We all read and see the ruling builds using broken synergies or bugs to run extreme high corruption monos and showing giant damage and ward numbers.
I don’t care.
My playing experience is not diminished by other classes but by the shortcomings of the one i play. It doesn’t hurt me if others can reach corruption 800 if i can at least reach empowered monolithes.
My wish: Give Forge Guard some love. I checked on Last Epoch Tools. Forge Guard is the onlz class that has no build released since launch. THE ONLY CLASS! (sorry for the caps).
Some issues i would like to see adressed:
I would say Forge strike is the class basic and centre. Against big groups of normal enemies this works ok. But when you fight bosses as a melee class you are constantly moving to aviod hits. This prevents you from using the skill most of the time. While this is not a problem with large groups, because the chance to generate a weapon is calculated for every monster hit, on bosses you have only one hit with max 60% chance to generate a weapon. Bring this up to 100%! At least one weapon should be created if you have the chance to hit the boss.
Make Ring of shields more active. Give them the opportunity to ignite on hit, not when they are hit. And 50% is way to low.
Remove the scaling of your weapons with attunement and move it to strength. There is no reason for a smith and his forged weapons of flame to be connected to attunement.
Give us some idols and item implicits. All i see is Void Knight and Paladin specific attributes. Oh ok, there is ONE idol and it is completely useless (increase area of forge strike, no one needs that).
The last skill you get after investing all of this points in Forge guard passives is smelters wrath. No one needs it. No one uses it. A skill you have to stand still for seconds? This skill could be used if it was instant.
Please give us a one handed weapon for the only set. Please?
Of course this is from my personal point of view. I love my knight. Packed in layers of steel armor. Wielding a mighty weapon and a protective shield and smiting the enemies with the burnig fire of his forge and his flaming creations. Until i meet the next boss i can’t click on to use my strike and (at least hope to) create my weapons. Then i play my falconer (own build, nothing broken) and rush through everything…
Because it has no changes to it in 1.0. There is nothing inherently different to its 0.9 builds and streamers will always bring oiut the shiny / broken / new builds first, because clicks.
The only Sorcerer build is an update vid, exactly for that reason.
That said, yes, FG and Shaman are among the oldest trees and need a revamp.
But I disagree that broken builds don’t impact that revamp. They should bring ALL builds into an expected range, both those above and below. Letting OP builds run rampant sets a target for what is “on par” and would just cause build power creep to get all 13 other classes in line with Warlock/Falconer.
“Because it has no changes to it in 1.0.”
Since the release there have been numerous builds with slight variations. Not so for Forge guard, although the game has changed and builds should be adjusted. But no one is interested.
I never said no builds exist. But if you look at them they either only use one forge guard skill or use warpath or multistrike because forge strike alone is just not usable. Proofing my point.
OP builds only set a target for what is “on par” if you let them. As i wrote, i don’t care if other builds are op (there always are op builds in arpgs). To make all classes equaly competetive is nearly impossible and needs to much work.
I truly believe most players don’t care about op builds as long as their choosen class is fun to play and at least able to beat most of the game except endgame.
But i agree that bugs and exploids should be taken care of but the focus should be on makeing the worst classes fun to play.
Except buffing the skills on their own won’t do anything.
Look at Warlock; Their Fissure can be made into dot or crit, a traversal, has interaction options with Infernal Shade, Chaos bolt & Zombies, (double because CB also interacts with Zombie) overall just connects stuff together. There is a clear theme around curses and basically throwing all kinds of stuff at enemies hoping enough of it sticks.
FG doesn’t have that yet. Multistrike procs, Warpath summons and RoS Dash are the only interactions. There is no synergy with Wrath anywhere, each ability exists in a vacuum and the passive tree is just 3 twigs in a trenchcoat.
That leaves very little to play with, to experiment with. Even if you implement everything you say, none of that helps making that throwing/potion part in the passives feel more at place. It doesn’t make me try to fit in RoS in a Shield Throw build. The builds that do work, like Shield Throw + Manifest Armor just have nothing else to be tried out.
