Forge Guardian: Strength Stacking Shield Bash Build Guide

The Forge Guardian build in Last Epoch focuses on strength stacking for high damage and tankiness through block effectiveness and armor shred.

### Forge Guard Shield Bash Build Guide
* ⚔️  This guide focuses on a Forge Guard build using Shield Bash in Last Epoch, emphasizing **strength stacking** and **block effectiveness** for **high damage output** and **tankiness**.
* 🛡️  Shield Bash is supported by the Flurry of Blows node, which **removes the cooldown but adds a mana cost**, and benefits from the High Impact and Indomitable Force nodes for **increased damage**.
* 💪  Gearing recommendations include **stacking strength on gear**, **prioritizing block effectiveness**, and looking for items with **flat physical damage and block chance**.
* 🛠️  The skill tree is detailed, highlighting key nodes like **Cutting Edge**, **Steel Coating**, and **Iron Arms**, as well as the recommended passive tree progression through **Juggernaut**, **Forge Master**, and **Paladin**.
* 🔮  Idols should focus on **armor shred on hit** and **block effectiveness**, with potential for **high damage scaling** in endgame content.
* 🏆  The build is described as **tanky and fun to play**, with the potential to become **one of the tankier classes in the game**.
* 📹  The creator plans to release a **second part of the guide**, along with Path of Exile content, and encourages viewers to **like and subscribe for more content**.
* 🎮  The build is positioned as a **strong choice** for Last Epoch players looking for a **durable and engaging playstyle**.

[Music] I cannot do that. I cannot do that. [Music] See. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] I kind of f. [Music] [Music] I cannot do that. [Music] Welcome back, you filthy last Debo players. All right. So as you would have seen on my stream the other day, I haven't had as much time as I normally would to get into the game, but we have Shield bash working, right? And we can just keep hitting. And yeah, but how do we get this to work? Well, number one, if we go to skills, we go to Shield bash. It's based off this Flurry of Blows node that they added in, which means there's no cooldown but a Mana cost. We lose our 100% stun or IGN night, but that doesn't really matter. The other thing that I'm doing here is I am strength stacking. So we use Iron Arms in the tree here. This allows us to strength stack. And currently, I have like 51 strength, which is buffing up my skill. Um, aside from

this I have a 100% armor shred as well, which comes off the tree so we Chuck on Hammer and Anvil, which is something that only the forge Master can have, and this is a forge Master build, so it's a little bit different. And the other big thing about Shield Shield B Shield bash now is we have high impact, which means other multipliers buff out, and we also have this node called indomitable Force, which means that per 40 block Effectiveness, we get two base damage, which essentially means that if we stack a ton of block Effectiveness on our shield and on our build. In this case, my shield, which is pretty low level, is 749 block Effectiveness, and we'll buff this up once I get all my idols and whatnot unlocked. We can do a huge amount of damage, basically stacking off defenses to get offense. So this build is quite tanky, even as it is where I'm at currently. I'm just progressing my monolith cuz I haven't had a lot of time.

to play like usual, and so far, it's going pretty well. Outside of that, we also have Shield storm now, which allows us a cap of 50% attack speed, and for every 1% block chance. In this case, I have 50% block chance. I get an additional amount of 0.5 of attack speed to my shield bash, which allows me to hit faster and faster as we go. Now, I haven't got the unique Shield yet. That'll be in the second video once I get this build to a more complete level. And basically, we've got a bit of patchworked gear in here, but we'll talk about gearing it everything very shortly. Overall, the build feels really good. It's actually quite a lot of fun. It was a little slower initially, but I managed to start my first monoliths at about level 43. So that's about where you want to start monolith thing. So I haven't even finished the campaign yet. But yeah, anyway, let's get into the details of

gearing and whatnot, and talk about the build in more detail. Okay, so in relation to gearing on this build, basically, you want to try and stack as much strength on your gear as you possibly imaginably can. In this case, I've got a helmet with high strength, void res, and overall armor and crit multiplier. My amulet, unfortunately, doesn't have strength but has attack speed and flat Global physical damage. Because you can't stack damage the conventional way, I found it's very similar like shield crush in Path of Exile Shield. You want a high amount of block Effectiveness. Block Effectiveness is where your damage is going to come from. If you can get additional amounts on the shield, even better. If you can get flat physical damage off the shield, even better, and block chance will increase your attack speed as well. Chest, uh, one of strength stacking chest with resistances and everything. Right now, this is working really well for me. My axe Global physical damage and increased Millie physical damage. And if you can get a little bit of bleed, even better.

