Season 4 Forge Guard Feedback

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Season 4 has been quite ok for me with STR stacking and new weaver set amulet.

I found the updated Forge Guard Set phenomenal. The helmet has incredible Health Regen and the Hammer [once reforged into a normal weapon], has enough punch to carry you smoothly up to regular Abby.

Fire focused Forge Strike + 15 Forged Weapons giving EACH +30 Fire damage is no joke.

That said, overall feeling of the class is rather undewhelming. It basically has two sub-par skills on Manifest Armor and Ring of Shields that neither do damage nor provide support.

So please, find below a suggestion/ideas list for the future of FG:

I think Ring of Shields just needs way less health recovery nodes, more damage nodes [specially DOT ones], longer/better buffs, not terrible cooldowns and, the most important, to be used as Aura of Decay with an ON/OFF mode.

I found myself wondering why the mace expert can’t dual wield two maces. That definitely can give a niche to FG that no other class currently has.

A problem of Manifest Armor in its current design is that it falls short on scaling once we reach empowered monoliths. Just copy-capped flat stats from equipment, are not enough for allowing the armor to survive. Other class minions have more class support for that but I don’t think FG needs to add that support to its class.

Maybe it could be good to add nodes to further import other character attributes? Like use main char Hearth Regen, Block Chance. Or just add similar survivavility options embedded in its tree.

To be able to use main char attacks in “tandem” with the Manifest Armor would also be quite cool. e.g.: After using Forge Strike, Manifest Armor “echoes” it. Same can be done for other one-shot attacks; like shield bash.

Multi-strike feels redundant with Rive and Vengance. So what about to be made exclusive for dual whielders?

Rebuke is kind of useless… and I think FG needs more “magic” stuff. So what about a flamethrower that scales with throwing and spell damage [you figure-out the balance here :wink: ]. It could spit “melted metal” for FG or raw “void anti-matter” for VK.

As for the ability of Rebuke itself, merge it with Smelter’s Wrath ludicrous channeling time. At least if we are channeling for 2+ seconds, let’s guarantee the damage.

The multiple redundant movement skills fells a bit off too. Lunge has to go. Some of the Javelin nodes probably are worthy to be merged with the Javelin skill itself.

Instead that Lunge, maybe the Shield Thrown skill from FG can be moved to the general Sentinel area… ?

… That would leave a slot in the FG area for an “Armaments of War” skill where the Forged Weapons can be “Rune Smith” into different flavors. :slight_smile:

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The FG isn’t a mace expert, he has 1 passive that gives a buff from Maces (Weapons Master) & that’s a threshold bonus.

The FG is spread too thin, he has melee, DoT, minion & throwing nodes. As many people have said before, his passive tree needs to be more focussed.

Yeah, I like those ideas, the the MA echoing a skill would be too close to the VK, but maybe it uses a complementary skill of it’s own when you use one of those.

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Originally, this is because it’s a hilarious concept. Dualwielding is fantasy enough, the idea of being dexterous enough with two maces was just a step too far thematically. Currently, I would expect this to stick as many items are now designed with these limitations in mind. If we were to change it, we would also need to rework a lot of items.

Rebuke is primarily a defensive ability. Reducing damage by 80%, then further reduction in the tree means it allows tanking a lot of hits that couldn’t otherwise be tanked. I use this a lot myself while leveling, and for things like ignoring Emperor of Corpses’ soul eruption (big aoe nuke).

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I agree whole heartedly with FG being under powered by a gazillion or 2 compared to VK and Pally. It’s also confused and has no special theme - it has forged weapons (did that yesterday very underwhelming) manifest armor (worst minion in the game) then its got shield throw which was really cool, well still is lava burst - but now shield throw time rot and shield throw bleed have simply destroyed it in performance and theyre both VK and Pally. It SHOULD be a mace specialist, it should be the class who specialises in physical damage and not have ignite nodes - it should have REALLLL damage multipliers like the others do (specially VK) and it should have ALL the negatives of using 2H and shield removed ESPECIALLY the worst DEBUFF in the game - haste to block which is an absolute murdering of the playability of this class.

