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Yeah, I used the browser function, it’s what I’m used to. Anyway, it wasn’t really important. I had most of my answers.
So far, from what I’ve enquired, I think the thing I’m missing the most is some form of idol crafting, or maybe gambling. And that’s because I’ve respeced into a flame wraiths build and I need 2 idols with chance to summon flame. I was lucky in that one dropped really fast, but I’ve gone 40 levels without finding the 2nd one.
Just now, I finished 4 idol nodes almost in a row, with a couple idol shrines, and none dropped. I know that most builds (from what I’ve seen) use idols mostly as a secondary gear just to bump health or similar, but in a few idols play a key role. It’s frustrating to spend a few days with a “limp” build just because you have no way to improve your chances of finding it.
EDIT: The game must have some link to the forums because a little after posting the 2nd one dropped 
Yup, the devs are aware that it is very frustrating to not be able to get any of the build-enabling idols to droo. What they plan to do to deal with the situation they’ve not said.
I think this is fine in terms of game design.
You start with a simple build using the basic skills, then your character finds some items bringing in new possibilities and you make alts to try and use what you have found.
In other words, you shouldn’t go for a build requiring something you don’t have yet (technically, you’re not even supposed to know these idols/uniques exist before you find them). This is a fine philosophy, and I personally like it.
However, the reality is that nowadays, people look for builds online. They know which idols or uniques exist, and they decide what they will play before actually playing and discovering the items.
I agree that this leads to frustration, and that the devs should probably accept this reality and find some way to help with that. Trade should help a lot, I guess.
I sort of agree with you on that. The thing is that I respeced because I could make the build limp along without the idols and I didn’t think they would take so long to drop. I do have a build that could have farmed it, but I like to experiment new stuff and get bored of playing the same thing for a long time, so that’s on me.
Regarding the builds, I do think that LE is easier to make your own builds for leveling, compared to PoE. PoE absolutely requires anyone who isn’t a top player to look up a build. It’s huge and has a lot of complexity and interaction. Too much, in my opinion.
I think LE has a decent balance for it, but my experience so far is that you can create a leveling build that works as you go along, but as you get to higher levels it starts to lose out. And while LE skills/passives isn’t overly complicated, it still has plenty nuances, especially with game mechanics which aren’t readily known for new players, that make it necessary to find builds for endgame, at least for most casual players.
Overall, I just feel like getting specific idols is harder than getting specific uniques (the common ones anyway). I might be wrong, but that is the feeling I get. And overall that isn’t a big issue. Like I said, most builds I’ve seen treat idols as an accessory to the build, so if you don’t have them all optimized it isn’t a problem. It’s just for the “special” idol affixes that I think we need some way to craft/gamble/target farm (the affixes, not idols in general).
That being said, the build was kinda working ok for farming monoliths before that, it just took a long time to target farm idols and get the 2nd one. And I’m sort of eager for making this build so I can try out dungeons, which seems more feasible with this than with other builds I’ve been trying out.
And yes, trade would probably help with that. Maybe when 1.0 hits and we get trade this won’t be an issue anymore for most people, though it will still be one for SSF chars.
Again, just to clarify: it did not detract much from the fun I’m having with LE. I just think it would be more fun if we had some sort of idol crafting. Or just make the special build enabling affixes drop more often. Or drop more often if you’re speccing into that skill. Just some way to speed up finding them.
100 % agree.
When I started playing PoE, I did follow build guides, and I did feel this need for specific uniques to be able to follow them. I traded to get them. Took me a few seasons to be able to play SSF and make my own builds.
But in LE I never felt the need for that, you can just jump in, wing it, and it works.
Works long enough to start building up a solid stash anyway. 
Also agree. It does feel harder and more frustrating.
I feel nowadays the affixes relating to the specific class arent very good anymore, there are a couple of outliers ie Smite on Throw/Wraith which are build enabling but about 85% are hidden on my loot filter completely as they are garbage and only appear if they roll with a good affix
The best Idols are Stout Vigorous (Life%) Lagonian of either Life(+life) /Assassins (+crit%)/Fire/Cold/Light etc while adding in Humble Idols to cap missing resists+2 Vitality/Ailment chance% and a small Idol here and there
Unless you are forced and I mean forced to run a ‘special’ idol in your build then nothing beats stacking % Hp/Crit everywhere. For example you need to run 4x Keen Idols to even play Smite on Throw. Thats your whole Idol setup gone to the proc… for this build its non negotiable it will not work without it. However plenty of other builds simply dont even want any, look at Scorpion Beastmaster…you get ‘Aspect of the Viper effect’ of about 6%…which is again not really worth it imo since you really want that HP late game as you basically get one shot continually at high corruption from certain mobs if you simply dont have every defensive mechanic in the game
This is a problem when EHG nerfed Idol composition to have that stupid unmovable dot in the middle that prevents the old placement (we had an extra slot a long time ago and EHG thought adding in this node would improve build diversity but imo just reduced it instead because we lost a pure 1x4 slot or something)
Having said all that when the game releases there will be 2 factions - SSF/Trade league factions. You can buy/sell Idols with the Trade league one so I will join it and readjust my filter to catch some good ones and become an Idol Purveyor and thats probably all ill trade depending on how it works
I actually asked Mike about this on his stream once, and he said it was intended functionality. A drawback/skill-issue of using summons like totems.
