Forge Guard Warpath Forged Minions Endgame Build for Last Epoch (Patch 1.0)

Our base class is Sentinel, which fills the role of a knight in Last Epoch. Upon finishing Act 1 in the campaign, your character will be offered an opportunity to select an Advanced Mastery. Each base class has three possible Masteries to choose from. For Sentinel, you can choose between Passive Trees for Paladin, Forge Guard, and Void Knight. Upon selecting a Mastery and placing 20 Passive Points into the Sentinel Tree, you'll then be able to place Passive Points into the Mastery Trees.

Forge Guard is the Advanced Class used for this build, and also where the majority of our Passive Points will come from. The Forge Guard Tree will focus around picking nodes that increase our Minion Damage, Attunement, and allows us to summon extra Forged Weapons. A similar amount of Passive Points will come from Paladin, focusing mainly on increasing healing potential and Attunement, but also rounding out our Resistances. Void Knight is not used for this build.

• 8 points into Juggernaut: Strength and Resistances.
• 5 points into Armour Clad: 10% damage reduction if within melee range.
• 2 points into Relentless: Some Stun Avoidance, mostly taken for the 20 points in the Tree, but Stun Avoidance will help us to continue channeling without interruption.
• 5 points into Valiant Charge: Additive Health and cooldown reduction for Movement skills.

Our base class is Sentinel, which fills the role of a knight in Last Epoch. Upon finishing Act 1 in the campaign, your character will be offered an opportunity to select an Advanced Mastery. Each base class has three possible Masteries to choose from. For Sentinel, you can choose between Passive Trees for Paladin, Forge Guard, and Void Knight. Upon selecting a Mastery and placing 20 Passive Points into the Sentinel Tree, you'll then be able to place Passive Points into the Mastery Trees.

Forge Guard is the Advanced Class used for this build, and also where the majority of our Passive Points will come from. The Forge Guard Tree will focus around picking nodes that increase our Minion Damage, Attunement, and allows us to summon extra Forged Weapons. A similar amount of Passive Points will come from Paladin, focusing mainly on increasing healing potential and Attunement, but also rounding out our Resistances. Void Knight is not used for this build.

• 1 point into Weapons Master: Taken to traverse the tree.
• 10 points into Battle Hardened: Substantial survivability boost while being attacked.
• 1 point into Peltast: Taken to traverse the tree.
• 10 points into Guardian: Taken for the additive Health.
• 4 points into Shield Breaker: Taken to traverse the tree.
• 5 points into Hammer and Anvil: We do not throw in this build, so this just adds a flat 25% Damage Reduction 100% of the time to your character.
• 8 points into Iron Attunement: Scales minion damage and Armor.
• 10 points into Folded Steel: A substantial boost to minion power. A single point in this provides an extra two Forged Minions to summon.
• 6 points into Might: Strength boost.
• 3 points into Infinite Bulwark: Taken to proceed to the next node.
• 5 points into Liquid Iron: This is important, as it reduces how much damage is dealt to us by DoTs, and will help us survive when we need to heal our Minions.

Our base class is Sentinel, which fills the role of a knight in Last Epoch. Upon finishing Act 1 in the campaign, your character will be offered an opportunity to select an Advanced Mastery. Each base class has three possible Masteries to choose from. For Sentinel, you can choose between Passive Trees for Paladin, Forge Guard, and Void Knight. Upon selecting a Mastery and placing 20 Passive Points into the Sentinel Tree, you'll then be able to place Passive Points into the Mastery Trees.

Forge Guard is the Advanced Class used for this build, and also where the majority of our Passive Points will come from. The Forge Guard Tree will focus around picking nodes that increase our Minion Damage, Attunement, and allows us to summon extra Forged Weapons. A similar amount of Passive Points will come from Paladin, focusing mainly on increasing healing potential and Attunement, but also rounding out our Resistances. Void Knight is not used for this build.

• 8 points into Defiance: Rounds our Resistances out, provides extra Attunement for minions.
• 5 points into Valor: Picked up specifically  Healing Hands and the additive Health.
• 7 points into Blinding Light: Endurance and the chance to Blind enemies on hit with  Warpath.
• 10 point into Dedication: Taken for the Attunement.