It’s the same with Shaman: If it wasn’t for the +125% phys/ele res through passives, Totem Spriggan wouldn’t be a Shaman, but Druid. Its Avalanche has 1 external interaction(EQ) and that one is baseline a melee attack and can’t be made to match their cold school. No matter how much you buff Avalanche, that’s the build.
The issue is more obvious with FG, because Paladin can overshadow them in both throwing and shield-using builds.
So yes, FG doesn’t have build diversity. But it’s not due to the power of singular abilities, but the fact you can’t make a whole lot of builds with the pieces given to you.
Maybe you are right and synergies (or the lack of them) is the main problem.
But buffing the skills (and/or others) i mentioned gives you the freedom to include non-synergetic skills without loosing to much power.
Synergies may be the more interesting and elegant solution, but also the more complex and difficult.
As i said: this is from my perspective and i am not the best in build development. This take may just reflect that my vision of a fiery tank is not possible/effective.
I just want primalist minions to actually be good. But only wolves and crows are worth running because the companion limit essentially means you can only pick ONE pet.
Scorpion can be good solo, and a Raptor/Scorp/Wolves zoo build can do well as bleed/posion combo build. Replace Raptor with Spriggan for Frostbite, and Sabertooth can replace either Raptor or Scorpion in a crit build.
Bear I haven’t found a good way to fit yet in something that isn’t taunt-reflect, and Storm Totem is missing synergy imho. Both Upheaval and Thorn Totem have their spots. Tempest Totem is still on my mist to test.
Overall, about a decent variety possible, although turning skills into Totems inevitably has less options.
Actually, the rebuke nerf also hit some FG build. Namely the only one I had, which was a retaliation build focused on having 100% uptime on rebuke, which now can’t happen. This change alone made the build useless.
That being said, regarding the OP issue, the fact that you need to buff the weaker masteries doesn’t mean you don’t nerf the overperforming ones. What needs to happen (either soon or at the end of the cycle, depending on the results from the survey and their decisions regarding this) is nerfs to these skills (profane veil and healing hands being the top priority, I thik) and then continue to buff the weaker ones like they have been planning to all along.
The plan for warlock and falconer was to make them on par with runemaster, which was better than the rest but not in a broken way, and then slowly buff the weaker ones. The need for nerfs for these is just a bump in the road that doesn’t really change the plan. Just adds the need for some nerfs as well. One doesn’t exclude the other.
Oh, I am definitely not trying to downplay the fact you’re not finding a fun build in FG. Users are usually the best to identify a problem in a system, they just happen to (generally) be the worst at thinking of solutions for it.
The real question is, damage scaling aside, what skills do you want to combine as FG? I could definitely see Multi-Forge combo, maybe Void Cleave into Fire branch, RoS as defensive, the new Healing Hands could mitigate the Attunement Healthpool? (Or Manifest or the Shield Throw buff-bounce over Void Cleave if you prefer 2H Mace or Shield)
It is rather spread on main stats, but if you focus on Shared Fire damage, you should be able to progress, I think.
But you would be right if you said you wanted to do a variation on this as physical, or with Throwing base attack, or with Wrath,… Those synergies just aren’t available, so there is no fun build to work with.
I guess that was what I initially wanted to say; There are builds, but they are all 2y old and nothing has changed since, so even 0.8 builds are probably the same as now. No point in remaking a video or guide about them. Same reason Runemaster (as newest mastery prior to 1.0) is the only Mage class seeing new builds.
PS: Also doesn’t help FG has no ‘build-defining’ uniques that push you towards certain combos. The buttons work, but purely on their own and build options are limited to what scales the same way.
Well, outside of taking dev time to fix the OP stuff rather than work on FG/Shaman reworks, I agree
And retaliation builds did get a new shield to play with as compensation! I was never a fan of the Rebuke build, so I can’t comment on that particular nerf, but I know EHG isn’t a fan of perma-uptime things. I’m actually trying to come up with a build for that Shield, so far I have a Paladin idea, but I’ll give FG another look tonight, maybe I can come up with something new for you guys.
