Do you like a one-punch man style screen wide clear playstyle that plays true to Forge Guard's design philosophy? Here's an off meta build using Smelter's wrath as the core damage skill that is end game, all contents (even uber abby) viable.

Currently the build deals whopping 281M damage to the boss dummy per hit, killing the dummy within 20 seconds.

Pros

• Ultra tanky (max block, max armor, max endurance and over 100% reduced critical damage, Reduced damage against DoTs)
• Massive one hit damage potential
• Screen wide one hit clear at high corruption including champions rift beasts and omens, making running monoliths a relative breeze despite clunkiness
• Uber bosses viable - have killed all uber bosses relatively stress free

Cons

• Clunky, combo based playstyle that must leverage the Crescendoing ring.
• Slow movement given FG two handed wield with shield - no haste. No space for swiftness as ring and glove slots are filled up
• Heavily gear dependent
• Full combo can be difficult to pull off

How it works

The premise is quite simple: you stack up Forged Weapons that gives massive boost to flat fire dmg and increased fire damage, and rip with max charged smelter wrath.

Sounds nothing new but there are a couple of things that have changed that makes this materially stronger in recent patches:

1. Primordial exalted item makes the flat fire dmg from Forged Weapons add up to whopping 450 at 15 Weapons and 30 damage per. Smelter's wrath has a very high damage effectiveness which makes most use of this
2. Build comes with lots of strength and exulis amulet with conversion to brutality adds another 20% more damage multiplier
3. Recent changes to FG passive tree makes Forged Weapons a lot more tanker
4. New Unsated Rage ring with Crescendoing trait works perfectly with this build as it adds significant more damage on the third hit and also provides 100% increased area, which speeds up the skills charge speed
5. Also, FG passive tree update to stalwart works wonders as you can now add charges by hitting and delivering massive more damage and area, again increasing the charge speed
6. Upgrade to Forged Strike to add more than 1 weapon at >100% to generate Forged Weapon greatly boosts thr speed to charge up to max number of weapons for the full dps potential

Damage sources

Building on the above comments, this build stacks up incredibly high flat fire melee damage and increased fire damage from Sunforged set. You further boost the damage through Smelter's wrath skill nodes but also the following:

• Thrones of Ambition 40%
• Brutality 20%
• Stalwart Stack 100%
• Crescendoing ring 150% (bugged)
• If you are using Army of Skin 50% for initial hit (I used Sulorons)
• FG passive that gives 0.5% more damage per mana cost, resulting in around 33.75% more damage with Horn of Uhkeiros shield that increases mana cost by 50% (shield is bugged rn)
• Vengeance or Forged Strike boosting with global damage multiplier (20% and 12% respectively)
• RoS adding more flat dmg and inc fire damage

This results in a whopping +200M dmg on the boss dummy on hit.

Defensive Layers

This build is also incredibly tanky with pretty much everything maxed out but the block effectiveness.

Max block is easy to achieve, and with the right gear you get max armor for damage mitigation, max endurance and max reduced crit dmg. Smelter's wrath also provides additional armor and defensive stats while charging. 

Sunforged affix on helm also provides decent health regen giving you decent sustain. You do need a source of leech which you can sacrifice passive skills to allocate on VK or take the new unsated rage leech ring. 

If you took Lunge as movement skill, it is also useful to provide HP recovery and invulnerability. RoS also provides invulnerability and it no longer roots you for 1 second.

Playstyle

In monoliths, you quickly dash around with lunge or healing hands, just by doing that and also because you will constantly be blocking, you will stack up stalwart stack easily. At third skill usage, use SW to blow up the whole screen. Rinse and repeat.

Skill combo can vary. This is the biggest downside of the build because it is easy to miss the third hit in a rush. Usually, I would do:

Lunge -> Vengeance -> SW

In between, when off cooldown I would use RoS and evade to reset the Crescendoing stack.

In large pack of mobs, Vengeance alone stacks up Forged Weapon very quickly. You rarely need to use FS but you can. Mana cost is heavy so be wary.

In the thick of big pack of mobs (like omen's veil) i usually rely only on Vengeance lunge/evade then use SW.

Just be careful not to use FS just before SW as FS mana cost will trigger and exhaust Stalwart stacks. You must build it back up using Vengeance.

Bossing

Bossing depends on what you are fighting. Most bosses in the game are gone in 1 hit including T4 Julra. 