In this section, we will break down each skill and highlight the key passives we have selected to make the skill shine in the build. While some of these skills do allow for some variation to exist depending on your own custom choices, we recommend utilizing the skill trees as presented until you have a strong understanding of the build itself.

 Warpath is the MVP of this build. For starters, Warpath is creating our Forged Minions for us, completely removing the need to manually cast  Forge Strike. With Moving Forge, you will very comfortably be able to cap on Forged Weapons, that being 12 of them. On top of this, it provides us a way to shred Armor and Fire Resistance from mobs simply by existing within melee range. There's a drawback on this skill normally, where it prohibits Mana regeneration while spinning. We circumvent this a bit with Dark Nexus, however it is still very possible to run out of Mana if you're spamming either  Void Cleave or  Healing Hands.

• 2 points into Unchained: Reduction in Mana cost
• 1 point into Reckless Spin: Reduces Warpath down to 0 Mana cost, but reduces Fire, Lightning and Cold Resistances by 30%.
• 2 points into Molten Path: Adds a small chance to Shred Armor.
• 2 points into Way of the Executioner: Traversal node.
• 1 point into Forgemaster Stance: This is what allows us to summon Forged Weapons.
• 5 points into Moving Forge: Increases summon frequency, and it's how we manage to summon 12 swords at once.
• 1 point into Iron Reach: Traversal node.
• 2 points into Whirling Steel: Traversal node.
• 1 point into Battlemaster's Blade: Traversal node.
• 5 points into Dark Nexus: The whole point of the previous nodes, this allows Warpath to generate Mana for us every three seconds. This is required to maintain Forged Minions, but also have access to  Sigils Of Hope on demand.
• 3 points into Quicksilver Wind: Boosts Movement Speed while channeling by 30%. This is extremely important as you climb Corruption.

In this section, we will break down each skill and highlight the key passives we have selected to make the skill shine in the build. While some of these skills do allow for some variation to exist depending on your own custom choices, we recommend utilizing the skill trees as presented until you have a strong understanding of the build itself.

 Forge Strike will never be used manually. Instead, the nodes we select are all used to buff the Forged Minions created by  Warpath. This skill does not need to be placed on your hotbar, and instead, you can place  Rebuke as a way to have an emergency button when you can't avoid lethal damage. This reduces damage by 80% while channeled. Realistically, there's not too many nodes that actually affect the Forged Weapons themselves, so we're a bit limited on what we can actually do here.

• 4 points into Forged by Fire: +40 Fire Damage.
• 4 points into Well Forged Weapons: Adds a whopping four Forged Weapons to our arsenal.
• 1 point into Forgemaster: Adds a chance to summon an axe instead of a sword, increasing cleave.
• 4 points into Lightforge: Increases Forged Weapons Attack Speed.
• 5 points into Heavy Strike: Increases Forged Weapon damage.
• 2 points into Engines of War: Forged Weapons have an additional 40% area for their attacks.

In this section, we will break down each skill and highlight the key passives we have selected to make the skill shine in the build. While some of these skills do allow for some variation to exist depending on your own custom choices, we recommend utilizing the skill trees as presented until you have a strong understanding of the build itself.

 Manifest Armor summons a set of possessed armor to fight by our side. This guy can do a lot, but for the simplicity of this build, we'll only be focusing on what's relevant. The Manifest Armor will apply Ignite stacks, as well as fill is as our body guard when fighting against boss mobs. This thing is pretty tanky, however, you may need to micro-manage his movement slightly. While our Forged Weapons will just continue to summon for free, Manifest Armor costs Mana and the AI will not move him out of harms way. Make sure your minion command button is mapped somewhere easy to reach.

 Manifest Armor has a lot of nodes which mimic (and even boost the effect of) your own gear, so keep this in mind early on while gearing, if your Manifested Armor is feeling a bit weak it may be because of the gear your own character is wearing.

This build has added the ability for  Manifest Armor to use Whirlwind Strike, giving him a bit of AoE damage on a 10 second cooldown. On top of this, the Minion is immune to Stun and has a chance to taunt nearby enemies every second, keeping us safe from mobs in the process.

