That might make you a very lonely Llama😮.
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Bronco/Heavy weren’t enraged, or frenzied, nor did they have the “increased damage when hit recently”, they just disagree with you. I despair at the level of discourse that can occur in polite society if the above (on both sides) is considered “enraged”.
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He’s already a lonely llama, but that is a whole different topic.
Now to the Mastery respec. No, it could be a core part of the character.
PoE is different even there you are divided with the 3 ascendecies (save scion cuz she’s special). PoE is more welcoming to full respec: 1) By giving currency (regret) is available and through books that allow for it. 2) by running a normal lab to change and pay the cost at the end. Since the mastery in LE is a one-time run and your are done, it should be permanent. Plus, there is great big bold text that says this choice is permanent! Choose wisely or poorly.
To be fair, bad ideas, especially those based on completely bad-faith assertions (I’m not even going to stoop to calling them “arguments”) SHOULD be discouraged, if not completely strangled in the womb. Especially when it comes to a premise that has wide-ranging impacts on how both new and experienced players handle the game, and a bad-faith assertion that simply handwaves these away should be discouraged, especially as experienced ARPG genre players don’t need some arcane reference texts to know that bad ideas sink a game. Bad-faith assertions deserve a bad-faith response, as it reveals the difference between people who are actually attempting to make an argument, but lack the communication skills and are willing to do better, and arrogant people who think they know better than developers and players with years and huge amounts of hours in experience and learning growth.
As for the OP specifically, there’s no mention that it takes roughly 4-5 hours to roll a new toon and take it up to the Mastery selection. What is this “high cost” (deliberately undefined to be as vague as possible) of respeccing a character, and what’s stopping someone from saying “the cost is too high, gatekeepers, needs to be free” and all that? How do you prevent “gaming the system” where players find that the fastest way to run through the game is not just picking an optimized leveling skill, but a different mastery altogether which not only artificially makes things harder for new players, but makes it so that the non-optimal skills never get used in the first place?
If the issue is that “skills taken after the mastery choice are hard to determine whether they’re worth playing or not,” then the entire point is for a player to choose that skill, see how it feels, and determine whether the skill is in line with what the Mastery promises. After all, games last far beyond the initial beta testing, and we want a player 10 years from now to feel the good experiences we’re feeling now.
As Bronco said, Last Epoch is ALREADY transparent with what skills are available, the skill trees that are available after you select the mastery, and all the passive points that give a player an idea what to expect after selecting the mastery. The OP, in no way, mentions what this transparency lacks or how it could be improved, but instead gives a bunch of assertions of “how new players would play” without any evidence that there are new players who are confused and would resort to these tactics (also, it’s the 21st century, many players love watching videos of gameplay to see if a game’s worth it or not). And besides, there are plenty of people both in the forums and in-game chat who are more than willing to help new players figure out what they want to play in the end.
All in all, the risks of “gaming” the Mastery respec system far outweigh the few hours necessary to make a new character and level to the mastery selection part,
I actually prefer OP’s suggestion over Heavy’s “compromise” 
I call dibs mike about to drop some nice future info for us 
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Hey all, just thought I’d weigh in with a little info about why it’s the way it is.
I quite often see the comparison of base classes and masteries to PoE classes and ascendencies. This leads to the feeling that masteries should probably be respecable as each mastery is an option of the class you’ve chosen.
This isn’t how we currently view mastery classes. We’ve generally thought of the game as having 15 classes (12 for now). You start out by picking a general theme and then after about 25 levels, you pick your class. You get a chance to test it out and decide which one you like instead of having to pick right out of the gate without information. We try to give a taste of each playstyle in those early levels. Some can’t be done well, but we try to give a bit of a feel for them all early.
I know it’s a different way of thinking about it that isn’t necessarily what many people think when they interact with the system but this is how we’ve intended it so far. Like most other things, it’s not set in stone and you feedback helps shape the game.
We really appreciate feedback on it and I just want to make it clear that everyone’s opinions on of it’s good or bad or what they would like to see instead are relevant and valid. I know it can be tough to present contradictory stances without letting it feel personal.
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Sorry, nothing exciting there.
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But early impressions, that are uninformed about certain game systems, especially ones, where players get confronted with it pretty early are very valuable.
Even if the devs won’t necessarily change the core systems behind it. They could change the way how certain systems are represented or explained.
My specific statement you quoted was more a general statement, not solely meant for this specific thread, but generally for the entire forum.
One of OP’s main complains was, that he feels like, he could make an informed decision about what mastery is catering to what playstyle.
Now the devs have feedback about someone feeling, that the passive tree and skill spec trees are too complex or chaotic for an unexperienced player to feel like, they know how a certain mastery plays.
That’s very good feedback.
Also, regardless of how much you thing someone is doing bad-faith assertions, whether they are on purpose or not, there should never be hostility coming towards those people, even if their post was hostile in some way, this will ultimately just lead to much more hostility and toxicity.
If someone is doing very obvious bad-faith assertions, just ignore them and trust the devs to filter this feedback.
The devs have a vision for their game and if there is some feedback, how ridiculous it might be, which doesn’t get any “negative response”, doesn’t mean, that devs will automatically think: Hey nobody disagreed with this, let’s implement this.
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Without really having read everything now:
I think that if you can play about 1 to 2 hours a day, and you enjoy the game, you could play more than one character with it. So you have simply longer something of it.