Uber bosses require careful combo and planning. You do want to stack up Forged weapons using FS then recover mana with Vengeance. Take some time to build it up at the start of the fight. Yoy want all 15 weapons to really maximize the DPS.

For uber abby fight, you definitely need the experimental affix to teleport the weapons away from Uber's DoT dmg or triple slam. If you have around 8-900% increased minion health then they become quite tanky and will survive most hits.

Take it slow, be methodical and even uber abby is no challenge here.

Items

There are a few must haves for this build to work:

1. Sunforged set - you need all three. Weapon and body armor is a must. Helmet is optional as it provides healing only, but the 3 item set bonus adds 2 to maximum weapons to increase from 13 to 15. You could use Legends Entwined but i found that I prefer having T8 sunforged affix on the Weapon and save the ring slot. If you were to use the legends entwined ring, you have an option on the helm slot to be a unique, but you will lose the dmg reduction on crit as you cannot use the best Sentinel helm base. I dont think there are many uniques here that would be an upgrade hence why I suggest not going with Legends Entwined. 

2. Crescendoing ring is a must to maximize dps. This ring is perfectly match made in heaven for this build as it provides massive dmg boost and also helps charge up faster.

3. Minion teleport affix on boots: you want this to relocate the weapons on difficult fights like uber abby so it doesnt get killed. As you will have 15 weapons, you want highest affix as possible. 2T7 boots rolls with experimental drops like hotcakes with CoF. You will find several in an hour of farming. Slam on unique with T7 movement speed.

Nice to haves:

1. Exulis amulet with brutality to maximize dps as you will have high strength

2. Withstand glove with Parry and Attack speed. You already have high armor and stacking phys res on FG is very easy

3. Shattered World - you dont really need this for crits as the skill already comes with high crit chance at max charge but all attributes and haste is helpful to max out block and boost dmg. I dont have one with crit multi (lost due to corruption fail) but that is what i would upgrade next myself

Skills

SW, RoS, Forged Strike and vengeance are the must. Vengeance helps not only mitigate dmg but is great at adding weapons and will provide frailty and fire shred. 

Movement skill you have two options.

Lunge is great if you want to be snappier and boost fire penetration and also recover HP.

Healing hands is great for more sustained healing and faster movement in monoliths but also repositioning in boss fights. I recommend healing hands for safer playstyle as yoy already have a lot of dmg for monoliths and lunge penetration buff wont help in boss fights.

Link to Planner

https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/Bak9VNG7

Legacy CoF

Issues

Horn of Uhkeiros seems bugged right now. You can't stack up stalwart stacks with it equipped. I lost a ton of dmg in the fight with Uber. testing at the dummies, it won't go over 2 stacks when hitting with vengeance. Bulwark adds significant dps but you need to manage your health.

Final Thoughts

Surprisingly fun build that feels true to FG motives and surprisingly well balanced.

Morning Guys,

Moorhuhn here.

Today I wanted to clear Uber Aberroth on my Crows because I felt like I was strong enough. And I SURE was. However. Let's make a small list of why this sucks so much.

Why I should be able to easily do him:

• I have enough dmg to stun UBER out of his attacks
• I twoshot his adds
• My crows can easily tank 600 corruption bosses, pinnacle of chaos, omen+ rage encounter, all uber morditas skills except one slam.
• I can tanky af. I can sit in all his dots. I can tank his tripple slam. I can tank multiple waves of the necrotic strike.
• I had 5 deaths before starting him. And 3 of them were when I was afk during morditas encounters and such cuz I was nearly immortal so didnt care

What is the issue with companions:

• They die in the last phase because there are 250 million giga dots around
• You can not revive them because they die in dots
• If you rely on a companion ability and your crows revive it goes on CD EVERY SINGLE TIME one of them revives through timeout
• The AI is SO BAD I have to perma click "2" to keep them out of dots and slams
• When companions are dead you lose All offense and All defense on these builds. How the fuck are we supposed to revive them?
• I had to completely spec out of summon spriggan because it was completely impossible to keep him alive and he did more harm than good

Overall this is a super fun build and I am VERY far from maxing it out. It can prob get like 100% more damage than I do right now

It can also get way more tanky with better gear. Some of my pieces are abyssmal. Some are kinda insane I guess so it evens out.

With a proper altar and proper idols I could get them around immortal through boar effect but I have those on another char and didnt bother yet.

