Manifest Armor Forge Guard Guide
Last Updated:July 6, 2024|Changelog
Welcome to the Manifest Armor Forge Guard build guide. A colossal humanoid construct made of fire and metal follows the orders of its master and maker, fearlessly charging into battle. Use the power of the forge to summon Manifest Armor, a powerful minion capable of destroying entire armies on its own.
This Forge Guard build uses Shield Throw against its own Manifest Armor to make it perform additional melee AoE attacks. Cast Sigils Of Hope and Javelin to gain powerful buffs and use Void Cleave to further enhance your construct's single target DPS.
This setup doesn't require any Unique to function and performs great even without good gear. However, Items like Apathy's Maw, Ribbons of Blood and Suloron's Step are amazing for scaling the build.
Overall the Manifest Armor Forge Guard is really strong build perfect for beginner, as its capable of defeating all the content in the game with zero gear. While it lacks AoE clear and its mapping it's pretty slow, its single target DPS is capable of obliterating any Boss in seconds. If you are looking for a minion build that specializes in Boss killing, this setup is perfect for you!
This build guide assumes you have a Level 70 Character.
Reach Level 70 with our Forge Guard Leveling Guide.
If you are looking for a different playstyle, check all our Build Guides!
Skills
Manifest Armor
Manifest Armor is a very unique Minion that scales with the stats in the player's Helmet, Body Armour, Gloves and Boots. Thanks to the Platemail, Steel Greaves and Great Helm Nodes this scaling property can be further amplified. Grab Titan Mace so the construct also gets stats from your Weapon.
- Manifest Inspiration procs on Shield Throw Hit and not ricochet. The projectile technically Hits everything in its path as it ricochets between enemies, this includes your Manifest Armor. Place your Manifest Armor in the middle of the trajectory of the ricochets for additional melee AoE attacks. As long as there are ricochets left, each Shield Throw hit procs Manifest Inspiration.
- Manifest Inspiration does not cancel the Manifest Armor auto attacks.
- Shield Throw's Tree is pretty flexible. Eruption provides an extra AoE hit to apply Ailments, but it's not necessary. Fleet of Foot might need more or less Points depending on how fast you attack. Adjust it to your needs and current gear.
Passives
Passives provide powerful effects that dictate the playstyle of a Class and its Masteries. Remember that you can allocate Passives on the first half of all Masteries regardless of the one you chose.
- Take all the Strength, Ignite Chance and Health related Nodes.
- Armour Clad grants Damage Reduction and is crucial for any Sentinel's survivability.
- Blademaster greatly boosts your Throwing Attack Speed.
- Juggernaut, Abyssal Endurance and Holy Symbol provide tons of Resistances.
- Folded Steel is a big part of the build's Damage.
- Might is a must have too boost your HP pool.
- Iron Attunement and Shield Crafter enhance your Manifest Armor's defense.
Make sure to complete the Campaign to get all your Passive Points.
Gameplay
This Forge Guard build uses Shield Throw against its own Manifest Armor to make it perform additional melee AoE attacks. Make sure you are familiar with enemy mechanics to know when to use your Support Skills to stay alive. Pay attention to their telegraphed attacks!
Skill Usage/Rotation
- Summon your Manifest Armor.
- Every few seconds, cast Sigils Of Hope until eventually reaching the 5 cap.
- Javelin into battle.
- Hit the Manifest Armor with Void Cleave for extra Damage.
- Command your Manifest Armor to charge specific enemies by using the "A" on your keyboard.
- Spam Shield Throw at your own Manifest Armor to destroy everything around it.
- Maintain 5 Sigils Of Hope up at all times.
Mapping
- Rush to the objective with Javelin.
- Let the Manifest Armor deal with enemies as you walk around.
- Group mobs before stopping to hit your Manifest Armor with Shield Throw to maximize its AoE.
Bossing
- Take advantage of all your defensive buffs and keep them active.
- Use both charges of Void Cleave at once against Bosses for additional DPS.
- Make sure you and your Manifest Armor stay under Javelin's AoE for its buffs.
- To maximize your DPS, place your Manifest Armor in the middle of the trajectory of the ricochets. This improves the total amount of additional melee AoE attacks that your Manifest Armor can proc, as long as there are ricochets left.
Learn more about how to maximize your gameplay in the Build Scaling section of this guide.
Gear
Gearing in Last Epoch revolves around finding Items and then using the powerful Crafting System to enhance them. As long as an Item has Forging Potential left, players can upgrade or modify their Affixes up to Tier 5. However, the powerful Exalted Tier Affixes are drop only and can't be modified by players.
