What's the deal with Forge Guard?

While we’re on the topic, has anyone tried a Warpath > Forge Guard 2h build taking most of the Warpath 2h nodes and the Forge Guard 2h damage boosting passives along with some supporting skills? I was thinking of trying it but don’t want to reinvent the wheel here.

Boardman has a million builds and Forge Guard Warpath isn’t one of them, so that should tell you how much he thinks of its potential lol.

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Or he’s just not got round to it.

Better off specing into Paladin just for Holy Aura. Not to mention the Paladin nodes up high are decent for it too. Mastering Forge Guard just doesn’t do much.

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That’s the problem. There is almost nothing unique and awesomely efficient that the Forge Guard can do and the two other masteries can’t.

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I don’t feel each build has to be ‘glass cannon or bust’. I was perfectly happy with the FG when it was more defensive but could still poke out some offense. I also was not in any way commenting on the ‘idea’ as mentioned being a function of offensive capability but it’s theme and how it plays to that theme namely defense, minions, and fire (at least that’s how I took it originally; now who knows…).

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I personally think that’s the fault of 2h weapons. Forge has a lot of the 2h weapon stuff out of reach to most other classes, or at the top of the reachable skill tree… Unfortunately as it is now there is little to no real advantage to going 2h over dual wielding.

I think forgeguard would be most used if 2h weapons weren’t kind of a bust.

That’s definitely part of it. As others have stated more eloquently than I can, the bigger problem lies in the passive tree and how bad the skills are in comparison or VK. FG brings nothing unique to the table. From the skills it wants to be a minion / fire build but none of those skills are really fun to use compared to VK and paladin.

Then the passive tree is all over the map - minions, throwing, 2h, shields, etc. Yet none of those passives really synergize with each other and are often at odds with each other or flat out punish you for investing in them.

I know there are a few FG builds that “work” but they don’t work well and / or require very specific gear to work.

The deal with forge guard is it’s specialized around minions. if you dont want to play a minion build, then dont use forge guard.

There was no need to be snarky. I asked a legitimate question and it was answered and discussed in a very constructive manner so far. I thought it looked interesting on paper, asked why there weren’t really any builds for it, and got some very solid answers that make sense. After spending some time in game with class, I agree with the majority of opinions stated. I strongly disagree that it’s a minion class, as it has limited support for minions, and stand by the opinion that it lacks focus.

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I dont think Bankaikiller was being snarky, but he was more or less speaking the truth. Ofc there are other FG builds that works, but its force is definately minions. A few examples :

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And yet it has it’s passive nodes spread out over so many different things as others have said, minions, throwing, melee, shield, 2h, etc… It just feels disjointed & the very opposite of focussed. :frowning:

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Well to me it doesnt. Imo it has pretty good synergies with a minion build.

-It has the highest minion damage node in the game
-It supports a 2h hybrid build (with forge strike spawning forged weapons)
-It supports a shield throwing hybrid build (manifest armor can benefit from being hit by throw)
-It has the highest damage reduction node in the game, so you can go all tank and let the minions do the job with a pure minion build

So to me it makes perfect sense if you play it as a minion build.

This. and @jgraham0331 I wasn’t being any sort of way then saying it’s best built with minions. however, in light of that, the class still has nothing to offer that it does better then other classes overall, at the moment.

Tbh I think it’s only really useful as a throw/minion build. Minions tank, throws from a distance. Operates sorta like a beefy necro.

The offensive style sorta like a primalist with the 2h is just underwhelming atm imho(it’s better with a one hander or dual wielding). You gotta sacrifice all the shield and most throw benefits, and in exchange you get very little in return.

2 changes would make forge guard as interesting as pally/void to me. More 2H exclusive bonuses especially in skill trees, and maybe ignite having some kind of inherent property like poison

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The Forge Guard has a difficult tree. I don’t say it has no viable build options. But it is somehow not that appealing to many people. Since the rework of the tree people have come up with some builds, bit from my point if view it is one of the least covered mastery when it comes to guides.

There are 1-2 good builds that work with FG, but nothing exclusive (besides that minion stuff). Theres a lot of builds that just do better on a different mastery.

I’ve stated it somewhere else on a FG topic: My very first Sentinel is a FG and I rebuild him several times now. What really works well currently is a DW bleed build. I’m wielding Undisputed and a Sword (works well with Humming Bee on early levels / or Eye Of Reen later). I’m going all for bleed and ignite on Forge Strike (making it a spear) and ingnite and ignite stack to physical damage conversion on Rive.

Teleport in to a mob with smite (attack speed buff as well), spam Forge Strike till oom, then Rive till full mana, spam Forge Strike again an repeat. The Rives 3rd strike will consume all ignite stacks on the target you applied with FS and the first strikes of Rive and turn it into a physical damage buff for your bleed stacks. Undisputed will buff your physical damage even higher when you hit bleeding enemies.

It’s a really fast an fun build and with some leech you also have very good sustain. They key here is the ailment application with Forge Strike that has insane attack speed so you can stack bleed and ignite extremely fast.

The gear is a mix of bleed and ignite. If I have time I’ll someday figure out the optimal ratio between ignite and bleed chance.

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I have taken both a 2h full minion FG (manifest armor+forged weapons, and gear focused on minions), and a 2h hybrid bleed FG (manifest armor+gear focused on myself and bleed) to 170+ waves in arena (also both easy capable of any empowered mono), with only T12-15 gear in SSF, so imo theyre very viable.

You can play summon FG but the mastery is a mediocre jack-of-all-trades and definitely not minion focused.

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I always thought of FG as the minion mastery for Sentinel. It seems like every class has at least 1 (necro, falconer, BM, FG, and I imagine Rune master will have some minion stuff as well).

Almost ANY Forge Guard build is better off picking Paladin as the mastery. The only reason to pick FG is for the exclusive skills Smelter’s Wrath and Forge Strike. Even then, a lot of time, it’s just better to have Holy Aura (Judgement sucks currently).

So basically the only reason to pick FG is if you are going Forge Strike minions.

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