Nova Hammerdin Forge Guard Guide
Last Updated:July 25, 2024|Change Log
Welcome to the Nova Hammerdin Forge Guard Guide. This is an exceptional build with screen-wide clear and effortless playstyle. Enra's Technique combined with Avatar of the Spire transforms Hammer Throw into an AoE skill, filling the battlefield with Hammers and allowing you to crush your enemies from a very far range.
Use Volatile Reversal, Sigils Of Hope and Ring Of Shields for the great Buffs they provide. Smite provides mobility in this setup, along with some Attack Speed Buffs.
This setup doesn’t require any Unique to function, but it can take advantage of many. Quicksilver Coil and Razorfall are great for speeding up the build, while Li'raka's Claws with Legendary Potential will make your DPS skyrocket.
Overall, the Nova Hammerdin Forge Guard is an amazing build capable of defeating all content in the game. It’s easy to play, has great Damage with massive range and AoE and it can get tanky with good gear. If you are looking for a fast, chill build that performs well and can fill the screen with hammers, 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!
- Long Range
- Amazing AoE Clear
- High Movement Speed
- Good Scaling With Gear and Uniques
- Buff Management
- Average Single Target DPS
- Vulnerable To DoT Damage
- Needs Legendaries To Shine
Skills
Hammer Throw
Hammer Throw is your main Damage skill. Enra's Technique combined with Avatar of the Spire enables the Nova playstyle. Take Zealot's Conviction and Weighted Hammers for big damage multipliers. Hammer Vortex provides Base Crit Chance when specced into Enra's Technique. Mana Starved Forging allows you to ignore Mana management.
Alternate Skills & Tips
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.
- Armour Clad grants Damage Reduction and is crucial for any Sentinel's survivability.
- Juggernaut, Abyssal Endurance, Holy Icon and Defiance provide tons of Resistances. Use them as needed.
- Place Points into Stalwart, Steel Aegis, Honour and Shield Wall for the Block Chance.
- Stack Dexterity with Javelineer to easily cap your Crit Chance.
- Blademaster is amazing for DPS.
- Siege Captain provides both survivability and Damage.
- The Resistance Shred granted by Shield Breaker is extremely powerful.
- Shield Crafter helps in keeping up the Buffs from Ring Of Shields.
- Get tanky with Walls of Solarum.
Make sure to complete the Campaign to get all your Passive Points.
Gameplay
The Nova Hammerdin Forge Guard uses Hammer Throw to create novas of Hammers that decimate all enemies within range. 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
- Cast 4 Sigils Of Hope for their buffs.
- Spam Hammer Throw at enemies.
- Use Smite or Shield Rush to move across the map.
- Cast Volatile Reversal and Holy Aura on top of enemies for their buffs and extra Damage.
- Use Ring Of Shields whenever it's available for its Buffs.
- Maintain 4 Sigils Of Hope up at all times with the Last Wish node.
Mapping
- Rush to the objective with Smite.
- Be careful not to backtrack when using Volatile Reversal.
- Group mobs before using Volatile Reversal to maximize its Buffs.
- Use Hammer Throw while staying on the move to maximize clear and reduce incoming damage.
Bossing
- Take advantage of all your defensive buffs and keep them active.
- Use Volatile Reversal to ramp up your Damage then spam Hammer Throw.
- Keep a Movement Skill off Cooldown for emergency situations or telegraphed Boss attacks.
- Use unspecialized Rebuke to tank telegraphed Boss attacks.
Advanced Skill Tips
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 stack as many other defensive layers as possible. Plan ahead for your next upgrades and consider the final Empowered 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
- 100% Reduced Bonus Damage Taken from Crits
- Capped Endurance
- 3000 - 4000+ Health
- 60%+ Armour Mitigation
- 3000+ Block Effectiveness
- 50% - 100% Block Chance
- 500%+ Critical Strike Multiplier
- 120+ Throwing Damage
- 100%+ Throwing Attack Speed (Pre Buffs)
Gear Progression
Milestone 1
Aim for good Item Bases with four 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 good Eagle Wing as soon as possible.
Milestone 2
Make sure your Critical Strike Avoidance or Reduced Bonus Damage Taken from Crits 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
Get an Ironglass Shield with T5 Block Chance as soon as possible. Carapace Shield is also an option early on. 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 a source of Life Leech. If you have Bleeding Heart, it's all you need to cover your sustain. It's a common item and easy to find. Grand Wrath of Rahyeh is an option if you don't have the Amulet.
