Right now the top side of ForgeMaster feels underwhelming, and the potion passives don’t feel like they fit the archetype really. I’d like to see more physical and melee damage buffs, perhaps some focused on 2h weapons? 2h feels underrepresented so far with how stats work. I’d like to see some skills perhaps like:
2h tactician : allows Forgemaster to block with a 2h weapon. base block chance of x% (I could see this being a lower number then shields to compensate, but since your spending skill points to get it, it’s a fair tradeoff).
Juggernaut Ascendancy: x% Physical damage per point when using a 2h weapon.
2h Specialist: x% increased melee attack speed when using a 2h weapon.
Melee Brawler: +x atunement and +x void/necrotic/poison protection for 4 seconds after you crit when using a 2h weapon.
And get rid of the potion bonuses. too much emphasis around a limited function in the game. The one that heals your summons along with you is great, the rest don’t add any flavor that I feel fit the model.
I don’t think these specifically need to be in there, but the concept is what I’m Emphasizing. More love for 2h please! and physical damage of course. That and more beneficial defensive options for 2h so we can see them survive higher tiers of play.
Less an Idea, more of a suggestion… can you please please do away with these “For 4 seconds after using ability” nodes? They’re… just awful and really take away from any synergy. You have a 15sec CD and for 4 sec the ability is useful, for the other 11 it’s a dud. That seems silly to me.
I think it’s a bit harsh to say that Ring of Shields is a dud for 11 seconds. The shields block ranged fire, they taunt mobs, they can heal & provide % armour & elemenetal protections for the duration & 4 seconds after a heal. Would I prefer it if they would give the +5-25% block for the full duration, absolutely, but that doesn’t mean it’s useless.
I’d like to see a lot more of the passives affect ranged attacks such as the attack speed nodes.
So you’re saying the other abilities that aren’t “For 4 sec after cast” are useful? and I’m saying the ones that are “For 4 sec after cast” are useless… But I’m wrong how exactly?
While we’re specifically talking about Ring of Shields, the fire aura is extremely weak.
Well, assuming you’re casting Ring of Shields on cooldown, they have ~26% up time, though if you’re a Forge Guard with points in Shield Crafter that will be somewhat higher since with a decent number of mobs hitting you (ie, in Arenas) Ring of Shields will be procc’d quite a lot (I’ve had anywhere up to 7 instances of Ring of Shields running at a time, though it’s usually closer to 5).
Having re-read your posts & realising you’re only talking about Ring of Shields, I’m not sure I’d necessarily disagree with you, though the first Touched by Fire giving an average of 0.78 added fire damage per point over the duration of Ring of Shields. The second Touched by Fire gives an average of 7.8% melee fire damage per point which still isn’t great.
Yes, yes it is. If they made the shields a spell rather than minions (like how they changed wandering souls) then that end of the Ring of Shields tree might be a bit better, since the shields “hits” would then be yours & would proc ignites/future strikes/etc. But I still don’t like the fire aura.
I was actually not talking about specifically Ring of Shields until you mentioned it specifically. I find most of the skill and passive nodes that give buffs for 4 seconds unfulfilling with few exceptions. The stacking on block increased armor/protections makes sense, that already is quite strong, but allowing it to persist longer than 4 seconds could get out of hand quickly. Flat, non-stacking, increases should be able to last longer imo.
I just created an topic about some VK defensive suggesstion and then realizing that there is a dedicated thread for such things >.< Please don’t reprimand me @Sarno xD
Anyway here is my suggesstion from my original thread:
I just had an awesome idea regarding VK defensive options.
While i understand that VK is a primarily offensive orientated mastery, the viable defensive options within it’s tree are lackluster, you basically just can spec into Health and a little bit of void protection.
So i thought if you really wanna commit to VK, he should get some very distinct and specialized defensive options.