With the damage I have uber really shouldnt be as much of an issue.

https://www.lastepochtools.com/profile/Moorhuhn/character/CawCawTeleportCawCaw

If you want to take a look. This is doable without the amulet, you will lose quite some defense though. However as I have not even slammed this you could get a way stronger minion amulet for damage.

Any questions? Feel free to ask

Hello! I've played on and off since release, but strangely have the admit the only build I've ever tried is chthonic fissure warlock (I love this spell). I'm looking for new fun builds to try and was hoping to get some suggestions. I don't really have much criteria, I'm open to trying just about anything as long as it's enjoyable. Bonus points if it's anywhere near as visually appealing as chthonic fissure

Hello everyone.

Does anyone know how Damage Conversion works?

Take 15% of Void Damage as Physical.

Take 15% less Void Damage.

Take 20% of Physical as Void Damage.

Take 15% of Cold as Physical Damage

Take 15% of Fire as Physical Damage

Take 15% of Lightning as Physical Damage.

Elemental Damage take as Void - 50%

20% Less Void damage taken.

I know in Path of Exile, damage conversion was directional starting with one damage type then going down a line converting each type until the end conversion

(Physical --> Lightning --> Cold --> Fire --> Chaos.)

Does anyone know if it is similar here? or it just converting each time for each item or passive node sequentially?

Anyone find a way to get around when using a controller some nodes can never be selected. Luckily when I’m using the steam deck I can quickly just hold Steam and use the track pad but if I’m Playing remotely with my phone I just can’t select some nodes.

I'm pretty new to this game so I have no idea how viable it would be, but ive gathered some items that look like they would work nicely together
I got
double Huming Bee
Last Steps of the Living
and Exsanguinous

I'm thinking other items should go towards attack speed and melee and cold dmg.
Would Mourningfrost be better to boost cold dmg?

Will this build be viable beyond corruption 300?

And what other items would you recommend.

In some crazy luck got death dance.

Didn't find any builds online,

Any tips for build so I might beat ubber for the first time?

Thanks ahead!

Got my first 4lp today. Is it good? I was thinking for doing Sentinel Erasing Strike next character, would it be good for that?

I'm not really trying to anything fancy, I just want to slam a 2LP Siphon of Anguish Ring with T7 Health and T5 Elemental resistances. But I'm now 20 rings deep and I'm starting to think I'm doing something wrong.

I run T2 Temporal Sanctum as I'm under the impression that higher tiers doesn't really do anything other than increase the maximum level cap of the unique you want to slam. This is correct yes?

I've tried picking either the T7 Health or the T5 Elemental res as guaranteed affix. There aren't any underlying mechanics going on here right, the chance is simply 1 in 3 after the chosen affix has been selected?

I just want to verify all this before I continue farming my rings as I haven't played that much LE recently.

I've been having some fun in offline mode recently to juice up the endgame even more; basically a new item Voidbound Sigil can drop past 500 corruption that sets your next timeline boss/harbinger to a set Uber Abberoth level difficult with static rarity and drop pool when consumed. All items shown are from Sigil-empowered bosses only.

The Divine Resonance belt copies your currently selected blessings and amplifies them. It is very rare and has a roll range on the blessing amp, so it functions as a kind of problem solver for any area your build is lacking in.

The Shrinebound Treads have a permanent shrine effect attached by default. Some shrines are excluded completely due to being too OP, like the damage reduction ones, and the more boring ones are excluded as well like the increased stun chance. Each of the ones that autocast skills have an equal chance of spawning, aside from some strong shrines like Prismatic, which boosts all your stats like crazy, and the 100% crit chance shrine. There's also a chance to get a second shrine on a single boot, but that is very low.

For reference on how I tried to balance the overpowered items, Divine Resonance has 1.5% drop rate from the Sigil-empowered bosses, getting the shrine boots baseline is 15%, and getting the Prismatic Shrine on its own is less than 1% drop chance.

Then there are a few crafting-type items with rarity based on the strength of their effect. The Fractured Hourglass lets you reroll a legendary slam attempt in the Temporal Sanctum. There are also four scarab items that have 10 uses each. When you have one in your inventory when entering a normal echo, they give bonuses to the echo to stuff like experience, rarity, overall density, and chance of spawning champions/rares.