I don’t think that makes much sense for 2 reasons:
1- That happens with totems. My original issue was spamming totems while in spriggan form, because missing a couple casts would spend enough rage I couldn’t recover from and I would revert into human form
2- Many times the problem isn’t our skill but rather the map. Just today I was casting wraiths near the edge of the screen but the game decided that instead of the ground I was actually aiming at the top of a cliff, which isn’t even really part of the map. I can’t walk there. But for some reason, I can cast there. I know this because, even though the wraiths weren’t summoned, the drain life circle was there.
3- The game has issues detecting where you’re aiming at. This is most notable on bridges where the hitbox seems to be completely unreliable comparing to what we see on screen.
Saying that you’re trying to punish your players for lack of skill when that only affects a certain type of ability seems silly to me. There are plenty of abilities you can blindly spam and get the desired effect with no penalty or skill required. And historically, in almost all ARPGs, summon builds are starter bulds for casuals and new players.
Given these issues, I think that it should behave in one of two ways:
1- Keep it as is but don’t spend mana/rage when you don’t actually summon anything
2- Change it to be like most games and just summon to the closest available location. This, to me, would be the preferred solution and I see no issue with doing that.
I thought the same thing, especially considering that failed summons still consume mana/rage. Shrug.
I also brought it up due to frustrations with totems in Spriggan form. And, fighting in certain terrain made it impossible… especially on bridges or narrow corridors. I couldn’t understand why that would be desired functionality… instead of just having totem casting incorporate some form of pathing-type ai to determine valid placement of the cast.
Exactly. I wouldn’t mind if it were summoning the things in some place I didn’t intend them to, but at least it would be casting them.
Like using the bridge example, maybe I aimed a little off the bridge and instead it summons them at the start or end of it, close to the cliff or something. That would be ok to me. In the totems case it would make it so they aren’t actually fighting the thing I wanted them to, because now they’re further away, but at least I get the summon and the rage back from the unsummon. I mean, they placed the mechanic that made it so you could stay in spriggan form while summoning totems regurlarly, but then you can’t use it properly at times.
It’s mostly the idea of spending mana/rage for nothing that is annoying. Especially when sometimes it really IS just the map design fault and not lack of skill.
I’ll give you a 1 word answer for each. If you would like one elaborated on, let me know. All is up for debate and discussion.
Wow, thanks for replying to me. This is the sort of thing that I love about the dev/community feedback loop. This is basically my first post and I get a dev replying to it, it’s amazing.
So, if I could intrude a little more on that, I would like just some clarification on the reason for:
5-Is the issue with replacing a +1 with the same +1 a coding issue? It doesn’t seem exploitative. In the end, it’s something that rarely happens, so it’s nothing really important, but as a programmer I’m curious as to the reason for it.
6-I know a lot of ARPGs do the same thing, so I’m also just curious if this is basically a performance issue or if it has to do with coding towns as “peaceful” places.
8-Would you mind explaining this one further, please? It’s basically the only one that annoys me regularly when playing (I tend to play minion-like builds and “place and forget” builds a lot). Is it a technical limitation, a low priority limitation or just some design decision?
5 - It must fully uneqip the first item all the way first. Then it can start to equip the next one. Unfortunately, part of the unequip is deallocating the +skills all the way.
6 - Pure performance. If we could, we would.
8 - The “no” answers were the design decisions. I just typed out why we can’t do it but I think I might be wrong? Basically, minions need a little room to summon. You don’t actually directly summon minions, it goes through an adapter that kinda disconnects it from you a bit. I know that sounds weird and it’s not really the whole story. That thing you create can fail if it doesn’t have enough room. Here is the key part of the problem: it’s crazy mega not performant to try and find an ok place once it starts, it’s essentially going for the ride, summon or fail. It’s at this point that you would have to get refunded the mana but it has no idea how much mana you spent to cast it. There might be a way to get around this that I’m just missing but I’m not sure. It wouldn’t be the first time we’ve tried to fix this whole problem.
Nice, thanks for the answers
5- Ok, as a programmer I totally get it
6- Nice to know
8- Ok, I can understand that. But if you’re using that method couldn’t you sort of reverse the process in regards to mana? Instead of spending mana and starting the process, start the process and when it concludes it signals back that it was successful and then you spend it. If it doesn’t signal back with success then you do nothing. From a logarithmic point of view it is sound, but I don’t know how hard that would be to implement with your current systems. Just an idea, though.
As a side note, I was trying out a hammer pala for fun (yeah, I jump around a lot with builds, I get restless and want to try things out). I was fighting the Elder Pannon (just before you get to the end of time for your mastery) and all the hammers were disappearing when he was standing in the middle, like it was detecting a collision. It made the fight much harder for me. Is this a bug? I assume it is, but it might not be a known one so I thought I’d just pop it in here, since it happened literally 5 minutes ago and you’re watching this
Once again, thanks for the replies, I really enjoyed your explanation for the summons, even if it’s just an approximation.
It must spend the mana first. The only hope would be to ty and send a refund.
It’s a bug, something in the zone has its collision layer mask set wrong.
Ok, I think I’m satisfied with all the answers. I might not agree or like all of them, but I can understand the issues and accept it. Once again, thanks for taking the time to answer.
You’re welcome. I know it’s frustrating having to make compromises on some of those and if we figure these things out, they could change still. There was a time when we said we couldn’t show the number of ailment stacks under enemy health bars.
And you couldn’t do +skills on gear, until you could…
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