One Idea was a 3 Node Branch:
First Node: X Void Protection (Maybe 5 or 10 points)
→ 4 or 8 points needed to advance further
Second Node: X% of Non-Void damage taken as Void Damage(4 or 5 Points)
→ 4 or 5 Points needed to advance futher
Third Node: X% increased Void Damage if you have taken Void Damage recently (either 1 Point node at the very top that is really strong or 4 Points)
To give you an idea how it should look… witness my advanced paint drawing skills
I’m playing VK recently and I think this mastery can have more mobility. VK has a great boost to movement speed but it’s not so useful especially if you use volatile reversal frequently. I want to see a node making Erasing Strike (ES) pulls me towards the enemies (walk through the time and void!) before hit. I tried to make it by Lunge + ES and it feels great actually. However Lunge takes some time to strike which causes unecessary delay. Plus, having additional skill on the skillbar like Lunge just to pull towards enemies, is super expensive pleasure. My proposal is to replace Movements Stolen node in the ES tree by something like Void Walker or Time walker allowing us to pull towards enemies before hit.
Also. Volatile Reversal (VR) is super useful skill, really. But the main problem with VR is that if I use it to restore mana + gain some useful effects, I still can’t get rid of this “back to the position you were 2 seconds ago” thing. It’s too annoying sometimes and basically limits skill performance and usability. It would be good to see another circle in VR’s tree where you can regulate the ratio between “back in time” for mana and position. I think the node like “Void irregularity” should be added to give an opportunity to control the time you travel back from your position POV. Yeah, it will boost VK in some builds greatly, but it’s fair I think.
New-ish player here. Started with Sentinel a couple weeks ago and have two above 70 now. Love the class and how distinctly different VK and FG feel. I’m definitely interested to level a Paladin too. I have some ideas:
There’s passives for Maces, Axes, and Swords - why not polearms? Sentinel makes a great halberdier or pikeman.
One of the things I love about this game is the ability to block with 2handers. Some passives in the tree boost block with any weapon, some are just shield. I understand the theme behind some, such as throwing damage with shield + block effectiveness. However, when it comes to simple block chance + effectiveness, why not make it for all blocking, not just shields?
Somewhat related - where are the Ring of Shields themed idols? Idols are passive, right? Certainly some of the affixes make them have the same gravity, if not more, than passives. But yet some skills are untouched by them.
Forge guard as a mastery currently feels weak/incomplete compared to paladins and void knights, particularly with regards to their innate passives. Void knights get echoes and damage, paladins get damage and defenses, but forge guard gets just a fairly bland defensive bonus that still results in a less tanky character than a similarly built paladin - my suggestion is to add some form of forged or manifested weapon to the forge guard inmates - this would fit both thematically and gameplay wise and opens up more areas where these can be worked into the forge guards gameplay style.
Yeah, it would be nice to make Forge Guard a bit different from the other two, maybe leaning in to the Forged Weapons & Shield/Hammer Throw a bit more.
Cool thing is, since MP is not out on LE yet, on MP release there could things happen like:
a. An extra “MP-Mastery-Tab” on each class under the normal masteries. (leveled with normal skillpoints or even leveled only/or extra on onlinepartys/teamplay ect.)
b. Gain extra MP-Blessings (maybe only working on MP then) if you mastered REAL, REAL HARD Endosses with full parties. (and such on all other Endgame mechanics like extra indended mp idols and so on)
c. This could be another topic (sry), but: Imagine 2 full mp parties (even hundreds or thousands) try to beat a long journey of content (many maps, game modes and such - both/all play ALLWAYS THE SAME RANDOM maps/bosses - ect.) to collect. some great stuff on the end.
Other than that / @ Topic:
Paladin Passive - which collect/accumulate all block-chances from any party member and transfers it to the Paladin (or all Paladins if there are more), on the same time the Paladins (or from all Paladins if more there) resistances are spread over all other party members (all paladins have 0 resist all then).
-> PLUS many additional Paths to other passive skillpoints in which you can spend another passive skillpoints to select what thing(s) goes from paladins and what thing(s) are collectet on MP-Partys.
Void Knight Passive - all Party Members within xx-Range (every set skillpoint increase range) have a chance to echo their skills now. (movement skills cannot echo)
-> PLUS an additional Path to another Skillpoint whether every set skillpoint increases the chance to echo their skills a little bit (not to high chances pls).
Forge Guard - all Party Members within xx-Range (every set skillpoint increase range) have a chance to manifest a soldier for 5 seconds based on their theme with 10 percent chance on hit. (Marksman manifest a bowman which shots with normal bowshots. A Beastmaster manifest a small little baby-raptor and a Paladin manifests another shield for 5 seconds, doing it’S best to protect this paladin and his party without hitting anything. And so on for other classes.)
