I'm confused about the forge guard concept -- blunt weapons vs class passives

Sentinel
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I’m aware the general opinion on the internet is that this class is a little confused. I’m not trying to reference any of the material saying “forge guard needs a passive rework, etc” – I’m just genuinely confused after approaching the class from a blank slate (as a game developer/designer myself), seeing that the theme of the class is obviously “hammer,”, seeing a whole 3-item set devoted to forging weapons in the endgame, and seeing minimal passives mentioning anything about blunt weapons, 2h/1h maces or anything. In fact, some of the most powerful forge guard nodes mention axes and the BLEED ailment, which is a powerful passive with multiple minions, I’ll concede, but I would expect to see 1h/2h blunt weapon stun buffs or something like that with a forge guard. In other words, the forge guard passive tree gives nothing to smacking enemies with concussive blows, which is the opposite of what I expected anticipating with this class theme.

I needed to amend this by noting that there is a blunt weapon damage node at the end, but much of the tree uses shields and the forged weapons simply don’t have enough damage to do anything with a single weapon and a shield from what I can see. in fact, the only way I can figure out getting them to do like half the damage of my falconer is using a 2h axe with the void cleave minion buff. it’s the only way I’ve found to make forged weapons a viable solution in what is supposed to be a minion tree, am I totally off-base?

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I dont really agree with the take that “forge guard is hammer”

to me it is “Weaponsmith” which yes, uses a hammer. But thats why the overarching theme involves turning forge strike into other things, including an anvil.

Forge guard is a master of arms, he makes and uses all implements of war. Not just his hammer. His hammer is a tool not a weapon.

As for the minion balance, while forged weapons are not interesting imo, they are not weak. They work for the intended balance level. Falconer is just grossly overtuned and is by and far the best minion.

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that sort of makes sense – I mean, my forge guard can definitely hold its own against the same corruption level, it’s just that a single dive bomb from my falconer can obliterate an entire group of enemies that takes my 12 summoned weapons like 10 seconds to chew through. I know it’s also an area thing, but the sheer numbers are nowhere near the ballpark, and I didn’t even put a fraction of the time into figuring out the falcon build that I did the forged weapons with ignite, figuring out how to have 12 of them, etc. heck, even my ballistas can shoot through a crowd of them hitting 10k crits constantly while my forge strike does like 1-2k max in a small area

edit: the reason I said “is hammer” thing is because the sunforged set includes a 2h mace, which obliterates my ability to use the void cleave minion buff if I want the 3-piece set bonus