Milestone 5
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. Your goal is to get 4 Large Rahyeh Idols with Throwing Attack Critical Strike Multiplier Prefix and Block Effectiveness, Chance To Shred Armor on Hit with Throwing Attacks or Health Suffixes.
Milestone 1
Upgrade your T20 gear 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 Ironglass Shield with Block Chance, Block Effectiveness and Damage Taken on Block. This build relies heavily on the defensive power of Block, finding a good shield is crucial for its survival.
Milestone 3
When all your core Defenses are covered, start working on your Damage. Get Throwing Damage, Throwing Attack Speed, Dexterity, Throwing Attack Critical Strike Chance and Chance to Shred Armour on Hit to increase your DPS drastically.
Milestone 4
Find Quicksilver Coil for the Haste it provides. Razorfall is great for Movement Speed and Damage.
Milestone 5
Li'raka's Claws provides a ton Damage. Only use them with Legendary Potential and you need to have at least Throwing Attack Speed or Throwing Damage as the Legendary Affix.
Milestone 6
Keep looking for Large Rahyeh Idols with Throwing Attack Critical Strike Multiplier Prefix and Block Effectiveness, Chance To Shred Armor on Hit with Throwing Attacks or Health Suffixes.
Milestone 1
Continue upgrading your gear with T7 Exalted items and begin farming all your Uniques with Legendary Potential. Look for Nemesis encounters in Echoes to add Legendary Potential or Legendary Affixes to any Unique with the Egg of the Forgotten.
Milestone 2
The Amulet slot has a number of choices, but they require changing the Grand Emptiness of Ash Blessing to Grand Wrath of Rahyeh. Uniques like Nihilis, Omnis and Aurora's Time Glass are all great options. The base type Oracle Amulet can be useful for mitigating Damage over Time.
Milestone 3
Get all your Idols as optimal as possible. Keep stacking as much Health, Strength, Dexterity, Throwing Damage and Throwing Attack Speed on your gear as you can. Get T7 Level of Hammer Throw on your Relic to invest more Points into its Skill Tree.
Milestone 1
Keep upgrading your gear with Exalted Items with high tier 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 and Legendary Potential are technically possible.
Milestone 2
Oceareon with Legendary Potential provides Chill and Shock along with a Damage multiplier and Damage Reduction.
Milestone 3
Continue farming all the Uniques with the maximum Legendary Potential you can find. Remember that some of these Items are extremely hard to get with multiple Legendary Potential. Good luck with the chase!
Milestone 4
Feel free to experiment with any crazy Unique, Legendary or Experimental Items that you might craft, trade or find! The possibilities are endless!
Two Handed Variant
This variant offers roughly 70% higher DPS compared to the normal setup, but loses all its Block, making the build much squishier.
The Gear, Skills, and Passives are changed from the regular version. Click on the planner to the right to open it in the LEPlanner and change your Skills and Passives accordingly.
Ring Of Shields is swapped for Shield Throw to get Buffs with Fleet of Foot and Throwing Arm.
Milestone 1
Find Zweihander or Obsidian Axe with the Affixes indicated in the Planner. These bases offer similar DPS. If you can't find these exact bases, make sure you're still using either a Sword or Axe, to activate Blademaster.
Milestone 2
Get Titan Heart with Legendary Potential to increase your tankiness.
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:
- Wrath of Rahyeh
- Bastion of Divinity
- Survival of Might
- Persistance of Will
- Bones of Eternity
- 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. Building Reduced Bonus Damage Taken from Critical Strikes is more optimal for this build, so go for Grand Cruelty of Strength or Grand Resolve of Humanity instead.
- Your third choice provides Block Effectiveness and Block Chance from Grand Bones of Eternity.
- Grand Body of Obsidian provides a huge amount of Armor that helps increase the survivability of the build.
- Grand Emptiness of Ash is great for Damage. Grand Wrath of Rahyeh is an option if you need the Leech.
- Finish up by farming Grand Crash of the Waves. The CC benefit from this Blessing is hugely underrated and makes most normal enemies completely unable to attack you.
These Empowered Blessings are flexible and depend on your current needs and goals.
These are valuable Empowered Drop Rate Blessings for this build:
- Grand Sight of the Outcasts is very valuable to help you find Large Rahyeh Idols with Throwing Attack Critical Strike Multiplier Prefix and Block Effectiveness, Chance To Shred Armor on Hit with Throwing Attacks or Health Suffixes. Once you find all your Idols, you can switch to the Grand Winds of Fortune and focus on Uniques instead or Grand Strength of Mind for Experience.