Similar Party-things like on 1. 2. and 3. (obove) could made for Party-Reflect, -Future Strike, -Divine Bolt, -“something” on Block, -“something” on Hit, -regeneration, and so on.
Have to end now - will write some more about topic soon. Cheers.
EDIT 1 (will edit here since someone post after me):
Sentinel Passive: Convert the Health gain and Mana gain from “Time to Faith” to percent health gain increase and percend mana gain increase if you blocked a hit recently (4 Seconds).
Paladin Passive: If you don’t have blocked recently (4 Seconds), gain 5/10/15/20/25 flat physical damage.
-> PLUS another point: Convert 20%/40%/60%/80%/100% of gained flat pysical damage to fire, then double it.
Forge Guard: If you used a movement skill recently (4 Seconds), all your hits have a (extra) 2%/4%/6%/8%/10% chance wo manifest a forged weapon (they use the skill tree of forged strike [and maybe other sources too]).
High-end-toggle on the upper part of void knight mastery: Toggle to become a void ranger! Your Mastery Bonus changed to …(um, just replace the two words “melee” with bow).
Further change all words with melee to bow on the whole void knight mastery tree too.
High-end-toggle on the upper part of paladin mastery: Toggle to become a Battle Paladin. Convert healing effectiveness to increased percent of mana regeneration. Attunement effect from Paladin Mastery Bonus is doubled. All your skills costs 50 % MORE mana now.
High-end-toggle on the upper part of forge guard mastery: Toggle to become a forged commander! You share all your resistances and additional defences with your minions.
Paladin Passive: Your Block chance and your Block effectiveness become Ward rentention.
Forge Guard Passive: Every point on many spent on manifest minions become Armor, lasts 10 seconds and stacks.
Void Knight Passive: Every point on attunement gives 1 physical bow damage.
Sentinel Passive: Gain 5 % to Retribution Chance with every hit with Rive, Vengeance or Smite. Lasts 4 seconds, can Stack.
Sentinel Passive: You have 25%/50%/75% Chance to Block and 250/500/750 Block Effectiveness while while your hit damage halves.
Forge Gueard Passive: If you use a Minion Skill which cost 20/30/40/50… or more mana, your channelled skills are for free for 1/2/3/4… seconds.
Void Knight/Ranger Passive: Your Melee/Bow hits have a 1/2/3 percent chance to cast Abyssal Echos or Devouring Orb for you.
Paladin Passive: Casting or activating Healing Wind, Sigils of Hope and Holy Aura provide you 10 % MORE Ward Rentention each for 10 seconds. Can’t Stack. (Healing Wind needs a good skilltree for this i think.)
For Each Movement (or channeled?) skill you have used recently (4 seconds) you have 10 % increased cooldown recovery speed. Can’t Stack. (maybe for some other classes too?)
Forge Guard Passive: Your throwing attacks become spells.
Forge Guard Passive: For each single Hammer- or Shield thrown (like multible hammers on one Hammerthrow caunt multible times and so on) enhances “Damage taken by attackers when hit” (Thornmail passive) at 10 damage per thrown piece. Lasts 4 seconds, can stack.
Forge Guard Passive: Every Point on this passive (1/2/3[/4/5/6]) (don’t know how much it will be) automatically reserve one gem spot on your WEAPON. For each gem spot filled this way, your Forge Guard multiplies his manifestations (x2/x3/x4[/x5/x6/x7]).
Paladin Passive: Every Point on this passive (1/2/3[/4/5/6]) (don’t know how much it will be) automatically reserve one gem spot on your SHIELD. For each gem spot filled this way, your Paladin increase his healing effectiveness by 10%/20%/30%/40%/50%/60%.
Void Knight Passive: Every Point on this passive (1/2/3[/4/5/6]) (don’t know how much it will be) automatically reserve one gem spot on your ARMOUR. For each gem spot filled this way, your Void Knight increase his resistances TO ALL RESISTANCES by 5%/10%/15%/20%/25%/30%.
Forge Guard Passive: For EVERY single Idol wearing, the Forge Guard become 10 Chance to Bleed.
-> PLUS: The overall chance to bleed is now shiftet to his manifestations. (he self has no bleeding chances anymore)
Paladin Passive: For EVERY single Idol wearing, the Paladin become 1 % LESS damage taken.
