Title. Especially Sentinel’s ‘Ring of Shields’ and ‘Sigils of Hope’ durations are killing me. The interaction between ‘Shield Rush’ and ‘Ring of Shields’ with the ‘Rush Wall’ skillnode is brilliant but ‘Ring of Shields’ duration running out mid-charge is bulls**t.
Furthermore, I personally don’t find having to self-buff my character every 10 seconds really engaging gameplay. With how the skill-system is set up, this could be easily remedied by nodes in self-buff-skills to allow toggleing (with reduced effect or something). Or nodes like “killing an enemy increases the duration by X seconds”.
It heavily depends on the skill, but the devs want to go away from auto-casting/permanent buffs anyway.
With changes they did to Flame Ward from Mage for example they want to promote a more reactionary playstyle of self-buffs.
So alot of the buffs could become even stronger with low uptimes, to make the decision important, when to active.
I really do like you suggestions of things like “increases duration on kill”, but this should still be capped and not possible to keep it up permanently.
Some buffs could maybe even use a system, where the cooldown start, when the abilitiy runs out, this would give the devs the opportunity to have things such as the “increases duration on kill” to be more powerful.
Making a skill permanent/toggle however is something i don’t find interesting and i personally would not like to see that.
Thank you for the reply. I am quite new to the game and have not really followed the updates/changes so I was unaware of the devs decision to “promote a more reactionary playstyle of self-buffs”.
For me it is quite sad since I feel the game is really good, I love making character builds in games, got 1.6k hours in Grim Dawn doing that, have also played Titan Quest and Diablo 2 & 3 (unfortunately). Last Epoch nails the class customization (even better than Grim Dawn), I also like the crafting, infuriating as a 1% fracture can be, it gives a very long lifespan to the game, striving for that perfect craft.
But the short duration buffs are for me a bummer. I don’t really understand why it would be bad to have option to make them permanent, proc out of something else, etc. I believe I am not the only person who is not really interested in making reactionary, moment-to-moment decisions in a arpg, I just want to turn create a strong character, turn my brain off and smash hordes of monsters.
The worst offender on this front for me is Volatile Reversal, because it has the added frustration of being very disruptive when it rewinds your position.
i just found out about this game and was very excited to try a new ARPG, especially after i watched some YouTube videos about build guides and leveling and saw the easy implementation of auto-casting. After my go-to-ARPG has become even more demanding lately i had high hopes to find a new source of hack-and-slay entertainment, but with the direction the devs want to go in mind this sadly might not be the game for me after all…
Ring of Shields with the Enduring Defence Node is active for 16s (i.e. permanent uptime if you tap it every 15 seconds) and is very powerful… So powerful in fact that having it on permanently as a toggle would probably mean that the devs would nerf it to compensate… Personally I find it ok on a 15s repeat cast…
Sigils of Hope however, is the clunkiest bloody skill in the sentinel arsenal… Again, its damn powerful but my god, tapping it every few seconds to keep the sigils up is a nightmare - especially when you have a special skill rotation that doesnt include it. It does have the Last Wish node which gives a very low chance of recasting on kill but even that is not enough to stop it being a really annoying skill to use… Its just so powerful that you almost cannot NOT use it for certain builds…
I wish these had a node like Enchant Weapon (Spellblade) - Kindling Blade, that recasts the buff automatically - it takes sacrificing skill points to get but it makes it far more useful.
As Heavy mentioned, the devs are trying to steer clear of autocasting type skills and the need for a player to want to use autocasting… but I am not convinced the current implementation of some of them (especially Sigils) is good…
I did mention in my original post that I would be fine with a reasonable reduction in effectiveness to the skill in exchange for the quality of life change of not having to press a button every 16 seconds. This power reduction could be tied to the toggle-node so those who do not mind pressing that button, would not lose anything.
In my mind, this would appeal to more types of players and be a net gain. Isn’t the whole point of customization to have multiple different flavors of ice cream, instead of only vanilla with different color sprinkles?
P.S. Another solution could be to introduce a item affix “increases the duration of all positive effects cast on you”, or something like that.
There might be a place for some permanent things, even though they are unexciting.
If the power they grant is balanced.
Currently alot of the buffs/skills can have 100% uptime while being so strong, that you have to take them.
We might see some changes to skills over time that might give you options to have some permanent stuff, but yeah as i said, the direction they mainly want to go is to give buffs not 100% uptime, because LE only has 5 skills, which is not alot, but every skill you do take should be meaningful.
Having permanent buffs is not meaningfull, even if you prefer that over temporary buffs.
Just to be sure: Currently we are at a state where we do have alot of stuff that can have 100% uptime already, even rign of shields can have 100% uptime already as a FG.
