A Once promising game

Feedback and Suggestions
1

Before i start as a disclaimer: i think last Epoch is the best damn base for a video game i’ve seen on my life, this developers are frikin geniuses i thought, now i see they are human like all of us.

I’ve seen a lot of feedback and suggestions i agree on.
Stuff about the endgame, stuff about progressión and choice, all good.
BUT there are somethings not being addressed so this post comes into being.
And i want to put them out to see if i am the only one.

  1. Whatsup with the skills trees or nodes NOBODY uses.

I dont understand how there are skill trees with 5 nodes that nobody, nobody, never, never used once, ¿what is twister and tsnumai for (inside maelstrom)? really, i want to know, ¿what are they for? what is violent squall for?
¿What are the seeds in entangling roots for? ¿why is there a skill tree if there is ONE semi-viable build for entangling roots?
¿Why smelter wrath throws axes that scale with dexterity? ¿did anyone use those nodes ever? ¿Why is there one viable build for smelters wrath? !¿What is furnace for?! ¿Who uses it??!!
¿what is incinerating blows for?
¿who uses channel nodes for avalanche now? ¿who uses avalanche follows you now?
¿why there is one viable build for summon scorpion?
¿what is summon bear for?
¿What is dark quiver for? besides throwing your computer to the trash Ron Swanson style.
I could do this all day, ¿how many skills are one trick pony? A LOT.

I would love to see the data on the nodes used by players, the developers must have the data, i want to see how many players took furnace or twister XD.

We really dont need big brain feedback → don’t have nodes in the game that nobody uses.

¿¿!!!Why do they give me events with meh imperial zombies if there are a lot of useless skills trees??!!!???!!!??

We bought into the idea of the game, unlimited diversity of builds, really you can find 5-8 per class that work. We were fooled.

  1. Whatsup with the Party Pooping

Why are developers so scared of having builds that scale with satisfaction. Whatsup with nerfing ANYTHING that comes close to decent, and most of all whatsup with the random arbitraty limitations on scaling.

Up to 3 times, up to 10 stacks, up to a maximum of 30%. The game is filled with this kind of stuff, ¿why? ¿what are they afraid of?, ¿happy players? isnt the fact that you have to build defense, offence and then stack an stat limitation enough?

stack of something lasts 6 seconds and can stack up to 3 times, ¿why? arbitraty limitations frustrate people that tries to scale damage, You have a stacking mechanic that doesnt encourage building attack speed, ¿Why? If you are so afraid that the build will get ridiculous having 10 stacks of something (for instance earth armour) why not just have one stack that gives you all the benefits instead, it’s appearence of scaling, not scaling, furstrating.

Damage per poison, but up to some percent, ¿Why? You can be creative and avoid all of this nonsense, !its absolutly disencouraging!

Lets take the example of thorn totem, 4% damage per poison,(limited to 80%) if it was unlimited i would be encourage to build thousands of poison stacks, i would be thrilled to get more and more, instead i have no interest at all on the node becase its capped at 20 stacks… I literally treat the node as a 80% more damage, which is nice, but then why the hussle.
Let’s say its unlimited and you have the problem of having 3000 stacks*4 = 12.000 more damage and its not good, ok then, why not give 0.5 % damage per poison or something like that?

And the most infuriating thing is that there are skills that have no caps, and other that do, Warlock can have a friking scaling arsenal but other classes are given a crayon to not hurt themselves.

Make the game fun again, all this policing is making the game die.
I can found hundreds of examples that are just arbitrary and would not break the game because of intrinsic limitations, like the number of totems that storm totem consumes, what ¿is there a way of creating 1000 totems i dont know of? ¿so it has to be up to 5? so frustrating, a guy on an office though of a number and i have to deal with this limit, removes immersion because it makes me think of this guy taking the random number out of nowhere.

The gear is the limitation, not the numbers on a node.

If there is no creative way to limit with gear stacking damage per poison or bleed then dont scale per poison or bleed, think of something else, dont fools us into a false sense of scaling when there is nothing to it.

OP builds are fun (and i dont know why EHG have allergy to them) but this it not about that, it’s about saying to the player: i dont care what gear you have, this scales up to my favourite number, wich is 2.

  1. Whatsup with useless uniques

Same with the nodes, having uniques that nobody ever used its nonsense, i really can’t understand it, uniques that cannot even be redeemed with low legendary potential.

¿What is Hive Mind for?
¿What is the ashen crown for?
¿What is howl of the West Wind for? (a new unique that is not useful)
¿What is sigeon reprisal? (a new unique that is not useful)
¿What is call of the tundra for?
¿What is paranoia for?
¿What is dark shroud of Cinders for?
¿What is Kermode’s Cage for?
¿What is keepers gloves for?
¿What is liath machination build intention? i really dont get it.
¿What is the scavenger for?
¿Taste of blood, Best king, rainbow edge, gladiator’s oath, bloodgeon… anybody uses them?
?What are roots of Vithdrasil for? Really what for? this i hate the most.
and sadly many many more.