Void Knight Passive: For EVERY single Idol wearing, the Void Knight become 1 % increased movespeed.
Paladin Passive: For EVERY single Sentinel based Idol wearing, the Paladin become 10 % MORE healing effectiveness.
Void Knight Passive: For EVERY single Sentinel based Idol wearing, the Void Knight become 5 % Chance to Tripple Echo when normal echoed before.
Forge Guard Passive: For EVERY single Sentinel based Idol wearing, the Forge Guard become 5 % Chance to Forge a random weapon when (or on?) hit.
Sentinel Passive: Stun Avoidance become flat Armour.
Paladin Passive: If you got a heal (maybe from any source), you have 10 % MORE damage and 10 % LESS Armour. Lasts 4 Seconds, can’t stack. (maybe CAN stack ^^)
Void Knight Passive: Every time Future Strike hits an enemy, you gain 10 % increased chance to echo with your next Mastery description here for 4 seconds if you hit this enemy again (can stack with multible enemies per hit).
34: Forge Guard Passive: Your Mastery Bonus expands. You gain 5 % increased throwing damage for each hit you have taken in the last 10 seconds.
35: Paladin Passive: You gain 0,5/1/1,5/2/2,5 Mana per second if you used a buff recently (4 seconds). Can’t stack.
Void Knight: If you echoed a skill recently (4 seconds) your next skill costs 5/10/16/20/25 % LESS Mana.
Forge Guard Passive: Your forged manifestations (works for all minions) have a chance of 10% to give you 0,5/1/1,5/2/2,5 mana back if they kill an enemy.
Paladin Passive: For each hit blocked recently (4 seconds) you have 1 % reduced block chance. For each reduced block chance this way, you deal 10 % MORE damage.
Void Knight Passive: Your void damage become colored damage. Now you see the origin of all void damage sources: It’s fire, yeah!
-> Your void damage from all sources (skills, passive, items ect.) become fire damage!
Forge Guard passive: The Forge Guard learn how to attach the wording “throw” to all his ranged(/bow ect.) attacks from ALL sources.
Paladin passive: Block chances from all soures are converted to 10 % MORE ranged(/bow) attack speed.
-> PLUS another passive point: Your healing effectiveness become MORE bow damage from all sources.
Void Knight passive: You’re affected by void distortion!
-> This way your echo chances become block chances from all sources. Your block chances become movement speed from all sources. And each percent of “each hit damage leech” (all sources) used recently (4 seconds) gives you LESS attack speed.
Sentinel passive: The sentinel loves and buffed his Iron Mastery!
-> If the sentinel have set the maximum points on his Iron Mastery, he can choose to set another point to gain “1 point to all skills”!
Paladin passive: While your Paladin practiced, he discovered the void powers.
-> Now his fire damage from all sources become void damage.
-> PLUS another point: You gain 5/10/15/20/25/30/35 % to echo with your new void powers!
Void Knight passive: For every point in this (1/2/3/4/5/6/7/8) you dispatch one of your idol squares to void. You gain 3 new passive points per point spend.
Forge Guard passive: For every point in this (1/2/3/4/5/6/7/8) your party members and manifestations are filled with 5/10/15/20/25/30/35/40 % of your idol powers. This has a 30 m Area of effect.
Forge Guard passive: For every point in this (1/2/3/4/5/6/7/8) you become one more idol square.
Void Knight passive: You dispatch your main weapon to void. After that you got a weapon donate back from void.
-> All damage types of your main weapon are transformed to void damage.
Paladin Passive: Your shields are blessed now.
-> AFTER you block a hit, a percentage of the incoming damage is back-healed by the amount of block chance your shield provides.
I think we need a Idol (or something else) with Chance to summon Sigil of Hope on kill/hit/when hit/block/ect… maybe something like: If you heal 1000 LP (can be you, your minions or party members), you automatically CAST a Sigil of Hope for free. (there should be a good (over-?)heal counter visible then)
Paladin passive: All incoming hit damage is translated (25/50/75/100 %) to damage over time (ignite, shock, frostbyte, bleed, poison, damned, time rot).
All incoming damage over time is translated (25/50/75 %) to heal over time.