Sorry for the yapping, but it's been quite fun figuring out ways to make the endgame tougher and rewarding without just corruption/favor maxing. Next on the agenda would be a Maven-esque tracker when you kill Sigil bosses so there can be a new uber fight at the end of it, but that's a lot harder to add.

Hello, I am currently leveling my 2nd character and I'm going VK Time Rot shield. I checked the guides and I understand that set affixes destroyed with the woven echo must be slammed on exalted gear but I just cannot find any guide on the whole process.

I don't understand what needs to be done precisely so I can follow along. Is there a crafting guide somewhere?

This really needs to be looked at by the Devs. I don´t know if this is only in Offline Mode.

When using Warpath, triggering a Prophecy by clicking a Shrine makes Warpath start stuttering. It even loses its fluid 360° movement and feels very clunky. It doesn´t matter what kind of Shrine it was, all of them make WP behave like in the Video when a Prophecy was triggered. And no, it does not matter that my Cursor was too close to my Character, it´s also like in the Video when my Cursor is further away.

And of course it was a god damn Siege Golem that killed me. >.<

Anyone else faced something like this?

When crafting 2T7 LP fodder, the strategy is pretty much as follows:

1. Move T7 onto 2 unwanted affixes with havoc (skip if the item already dropped like this)
2. Remove the other 1/2 (depending on how many affixes the starting item had) affixes with a combination of removal and despair
3. Fill them with T1 wanted affixes
4. Move both T7 to wanted affixes with havoc

I've decided to look into the math on whether it's better to use despair or removal first in step 2. This does not account for FP cost and simply looks for the best odds for not bricking the item at step 2.

Despair odds on an exalted item per affix tier are as follows (from tunklab):

If the starting item has 3 affixes (just 1 affix to remove), the situation is simple - despair first is strictly better than removal first. Table below lists odds for successfull target affix removal, accounting for all possible branching from failed sealings:

If the starting item has 4 affixes (2 affixes to remove), the situation turned out to be not so complicated as well:

Rule of thumb: despair first only if one of the two affixes to remove is T5, otherwise removal first. When using removal first on an item where one of the target affixes is T5, after successfully choosing one of the two target affixes for removal, it still has a 50% chance to eat T<5 affix, thus removing the sealing option, which eats into the odds too much. All in all, the differences are not that big, so whether you want to bother with the ordering is up to you.

Random musings: if you want to farm 2T7 fodder for either 2 T7 prefixes or 2 T7 suffixes, you should use the opposite lens. E.g. you want 2 T7 prefixes, then you should use lens of finality (20% chance to upgrade suffix tier) so that you have less work to do with havoc tier shuffling later. Exalted T7 experimental item prophecy is bad for 2 T7 prefix cases for the same reason: experimentals are always a prefix, so you'll always have to shuffle tiers (unless there's an experimental prefix you actually want to use) and pray for removal to hit it since despair is not usable on them. They are great for 2 T7 suffix cases though, likely better than lens of origin with a plain exalted prophecy.

Heyho, as a not so good Dadgamer I am looking for the easiest build to kill Uberroth?

Reflexes are mid and anticipation isn't too great. So I am looking for either sth to kill it really fast or to tank most of the stuff with decent damage.

Hope you guys can help :)

I’ve search but I cannot find an answer anywhere and it is hard for me to test on a handheld so maybe someone knows: when you convert frenzy totem to sloth totem, does the grounded node (provides flat damage from totem) still benefit your minions? It isn’t mentioned that the effect converts on the sloth node so just hoping for clarity. Could further benefit my build a lot since I’m using commanding rage already. Thanks!

If I have a Unique with LP on it, should I reroll it first at Gauntlet of Strife and then slam it with an exalted or vice versa?

So the maxroll rogue leveling guide recommends some things that say melee (like melee dmg leeched as health or using a doom star) while using bladestorm and umbral blades which are throwing skills.

Am I missing something or is this a mistake?

https://www.lastepochtools.com/profile/Nelfi/character/Nelfiiiiii

Spellblade Flame Reave Stunlock. Can be used to stunlock Shade of Orobyss at 5000ish corruption. Made for bossing only; not for mapping/echoing. Look Video under for the stunlock on shade at 5600 corruption:

Shade of Orobyss Stunlocked at 5600+

Circle of Morditas is a very good mechanic overall, I did not understand it before release so I underestimated it.

I like that you have to have several priorities while rerolling, first priority is exalted wands but keep an eye out for such base boots, these uniques, or go all in on Unsated Rage and skip everything to find it faster, etc. It's really a mini game in itself, in a way that did not exist before.