Using the correct Item Bases allows you to make use of their amazing Implicits, this is fundamental for gearing efficiently. Combine Implicits, Passives, Idols and Blessings to cap your Resistances and other defensive layers, while fitting as much Health related Affixes or Endurance Threshold into your gear as possible. Plan ahead for your next upgrades and consider the final Blessings of your build while gearing. Finish up by farming Uniques with Legendary Potential and Sealing Affixes into Exalted Items to unleash all of your build's power!
Here are the Stat Goals for this build:
- Capped Resistances
- Capped Critical Strike Avoidance
- Capped Endurance
- 3000 - 5000+ Health
- 40% - 60%+ Armour
- 30 - 40+ Attunement
- 200% - 400%+ Healing Effectiveness
- 100%+ Throwing Attack Speed
- 100% Crit Chance with Manifest Armor
- 40% - 90%+ Movement Speed
Gear Progression
Milestone 1
Aim for good Item Bases with two valuable T5 Affixes. The defensive rolls on T5 Suffixes are very important at this stage as they can easily cap all your Resistances when combined with Item Implicits, Idols, Blessings or Passives. Get a Lucerne or a Weapon with high Melee Critical Strike Chance as soon as possible.
Milestone 2
Make sure your Critical Strike Avoidance is capped. Remember that Woven Flesh is always an option early on. It can be farmed by killing the Abomination in the Fall of the Outcast Monolith Timeline.
Milestone 3
Fit as much Health into your gear as possible. Hybrid Health and Health are extremely valuable, but can be hard to find early on. Use regular flat Health until you find them.
Milestone 4
Get your Manifest Armor a source of Melee Life Leech. Craft Melee Damage Leeched as Health on your Gloves to ensure your construct sustains all Damage it takes with ease.
Milestone 5
Get 1 ring with T1 Throwing Damage and Reduced Mana Cost to reduce Shield Throw's Mana cost to 0. While you look for this basic set of gear, start farming your Empowered Blessings and look for any Idols that can help you cap all your Resistances momentarily or increase your Damage output.
Milestone 1
Look for a pair of Suloron's Step. This Unique Item is crucial to enhance the build's DPS thanks to how Manifest Armor gets 300% effect from the stats on your Boots.
Milestone 2
Farm Ribbons of Blood for the amazing stats it provides. Farm it by killing the Abomination in the Fall of the Outcast Monolith Timeline. Once you get it, Melee Damage Leeched as Health is not mandatory on your Gloves anymore.
Milestone 3
When all your core Defenses are covered, start working on your Damage. Get Throwing Attack Speed, Critical Strike Chance, Attunement and Minion Damage on your Prefixes to increase your DPS drastically.
Milestone 4
Any Class specific Sentinel Prefix that scales Melee Damage is extremely valuable as Manifest Armor gets additional stats from your Chest and Helmet thanks to its Skill Tree. As you finish up your Empowered Blessings keep a decent Health pool, capped Resistances, Endurance and Critical Strike Avoidance. Your goal is to have items with 4 valuable T5 Affixes, also known as T20.
Milestone 1
Upgrade your T20 setup with Exalted items, high value Sealed Affixes or ideally both. Obtain the Affixes included in the Planner, but prioritize the indicated Item Bases for their Implicits. Make sure to Seal highly efficient low tier Affixes.
Milestone 2
Get an Apathy's Maw with 1 Legendary Potential and slam Melee Critical Strike Chance on it, Exalted if possible. Target farm it by killing the Shade of Orobyss at 50+ Corruption. This can take significant time to farm but the power it provides is unmatched.
Milestone 3
Look for Suloron's Step and Ribbons of Blood with Legendary Potential. Aim for the indicated Affixes in the Planner for each slot. Make sure to collect Exalted Items useful in this process.
Milestone 4
Get all your Idols. Keep stacking as much Health, Throwing Attack Speed, Attunement, Minion Damage and Minion Health on your gear as you can.
Milestone 1
Keep upgrading your gear with Exalted Items with Sealed Affixes. Get every stat in the right place and in the correct Item Base. Min/Maxing your gear in Last Epoch can be pushed to the extreme as Items with multiple Exalted Affixes are technically possible.
Milestone 2
Get as close to perfect rolls for all your Empowered Blessings and find all your desired Idols with the best in slot Prefixes and Suffixes.
Milestone 3
Continue farming Suloron's Step, Ribbons of Blood and Apathy's Maw with the maximum Legendary Potential you can find. Remember that some Unique Items are extremely hard to get with multiple Legendary Potential. Good luck with the chase!