fragility armor shred all that sort of stuff works really good on an axe for now until I get the uh the the axe that looks like a shield. Rings same go block. Effectiveness on your rings strength and physical damage and any crit multipliers or anything like that. This isn't a great Ring because its implicits aren't good. Currently I'm running the scavenger belt which is helping me get easy haste buffing as well. Then I'm also running another ring which has given me again block flat physical more resistances more healing. Effectiveness and which works really well on the forge guard which can feed into Paladin points as well. And then my gloves I'm running Fighting Chance. It just gives you good amounts of basically all the stats you need and you don't worry about the increased damage taken because it means nothing but 71% increased flat melee damage. Is Awesome on my boots again strength armor movement speed any resistances or preferable. And in my uh my Relic I had this drop it's in no way B.

but 33% increased resistances is pretty good, so yeah, it's basically it for gearing that. Idols, I'm still sort of gearing up, but you basically want armor shred on M hit and or any other sort of Relic that gives you block. Effectiveness that's going to increase your base damage. The potential for this build to absolutely go off the hinges is outrageous because you can stack so much block. Effectiveness in the high levels, so I shouldn't have any issues getting to empowered monol this in the next day or so once I get back online a bit more. Okay, so in relation to skills, I used Vengeance to level up just because it was like a tank your option and it does give you dark Jewels, which gives you Global damage, which is pretty good. And then you also get perfect R and you also get bolster, which means you get less damage taken when you start hitting and increased armor. So it's good because you're not really relying on it, but it's

there just in case you top up your mana and weight. Currently, there's a bit of Mana ISS bit of a Mana issue in the build so that's what I use this for. It just works really well. I couldn't find anything else that sort of works better than this. Um, obviously Shield bash so the route that I took was essentially you need to go Cutting Edge, you need to get indomitable force, and then you need to go straight to fla blows, and then basically you want to go up and get high impact or Shield storm first, and then high impact, then you go to Steel Coating, and then iron arms, and then basically you just keep progressing these until they're capped. I also have a uh, a lunge setup as well, and basically it's just like a damage reduction lunge setup which goes to Dawn charge, Juggernaut Dash, Unstoppable, then we go up to Warriors renewal, uh, endless will into umbus skade, and double strike, and then lead the charge which gives me haste. Then I have ring of shields now I use

ring of shields to buff up my damage. So yeah, I go up to like 10,000. So to be able to do that, basically you want to get increased reinforcement. I went into tempered steel, Mar of shields, then into defensive Shields, which increases block effectiveness. So per Shield, you get increased block effectiveness. And we don't need Rush wall. And then I also went down into banding, into enduring defense, so it lasts for longer, and shield Spike as well, which gives me a bit of damage reflect. But I'm still tuning this up. And then finally, for when I need it, I've got Healing Hands of the Paladin, just because I can. And then we go into Divine barrier. We want home Ward as well, so we cast it essentially on ourselves if we're not casting on an ally. And then we also come down and we get prayer of the Fallen, we get vow of restoration, into sacred gift, then into blessed parish, and then finally into purity of thought, which reduces the cost of it when you need it. So when you need

it and it's clutch. You've got it finally for Passive tree. So essentially, you want to level up through and get Juggernaut early on. And then you want to get some points into Fearless to get your HP pull out store wart because it gives you block. Effectiveness again, and then armor clad. We get damage reduction increased armor, nothing wrong with that. By that point, you should be like capped out. And then you can move into the forge Master. Now, this is a strength stacker. So we need weapon master so we can get 10 extra strength. This increases our damage pretty significantly. You also want steel agis because again block. Effectiveness. I got a little bit of of rallying block, but I haven't leveled that up too much. Some points into unflinching un flinching Guardian, then some Thorn M Points. Then we want to cap out hammer and Anvil so we get 100% armor shred, which is really powerful. I've got one point in Iron Attunement then into might for more strength then into Flawless