But the devs want to avoid having 1 (or even multiple) buffs in your actionbar that you literally can keep up all the time. That’s not healthy for balance and for the gameplay, even if you don’t care about moment-to-moment decisions.
I do think it’s great when a game manages to give alot of different player types things they enjoy, but if you don’t care for reactionary or moment-to-moment decisions and just wanna “turn of your brain” LE might be not the best contender.
Maybe the devs can achieve giving player like you options that you enjoy, but giving those options while still giving strong temporary options might be harder to balance and before too much stuff turns into auto-casting/permanent uptime i would very much prefer having only buffs that can’t achieve 100% uptime.
That is due to VR mainly being used as a mana regenerator, while still still has so much more to offer. If you find this skill “disruptive” play somethign else, Sentinel has plenty of other optiosn to regenerate all of his mana within 1-2 seconds.
VR is one of the most unique skills and despite it being a buggy mess most of the time i would not want this skill to turn into a braindead auto mana refill skill that is not used in any other context.
This would make balancing skills even harder, because balancing a skill around itself within the skill spec tree can be relatively easy, but if you add global modifiers that affect all kind of skills, devs will be alot more restricted with cooldowns, durations and uptime.
Does it have to be “exciting”? Some people derive enjoyment not from hectic, fast-paced action but from observing a well-designed machine perform.
Define “meaningful”. I do think that *Holy Aura’ for example is very meaningful and it is a 100% uptime buff with a additional active! (Might even be the best way to implement a buff-skill?)
Also, in my opinion not all builds should require a intricate, precise 5 skill-rotation to play. If a player wants to have a skill he primarily uses, a second, stronger skill when a tougher monster shows up, maybe a “oh shit button” and have rest of his skills be passive buffs to enhance that style of gameplay, why should that not be a thing?
Uptime is not the issue.
I am truly saddened by this but if this is how the cookie crumbles, I can’t really do much about it can I?
The way I see it is that one big chance for success for LE is not to challenge Path of Exile to a competition of which one is more hyper fast-paced LSD-fumed-adventure, rather appeal to the arpg-players which indeed dislike the POE-approach.
I have seen many promising games dead and buried only due to the creators vision of how their game “should be played”.
Thank you for the reply though, I hope I did not come of as a insufferable twat.
Having a permanent skill that give you x defenses or y offensive capabilities has nothing to do with a “well designed machine”, because most likely all builds will take those, if they exist.
If there are permanent things, we might need to have 100 different permanent things to choose from and then you will have some decision making in which of the 100 permanent ksills you choose.
Having an impact on how your character plays.
Numeric damage or defensive increases will not do that.
Creating passive/permanent buff type of abilities that change how you character plays/feels is increibly hard without making them too strong.
I do like the theme of Holy Aura, but it’s also one of the skills that is waaaaaaaaaaaay too strong. As soon as you play paladin,…not taking holy aura is not reasonable in the current state of balancing for the vast majority of builds.
Mastery exclusive skills are very thematic and build defining in LE, but i thinkg Holy Aura is the only one of those, that is basically mandatory to pick, as soon as you chose that mastery.
I do like how Holy Aura functions, but if you would give that functionality to more skills, it would loose alot of it’s flaire and uniqueness.
That is already the case currently in LE, even though LE’s skil lsystem leans very much into the direction, where every active skill is very impactful and meaningfull, most builds don’t use all 5 of them all the time.
I already mentioned this above, in the section talking about that this is not impactfull on how your character feels.
Just for clarification, most of the stuff here is my personal opinion.
The things talking about what the devs want to achieve are mainyl focused on “auto-casting” abilities for maximum efficiency. That’s the thing they want to get rid of.
This does not necessarily include permanent bufffs. Maybe we will get some of those in the future, but only because i personally dislike them, doesn’t mean the devs see a place for them.
I am confused, you want a more “turn your brain off” playstyle, but don’t want hyper fast gameplay? But your prefered playstyle does promote this even more.
Just because you have 5 active skills that you need to press every now and then to maximize your rotation and efficiency doesn’t necessarily makes LE’s “suepr fast”, quite the contrary, especially with how slow paced the combat in LE is.
Because combat in LE is very slow, every enemy mob counts and requires active decision making from the player, instead of brainelssly clear 2 screens away within a fraction of a second.
I think EHG is very minfull of community feedback, while still trying to be true to their vision.
We already had multiple major overhauls of features and with the recent reveal of some detaisl of the bezaar you can see they defintiely want to try something new and different, but i am 100% sure that they will not carelessly enforce their vision, if the community feedback is really negative.
Haha, you’re welcome, we are all here in the forum to exchange opinions and suggestions.
What we did here was one of the more cleaner discussion C=
I am happy with this.