• 1 points into Iron Grasp: Taken to traverse the tree, but adds a bit of our Glove stats to the Manifest Armor.
• 4 points into Redistributed Steel: Weakens the Armor, but provides a large boost in damage.
• 1 point into Titan Sword: Your Armor gains a sword, which scales with the stats of your own.
• 4 points into Platemail: The Armor mimics our own chest piece at a rate of 160%.
• 1 point into Force of Impact: With the Champion Regalia we've grabbed, this adds up to an extra 86 base damage to the Armor's attacks.
• 4 points into Great Helm: The Armor mimics our helment at a rate of 240%.
• 1 point into Whirlwind: Manifest Armor will now attack with an AoE spin attack.
• 3 points into Warstomp: Adds the ability for the Minion to taunt.
• 1 point into Thick Padding: Manifest Armor now has Stun immunity.

In this section, we will break down each skill and highlight the key passives we have selected to make the skill shine in the build. While some of these skills do allow for some variation to exist depending on your own custom choices, we recommend utilizing the skill trees as presented until you have a strong understanding of the build itself.

 Void Cleave acts as a firestarter for this build, pun intended. While it can, and should, be used to hit enemies with, it has a more important purpose. It provides a substantial boost to any minion hit by it by adding Ignite Chance and Fire Damage to your allies. On top of this, Void Cleave inflicts Critical Vulnerability to enemies hit, opening them up to devastating attacks from all Forged Minions.

Void Cleave can be used while channeling  Warpath. It will disrupt the channel briefly, but then continue, so long as the button for Warpath is held down the entire time. Be wary if you're low on Mana, as Warpath won't start up while at negative.

• 1 point into Riftflame: Taken for pathing.
• 1 point into Hellish Chasm: Converts all of Void Cleave's damage to Fire.
• 5 points into Molten Blades: One of the nodes required to turn Void Cleave into a minion buffing action.
• 1 point into Scorching Path: The other node required to turn Void Cleave into a minion buffing action. However, this one forces you to actually hit the minions themselves with Void Cleave and not just make contact with the enemy. Ideally, you hit both, as Void Cleave will apply boosted stacks of Armor Shred to foes.
• 3 points into Dark Pathway: 30% cooldown reduction.
• 3 points into Abyssal Walker: Taken to give Void Cleave a bit of movement.
• 2 points into Into the Depths: Increases the Area in which Void Cleave hits.
• 1 point into Precognition: Taken mainly for traversing the tree, but it also ensures the attack will always hit enemies.
• 3 points into Rift Maker: Each use of Void Cleave will inflict three stacks of Critical Vulnerability.

In this section, we will break down each skill and highlight the key passives we have selected to make the skill shine in the build. While some of these skills do allow for some variation to exist depending on your own custom choices, we recommend utilizing the skill trees as presented until you have a strong understanding of the build itself.

 Healing Hands solves a lot of problems for this build. It acts as both the sustain and the traversal skill for the build. One of the biggest weaknesses of Forge Guard Minion builds is the fact that any sort of prolonged exposure to DoT/Channeled boss abilities will likely kill them. And while they still will if left to their own devices, Healing Hands offers a way for us to combat the damage being dealt to them while still keeping damage output high.

This skill will proc off melee hits, but specifically all  Void Cleave hits and the initial hit of  Warpath. While Warpath is a bit of a problem child for  Healing Hands automation, it works well with this setup because we're constantly starting and stopping the channel in order to buff our Minions. The healing off these two melee attacks is reduced quite a bit, so if you need a bigger heal, manually cast Healing Hands and utilize it as a traversal skill. You are immune to damage while doing this, making it a safe way to either get out of danger or leap back to your Forged army in order to heal them.

• 4 points into Cleric's Hammer: Automates Healing Hands off Melee hits.
• 1 point into Rahyeh's Chariot: Turns manual usage of Healing Hands into a Traversal skill.
• 1 point into Sun Shroud: Immune to damage while moving with Healing Hands.
• 1 point into Cloud Voyager: As long as you heal a single minion, most of the cooldown on Healing Hands is removed.
• 1 point into Divine Barrier: Grants Ward per Attunement on heal.
• 2 points into Prayer of the Fallen: Increased Healing Effectiveness.
• 2 points into Blessed Parish: Increases the Heal Area and reduces Mana cost on use.
• 4 points into Urgent Healing: Adds 140 healing to the initial heal.
• 4 points into Vow of Restoration: Provides an additional 80 healing each second for three seconds.