- Grab Grand Slumber of Morditas to help you find more Relics. Once you're satisfied with your relic you can switch to Grand Binds of Sanctuary to help you find more Shields or Grand Vision of the Aurora to find more Amulets.
- Take Grand Scars of Blood to find more Eagle Wings.
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 4 Large Rahyeh Idols with Throwing Attack Critical Strike Multiplier Prefix and Block Effectiveness, Chance To Shred Armor on Hit with Throwing Attacks or Health Suffixes. These Idols are important for both DPS and survivability.
- Get 4 Stout Lagonian Idols with Health and a resistance if you need to cap or Health. The HP gained just from the Idols is huge.
Other useful Idol Affixes
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
The Nova Hammerdin Forge Guard uses Hammer Throw to create novas of Hammers throughout the battlefield. Scale your Throwing Attack Speed and Flat Throwing Damage as much as possible. This build also has good survivability thanks to the multiple defensive layers it can take advantage of.
- Throwing Attack Speed: This build gets a ton of it thanks to the Buffs provided by its Skills and Passives. The more you have, the faster you deal Damage and apply ailments with Hammer Throw.
- Flat Throwing Damage: Hammer Throw doesn't scale with the base Damage of your weapon, so you need to stack this as high as possible on your Gloves, Belt, Amulet, and Relic.
- Strength: Hammer Throw gains 4% Damage per point of Strength. Additionally it grants 4% Armor per point, which adds a nice defensive layer for the build.
- Dexterity: Hammer Throw gains 4% Damage per point of Dexterity. Thanks to Javelineer, it also grants a ton of Base Crit Chance.
- Critical Strike Chance: Critical Strikes deal double damage by default and scale with Critical Strike Multiplier. Javelineer and the Base Crit from Eagle Wing make this much easier. The Base Crit from Hammer Vortex when specced into Enra's Technique further helps with Crit Chance.
- Critical Strike Multiplier: Increases the Damage your Crits deal. Build as much as you can.
- Sigils Of Hope: They grant increased Damage and Added Fire Damage.
- % Increased Damage: Anything that increases Physical Damage is welcomed.
- Volatile Reversal: The Harbinger of Dust Node applies a powerful debuff on your enemies that makes them take additional Damage.
- Level of Hammer Throw: This is a big boost to your damage since it allows you to invest in additional multipliers from the Skill Tree.
- Shield Breaker: Since the build attacks so fast and has so many hits, it is extremely easy to apply 10 stacks of Physical Resistance Shred to your targets. 10 stacks increase the Damage enemies take by 50% (20% for Bosses).
- Armor Shred: Shredding Armor is good for all hit builds, but it is especially impactful for Physical.
- Penetration: Conviction grants 16% Physical Penetration.
- Armour Clad: Grants Damage Reduction and is crucial for any Sentinel's survivability.
- Block Chance: Block is a defensive mechanic that grants a chance to reduce the Damage taken from Hits. This build can have anywhere between 50% and 100% block.
- Block Effectiveness: The percentage of Damage reduced on Block depends on how much Block Effectiveness you have. The percentage cannot exceed 85%. Sentinels have access to the Block Effectiveness Suffix on their Idols.
- Walls of Solarum: Grants Damage Reduction.
- Endurance: Allows you to take up to 60% less Damage while below a certain Health threshold. The Iron Sigils node from Sigils Of Hope makes this especially valuable for Sentinels.
- Strength: Grants 4% Armor per point.
- Armor Mitigation: This setup can get high Armor Mitigation. Combine the Armor from your Item Implicits and all the %Armor this build has to reach 50 to 60%+ Mitigation.
- Health: This build can stack a decent Health pool that can surpass the 3000 mark without sacrificing other defenses.
- Leech: Bleeding Heart provides this build with enough sustain. Grand Wrath of Rahyeh is an option if you need it.
- Chill and Slow: Are Ailments that greatly reduce the Action and Movement Speed of your enemies.
- 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
Summary
The Nova Hammerdin Forge Guard fills the screen with Hammers in a spectacular nova. Overall this Forge Guard is an excellent setup capable of completing all the content in the game. It has great AoE, range, survivability and speed.
- Blast through enemies with screen-wide AoE Hammers dealing high Crit Physical damage.
- Scale Crit to turbo charge the Damage with Javelineer, Eagle Wing and Li'raka's Claws.
- Maintain 4 Sigils Of Hope up at all times for the amazing buffs they provide.
- Use Volatile Reversal on top of enemies for extra Damage.
- Ring Of Shields provides great Buffs to survivability.
Credits
Written by Volca.
Reviewed by Facefoot, LizardIRL, BinaQc