This class is underloved, underwhelming and underplayed - check last seasons 1 percent stats or less. Big shock when you side by side it to the other 2 sentinels. I hate seeing ( which I saw again four times yesterday ) people referring to FG as the ugly redheaded step child of the sentinel (ok its a little funny)

I have posted suggestions on disc and here and I have seen a LOTTTTTTT of others post them too asking for FG to get some love so more people might play it.

I hope they take it on board - removing the 2H / Sword negatives would be a nice start but it will still be 50 times less damage than the other classes.

Defensively it can get good armor but VK can stack max armor, it has the craziest leech and can turn ele into void dmg and take way less. Its actually tankier. Pally has even more defense than that! Its hilarious the tank class is actually the least tanky.

I’m gonna go cry a bit now typing this has made me sad all over haha

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About FG dual-wielding: I meant one-handed maces… not two-handed maces :slight_smile: . As far I can see, one-handed maces are kind of very narrow in their abilities right now [maybe by design?]. However, some of the maces I like the most are actually one-handed maces: Sinathia’s Dying Breath and Apiarist’Comb.

Dual wielding Sinathia’s Dying would useless for a FG… but dual wielding Apiarist’Comb. would be absolutely ridiculous :smiley: . Right now, one-handed maces are quite “safe” for this kind of addition to a class. It would be a nice a “niche” for FG to have.

About Rebuke: Let’s reword “useless” as “too niche for deserving a skill slot”. A skill that can’t be realistically used 99% of the time probably needs to be moved to an item instead. We have very few slots for our characters, I would rather would fill them with something that is useful more often during play-time. A question then: if rebuke is to stay: How do you make it more relevant during the time it is not used?

In any case, the feel-bad for Rebuke is arguably due to FG limited options. If FG had more playable options, likely Rebuke would feel different.

About the “Tandem” with the Manifest Armor. From interface POV, I was thinking on something like Primalist wolfs. Wolf skill icon has multiple “states”. Same can be done for “tandem skills”. Difference with FG is that the “state” would change actively by player.
* When in “inactive state”: No “tandem skills” are enabled.
* When “active state”: If in “Defensive Mode”, MA would be close to the player and execute skills in same place as the player [as close in time as possible; together if possible]. Dual Forge Strike and a shoulder-to-shoulder Dual Shield Rush/Bash would look amazing.
* When “active state”: If in “Attack Mode”, MA would execute the “tandem skill” towards the player. Forge Strike would be kind-of meh here… but a “dual-cross” Shield Rush/Bash would look amazing.

If nothing else, consider these “Tandem skills” for marketing purposes. Surely they look juicy enough on the screen. Your marketing team would be really happy to use them for promotions purposes :stuck_out_tongue:

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Yeah, they could remove the bleed modifiers from Pally for more holy fire/lightning modifiers & do the opposite for FG.

DWing 2 Renegade’s Will. +6-10 to Vengeance, not sure if the more hit damage would be multiplicative with another instance of itself, it has a massive amount of attack speed & it’s very easy to get LP on it…

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Yeah I mean I still wouldn’t play vengeance with its tiny AOE it’s super tanky but kudos to anyone who pushes much past normal abby with that build, yikes! Dual maces would look very cool for sure!

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Double Renegade’s Will sounds fun… so why not?

You would need to invest in LP crafting to make the weapon viable in the endgame anyway so, what is wrong in having your reward after your crating effort?

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no. he is correct rebuke is kind of useless. you’re describing a niche use for it for big telegraphed moves that you most likely wouldve been better off physically moving your character out of and avoiding the damage altogether. you are almost always better served having another skill take its place.

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Yeah, but as it is currently it’s ~1 in 6 for an LP2 (which is all you’d need for the offensive stats) & 1 in 38 for an LP3 which is bonkers. Given CoF’s bajillion exalted drops, getting a decent legendary out of it is probably reasonable for a “dad gamer” & likely trivial for someone who no lifes the game.

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Exactly: It looks amazing and it is something somebody would consider worthy of investing time.

At best, it is not broken and people will have fun. At worst some stats needs to be slightly dropped to get the item balanced out… So just let it fly.

