Forge Guard Warpath Forged Minions Endgame Build for Last Epoch (Patch 1.1.7)

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 in the Sentinel Tree, you'll then be able to place Passive points in 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 in Juggernaut: Strength and Resistances.
• 5 points in Armour Clad: 10% damage reduction if within melee range.
• 1 point in Fearless: Pathing node.
• 1 point in Stalwart: Easy 3% Block Chance.
• 5 points in 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 in the Sentinel Tree, you'll then be able to place Passive points in 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.

• 10 points in Battle Hardened: Substantial survivability boost while being attacked.
• 3 points in Unflinching: Prevents your minions from being stunned.
• 10 points in Guardian: Taken for the additive Health.
• 5 points in Hammer and Anvil: Adds 100% chance for minions to shred armor.
• 8 points in Iron Attunement: Scales minion damage, armor and our Attunement.
• 10 points in Folded Steel: A substantial boost to minion power. A single point in this provides an extra two Forged Minions to summon.
• 6 points in Might: Strength boost.
• 4 points in Infinite Bulwark: Potions will now heal your minions.
• 5 points in 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.
• 1 point in Flawless Defender: Useless for us, taking for pathing.
• 1 point in Walls of Solarum: Another easy 3% Block Chance.

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 in the Sentinel Tree, you'll then be able to place Passive points in 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 in Defiance: Rounds our Resistances out, provides extra Attunement for minions.
• 5 points in Valor: Picked up specifically  Healing Hands and the additive Health.
• 7 points in Blinding Light: Endurance and the chance to Blind enemies on hit with  Warpath.
• 10 point in Dedication: Taken for the Attunement.

 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. Mana is generated through Dark Nexus, to enable unrestrained usage of  Void Cleave.

• 5 points in Unchained: Reduction in Mana cost.
• 2 points in Molten Path: Adds a small chance to Shred Armor.
• 2 points in Way of the Executioner: Pathing node.
• 1 point in Forgemaster Stance: This is what allows us to summon Forged Weapons.
• 5 points in Moving Forge: Increases summon frequency, and it's how we manage to summon 12 swords at once.
• 1 point in Iron Reach: Pathing node.
• 2 points in Whirling Steel: Pathing node.
• 1 point in Battlemaster's Blade: Pathing node.
• 1 points in Dark Nexus: The whole point of the previous nodes, this allows Warpath to generate Mana for us every three seconds.
• 3 points in Quicksilver Wind: Boosts Movement Speed while channeling by 30%. This is extremely important as you climb Corruption.
• 5 points in Juggernaut Stance: A massive 20% Block Chance and 500 Block Effectiveness while channeling Warpath.

 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 in Forged by Fire: +40 Fire Damage.
• 4 points in Well Forged Weapons: Adds a whopping four Forged Weapons to our arsenal.
• 1 point in Forgemaster: Adds a chance to summon an axe instead of a sword, increasing cleave.
• 4 points in Lightforge: Increases Forged Weapons Attack Speed.
• 5 points in Heavy Strike: Increases Forged Weapon damage.
• 5 points in Engines of War: Forged Weapons have an additional 40% area for their attacks.
• 3 points in Arcane Welding: 75 Ward is gained when summoning. These points are free, so no reason not to take them as long as your  Sword Catcher allows you to.

 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 has a chance to taunt nearby enemies every second, keeping us safe from mobs in the process.

• 4 points in Iron Grasp: Adds stats from our gloves to the Manifest Armor.
• 4 points in Redistributed Steel: Weakens the Armor, but provides a large boost in damage.
• 1 point in Titan Sword: Your Armor gains a sword, which scales with the stats of your own weapon.
• 4 points in Platemail: The Armor mimics our own chest piece at a rate of 160%.
• 1 point in Force of Impact: With the Champion Regalia we've grabbed, this adds up to an extra 86 base damage to the Armor's attacks.
• 3 points in Great Helm: The Armor mimics our helment at a rate of 180%.
• 1 point in Whirlwind: Manifest Armor will now attack with an AoE spin attack.
• 1 point in Warstomp: Adds the ability for the Minion to taunt.
• 5 points in Burning Armor: Manifest Armor gains additional flat damage and all Fire Damage deals 50% more.

 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 in Riftflame: Taken for pathing.
• 1 point in Hellish Chasm: Converts all of Void Cleave's damage to Fire.
• 5 points in Molten Blades: One of the nodes required to turn Void Cleave into a minion buffing action.
• 1 point in 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 in Dark Pathway: 30% cooldown reduction.
• 2 points in Abyssal Walker: Taken to give Void Cleave a bit of movement.
• 5 points in Into the Depths: Increases the Area in which Void Cleave hits.
• 1 point in Precognition: Taken mainly for traversing the tree, but it also ensures the attack will always hit enemies.
• 3 points in Rift Maker: Each use of Void Cleave will inflict three stacks of Critical Vulnerability.
• 3 points in Armor Sunderer: Adds enhanced stacks of Armor Shred on hit.
• 1 point in Nether Charge: Increases Mana cost by 10, but also allows an extra charge of Void Cleave 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 in Cleric's Hammer: Automates Healing Hands off Melee hits.
• 1 point in Rahyeh's Chariot: Turns manual usage of Healing Hands into a Traversal skill.
• 1 point in Sun Shroud: Immune to damage while moving with Healing Hands.
• 1 point in Cloud Voyager: As long as you heal a single minion, most of the cooldown on Healing Hands is removed.
• 1 point in Divine Barrier: Grants Ward per Attunement on heal.
• 2 points in Prayer of the Fallen: Increased Healing Effectiveness.
• 3 points in Blessed Parish: Increases the Heal Area and reduces Mana cost on use.
• 1 point in Purity of Thought: Reduced Mana cost.
• 4 points in Urgent Healing: Adds 80 healing to the initial heal.