Is full physical build strong enough

So I am usually trying to experiment on builds on my own without looking online for any guidance, but I think I am doing something wrong regarding the build of forge guard

First of all the skills I am using: Vengeance, Ring of shields, Rebuke, Shield rush and Warpath. What I am trying to make is tank, full melee, physical damage build, so no void, no elemental damage, no poison, necrotic etc. only pure physical melee damage (bleeding is ok). However lots of talents regarding the offense aspects are focused on throwing spells and or elemental damage.

Is purely physical/tank/melee build possible at all? Because compared to the first character where my first death was at ~60lvl, I die quite a lot with this class, while boss fights last quite a lot in comparison to my first character (2x - 4x slower). The first character was quite tanky too. I understand that more tanky build means slower taking down of enemies but I donā€™t feel as tanky while I feel like my damage is low.

So if anybody have any tips, I would like to hear it.

Yes it is possible.

Forum is online :slight_smile:

Seeing is believing. The video below has gameplay T the end just showing its viability

With pedantism like that weā€™ll turn you into an accountant in no time (or possibly less with Volatile Reversal)!

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What i meant is, I usually make builds on my own without looking up any guides, they are not always perfect but its more fun for me if i made it myself. I asked for a guide since some stuff might be broken / not working as intended since we are still in EA so I wanted to check with the veterans of this game if I should even bother trying this way.

Thanks for the video btw!

Also I see for this build some void spells and spell skill points in fire damage. Does fire damage points mean that I should focus my build on more fire damage? I dont want to be picky and ungrateful for this link but for example I am using bleeding heart amulet so I think using spells might hurt my character even more. I guess I will have to make hybrid compromises

Aiming to just do Physical damage leaves your damage weak, you should be trying to stack as much melee damage as possible regardless of which damage types you use to do so. A full melee build is extremely viable however a Physical damage type only melee build is basically pointless unless you just like doing less damage with zero benefits.

Yeah I get ya I feel the same

Spells are often the best way to directly buff your melee damage.

I think I am getting the stats wrong then, I thought that if I focus the same type of damage, buff like +50% physical damage will boost my damage the best possible way, I mean the less different types of damage the stronger the types are

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Just donā€™t think I am trying to prove a point or to act like a smartass, I just enjoy experimenting and trying out unorthodox builds, and while usually I get quite satisfying results, this time I feel like I hit the brick wall

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Thats not wrong. if ur main dmg dealer is a physical melee skill its okay. but for example passives that give melee void dmg +24 are just on top of your dmg no matter what element it is.

In boardmans example build the main dmg comes from vengeance (basically physical) the other spells (no matter what element) are just like buffs for your mobility or global melee dmg. They do dmg like void or fire on activation or even grants some additive elemental dmg as well but thats like i said on top.
Most the time best way is to focus on 1 maybe 2 skills for dmg and build around those. i would also recommend either melee or spelldmg. All that dmg type differences are not that important unless you wanna dig into it very deep for like pushing 400+

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+% increased melee damage would buff all of your melee damage, regardless of what element it is, +% increased physical damage would buff all physical, regardless of what the type of skill (melee, spell, throwing, but not minions) is.

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My paladin if my favorite character. Lvl 80. physical/bleed only. I run Rive, Judgemet (there is a bit of fire with Judgement but I donā€™t use it for that, I use the heal nodes), Ring of Shiels, Sigil of Hope and Holy Aura. While it wonā€™t clear massively high arenas I find it immensely pleasurable to play.

Edit: not crit, heal nodes

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Yeah you are correct about that. I didnā€™t clarify very well, you want as much % physical and % melee damage as you can get but you also want to get as many +2 melee void damage or +2 melee fire damage as possible for example.
What I also didnā€™t clarify very well is that you want a healthy balance of Buffing skills and damage skills, if you cant use all your attacks simultaneously then you could be buffing 1 or 2 of them instead for way more DPS.
Iā€™ve found the best way to get the most damage is having 1 or 2 main damage skills and the rest of them increasing your damage.
The ā€œInitiativeā€ buff in the Lunge skill tree is a good example.

I have a Paladin on the go, my 5th character. And although he clears slower than most, he is almost unkillable. I found there were 2 key thingsā€¦

  1. A decent weapon - I have gone 2-hander, so a Barbed Mace is ideal (Barbed Mace - Official Last Epoch Wiki) as it has the most raw damage of any weapon, Iā€™ve yet found. Then enchant it with more Physical damage and Health on hit / leech.

  2. Smite. Smite costs 3 mana, has no cooldown and heals me for 300+ HP (Iā€™ve stacked Healing Effectiveness). If you look at the skill tree, it also buffs you like crazy if you take the Righteous Flurry 5/5 you get +50% attack speed which is just immense. With my heal on hit and crazy attack speeds I can stand there and tank even the fire siege golems.

Judgement is also great and deals 4k damage with another huge heal over time for me. I canā€™t spam it due to mana cost but my rotation is:

  1. Lunge (get a ton of buffs from that including Initiative)
  2. Smite (get healed for 300+ and crazy attack speed)
  3. Judgement (huge damage and get more healing rolling)
  4. Spam Vengeance (does only about 1200 a hit, but very very fast, healing me even more + 36% damage reduction from Bolster + all the Riposte it does.
  5. Go back to Lunge (you can cast Lunge and get rebuffed even if you don;t actually move anywhere)

Holy Aura on top of all that.

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