Overall, I think trying to tweak numbers when you have limited dev time available is not efficient. It doesn’t create new builds, just collections of buttons that each do damage. At best, it feels like a temporary solution you then have to nerf during the revamp. People are still annoyed they removed Ice Thorns from Primalist even though that was over a year coming, buffing things now to nerf them in 3-4 months would probably be worse. I rather they give us a full revamp in a few months than constantly have to tweak numbers and then take it back in a year. But that is just my opinion. Maybe they found a way to do it 1 skill at a time (See also: new Primalist/Shaman skills) and it would be great trickle-feed, but if they can’t, number changes feel (to me) like they don’t address the core issue of build diversity.
In theory, fixing the OP stuff will take less time than the time required to buff a new mastery. What needs to be balanced are the broken skills and those aren’t that many. Whereas to buff an old mastery you need to rebalance all skills and the mastery tree as well, to give it those shiny new passives the new ones get.
So there’s really no reason why they shouldn’t be able to fix both. Maybe not for right now (again, depending on what the survey changes or not), but at least for 1.1.
I wans’t talking about the broken skills, I think we both agree that OP bugs should get nerfed within the cycle.
What I was talking about is trying to eek the curent FG skills to a level people would attempt them in a competitive level, only to then later on have to undo it all in a revamp.
Most of the time on minor changes goes into testing & QA, which isn’t affected by the amount of change as much as the number of interactions that have been changed. It’s why WoW ended up with the invisible balance aura of +/- X% damage done and Y% received, because that doesn’t require a lot of verification.
My issue with that is that it does nothing for build diversity. And I think that is what OP actually wants.
I feel like the devs simply dont have enough time. I am shocked they dropped into 1.0 without doing reworks on literal years old classes while dropping the bombs that are the two new classes.
They did some light reworking with shaman, but it didnt really do much imo.
Tempest strike is swipe 2.0 which is cool, it can be played as a really fast melee attack which is fun. but everything else in it is really boring and undercooked.
Shaman still needs a rework, and tbqh tempest strike needs buffs.
This topic hits close to home because I kept saying they needed to fix the bad classes before 1.0, but now that the masses have the game its gonna be a constant struggle for them to release content that the minmaxer/streamer crowd can consume, while also trying to fix the dumpster that is shit like FG. They wont have time moving forward to just do a “this is the no content class fix patch” because now people expect poe style leagues…
1.1 is confirmed “pinnacle” bosses, are they balanced around FG? or Warlock/falconer/Runemaster? so if I pick FG I just cant do pinnacle content now or what? like it feels so backwards.
I finally got around to making that build idea for a “Sergeant Forge” build…
Requires exactly 1 unique, which you can still replace if you like. Without the Shield, Sigils would work as well, just make sure you don’t accidentally take Meditation and lose the minion buff.
Pros: Strength boosts your Multistrike + Forge Weapons, Attunement boosts Forge Weapons (dmg + health) & Healing Hands hits. The latter also heals your weapons, so probably overstacked in the planner. Cons: Currently have issues finding good “Shared Increased Damage” and Idols for it.
Multistrike is your go-to attack button, Forge Strike & Shield Throw manually whenever you like. RoShields as defensive, although it should proc often enough when being hit, HH is there purely to buff your melee swings and heal the weapons while you’re hitting stuff. I opted for a Phys hit/bleed focus so you can adjust as you prefer.
Alternative build for 2H:
Manual Forge Strike only, Void Cleave as alternative to buff them.
Doesn’t run RoS or Shield Throw, for the big weapon theme.
Sigil - 4/5 Word of Power is an option to buff Forge weapons more, need to see it in action first.
Both builds have spare points left at the end to play with and run 0 Exalt affixes, so this is just the conceptual phase, but it should definitely work as a synergy. The biggest thing is gonna be your Weapon stats as they scale with Forge Weapons, so I definitely felt stifled in a “sword & board” requirement. +X (flat) melee damage may be better than the Increase Phys affix for weapons, gonna need to test that too.