[I have for example consciously first once a large part of my characters EXCLUSIVELY only the normal monoliths in each case completely play through let and only a few weeks ago with the strengthened versions started. Since now to heat through with some is again quite fresh for me and makes real fun. If my then set everything there and have collected it then goes off into the arena! I don’t have to be first in a ladder all the time, show awesome builds (I know they are good ^^) or get bored in Empowered Monoliths after 2 weeks].
The only “problem” here is at most the expectations of a player.
If you have 40 low-level characters and enjoy playing with them in turns - who cares?
But if you play only one character and have the claim to be more or less “top notch” with a playtime of 1 - 2 hours, but for whatever reason you don’t manage to meet your expectations, some people will look for “external reasons” why that is the case now.
In short:
Last Epoch is not Candy Crush.
PS:
Some translations are somehow… not successful.
Translated with DeepL Translate: The world's most accurate translator (free version)
Eh, most of the topics are still crammed with toxicity. inb4 ‘then d0n-T reaD tHe forUms lol?’
I don’t really care what anyone else thinks of this. It’s fact to me, and it’s just disgusting. We’re literally all playing and loving the same game, and we get to the forums and (some) just creep around and shit on the first post they see.
The game is great, but the forums f!@#$%^ suck %=# to anyone with an opinion. If you feel an urge to counter me before reading this entire post, you’re probably one of the issues. (To be fair, its my issue, you’re just one of the causes.)
There’s some feedback.
I think the vast majority of the LE forums are Great, the LE community is amazing.
There are just some very polarising and heated discussions about very specific topics, like for exame: Respec, Autopickup and Crafting.
I myself sometimes have very strong and unpopular opinions about certain subjects, but I genuinely don’t care if someone disagrees with me so hard, that he get’s hostile. I have a thicc hide 
But the issues with this kind of stuff is, that then other people respond with hostility and everything goes downhill from here.
I can totally get, that new player do not feel welcomed sometimes.
But you also need to have a somewhat thicker hide, when putting stuff in the world wide internet 
But I think we will soon need to have better moderation in forums.
If the community keeps growing the devs will not be able to handle the moderation.
You might wish to know, POE forums pre-release, was kinda like our forums now. It turned to shit at 1.0. Go figure 
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I hate to say it, but… how about playing the game and discovering how each Mastery works yourself? You know, actually playing a video game?
Today’s culture of NOW has to come to an end - seriously.
I would like to say that Heavy’s reply to me was great. Notice the lack of negativity? If you don’t, Hmm. Ty @Heavy. And now!
I agree and disagree. Polarising topics, sure! This has nothing to do with what people willfully type in this forum. There is no ‘they’re like this because reasons’. It’s human nature at its finest, and it sucks. That being said, if I claim this to be human nature, is it futile to even complain about all this? Probably. Buuuut we are who we are. and I hate this garbage, so I’m going to be vocal.
I agree. But this is literally excusing the asshat behavior. It’s lending them a helping hand and saying ‘This is acceptable. Keep shitting on people.’ I won’t be apart of it, on the other team, in fact! This is not me saying you are indeed actively encouraging this sort of thing, but that its my perspective on it. I’m wrong on occasion, too lol.
My wife and I talked about this the other day. I keep seeing ‘gamers’ asking for things like ‘Can you post a lv 32 update?’ and I think 'wth? that’s so specific, wha? And then it hit me how much things have changed. And I can’t say I like it, but who am I? How others choose to experience the games they play is their own business. I couldn’t play like that, I just couldn’t.
Genuinely curious though. If the paragraph above this one hits home, or feels bad, etc, please reply! Maybe I’m just not seeing a perspective where non-playing a game is enjoyable. If anyone flames you or shits on your post, ignore them. Literally all you can do apparently.
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cough…Trading…cough
Hey, allow me to disagree. As you say, at level 25 you don’t know much, but there are plenty of guides out there from people who tested all masterys and from spending 5 minutes on youtube can get a picture of what to chose that fits you. And even if you choose ‘wrong’ there are still many builds out there that can make that mastery a very good one, every mastery is viable in it’s own way(or ways, usualy there are many skills and combos per mastery that are end game viable). And I don’t really know what great cost to you means, because just going through the campaing you don’t get a lot of gold, and if it would cost a lot, well, it.s easyer and faster just to start from the beginning. 
Agree, but this goes both ways.
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Please elaborate so I do not misunderstand your meaning. I referred to teams, so naturally it goes both ways. As this is my opinion, I know others will have difference, and that is totally fine. 
I’m going to do this because I want to see what its like (again) from the drivers seat. Sorry if I’m bad at this, and yet I’m not? Ah, anyway!
No one should have to go watch some other gamer play a game to play a game. (That said, the information is out there, and you’re already online, so… fair point for today’s average gamer.)
Starting over being easier and faster is subjective. (This word is a popular one, so it’s a natural fit here.) I believe time spent leveling a new character is the issue I’ve seen thrown around somewhere. It’s definitely one of my main gripes, but I accept it and play in spurts to mitigate doing the story as many times as I have. I feel there will be something added later that addresses this in some way.
Yeah, it’s a to each their own thing I suppose. overall @AmorphiZz I agree with you mostly.
Also…
What? If you’re sinking years into the game, it’s not going to be on the same character. You’re also getting all the knowledge you’re complaining about not getting right from the start. Literally, that’s all this is. But, that said, the business argument isn’t too far off. So… that’s gloomy. :\