I plan on making a WP build utilising this node, with a 2H Sword (likely Volcanus), and a shield for its defensive layer and the buffs granted for FG with one equipped. (alot of these buffs may drastically change, but I expect nodes relying on 2H and seperate ones relying on a Shield to be present in sentinel trees.)
The node itself causes:
“20% Less Damage for You and Your Minions”
“10% Less Attack and Cast Speed for You and Your Minions”.
“Haste Instead Grants +10% Added Block Chance”.
Im wondering if those who are alot better than me at making builds/understanding the maths behind damage calculations can answer me. Are these drawbacks worth it?
I know it may be hard to objectively say without being able to experiment with and utilise the node yet, but based on your understanding, is this a node any 2H FG should take. If it isnt, are there any specific skills/builds that would benefit from it while others would not?
While DPS will almost definitely be lower than if you were to just use a 2H Sword, do you guys think the passives reliant on equipping a shield, but mostly the defensive layer of block would make that DPS decrease worthwhile?
A bit further down the line, there is some discussion about this node.
What I think EHG is going for with it is that it won’t always be an auto-pick. For some builds a 1h will be better. They are trying to balance things so that you can play for either.
But until we get to experiment with it (or, at least, get the full patch notes and updated trees) it’s going to be hard to say how much it will be worth or not.
I expect in some builds it might be a great improvement, but not in others. And you’ll probably have to build into it.
It depends on what you want to do with your build.
In general you can say that any current 2H build has chosen to use a 2-Handed weapon for a reason.
If this reason was “to maximize my damage output”, then Forgemaster’s Might is not what you want. If the reason was something else, then it could be an improvement for your build.
Things are similar if we look at the passive from Warpath’s point of view.
You could say that Warpath offers different specializations for different masteries of Sentinel. For Forge Guard, the specialization is to summon Forged Weapons, which would indicate a minion build or hybrid minion/melee build, and in both cases this passive will hurt your minion damage output, so that’s not very good.
To me, it feels like this is more of an upgrade for builds that already had a shield, since now they can go from 1-Handed to weaker 2-Handed and keep their shield.
The highest +melee damage unique 1H sword is Chronostasis with +54 melee damage
Reducing Volcanus’s +melee damage stat by 20% brings it down to +72 melee damage instead of +90
It’s still a lot higher melee damage than the strongest +melee damage unique 1h sword Chronostasis.
Obviously there are SO many other factors to consider with a comparison like this, like attack speed (also impacted), other affixes on the items, etc … But it would appear that the drawbacks may be worth it.
