First about me, i’m a “warrior” player, in league of legends i play as a tryndamere with 2900m maestry, on Diablo 4 i have about 10 barbarians lv 100, on World of warcraft i play as warrior 2400 rating and so on…
In last epoch forge guard caught my attention at first sight, a flame knight fit my style, so i’m a forge guard player, hit rank 1 rive on release and first cycle.
So here is MY massive problem with last epoch and why i stopped playing this game:
HP/Endurance VS Ward Balance
The fact that theres no viability through HP builds is crazy to me, WARD was broken at release and still is broken on cycle 1.
I’m a warrior (forge guard) player, get these shields and drain life mechanics out of my class.
My suggestions:
you should have more HP if you are not playing with any ward
Endurance should be on top of player HP and NOT on bottom.
More talents HP/Endurance oriented instead of relying only on affixes
I will come back to last epoch, on the day my class doens’t requires any ward.
2 healing hands talents and 2 Idols makes me generates 4k ward.
Show me how i can get 4k HP through 2 talents and 2 idols, if you can’t you are objectively wrong.
Admittedly, I don’t play WoW, but I have over 2k hours in FFXIV and did Savage Raiding in Shadowbringers both as a tank and dps.
So please, correct me if I’m wrong, but… Aren’t shields (not like sword and board, but like Ward) used on almost every tank/warrior style class as part of their effective HP?
I don’t go out of my way to build ward on any class in LE, and I’ve had no issues surviving just by treating ward as a “it’s nice to have.”
No, most of the time they doens’t exist at all, but when they do, they are physical and its scaling is properly according to warrior theme. They don’t need intelect, ward retention, ward per second etc.
Lets take WoW warrior as example, they have ignore pain, a “barrier” which mitigates damage, its physical and it scales with maximum HP.
Forge guard is suposed to be about armor, metal, flame knight fantasy, not ward/draining life, intelect mechanics.
At least in FFXIV all tanks have barriers that act as effective HP, same as Ward. Your own resistance and armor applies to it as well. Which doesn’t sound like what WoW does.
Maybe psychic barriers are a final fantasy thing, but this is definitely the exception. Magical barriers are definitely not a warrior thing in most universes.
Seems like they are in this one though lol. I mean, you’re talking about a class who can use a magical suit of armor, telekinetic swords and shields, and shoot fire. But a magical barrier is too far from the “warrior” fantasy for you?
That’s player choice though. I’ve personally never seen an INT Stacking Forge Guard build. Plus nearly all your defensive stats, including Armor (which you get from being hit and STR scaling), reduce the damage your ward takes. Ward Retention from INT only makes it Decay slower. If you’re in the middle of a fight it’s not as good for keeping Ward up as actual physical defense is.
Edit: basically a 100 STR Forge Guard will have a stronger Ward than a 100 INT Forge Guard in the middle of a fight.
Edit 2: Define “warrior stuff” for me. Because being able to generate ward when summoning telekinetic swords, or using said telekinetic swords to grant me ward when standing near them are the only parts of Forge Guard’s kit (specifically Forge Guard skills + passives) that generate ward.
Stepping into Paladin’s Holy Warrior kit to generate Ward with Healing Hands and saying “Forge Guard isn’t a holy warrior!” is as dumb a take as saying a Fighter with a Wizard Subclass being able to use Burning Hands is going against the Fighter Theme.
Maybe you are new in the game or new with forge guard.
I recommend you check ice gauntlet and clever solution, the main issue is HP/endurance “weight” vs Ward… they are not remotely close to each other.
I’ve been around a while and I’ve played Forge Guard a good bit. Not as much as Paladin, but enough.
The thing is, I make my own builds and again, assuming equal everything else. 100 STR makes your ward stronger than 100 INT when in the middle of fight due to how Ward takes damage.
All defensive stats sans Endurance and Mana before HP affect Ward at a 1:1 ratio that they’d affect your HP.
Stacking INT makes little sense unless you’re using skills or effects that specifically scale with INT. I don’t believe Sentinel or it’s masteries have any that scale with INT though
What corruption are you talking about when saying both are viable? I don’t see a single level 100 character on your profile, so I’m curious.
EDIT: my bad, there is a single lvl 100 character back from beta, but the question still remains
On cycle 1.1 I am running 200+ corruption, which is easily achievable before level 90.
Secondly, my personal builds have nothing to do with the statement I made about HP being viable. go look on Lastepochtools.com and you will find dozens upon dozens of builds that do not use ward, that can complete all content in the game.
Thirdly, all that being said in my second point, I actually do not use ward at all on my builds LOL. I only have 1 ward build out of my several level 90+ characters.
In conclusion, a simple google search, or by checking lastepochtools.com which aggregates all builds from all sources would show anyone how incredibly large the pool of builds are that do not use ward in any way, that can do 100% of the game’s content.
So your issue isn’t with Forge Guard having ward. It’s with Ward being OP. Got it.
Edit: the top forge Guard in arena only stacks ward between fights using a unique shield. The healing hands for ward can’t be used in combat. So… There’s that? Plus they don’t stack INT at all.