Learn the basics for crafting gear with our Beginner Crafting Guide.
Check our Unique Item & Set Farming Guide and learn how to get them!
Want to know more about Legendary Items? Check our Legendary Guide!
Blessings
Completing a Timeline in the Monolith of Fate lets you choose one of several randomized Blessings from its unique pool. Their benefits are permanent and persist even outside of the Monolith of Fate.
Empowered Blessings are a fundamental part of all builds, so getting the correct ones for each is key.
The sooner you reach Empowered Monolith, the faster you can start farming your desired Blessings!
Normal Blessings are not important as they are eventually replaced by Empowered Blessings. However they can still be a great source of Resistances, Critical Strike Avoidance or Life Leech for your build early on.
Pick up these Normal Blessings on your way to Empowered:
- Echo of Solarum
- Bastion of Divinity
- Survival of Might
- Persistance of Will
- Vigor of Jormun
- Resolve of Grael
- Heart of the Caldera
- Embers of Immortality
- Body of Obsidian
Note: Don't target farm Normal Blessings. Get to Empowered Monolith as fast as you can.
Reaching Empowered Monolith unlocks all the level 100 Timelines and the ability to farm Empowered Blessings. Unlike Normal Blessings, these need to be farmed until you get the desired ones for your build. It is extremely important to get this set up as fast as possible to free up affix slots on your gear. Remember, the more value you get from your Blessings, the easier it is to craft efficient gear!
These are the core Combat Empowered Blessings for this build:
- If you are lacking Critical Strike Avoidance, start with Grand Survival of Might. A high roll on this Empowered Blessing can be combined with a single high rolled T5 Critical Strike Avoidance to cap it.
- Get Grand Resolve of Grael to compensate for the downside of wearing Suloron's Step.
- Continue with Grand Bastion of Divinity for the Lightning Resistance.
- Once your core Defenses are sorted, grab Grand Memory of Light for additional Health.
- Finish up by farming the best rolled Grand Embers of Immortality you can get to cap your Endurance. If you have enough Endurance on your gear, farm Grand Body of Obsidian instead. It grants an insane amount of Flat Armour and has great synergy with the build's access to % Armour and Strength.
These Empowered Blessings are flexible and depend on your current needs and goals.
These are valuable Empowered Drop Rate Blessings for this build:
- Farm Grand Winds of Fortune to help you find more Uniques.
- Grab Grand Right of Conquest to help you find more Boots and Suloron's Step.
- Lastly take Grand Favor of the Wengari to find more Two-Handed Axes and Apathy's Maw.
Learn how to farm Blessings fast with our Advanced Monolith Strategies.
Idols
Idols grant your character bonuses when equipped in the dedicated Idol Container. Unlock all the slots of your Idol Container by completing the Campaign and some of its Side Quests. Remember that some Idols are Class specific and you won't be able to equip them with other non-compatible Classes.
These are the Idols recommended for this build:
- Find as many Stout Lagonian Idol with %Health and Health as you can.
- Get 2 Small Eterran Idol with Increased Healing Effectiveness and Void Resistance.
- Get 2 Small Lagonian Idol with Armour and any Resistances you need to cap.
- You might also want Adorned Rahyeh Idols with Increased Healing Effectiveness Prefix and Health Suffix to increase your Healing if you lack sustain.
- Health
- %Health
- Vitality
- Armour
- Elemental Resistance
- Fire Resistance
- Lightning Resistance
- Void Resistance
- Physical Resistance
- Poison Resistance
Make sure to complete the Campaign to get all your Idol Slots.
Learn how to be efficient with Idols with our Advanced Idols Setups Guide.
Build Scaling
This Forge Guard build uses Shield Throw against its own Manifest Armor to make it perform additional melee AoE attacks. Scale your Throwing Attack Speed to proc Manifest Inspiration as much as possible. This build also has decent survivability thanks to the multiple defensive layers it can take advantage of.
- Manifest Armor: This unique Minion scales with the stats in the player's Helmet, Body Armour, Gloves and Boots. Thanks to the Platemail, Steel Greaves and Great Helm Nodes this scaling property can be further amplified. With Titan Mace the construct also gets stats from your Weapon.
- Minion Power: Your minions gain Minion Power based on your Character Level. By level 100, they deal 45% More Damage and take 45% Less Damage (Multiplicative with other modifiers).
- Minion Melee Flat Damage: Get as much Flat Damage for your Manifest Armor as possible.
- Throwing Attack Speed: The faster you attack with Shield Throw the more Manifest Inspiration procs from your Manifest Armor.