I would also like to see also the data on use of uniques, again easy feedback → how about start for having a game with no useless nodes and no useless uniques and no useless up to’s.

  1. Whatsap with COF

I am kidding everybody knows whatsap with COF, it sucks.

sorry for my english, i am not english speaking.

there is only one solution for all of this, only the one, and i will give it to you->
Unleash the crazyness:
Add two slots more on the player equipment, one on each side → earrings. (of course can be other thing but you get the idea)
Add a new item type to the game → earrings
Earrings will not give stats and will not be like other items, earrings will just affect skills behaviour in small but significant ways.
The skill trees are limited in space, you cant open them up indefinetly, that’s why an external support for the skill trees is needed (besides some uniques), earrings will just add an effect to the player, for instance:

  • gathering storm and storm bolts are converted to fire.
  • devouring orb is converted to fire.
  • hammer throw is converted to lightning.
  • rive is converted to fire or void.
  • javeling now makes a fan (like multishot) instead of raining from the sky.
  • tornado gains ignite chance per second per your chance to ignite.
  • earthquake deals 80% less damage but costs 60% less mana and damage over time for earthquake deals x% more damage
  • spirit thorns is now channeled and has 50% more projectile frecuency or something.
  • when you cast maelstrom on you its cast on nearest totem.
  • when you cast thornshield on you its cast on nearest companion.
  • maelstrom has 90% less duration (or 1% less duration per attunement)
  • maelstrom has 90% more duration (or 1% more duration per attunement)
  • smelter’s wrath deals x% less damage but its no longer channel skill but normal melee attack.
  • eterra’s blessing now grants ward instead of health.
  • summon vines is replaced with entangling roots and deals 50% more damage.
  • vengenace throws 5 iron blades instead of 1. Or give smelter’s wrath axes to vengeance.
  • shield throw is thrown on an incresing orbit arround you (like hammer throw)
  • hammer throw scales with equipped mace but you only have 1 hammer.
  • Consecrating aura now last indefinetly but you burn yourself when you use it (you get the idea)
  • Consecrating aura is converted to void.
  • forged weapons deal 100% more damage, you can only have one forged weapon but it does rive when you do it.
  • Hail of arrows follows you and has unlimited time but it also hurts you.
  • avalance is now a melee attack that throws big boulder on melee hit.
  • rebuke no longer protects you but increased mana regen 1000%.
  • ravaging aura deals more void damage per vitality.

and cosmetic earrings:

  • falcon is now a robot falcon.
  • forged weapons are hammers.
  • swarmblade is not godawful looking now
  • summon bear is now white and awesome.

I dont know, this are all random ideas, some of them are ridiculous, but you get the idea: open up the possiblities, open up the builds, maybe there is a better way to do it, maybe the skill trees and uniques just need to be fixed, but open up the crazyness or the game will close on you.

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Dude, are you ok?

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Quite relatable. It’s exactly how that feels in my brain when I drink too much irish coffee.

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Nope, had high hopes for the game.

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Those are options and you can take them (speaking of about skill nodes)

It’s rather that problem is that there will always be meta and arpgs are all about ” how i get most power” and this leads to this mentality that it’s more of math test than just choosing what candy ypu want to eat.

If you pick weak skills or weaker nodes you’re screwed and not having fun which creates this ” why there is bad nodes and not viable nodes etc”

For people who don’t care this stuff they probably choose all kind of things but it doesn’t change fact that answer for most power on this ”’math test” is option xyz.

So yea diversity is there but soon you but thresholds on what you need to achieve and viable discussions start to roll on then diversity starts to go thin.

EHG fumbled big time when they let those outliers to be available so long. 300 corruption is where we try to balance things around and still people think 1000 corruption is viable…

I have made many builds, and most of time i just know that i cut my wings off because i know what is way stronger.

Game doesn’t give enough options to really grind weaker builds to very high to end game.

It just feels bad when some meta/bugged/Devs gave love build is just so much stronger build than some weaker off meta build because i cant pour months of hard work to get same point because game throw shackles everywhere.

And i know meta will always exists and tier lists exists but in this game it just feels way worse than it should. We should be talking how much effort you need to pour into meta vs off meta than ” this build is just way bad and feels bad vs im having fun”

There is two/three different dev vision eras right now, which means that older stuff just is like putting ankle weights on ya vs newer stuff is way way more scaling and more fun.