Void Knight passive: No single hit can do more than 99 % of your maximum health (interesting ward interaction here). Your health leech is doubled(trippled?). You have no armour. You have no critical strike avoidance.
Forge Guard passive: All incoming critical strikes are split. (10/20/30/40/50/60/70/80/90/100 %)
-> You take a normal hit (damage wise), your manifestations/minions take/share “the overdamge” for you.
I am a massive fan of off-meta weird builds and am extremely impressed with the level of developer to community communications shown by your company. That being said, I have some suggestions for void knight id love to pass on. (Level 75 and have not put more than 45 hours in, so my knowledge on uniques are limited)
-abyssal echoes are now cast from your devouring orbs, but not yourself. Abyssal echo can not echo.
-a way to proc the abyssal echoes buff(can’t remember the node but the one that you can get more mana/movespeed) on bosses.
-warpath scaling with attunement when taking the void damage node
-erasing strike (in addition to creating void beams on enemy kill) has a chance to spawn void beams when hitting bosses/rare enemies (haven’t found a way to justify taking erasing strike when scaling spell damage/void damage for the beams themselves, this node feels next to worthless unless there is something im missing)
-a way to proc the mana/life gain from the void teleport ability, can remember the name, without actually moving.
-forge strike can be charged while moving at 15/30/45/60% move speed (i feel this ability is outshined in everyway by flame reave. Forge guard is such an epic idea for a class but this skill doesn’t feel amazing at higher levels)
I’ll add more as I play, and thank you for the love you’ve put into this game. Its the most fun I’ve had with an ARPG, specifically the fact that me, a casual player, can create a build and have it actually work instead of “bricking” my character (looking at you PoE)
Few ideas
Low tier VK node to convert holy bolt to void.
Vengence node to convert iron blades to throw weapons.
Temporal coruption should work on holy fire part of smite tree. Add a pasive node above temporal corruption to enable it if necessary.
Smite lightning part has no sense as none of masteries has compatibility with it. Possibly add some cornversion in one of trees. Forge guard could be good option for it as he has plenty of throwing skills. Could enable Thor trope style play with some hammer throw interaction.
There are a lot of nodes which relate to 2H weapon usage
There are a lot of nodes related to block and/or using a shield
not only do points 1 and 2 not synergise well but they are in direct conflict … choose one or the other
FG is in a pretty sad state at moment as every build concept is better built as Paladin or VK
so my crazy idea is to put a single 1/1 node into the passive tree (there is currently a nice gap between Infinite Bulwark and Flawless Defender at 30 points in tree waiting to be filled) which says “FG can now wear a shield while wielding a 2H weapon”
It will create the ability to synergise all those nodes which are currently in conflict and will also create the Crusader archetype of warrior wielding 2H weapon and massive shield.
Modify Shield Creator such that, upon the first point placed in it, Ring of Shields is modified for Forge Guards so that hits absorbed by Ring of Shields also add stacks to Stalwart and Avatar of War. This will prevent one top tier Forge Guard talent fighting against the other, as well as its innate talent.
I would also like to see a talent in the Forge Guard tree similar to the Void Knight that grants as stacking bonus based on the number of points invested in Forge Guard. Ideally, every single tree in the game would have a similar feature to encourage specialization. But, maybe move it up to the 30 point tier (from the 20 point tier) so it only kicks in when a sizeable investment is made. For Forge Guard, a stacking armor buff would make the most sense (10 armor per point invested in the tree).
This bugs me a lot because FG is the mastery I’d most like to play. It seems like there are ways to make FG work, but every one of them would be better off as a VK or Paladin. I’ve played with the build planner over and over again and can’t seem to make a FG build work the way I’d like.
Even though FG has skills that sound great and some individual passives that look great, almost all of them come at an unacceptable cost and are often in direct conflict with one another. What’s the purpose of the mastery? Tank, minion-focused, 2h damage focused, fire focused? It’s all over the place and the active skills have a very high mana cost for little reward.
Anyway, really enjoying paladin for now and will most likely give VK a try next. I hope FG mastery gets another look because on the surface it looks like the most interesting of the bunch.
I found a way to use that node. Making erasing strike cost more than a hundred mp does some very interesting things when you combine it with the forge guard % per mana cost passive node. Pretty sure it buffs the beams too but that’s hard to check.