- Attunement: Manifest Armor gains 4% Damage and 10 flat Health per point of Attunement.
- Javelin: Battle Standard is great for the offensive and defensive buffs it provides.
- Sigils Of Hope: They grant increased Damage and Flat Fire Damage with this setup.
- Void Cleave: Buff your Manifest Armor's DPS tremendously thanks to Molten Blades and Scorching Path.
- Minion % Melee Damage: Anything that increases Minion Melee Damage is welcomed.
- % Melee Damage: Any Class specific Sentinel Prefix that scales Melee Damage is extremely valuable as Manifest Armor gets additional stats from your Chest and Helmet thanks to its Skill Tree.
- Apathy's Maw: This Unique provides incredible DPS. Farm it with Legendary Potential!
- Minion Melee Critical Strike Chance: Make sure you get T5 or Exalted Melee Critical Strike Chance on your 2H Weapon. It's easy to cap the Manifest Armor's Crit Chance due to how it scales from player gear.
- Minion Critical Strike Multiplier: Increases the Damage your minions Crits deal. Due to how Manifest Armor scales with gear, Suloron's Step is impossible to ignore. Get the best one rolled possible!
- Level of Manifest Armor: Get this Prefix on your Helmet for the Increased Damage it provides and to invest extra Points into its Skill Tree.
- Chance to Shred Armour on Hit: Each stack of this Ailment reduces enemy Armour by 100 for 4 seconds and stacks infinitely. Enemies have 0 Armour by default and it can go into the negatives. At -1000 Armour a target takes 23.7% increased Physical Damage, while at -4000 Armour it takes 57.2%. With the amount of hits the build has, the stacks ramp up quickly.
- Armour Clad: Grants Damage Reduction and is crucial for any Sentinel's survivability.
- Endurance: It allows you to take up to 60% less Damage while below a certain Health threshold. Your base Endurance Threshold is 20% of your total Health by default.
- Strength: Grants 4% Armour per point.
- Armour Mitigation: This setup can get insanely high Armour. Combining the Armour from your Item Implicits and all the %Armour this build has, it easily reaches 40% to 60%+ Mitigation. This is huge on top of all the other defensive layers the build has.
- Javelin: Battle Standard is great for the offensive and defensive buffs it provides.
- Health: This build can stack a decent Health pool that can surpass the 5000 mark. Health is very effective when combined with all the other defensive layers, but be careful more Health requires better sustain.
- Healing: Javelin can provide decent sustain thanks to the Divine Intervention and Righteous Descend Nodes, which cast Smite. Its AoE Heal provides sustain for the build that can be enhanced with Heling Effectiveness.
- Chill: Is an Ailment that greatly reduce the Action and Movement Speed of your enemies. Sadly, this build needs a Legendary Apathy's Maw in order to get it reliably.
- Frailty: This Ailment reduces the Damage dealt by enemies by 6% for 4 seconds. Stacks 3 times.
- Ward and Ailment Cleansing on Potion Use: Cleanse all Ailments on Potion use.
Our Damage Explained Article covers all you need to know to scale Damage.
Learn all you need to know to scale Defense with our Defense Explained Article.
Loot Filter
Loot Filters are critical in Last Epoch. Making sure you highlight all the related valuable Item Bases, Affixes, Uniques and Idols is crucial to ensure your character's progression. As your gear gets better, remember to hide the rules that are no longer useful to avoid screen clutter.
Here is the Endgame Loot Filter for this build:
Learn how to load and make Filters with our Loot Filter Guide.
Video Guide
COMING SOON!
Summary
A colossal humanoid construct made of fire and metal follows the orders of its master and maker, fearlessly charging into battle. Use the power of the forge to summon Manifest Armor, a powerful minion capable of destroying entire armies on its own. Overall this Forge Guard is capable of completing all the content in the game and has one of the best single target DPS in the game.
- Use Shield Throw against your own Manifest Armor to make it perform additional melee AoE attacks.
- Scale Throwing Attack Speed to proc Manifest Inspiration as much as possible.
- Maintain 5 Sigils Of Hope up at all times for the amazing buffs they provide.
- Javelin's Battle Standard Node is great for the offensive and defensive buffs it provides.
- Buff your Manifest Armor's DPS thanks to Void Cleave's Molten Blades and Scorching Path.
- While they are not mandatory, Suloron's Step, Ribbons of Blood and Apathy's Maw are great Uniques that you want to get to scale the build to its full potential.
Credits
Written by Lizard_IRL.
Reviewed by Facefoot, McFluffin.