Defender and into walls of solarum, and then we're going to level our Shield crafter, and then we'll be able to Auto Trier ring of shields as well, which is going to auto trigger our buff as we're hitting away and make this build significantly more tanky. And block Effectiveness per Shield is 20 per point, so that means we'll get like 40 damage per point for all five Shi, so for each of the five Shields that spawn, so we get an extra 100 base damage, which is going to buff up our damage pretty significantly as well. Then I've got five points in a paladin for honor, and again we get an extra 200 uh block Effectiveness out of this, and then Pro progressively we might sort of push some more points into this, in particular most likely around Defiance to give me Attunement, uh to get my Mana pool and whatnot up, and in the void Knight we'll probably switch into some Abyssal endurance nod so we get void res and

physical res and increased health, so we can make this build even tankier. Okay, so hopefully there's enough detail in this. If you want to go this route and play the skill, I really like the forge master. I just the forge Guardian, sorry. I think it's a really fun class, and I think it's got the potential to be one of the tankier classes in the game. So far, that's definitely the experience I'm having. But anyway, if this helps you, fantastic. But anyway, if you like this type of video, don't forget to like and sub to the channel. And I'll have a second part of this probably over the weekend. Done. And then we'll be doing a bunch of Path of Exile content leading into the announcements coming out next week for League start. So we've got to get some League starter guides finished. The first one that's off the ranks is going to be shield crush, funnily enough, which is basically what this skill is, except in Path of Exile. Anyway, I'll see you guys later and have

Strength Stacking Shield Bash Forge Guard | Build Guide | Part 1 - Last Epoch 1.1

Jorgen

Analyzing the Shield Bash Build in the Game

The Shield Bash build focuses on using Flurry of Blows for no cooldown but a Mana cost, while strength stacking with Iron Arms.

It also utilizes 100% armor shred from the tree and benefits from high impact and indomitable Force for increased damage.

The build incorporates Shield Storm for additional attack speed and is designed to be tanky while dealing high damage.

Gearing and Skill Strategy for Strength-Based Build in Path of Exile

Stack as much strength as possible on gear, prioritize block effectiveness, and look for additional physical damage and resistances.

The build benefits from high block chance, flat physical damage, and increased resistances on rings, while the scavenger belt provides haste buffing.

Focus on armor shred for idols to increase base damage through block effectiveness.

Using Vengeance for leveling up offers tanking options, dark jewels for global damage, perfect form for damage reduction, and increased armor, providing a balanced skill set for the build's needs.

A Complex Mana and Weight Management Build

The build focuses on addressing a mana issue and optimizing weight management.

It prioritizes skills like Cutting Edge, Indomitable Force, and Flawless Blows for the main setup, while also incorporating a damage reduction lunge setup with skills such as Dawn Charge and Juggernaut Dash.

The build further enhances damage through Ring of Shields and emphasizes increased block effectiveness and longer defense duration, while also incorporating healing and barrier skills for added support.

Efficient Leveling and Key Skills for a Strength Stacker Build

Focus on leveling up through Juggernaut, Fearless, and Armor Clad for increased block effectiveness, HP, and damage reduction.

Prioritize skills like Forge Master, Steel Agis, and Hammer and Anvil for strength, block effectiveness, and armor shred.

Invest in Shield Crafter for auto-triggering buffs and increased tankiness, and consider adding points to Paladin for honor for extra block effectiveness.

In the Void Knight, prioritize Abyssal Endurance nodes for void resistance and consider boosting Defiance for attunement and mana pool.

The Forge Guardian: A Tanky Class in the Game

The Forge Guardian offers the potential for a tanky build with increased physical resistance and health.

The class is experienced as a fun and durable option, with the potential to be one of the tankier classes in the game.

Stay tuned for more Path of Exile content and upcoming League starter guides on the channel.