat damage or critical strike multiplier, making our damage scale even further. I could easily recommend this for starting patch 8.4, if nothing too big changes.
Leveling Guide :
Levels 1-19 : Forge Guard, Level 19 (LE Beta 0.8.3e) - Last Epoch Build Planner
So this is one of the rare exceptions where you can actually level as the build as you level, thanks to the access of forged minions so quickly in the skill tree. You can use Warpath all the way through, just focus on getting a big 2h weapon with as much flat and attack speed as possible. You will be ZDPS for a while, but since warpath will cost 0 mana, you can just keep spinning until things are dead.
Levels 20-40 : Forge Guard, Level 40 (LE Beta 0.8.3e) - Last Epoch Build Planner
When you reach level 20, you can get Void Cleave, which will be a large amount of your single target, due to the insane amount of damage from Molten Infusion stacks. We can then specialize into Forge Strike when we gain our mastery. We actually don’t use it, but there are nodes in it that affect your forged minions, so it will let you have more and also let them last longer, making them much better for leveling. After this point you will be around Tomb of Moridatus and then you can just follow the finished build planner for progression and be primed for endgame.
Finished Planner :
Loot Filter (Don’t use till 40+) :
This has been Dr3ad from Epoch Builds, off to create more builds!