I think the best discussions are the ones where 2 parties extremly disagree, but still being very constructive and respectfull.
Even though we seems to have very different tastes of playstyles, we are all here to give our own opinions and try to make this game as good as possible.
I’ve never used it as a mana regenerator in any of my builds. I used it for the very strong but obnoxiously short duration attack, cast, and movespeed buffs - you know, the kind of buffs that this thread is about.
I do play something else. I will never put VR on my bar again. The movement rewind is undeniably disruptive and I am not willing to deal with it to gain the power that comes with it. I have no idea why you’re coming at me like I’m yodeling at the moon.
“Unique” is not synonymous with “good”. VR is a skill that is neat in concept but not in execution. A skill that slaps your location backwards is antithetical to gameplay that is almost always focused on forward progress. It is a perfect example of “Players will do things that suck if it gives them power”.
I’m not sure who believe you’re talking to with this, but it isn’t me.
Woops, it seems that i accidentilly deleted my section talking about the buff component of that skill, while i was editing my post.
This might be true for low and mid tier gameplay, but once you don’t kill stuff within seconds anymore this becomes less of a problem.
I could see a node in VR’s tree being added that nullifies the position change on the skill.
It’s totally fine if you don’t like that part of the skill, but I personally would not call this “undeiably distruptive” since you, as a player have 100% control over this skill and where it rewinds you.
It is a great skill that requires some player skill to use to it’s fullest potential, especially on boss fights.
I agree, the implementation of these skills is detrimental to the game.
Especially, given the long cooldowns, there’s no way to keep track of every single one of them and sometimes you simply find yourself without the skill available when needed.
If you want these buffs to be “reactionary playstyle”, then just give them a mana cost without a cooldown.
Even so, you’ll find yourself in a “piano style” kind of gameplay that is not suitable for long sessions of gaming.
If LE had higher mob density, I might not disagree as strongly. But it’s extremely common for there to be enough space between packs for the buffs to fall off. So the choices are:
Spam it between packs and get your forward motion set back.
Engage a pack without the buff long enough for the rewind to not significantly disrupt your positioning.
Engage a pack, rewind position, then Lunge/run back in.
All of those options feel dumb.
I actually think that would make the situation with VR worse. Being able to remove the annoyance/disruptive drawback of the skill would only make it harder to justify not taking it for the short duration buff. It would also take away the only remaining flavor of the skill that keeps it from being something you just throw on autocast and forget exists. What I’d like to see is the Warped Time and Catching Up nodes removed/reworked/replaced.
I don’t think it’s good design for an ability to require that you to hold a constant, rolling account of your location X seconds ago in your head for it to not disrupt your gameplay. I can’t imagine how it would be feasible to implement, but IMO that is something the game should provide a visual cue for.
The movement rewind is least disruptive when you’re fighting in a static general area, so I’d actually argue that it requires less skill to use without disruption in boss fights.
I’m with OP about these skills being just a “click tax”, if you see them in this light then these become a kind of proto-aura rather than the originally intended substitution.
One thing that I’ve started noticing long time ago is how (in my memory) Sigils have been mentioned more than once but from what I personally recall I’ve never read any complain about Devouring Orbs
The uptime mechanics are very similar if not about the same, but somehow Dev Orbs are never mentioned as “annoying”, maybe because they do deal direct dmg while Sigils are mostly buffs?
While DO is balanced by its cooldown, Sigils is balanced by its mana cost. DO has no limit so you want to cast it as often as possible to get max amount of Orbs. This favours the “autocast” with num lock mechanic. Only complaints people have is that DO is not an instant cast and cannot be cast while spinning around with Warpath.
I don’t like Sigils very much because of its clunkyness. The only way it can be build ok-ish is with increased duration in the tree. Also there are idols that increase its duration. But I find it a very bad tradeoff to “waste” skillpoints or idol slots for convenience. These kind of tradeoffs I don’t like. In mist cases I would go for more power instead of convenience and end up with something that doesn’t feel smooth to play.
With the 4 second buffs this is very similar. 4 seconds are a very short duration and it’s hard to keep track of your buffs if you even have several different ones.
Would be cool to have idols with secondary stats that maybe increase duration if said buffs. If this is overpowered there could be a mechanic that works like this:
Your self buffs last 100% longer, but have 33% [tweak numbers at will] reduced effectiveness when the base duration is exceeded.
The difference with DO is that skill is offensive and if not cast it just lowers your DPS, while sigil or other defensive skills if not cast most likely lead to your death.
Having your overall resistances and endurance making a yo-yo effect between super-high and super-low depending on their cooldowns also means that it becomes difficult to gauge the toughness of any encounter because we don’t know how hard the next strike will hit us for.