2 Likes
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Ok then, let’s get into those things:

Earrings? Nice idea! Adjustments with gear to create unique interactions is something the game definitely needs.
A balancing nightmare… but nonetheless a good addition to create ‘something’ of that sort which isn’t tied to gear otherwise and hence causing it to fall in the limitations of having several extra stats handled accordingly.

Has nothing to do with CoF though… any why does CoF suck? CoF is decently fine by now, with minor drawbacks that need to be ironed out.
It’s not like it’s inherently broken like MG.

Uniques:
Hive Mind is removed, doesn’t drop anymore.
Ashen Crown is used in a elemental nova build actually.
Howl of the west is decent for a full companion build, they actually work.
And so on.

There’s a few really useless ones in the list though, take them as ‘filler uniques’. Or due to be reworked, like a ton in the game.

The limitations on skills:
They are fine on their own… but you’re right that they’re far too prevalent, the lazy outcome so EHG doesn’t need to properly adjust them to situations coming up… and given how ‘well’ they handle balance it’s actually the better situation since otherwise they would mess the balance up even more then already is the case.

Unused nodes:
Yes, a major problem. Some are outright nonsensical, some have very very specific use-cases.
But overall… they’re a waste of space, making it look ‘nice and filled out’ solely… but they’re useless as you said, with a few exceptions in your list.

Especially examples like dark quiver which under no circumstances can work… the convenience downside would need it to raise in power by a good 400-500% to be deemed a viable option.

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I still don’t understand what WhatsApp has to do with any of this?

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And what about only 2 ring!?! I don’t know about anyone else, but I have 10 fingers so my characters should be able to equip 10 rings.

I kinda like it how some people think that CoF is shit & some think that MG is shit, that sounds balanced (ish) to me.

That’s not what LEtools says.

So some of them could be travel nodes then?

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The difference is that the majority of people simply haven’t experienced both sides in-depth. For me… I’ve far more experience in MG, though I’ve seen all the issues which long-term are created by CoF in the forum already and taken that in, fact-checked it and seen them to be true.

Like the Nemesis problem, the experimental item problem and so on.

In comparison MG is fundamentally flawed still and nothing has been done to alleviate that. Which 100% of the time leads to a broken economy if given enough time.
Currently the only way to stop that for cycle is to reduce the flow of good to such a degree that it won’t come to it by the end of the cycle… but in Legacy it’ll always uphold.

MG is not functional until it’s working for years without breaking in Legacy, solely as a model at least, which is not the case.

Huh? When I opened it it told me it’s a legacy item… well… might be changed simply and it loaded a old version. My bad.

Yeah, some surely are, and that’s fine. But there’s a good chunk of ‘end-nodes’ which are nonsensical… and even travel nodes should provide miniscule upsides and not some random unusable stuff… or worst-case detrimental ones.

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It’s like chess.
You have so many openings, but if you don’t want to get crushed you play the select few.

  1. All skills need to have 1 single, 1 point passive that let’s you select the type of damage you want to have on that skill. I’ve been stopped so many times coming up with my own unique build because I can’t focus on the type of damage I want to center my build on.

  2. Some class skills needs to be removed and replaced with buffs instead that work with most other skills. It’s better to have 3-4 buff skills you can choose around than 3-4 skills that you won’t even touch.

  3. The game is in a serious, extremely serious need of more unique items that focus on other elemental type of damage than mostly just void. A base that can serve into pushing you in 200 corruption where you can hunt for your t7 even on a non meta build.

  4. Lastly, they need to stop being afraid of people coming up with OP builds. Let them do it, and then just tweak the numbers in the next cycle. Becoming an OP character is literally the aspiration of everyone playing this genre. The caps are ridiculous.

Since the last time I played, the leveling experience is easier. Items drop nicely - mostly unusable because of 3. - and you don’t feel like there’s any roadblocks. Even runes of ascendance are bountiful compared to 5-6 months ago that lets you gamba.
Decent changes, but their focus is way waaaaay off. There’s just not enough versatility.

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The game has been in development for more than 4 years. And the developers did not see that they did not make normal rings unique to physical builds.

Although it would seem how could it not be noticed?

The game is based on a physical build, you just have nothing to take into the slot of rings from the unics. To look for them with potential and put together a delicious build.

I am already silent about the fact that 95% of skills based on ordinary physical damage simply cannot give out damage.

(sry translate)

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And if you just want to have some silly fun, just go for the bongcloud and look how far you can go.

For every game with complex options and interactions that I am familiar with (meaning I have played it for more than just a couple of hours), the following is true: some options are more powerful than others, to the point where the least powerful options look silly to have at all. It’s a curse of game design that nobody appears to be able to overcome. I guess it is not as easy as it sounds to make everything halfway balanced against each other.

