I clearly haven’t been playing this game long enough to know a time when poison wasn’t the best build possible. 
Not entirely sure if you know my general position on this subject, I just wanted to offer an opinion on your statement, which is wrong IMO.
Not sure if you have read all my other previous replies on this subject, but just so you know, i am highly against the current implementation of this mechanic.
While underlying goal was noble from the devs, the implementation is just bad. Too much punishment for good character building. Just feel free to read all my previous replies.
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I agree with your sentiment that it is bad. My reasons are different though.
I see making enemies excessively tanky in this way as a “Play poison DoT tank or you will lose out” as the longer the battle lasts the more you will play tank and the more effective poison will be.
I should state of course that high damage builds tend to have lower defences, and thus they tend to get one shot by mob packs, they should not be made bad at the one thing they are good at.
Basically the issue I see is that it is encouraging a very specific type of build and punishing all other ones, using the excuse that they want people to engage with boss mechanics - but tanks do not do that either, they just face tank the big aoe.
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Often high dps character sacrifices their defense.
In other words, DPS / Defense are relationship of trade-off, and I feel this is natural.
I feel that this boss resistance system occurs unfair penalty for high DPS character.
Because they already sacrificed their defense.
In addition to it, and Intense penalty of DPS are only increase instability in viability in boss battle.
Of course, all bosses can kill easy by getting use to, so this system does not inhibit gaming progress never.
But seeing much penalty damage with my own eyes is not fun, not comfortable.
If this damage penalty can not remove in this game, at…at least, while bosses reinforce their defense, I wish they have great penalty of their offense / attack / cast speed.
In any case, I feel this system is too unilateral.
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It’s a bad step to take to make people weaker in an ARPG. There will be power creep and bonkers numbers on the screen at some point… yes. Right now you are punished for beeing “good” at theorycrafting and grinding and that’s bread and butter of a ARPG. Content should get harder and harder without artificial brik walls in your way.
All the system is implementing right now is the uselessness of dmg builds because you are not that much faster vs the guy who builds tank like a maniac and who a lot saver. This system they implemented is like: “If you have LESS protections you TAKE less dmg but if you have a LOT of protections you TAKE more dmg… just because!”. If they want to make things harder enemys should get more powerfull over time without making players intentionaly weaker.
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I’ve yet to hear even a single player say they liked the mechanic.
I get that people worked hard on these boss mechanics, but if you want us to engage them at ALL, present them at a point in the game where we aren’t strong enough yet to face tank and/or one shot the boss, don’t cripple everybody into doing fractions of normal damage. If you want us to engage with that boss mechanic repeatedly, level up the bosses (in monoliths) and make them more rewarding, but everything is supposed to be “conquered” at some point, not repeatedly “engaged” in the same manner at level 55 and 100.
When we get all of our top-leveled gear, we want to go see how much better it is against the bosses like, “Daaaamn it took me 2 minutes at 60, but now with my almost BiS gear and level 80 I hammered this weasel in 20 seconds!”
Not, “ok let’s see how much better my gear got… Hmm I’m doing 100% more DPS but didn’t even come to close to halving my kill time. Wtf.”
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Even worse - there are plenty( probably great majority) of players who most likely would be against it but:
- Aren’t aware of it
- Think that bosses have some weird resistances and they need to get more damage or penetration
- Don’t notice it because of their currently low DPS build
I can totally see myself gaslighted into #2 as it would be nonsensical for me to think that there’s a timer limit for how fast I should kill a boss.
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I was excited about this game until the implementation of this mechanic. I hope the devs re-think it.
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Strongly agree with this. The vibe I’m getting is that in this instance the devs are more concerned with their satisfaction at having people fully engage with the boss encounters they’ve crafted than they are with players’ satisfaction at their theorycrafting/grinding paying off.
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I know it’s semantics, but they aren’t making the player weaker, they’re making the boss stronger.
With my current buld, I’m spamming Smite, I don’t usually spend much time looking at numbers on the bosses because I’m more focussed on the mechanics, but I’ve never noticed a damage reduction (because I’m not paying attention to the numbers). I cast Smite a few times, then move to deal with the mechanics, then cast it a few more times, etc.
I’m #1 because I’m paying more attention to the mechanics…
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Here is my short video about this problem. (20 sec)
Could you check it?
This build is earthquake / avalanche mixed build.
The Aftershock generated by earthquake summon 2x boulders as many as totems.
Then, additional boulder can summon from Avalanche’s node (by crit), so totally 20x boulders generate per 1 earthquake, in theoretically.