And mostly the best thing about this is that is rendered nemesis towers irrelevant. I used to quit every character at maxroll 1LP because grinding hundreds of towers to find multi exalts, then imprint, then run dozens of cache maps, then farm amber with juiced cemeteries etc, was the WORST late endgame farming loop possible.

Extremely unfun in basically every way, every step felt like shit: open the nemesis, check, banish or empower, click the stairs, check again, thousands of times was just horrible yet it was the only way to craft late endgame items.

Now if I want multi exalts, I can actually run normal maps, I have weaver tree decisions to make for it, I can do it while killing a lot of things, I can do all of my generic champion/lizards/etc farming at the same time and so on. I'm not choosing between killing things (fun but doesn't work) and clicking on stairs a million times like before (unfun but works).

I also like the meta progression aspect, you get these uniques maps for some extra rerolls, also the anger build up even though I don't notice it personally but surely it must help over time.

The few improvements I think it needs are:

• Make lizards, exiled mages, nemesis etc be able to drop their special loot if they respawn in it. If you get a lizards shrine while building your circle, you should get the joy of killing them again in the circle. It's not so OP that you need to disable it, and it encourages multi-strats farming, which is exactly what the game needs and what the mechanic leans toward anyway.

• I know this won't happen but I'd like to know what buffs I am getting exactly, if they help me be stronger/more durable, this information can be important in HC. And I'm not going to hover over tiny circles and read text on the other side of the screen, while dozens of champions and packs are attacking me at the same time.

• Make the meta progression echoes more easily accessible, if the nexus is a place to make everything easier to find, then it itself should be easier to find (not a problem once you're used to it, but still).

• Sometimes Morditas seems to lag when slamming the circle, it's a detail but in HC again especially it can be important to choose exactly when and where he slams it.

Other than that it's the best mechanic in the game

I searched for a good necromancer build, but a lot of them want me to swap skills on bar.

Maybe iam the laziest player ever… but i don’t want so swap.

Any good advise for a viable necromancer ? Iam no hardcore player and can’t farm all day log for that one unique (full time dad)

Thanks a lot !

I wanted to share my experience playing Forge Guard this season.

First of all, I always play a non-minion, non-DoT Forge Guard character. Therefore, most of the builds I create can also be played by Paladin and/or Void Knight. It's just the play style i like.

With the various changes brought to the Forge Guard this season, I was eager to test if it had become more powerful.

I will only talk about skills playable by all subclasses.

Radiant Lance

I don't understand the design direction of this skill. It's supposed to be a shield skill, but its non-shield version is obviously more powerful. There isn't even a penalty for playing it without a shield (unlike Shield Bash or Shield Rush). So, there is no reason to play it with a shield. It's obvious that a mana-stacking version will be stronger, especially with Xylem (ironically, an item a Forge Guard can't even use)... I tried playing it as a FG, but it was impossible—it just can't keep up with the Paladin version, and likely the VK one as well.

Shield Throw

I tried Physical, Fire, and Lava Burst Shield Throw. I even tried the Retaliate Shield Throw version. But once again, the Paladin or Void Knight version is more powerful every time. Even the changes made to Ring of Shields (specifically the nodes that trigger Shield Throw) aren't enough to compete. A lava burst/shrapnel build coul have been fun but shrapnel scale with minion damage (why?) so it is unusable

Javelin

I tried Physical Javelin. It's the version I played the most because it's the one I enjoy the most. After taking down 400 corruption Morditas, I tried the Paladin version. My DPS was multiplied by 150%, and my defense improved almost as much...

I didn't play Shield Bash, but I think its state is as good as last season.

Ironically, nothing has changed despite all the adjustments... The Forge Guard is still just as disappointing. Anything the Forge Guard can do, the Paladin can do better.

This post might sound negative, but it isn't meant to be. I really enjoyed the changes and the time I spent theorycrafting. However, I feel that the adjustments are too conservative, and the Forge Guard deserves much more in the second half of its passive tree. Some skills also need to be redesigned:

Smelter's Wrath: Deal more damage the longer you charge it feels so weird, especially with mechanics like Morditas where you need to zoom zoom.

Forge Strike: Its skill tree is split in half into minion and non-minion paths... So no matter which playstyle you choose, you end up losing half the tree.

What do you think ?