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As a fellow no lifer you are correct sir - I have seen and left on the ground a bunch of lp3s of this, even slammed with 77 stuff which seems very frequent on 1H maces and nothing else this season curses vengeance would still be a B tier build at best, it would be able to do normall abby and prison boss and maybe uber but would be super annoying due to having to physically be on top of him for the tiny melee but it’s a maybe and it would take a while and doing echos would be quite hard at a higher corr because you again need to lunch/shield charge to packs and your aoe is tiny so ranged mobs would be slapping you hard. I tried a build using 1 with great rolls back in 1.2 geared everything it was horrible lol - just my take on personal experience with it

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Dualwielding can be trained even without talent or good coordination… where is the fantasy in that? I personal have more issueswith 2 blades rather then 2 maces. So again I can’t understand why this is to far. It’s like saying “Fireball is fantasy enough we don’t need other spells… like that Wizard in our DnD group… I swear if he asks one more time how big the room is…”.

it’s amissed opportuny same goes for dualwielding wands or wands and X. Then again you already shut the stable door after the horse has bolted and it would be a far to big workloud to make “dualwield all” a thing. Same goes with the fantasy that makes maces have no bleed stuff on them. I’m happy for everyone who ws never on the recieving end of a stick but oh boy those can make you bleed a lot.

On the matter itself… FG is jack of all trades and completely outshined by other classes that do more dmg, have better pets, are more tanky and so on and so forth. FG is good for nothing and meh at everyting outside of visuals.
FG needs something to shine because right now I have no idea why I should bother with the class at all when every other mastery ingame is just plain better.

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You can dual weild mace in POE2 just saying haha!

But 100% agree with that statement - it can do a bit of everything but at a very average level. If they don’t fix FG for season 5 man… this game has 0 hope.

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So little people care about FG or Shaman so fixing those classes will do nothing. There is so much to do I don’t know where they should realy start.

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No the correct statement would be that so little people PLAY forge guard. The reason being is because it’s shit. I and lots of others who engage in global chat and discord/reddit would and are dying to see FG get a face lift. I haven’t seen the stats for classes played this season but last season rogue had like 3 percent and they changed it, they broke it to shit but they gave it new skills etc and it seemed like every man and their dog was playing it so will be interesting to see. If they make FG powerful like VK/Pally I bet the stats will climb as well. It also did the season they made EQ bear strong and buffed BM.

You’re are completely right with not knowing where to start for them. My biggest suggestion remove the penalties from 2H/Shield especially fkn haste to block. Playing a slow class is disgusting. Removing the debuffs would be a nice start, still be 100x less strong than the other 2. They need to decide what FG’s speciality is. I think VK - void, Pally - fire that FG should be pure physical and maybe have some bleed nodes or a LOT of bleed nodes with more in its skills. If they’re going to make it ‘minions’ Forged weapons needs a skill tree and manifest armor needs to die and be replaced or completely redone because it’s weak and slow and the worst minion in the game.

Also shield throw needs to ricochet off terrain and get more buffs because it sits within FG’s tree, strongest spec is fire weirdly but then the strongest builds this season are timerot and bleed and the bleed is in the pally tree… EHG MAKE YOUR MINDS UP! I will help you redo the FG for free if you like. Sheesh!

Playing POE2 recently as wel as POE1 for a decade - shield throw there ricochets off terrain and in 2 a lot of skills ricochet off terrain, like a LOT. This skill needs it for single target, the idols help but still lack.

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Yeah that’s why noone is intrested in the mastery. Look at the paladin. Was nice to play, got a rework that made it multiple times more OP then it was before and people swarmed it.
Look at the Marksman who killed bosses in seconds and how ppl swarmed the class. Same this season.

There is a reason why some masteries or skills are unintresting to people. because they are unbalanced pieces of shit only picked for flavour or by people who want a change of pace or some kind of built in hard mode.

There are a lot of builds and a few masteries that are simply completly shit and this was told by players again and again and EHG isn’t caring at all or incompetent or have more pressing matters at hand then to deliver good classes.
Heck even D4 did a good job in their last addon because every class has some fun builds to play that ripped content into shreds. Not even Druid players I know were depressed the class they like was ass and they had a good time.

I have no problems with a class that is behind for a season but FG was instantly nerfed when it was fun.

The whole idea behind FG is flawed extremely and the class needs a complete overhaul.

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If EHG had time for few adjustments; not an overhaul, jut enough changes to enable a build… what kind of fiery metal character would you be willing to play?

I left some “modest” suggestions above… but if I had to get wild, I would like a metal-mascot. Hound and Rex are already taken so… an Armored Rhino or something similarly absurd would be great.