At first, boulders could deal about 1,500 damage to Boss dragon, but soon, it downed to few hundreds.
And at last, it became to only 80 damage…
※Now avalanche node has OP bugs, and I reported it.
But it is not important thing.
The important thing is nearly or more greater dps builds get same excessive penalty.
How many player can consent this excessive penalty and motivate to make more strong build under this condition ?
Is this really good balance? I do not think so.
I think that increasing DPS is one of most fun things in this kind of game.
I feel this system is robbing it 
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I think the clear speed is fine and maybe as a few others have stated there are many ways to approach this. Imo it is really just seen the numbers lower that feels bad, everything else is fine. time to kill fight mechanics health and damage could be tuned up a bit more but other than that I love the way the fights go. as OP stated Le is not a game about clear speed. regardless players will find a way for efficiency. I am sure EHG is capable of finding a good solution to the issue at hand and I think they will. They are experimenting since it is still in beta and I think that is awesome. yeah something will hit and miss but I am happy they are trying to push the envelope and do things other games don’t
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I would not say it completly remove my motivation but it’s annoying yes, so ok
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I feel like this feature should be completely removed.
It nerfs the player and it feels bad.
A sort of hidden mechanic destroying your damage, it is just bad design imo.
Make the player experience the complete boss fights in a different way, please rethink this.
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I am actually what feels to be in the small minority of players who actually don’t care about the adaptive damage decrease on bosses. Why? The bosses I have engaged with so far feel fun, I have to do the mechanics and prove I can meet the gear checks. I actually have to prove I can interact with the boss correctly to win and that is fine by me. I feel successful and a sense of achievement after each fight. I personally feel like this is the experience the developers want to have with players, to actually sit there and experience an epic battle.
One of the real questions that players need to ask themselves when they fight a boss is what actually do they consider a successful, fun and engaging boss fight? One where they take a glass cannon niche build that 2 shots a boss or a 1-2 min boss fight where they are forced into doing and interacting with boss mechanics correctly? I think players in ARPGs have been little brain washed into believing that the only way a build can be successful is how fast they can burn a boss, that that is the only measure to success. I personally think a video game that allows a player to quickly burn a boss a design flaw. Mind you, one that is not easily fixed within ARPGS because of how complex different interactions game can become. I think a change to how much damage bosses can take is a step in the right direction.
I think the approach the developers are taking to make boss fights actually balances for all classes is a provocative and i think its an important experiment to have. I personally think the community should be little more open to this idea or other ways to address the problem of future build imbalances without completely infuriated at the idea of their build doing less damage therefore the idea is bad.
When I talked to my friend he came up with a good idea to address this problem without truly gimping damage to make all builds borderline by allowing elemental penetration to play a bigger roll in boss fights. Make % based penetration to be what players need if they want to make boss killers. So if you want to make a boss killer just make players need to invest heavily into penetration with ability points and passives. This would allow players who want it to be able to gain more advantages in boss fights but still keep bosses epic, engaging and feel rewarding to fight.
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every patch i start from scratch. now with the new damage reduction it sometimes takes me 30 min to clear one map in MoF
. this really becomes annoying real fast, i dont have the time to play hours in a row. even when you find upgrades it doesnt nearly change much
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why can’t there just be a timeline difficulty slider? if you wanna do harder content, slide that bad bitch up, if you wanna zone out and grind and clear fast. slide that bitch down. i am no developer, but this system seems counter intuitive to bringing in new players. just my opinion. carry on.
A successful boss fight is one where my lvl 100 char doesn’t go from 800 per hit to 80 per hit in 5s on a lvl 55 echo boss.
The boss is still a damage soak. It just soaks more…
I would agree when it comes to this it doesn’t make much sense.
Unless introducing a system where permanent damage floor narrows the field like in the case of shaper battle, even low DPS high Deffense builds can exist, so I think that so-called build variety will be secured.
In an extreme example, the so-called Glass Cannon can’t rampage before the equipment, levels, and build concept are in place.
So, when they are young, unless they’ve prepped by watching spoiler videos, they’ll face the boss gimmick, and then they can learn it well enough.
And maybe some cases, they can learn it a lot more times rather than tanky builds.
I think that’s enough.
Originally, I also like the enrage system of bosses used in many games.
But I believe this system is wrong.
I sincerely hope that finding other ways to stimulate the boss fight.
- Of course, Last Epoch is Last Epoch, and other games are other games. So, if I was told that this was the Last Epoch, I would have to accept it.
However, for a while after I faced this problem, my narrow mind has not yet accepted this system