This is true for video games of different genres, boardgames, WH40K, D&D…

But one thing I learned: I can still have fun with some of the worst options, either by challenging myself or by adjusting my personal goals.

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nobody is here talking about the hierarchy of builds and it’s inevitability, no, nobody is making that point or that complain, i love that there builds stronger than others my point is on policing, the game is on a cage, lack of diversity, useless uniques, useless nodes, skills that are one trick ponys, etc…

The game was sold as freedom of choice, then we discovered developers put everything on cages sucking every fun left, really guys, for a game with this many bugs you would think developers would relax a bit and give fun things to players.
BTW my stash tabs crashes all the time just by sorting or changing tabs.

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Its insanely good, Wolves have a 150% more multiplier from their tree for Lightning damage. However, their basic attack and Ice bite (which has 200% base dmg effect) have split scaling (Phys/Lightning/Cold on Ice bite) meaning that generic flat melee damage is not effective since its split between the multiple types and does not get the 150% more multiplier. Enter HWW which gives Flat LIGHTNING melee damage which is not effected by the split scaling and hence gets the full 150% multiplier. You can use Crescent axes/moon daggers or the unique Tempest maw and exalted flat melee lightning damage can give your wolves a major boost (especially if you dual wield).

https://old.reddit.com/r/LastEpoch/comments/1eppaug/aberroth_kill_shield_throw_forge_guard/
500 corruption, Aberroth killed doesn’t sound like its not useful…

BiS for bleed builds as it literally doubles your DPS when clearing. You can simply swap to a Dragonbone for Big HP bosses like Aberroth/ high corruption timeline bosses.

I agree that there are a lot of underperforming things in LE and it would be better if EHG focuses on these rather than adding new skills or reworking existing skills that work fine (Volatile Reversal) but I don’t think the situation is as bad as you put it.

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wow man, thanks for taking the time, the shield throw build actually looks dope, i hope its not offline cheating because i am going to try it.
I cannot agree with you on howl of the west wind but i would love to be proved wrong in everything i said… because it would mean this game is awesome.
BUT, the game is in bad shape mate, lots of skills and uniques have 300 layers of dust on them, they keep limiting everything and making it borring, and really, the lack of diverse builds is outrageous.

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What about underwear? And socks? And a jacket/vest?
I want to wear a jockstrap underneath my clothes. And I guess It would be nice to have that in LE as well.

This isn’t really a problem. The thing is that CoF is more clearly targetted at altoholics. So if you have a dozen different characters and they’re all CoF, you can actually get most things decently well. So for the long term and for people that like making multiple characters all the time, CoF is actually pretty good.

But if you use CoF on a single character, then CoF feels underwhelming because it is.

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Umh… the item starvation for those types is there no matter if you play a single character or 20.
You won’t reliably get a T7 experimental item, and you also won’t reliably be able to make a experimental item which has a T7 affix on it either on your own (non experimental T7 in that case).

Those are basically unicorn items and far far more rare then a rare T7 affix item which is perfectly rolled… as a basis.
Which poses an issue since a well-rolled T7 rare affix item is already getting deep into the utter utter end-game.

The same goes for boss-drop uniques in CoF, even if that got better by now.

And for Nemesis items we don’t even need to start speaking, they’re basically what ‘talisman’ drops in Path of Exile were, a miracle to turn out well, even if the potential is higher then any ‘normal’ item has.

CoF itself should actually scale extremely well with a single character compared to alt characters… solely for the fact that you get 3-4 times as many ‘decent’ items and you’re actually able to go into T7/T6 combination items in a reliable way with enough effort time-wise… which is a unicorn for MG in general, they simply don’t exist with any reasonable combinations in the whole market because they’re so rare.

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I got a few of those already, so I don’t know what you mean by them being unicorn items. And I’ve played only about 300h since 1.0 launch.

CoF is good for the long term (meaning it’s better in legacy than in cycle). You reach a point where you have most things you need.

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Did you get the ‘right’ T7 experimental mod on the ‘right’ base for yourself?

That’s the unicorn.

Not to speak of crafting it into a great item which has around a 1 in 25 chance to happen. (If the drop itself is already fairly decent, otherwise vastly less)

If we solely go for being a base to throw at a LP item then it’s a bit easier, still hundreds of hours for CoF to achieve nonetheless with a 2 LP outcome unless you’re lucky.

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This is just an expectation issue. It has been established already that CoF isn’t a faction if you’re chasing BiS items. It’s a faction if you want to have drops and get good gear. BiS is for MG.

If all you want is getting the best gear you can possibly get, then MG is the way. Just farm currency and buy it.
If all you want is to get your build going while having upgrades until you have pretty good gear that lets you play what you want, you can use CoF.

I thought we had already established in the past that CoF and MG can never be equivalent, not is that their purpose.