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Personally my first would be the 2H and shield node - no penalty for using it, speciality class, special skill, bonus damage for that class. The haste to block is the worst debuff in the game. In POE2 Giants blood has no negative effect (dual weild 2H or 2H and shield) only that you require a lot more attritubes to use the item.

My second suggestion they need to specialise the class, someone said it does a bit of everything but it does it at an average level. 100% true - Pally is fire, Void is Void, FG should be Phys (so I guess bleed although pally does a bleed shield through that applies 10k stacks on a dummy and runs 2-3k corr easily) I would say pure phys / phys pene / phys bonuss - it has no “more dmg” like void, it has no void like leech, it doesnt have the extra dmg pally gets, I mean pally even gets better block nodes lol but pally, traditionally in games is tank af. I would love to see:

Less armor nodes - armor only works up to lets say 1000-1500c then you’re getting 1 shot regardless and the nodes do nothing vs the over tuned poision/dot stuss

Less minion nodes - forged weapons needs its own tree and manifest tree needs a HUGE workover, its the worst minion in the game

Less generic shield nodes - add far more specialised shield throw ones, make shield throw much stronger and appealing, make it fkn ricochet off terrain like poe

Damage multiplier/2H nodes - we have crit with 2H, str with 2H and a bleed/ignite bonus. It needs speciality ones - attack speed bonus with 2H, MORE not INC damage with 2H - not a node that says X with axe, Y with mace, Z with spear - ALL 2 Handed weapons including staffs which should be weilded with shield too.

Existing nodes - the life nodes need a big buff FG has no leech or mega drs like the other classes which is why shield with 2H is so important to have no negatives. It should have the most life EASILY and should have its life nodes like “unflinching” buffed - 30HP per point, 300 stun avoidance per point - as it is 6/100? That’s a joke. Stun avoidance is a joke (have written many threads) - “guardian” should be 20HP per point. “Might” should be 2 Strenght per point and 3% per point.

Forge Strike and Smelters Wrath are 2 really weird skills - FS is like Hammer for Titan in Poe2 but does no real dmg just occassional stun and dmg buff for you/forged weapons and Smelters is just straight up weird, it’s 1: Fire - Pallys thing and 2: Channelling which generally gets used if at all by guys with shield and 2H so block stole their haste - making avoiding stuff terrible, clear terrible and damage terrible. They both need to go. Replace with something suitable for a giant manly man with 2H and shield.

The sad thing is everytime I’ve posted about FG, made ideas that would seem absolutely WILD to any other class that even if they listened and made the changes it would still not be on the same damage scale as VK or Pally.

It would definitely be more appealing to people. Lol god I talk alot, they’ll never implement anything like this. They are too stubborn

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I think EHG cares a lot about the flavor of the characters. That’s great when works and not that great when it does not.

Runemaster is a great example of something both, flavourful and with enough deep to support lot of mechanics. FG falls in the other, where idea is still great, but execution falls short somehow.

I think the key to make EHG makes changes in FG is to justify it enough from this flavour perspective. Not saying that this is the “right” approach to design classes for a video game, just saying that feeling I get is that they might be receptive to “flavour-driven” arguments.

Let’s make few points on this…

Overlap with Pally:

  • What if it is not FG who overlaps with Pally but is Pally who overlaps with FG? Reason being, there is no “light” damage element. We have void, necrotic and poison for the “bad guys”… but nothing that represents “divine power”. A way to improve FG would be by moving Pally from Fire damage to “Light” damage.

“Physically centered” characters

  • Fire forging is what you do when you are a novice… real man use bare-hands to forge metal…
  • A slightly different flavour for the class would also work. Instead of “Forging Weapons”, it can be a “wielder of weapons” a.k.a.: Weaponmaster. With this, all “fire-oriented” restrictions go away and you have a free roll for making it full physical too.

Damage multipliers.

  • Different kind of forging: You get a multiplier for each different type of additive damage a weapon can do. To be in the safe side, we can add a max multiplier.
  • More on the different kind of forging:“Cold”/ “Void” / “Necrotic” Forging could be a way… Think on this as some kind of "cooking. On this, I really think “Necrotic” damage is severely underused in the game… but ok, maybe this point is better for an acolyte version of “Demonic Smith” :stuck_out_tongue: