Endgame itemization

[xyianth]

I’ve finally finished running each mastery through the campaign and have started messing around with endgame builds. And, I have to say that I am finding itemization at endgame to be very poor. Every build requires the same 4 affixes on 4+ pieces of gear just to survive. (set phys/void, set necro/poison, ele resist, health/hybrid health) Almost every build I make ends up using the same unique chest piece for crit avoidance. The idol system is nice, since almost every build uses different idols. Coming from ARPGs like grim dawn, poe, and d2/d3, this feels extremely lacking.

Part of the issue is how few affix slots we actually have vs how many types of defense are practically mandatory. 7 different resists, crit avoidance, health, armor/dodge is a lot to build in and the way combat is designed, you can’t really skip any of them. Adding uniques that convert incoming damage fully from one type to another would sort of help, but given the way the set affixes work, it wouldn’t change much on its own.

Another reason this feels so bad is the complete imbalance of power between affixes. +10% mana regen is an extra 1 mana/second in most cases. That doesn’t come anywhere close to +50% damage or +20% resists in terms of power. Even before you account for all the other ways to get mana on skill use there are. The mana regen affix is practically worthless in its current form. And that is not an unusual case, most affixes appear to fall into this same situation. It actually almost feels intentional as there appears to be two types of affixes: mandatory and worthless, and nearly all of the mandatory ones don’t drop on items until level 50+.

All that said, I like the way normal, magic, rare, and unique items are balanced in this game and adding affixes to rares is not the solution I would recommend. Instead, I think we need another mechanic to add additional affix style effects to a character. Something similar in effect to the constellation system in grim dawn or the pantheon in poe. It doesn’t need to copy the mechanics of those systems, just the idea of having something aside from items and passive points that adds effects to your character. This would enable you to add more types of defense type effects to tailor builds and in so doing free up some itemization options for other affixes. You could add things like:

• You cannot be critically hit while below 50% mana
• When you reach 100% mana all your mana is converted to ward at 400% rate.
• When you get hit, 10% or your armor is converted to dodge rating, when you dodge, 10% of your dodge rating is converted to armor.
• Your ward protects your mana instead of health and you spend ward to fuel skills.
• You have 50% in all resistances, and you can’t raise them higher. You are immune to penetration effects.
• No single hit can do more than 35% of your maximum health. You cannot generate ward and are stunned when this effect reduces damage taken.
• etc…

As to how this is implemented, I think it would be great if it wasn’t entirely RNG based. Maybe something like a series of trials that you can undertake and depending on which trial(s) you choose is what determines which effect(s) you get. You can of course add variable numbers into the effects to introduce some RNG and replayability, The strength of the effect isn’t really as build defining as the type of effect, so that can be left up to chance more easily.

I am still relatively new to this game, only about 130 hours invested so far. So maybe I am missing something about endgame itemization, but flipping though most of the build guides I’ve seen appears to confirm my suspicions. Maybe legendary items will help address the issue in the future, but I don’t think it will be able to solve the issue entirely by itself. Not to mention that it will feel just as bad if the answer to the itemization is: only legendaries matter.

[Heavy]

I really do agree with the general statement, that endgame itemization is lacking currently.

But i wanted to point out some things:

@xyianth

Almost every build I make ends up using the same unique chest piece for crit avoidance.

While the Woven Flesh Unique certainly is a very strong one, especially early on. It is not a particularly good endgame item for many builds. It really helps early one, since it’s so commonly avaialble as soon as you start MoF. But there are actually not alot of builds that wanna use that for high endgame.

@xyianth

Part of the issue is how few affix slots we actually have vs how many types of defense are practically mandatory. 7 different resists, crit avoidance, health, armor/dodge is a lot to build in and the way combat is designed, you can’t really skip any of them.

I agree that the balance might not be perfect yet, but having low amount of affix slots, actually does increase the build variety.
You will never build ALL defenses, because you don’t have enough space for that. you will always skip some defenses.

@xyianth

Another reason this feels so bad is the complete imbalance of power between affixes. +10% mana regen is an extra 1 mana/second in most cases. That doesn’t come anywhere close to +50% damage or +20% resists in terms of power. Even before you account for all the other ways to get mana on skill use there are. The mana regen affix is practically worthless in its current form.

I very strongly disagree.
In fact i am actually so surprised by how many people neglect mana regen.
In theory it might sound very weak, but did you actually play with it?
You can reach up to 15 mana regen baseline with only T5 mana regen affixes. You even don’t need to go that hard into it. Only having one T5 gives you already 12 amna regen, which is a HUGE difference.

@xyianth

When you reach 100% mana all your mana is converted to ward at 400% rate.

There is already a unique doing the exact same thing, with different numeric values.

All of your other sugggestions are definitely cool, but some of them are way to special and complicated to be usual affixes.

[xyianth]

Thanks for following up. I really do enjoy this game and most of its systems, so I was hoping that I didn’t come off as just complaining for the sake of complaining. From the general sentiment, maybe I should call what I am doing midgame builds, it sounds like things change again later on. I freely admit that I am only in early endgame so things may change at 80+ builds. (I’m still in the 50-60 range right now)

@Heavy

In fact i am actually so surprised by how many people neglect mana regen.
In theory it might sound very weak, but did you actually play with it?
You can reach up to 15 mana regen baseline with only T5 mana regen affixes. You even don’t need to go that hard into it. Only having one T5 gives you already 12 amna regen, which is a HUGE difference.

To what build though? Channeling builds are the most mana intensive, but mana regen simply doesn’t work while channeling. There are very few ways to make mana a defensive layer, and I have yet to find one that isn’t just objectively weaker than building around health/ward instead. The only two builds that I have had mana issues with that were not channeling builds is when I tried to build around Forge Strike and when I was stacking Maelstrom, Tornado, and Ice Thorns. I abandoned Forge Strike because I couldn’t find a way to make it decent at anything and I strongly doubt an extra 5 mana regen would have fixed that. (note, this is probably an issue on my end and not the fault of the skill itself.) And the Maelstrom/Tornado/Ice Thorns combo lost all mana issues simply by adding in Tempest Strike to the build. Devoting multiple precious affix slots to mana regen to get an extra 5/s seems like a universally bad trade when you can get 5+ mana per hit with a few passive points or skill setups.

@Heavy

You will never build ALL defenses, because you don’t have enough space for that. you will always skip some defenses.

Then is hardcore/deathless not something this game wants to support? It seems to me that if you skip capping any of the 7 resists you are guaranteed to die randomly to something. If you don’t build some form of eHp (health, ward, manashield, etc…) you are guaranteed to get one shot by something. If you don’t negate crits you are guaranteed to be one shot by some random crit. I honestly don’t see how you can skip any of these and not just randomly die. That is fine in standard mode, but I prefer to not die when playing these games. Of the 12 characters I ran through the campaign I managed to go deathless on 6 of them, which I am sure is not much of an accomplishment to the experts here but I enjoyed it. However if MoF scales like it appears to, I don’t see any way I’d ever get to 100 deathless without all of those defenses. Maybe I am just bad, but that is how it seems to me so far.

@Heavy

There is already a unique doing the exact same thing, with different numeric values.

All of your other sugggestions are definitely cool, but some of them are way to special and complicated to be usual affixes.

Oh, happy coincidence, I haven’t stumbled across that one yet. As to the suggestions, they were more meant as an example of what I meant, not as an affix to be literally added into the game. I am sure they don’t fit as stated into existing mechanics/builds. What I don’t want is whatever other mechanic gets added to just copy/paste existing affixes. Like I stated, I don’t think just adding more affix slots is the answer.

[mcmagic]

@xyianth

Then is hardcore/deathless not something this game wants to support? It seems to me that if you skip capping any of the 7 resists you are guaranteed to die randomly to something. If you don’t build some form of eHp (health, ward, manashield, etc…) you are guaranteed to get one shot by something. If you don’t negate crits you are guaranteed to be one shot by some random crit. I honestly don’t see how you can skip any of these and not just randomly die. That is fine in standard mode, but I prefer to not die when playing these games. Of the 12 characters I ran through the campaign I managed to go deathless on 6 of them, which I am sure is not much of an accomplishment to the experts here but I enjoyed it. However if MoF scales like it appears to, I don’t see any way I’d ever get to 100 deathless without all of those defenses. Maybe I am just bad, but that is how it seems to me so far.

I don’t think monolith scales in the way you think it does. It may be difficult to go deathless the first few characters you make but you will hit the point where it is VERY easy to go deathless through all of monolith.

[Heavy]

@xyianth

To what build though? Channeling builds are the most mana intensive, but mana regen simply doesn’t work while channeling. There are very few ways to make mana a defensive layer, and I have yet to find one that isn’t just objectively weaker than building around health/ward instead. The only two builds that I have had mana issues with that were not channeling builds is when I tried to build around Forge Strike and when I was stacking Maelstrom, Tornado, and Ice Thorns. I abandoned Forge Strike because I couldn’t find a way to make it decent at anything and I strongly doubt an extra 5 mana regen would have fixed that. (note, this is probably an issue on my end and not the fault of the skill itself.) And the Maelstrom/Tornado/Ice Thorns combo lost all mana issues simply by adding in Tempest Strike to the build. Devoting multiple precious affix slots to mana regen to get an extra 5/s seems like a universally bad trade when you can get 5+ mana per hit with a few passive points or skill setups.

I agree that mana regen is very build specific, but for channeling builds for example you have different avenues to scale your mana management.

I was generally talking about builds using a spender/filler rotation. Or for some cases even just a spender.

You can also combine mana regen with some of the mention mana gained on X from passvies/class affixes

EDIT: Mana regen can very very quickly become waaaay to strong and i think it is really in a good place currently, despite many people thinking it’s weak.

@xyianth

Then is hardcore/deathless not something this game wants to support? It seems to me that if you skip capping any of the 7 resists you are guaranteed to die randomly to something. If you don’t build some form of eHp (health, ward, manashield, etc…) you are guaranteed to get one shot by something. If you don’t negate crits you are guaranteed to be one shot by some random crit. I honestly don’t see how you can skip any of these and not just randomly die. That is fine in standard mode, but I prefer to not die when playing these games. Of the 12 characters I ran through the campaign I managed to go deathless on 6 of them, which I am sure is not much of an accomplishment to the experts here but I enjoyed it. However if MoF scales like it appears to, I don’t see any way I’d ever get to 100 deathless without all of those defenses. Maybe I am just bad, but that is how it seems to me so far.

First thigns first: You do not need to CAP al lresistances, thats waaaaay less mandatory than in any other game, given how the resistance system in LE works.
Resistances are just another defensive layer.

But you can easily cap all resistances and still go 1 primary and one secondary defense.
But you can never go all at once(like going resitances, dodge, block, ward AND glacning blow for example)

@xyianth

Oh, happy coincidence, I haven’t stumbled across that one yet. As to the suggestions, they were more meant as an example of what I meant, not as an affix to be literally added into the game. I am sure they don’t fit as stated into existing mechanics/builds. What I don’t want is whatever other mechanic gets added to just copy/paste existing affixes. Like I stated, I don’t think just adding more affix slots is the answer.

That’s toally fair.

And as i said, i really liked some of your ideas!

[XLVI_carpo]

You raise some good points and I like your suggestions, too.

Maybe theres time for additional stuff like specialisations via trials like you mentioned after release. This is the perfect content for a league/cycle mechanic to be added.

For 1.0 EHG is still adjusting the current mechanics and balance and with some really huge stuff to come they propably won’t make that impactful changes in the near future.

Compared to really polished games like Grim Dawn and PoE, LE may lack a bit of diversity and complexity.

But for future systems I can see having some deeper specialisations for masteries with unique mechanics that fit the theme.

[xyianth]

@mcmagic

I don’t think monolith scales in the way you think it does. It may be difficult to go deathless the first few characters you make but you will hit the point where it is VERY easy to go deathless through all of monolith.

I am honestly finding this very hard to believe. I’m getting 1-shot way too often with 40% resists and armor in the mid 60s as it stands right now. I have enough leech and damage output to basically instantly heal from any non-fatal hit, but the sheer amount of attacks that seem to be able to do 700+ damage in a single hit is ridiculous and annoying. Can you elaborate on how you are supposed to avoid dying to all these without capping all defenses? Is it just stack movement speed and spend 80%+ of your time avoiding hits and doing damage once in a blue moon?

[Llama8]

@xyianth

I’m getting 1-shot way too often with 40% resists and armor in the mid 60s as it stands right now.

That’ll be why, if you’re at 40% resist, you’re taking 25% more damage than you would at 65% resist in a lvl 65 area (and you’re taking more in a higher level area)

I have enough leech and damage output to basically instantly heal from any non-fatal hit, but the sheer amount of attacks that seem to be able to do 700+ damage in a single hit is ridiculous and annoying.

I’m not entirely sure that 700 hp is a particuarly big number for monoliths. Going with 700 hp, uncapped/low defences & lots of damage/leech is an option & it will allow you to leech back to full very quickly. But, and it’s a very big but (queue song), it does require that you a)play very actively to avoid taking hits (which can be done) & b)be very good at it (I think it was either @LizardIRL that did the hardest bosses in the game nekkid except for a weapon, belt (for potions) & boots).

LE as a game is more about stacking defences than, say, PoE which is more about nuking everything from several screens away while the game is loading the mobs in. The games are very different & require different gearing mindsets, you can’t just gear for max DPS in LE “because that’s how it works in PoE/D3/other games”…

Can you elaborate on how you are supposed to avoid dying to all these without capping all defenses? Is it just stack movement speed and spend 80%+ of your time avoiding hits and doing damage once in a blue moon?

If you’re good enough at LE then yes, that can be done, most people, however, gear for defences & get all the DPS they need from their passives & skills.

[xyianth]

It is not exactly my intention to run high dps low defense, that is just what I have had drop for me. But my original point in this thread was that stacking defenses is fine and all, but it leads to the same few affixes being desired by every build. Others were telling me that you don’t need to cap resists, but so far that doesn’t seem realistic to me.

I’m sure that I could spend some time gambling and crafting to fix up my gear, but honestly I am not a fan of how gambling works in LE and I have not yet messed with the crafting system. The build I am playing is great for clearing, but really bad for dodging mechanics. (auto-cast lunge gets me killed a lot)

Thanks for the tips though.

[Llama8]

Fair enough, if you don’t like gambling, you could set up your loot filter to highlight items with a few of the desirable affixes that you’re currently lacking (hp, block chance/effectiveness, etc) to round out your build a bit. LE definitely requires defences (for the normal player, as compared to the abnormally skilled player), if not resists, then several other things depending on the class & build.

If you’re a Sentinel, then going balls to the on block can be good (Pally/Forge Guard more so than Void Knight) & keeping Ring of Shields up can help as well as they block projectiles, taunt, provide static buffs, heals & the like.

[Cujo]

@xyianth

Can you elaborate on how you are supposed to avoid dying to all these without capping all defenses?

Im by no means an expert on this, but i agree with @mcmagic, that once you find out what the different builds needs, the monoliths becomes very easy.

In general this is what im going for :

• Primalist : 1000-1500 health, max res, 30+%block, 20-30%armor, 20-30%dodge
• Sentinel : 1000-1500 health, max res, 60%+%block, 35+%armor, no dodge
• Mage : 2-3000+ward, 30+%dodge
• Acolyte/Rogue : not too familiar with these

NOTE : This ofc differs with different builds, but i find those numbers pretty solid for easy mono running, and its quite easy to accomplish with some crafting/gambling (I know you said you didnt do much craft/gamble, but if you want an easier time, you should look into it)

Also (this might be obvious, but ill say it anyway) :

1. If Dual Wielding : You will need a bigger Health pool and more dodge/armor than normal, as 12 % more damage taken is quite a difference
2. If not going Max reistances : This is ofc possible, but then you will again need even more health/armor/dodge
3. Set resistances : Those are generally considered the best option, but personally i rarely go for these, as it leaves more room for different prefixes, and that imo makes my chars feel somewhat different to eachother. (i play only ssc and have no problem maxing res without the set res)
4. The real differences in chars comes from the “special” affixes that the armour and helm can get (which most of your money should be spent on gambling), and ofc the idols.
5. Be Aware : of going for a guide that is made/shows top gear (if your somewhat new), because some of them will only work if you actually got the gear for it, and they can be fragile if you dont. (not true for all of them ofc)

Im not sure if any of this was useful, and it only reflects my own thoughts, so take it with a grain of salt.

[Kotli]

@Llama8

@xyianth

I’m getting 1-shot way too often with 40% resists and armor in the mid 60s as it stands right now.

That’ll be why, if you’re at 40% resist, you’re taking 25% more damage than you would at 65% resist in a lvl 65 area (and you’re taking more in a higher level area)
Snip

Its even worst than you think because 40% resist = 60% damage taken 65% resist =35% damage taken.
So he’s really taking 60/35= 1.714 times more damage or 71% more damage by only having 40% resists instead of 65%.

[mcmagic]

Thats not accurate because of monster penetration

[Lying]

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

[XLVI_carpo]

@xyianth

I’m sure that I could spend some time gambling and crafting to fix up my gear, but honestly I am not a fan of how gambling works in LE and I have not yet messed with the crafting system.

This is a big deal. You’re missing the two most powerful itemisation mechanics in LE. While I get that you dislike gambling, avoiding crafting is really hurting your build.

You won’t get any meaningful progress in monolith without crafting.

Your point on itemisation is relatively accurate, imho. But different classes/masteries/builds benefit different defensive mechanics. @Cujo has made some good examples.

You don’t have to cap resistance. In that case you need to have some other defensive mechanics in exchange. Low resistance needs high hp. And on Sentinel you have a lot of armor and global mitigation in the passive tree. Block with shield is also viable. Ring of Shields is a good defensive skill. Frailty is nice to have.

But your point in being oneshot is defenitely related to your gear being not good enough to take some hits. You need to start crafting or you will never see higher monolith levels.

I’m running a really squishy Necromancer that has 40% res in average, no dodge around 50% crit avoidance. But my hp pool is around 1200 hp and I can’t remember being 1 shot. I’ve cleared every monolith timeline with her. As a necro I can avoid getting aggro very well, but not 100%. The defense is enough to react and run or transplant out if danger.

[xyianth]

Thanks for the tips. What I dislike about the gambling is honestly just the unskippable dice roll animation that takes time just to tell me what color the item ends up… which I can plainly see when it shows up in the inventory anyway. Given the number of attempts the game expects you to make to get whatever you are looking for, this wasted time adds up.

As for crafting, I don’t really have a good feeling for how it works except that I don’t have anywhere near enough shards of the desirable affixes to do anything with them. It appears to me that the game expects you to run the area lvl 55 monolith hundreds of times for drops/shards before attempting to move on. I think my main issue was that I tried to move on immediately after beating the abomination. I’ve gone back and had better luck. Eventually I’ll have enough drops/shards to make progress.

I really appreciate all the help from this community, I’m pretty sure the poe or d3 community would have just responded with a thousand ‘git gud’ responses. Hopefully as I gain more familiarity with the game I can return the favor.

[Neokortex]

There will be an Item Trading System (The Bazaar) later on on Last Epoch, so you don’t have to gamble, craft or find something (meaning all things you want) yourself.

For now i find it’s the easiest (fastest) for you if you find a real quick build (any class) for speedrunning some monoliths and just open the big chest on the end.
-> Under three or two (some builds do it even under one) minutes per run on either monolith and you’re fine i think.

[darkdeal]

The reason people say you don’t HAVE to cap resists is because it is more on par with other defensive layers than in other games. Putting affixes into max HP and Health Regen is just as effective. The reason that almost everyone DOES cap resists is just because of how easy it is to do. On top of that, HP/Ward, Health/Ward Regen/Leech and Resists are the only defensive layers in the game that are universal. Meaning they protect against both hits and dots.

[Heavy]

What also leads to many people wanting to cap resistances, is because they have a “clear goal”, a milestone, a threshold.

Especially when you don’t have alot of experience with the game, you don’t know how much hp is “enough”, how much dodge do i need? etc.

Resistances are effective and mroe easily understandable with haivng a cap andi totally get that.

I think it’s very hard to teach new player that there are other ways, they just need to learn that over time.

[wast3d]

when you know what affixes you need, set up your lootfilter to highlight the drops that have them and stash them for now untill you have enough. visit the shop regularly to stock up on shatter-runes. look out for good crafting bases: good implicits and one or two of the needed affixes already on them.
when you need to craft, shatter the gear to get the affixes and slap them on your bases.

for the lootfilter-rules:
for more common affixes add the condition affix-tier >= 3, but not for the rare class specific affixes.

focus on the defenses from the gear (and maybe passives too). use the tunklap gearplanner for planning early endgame, because it’s very unlikely that you will get many tier 5 affixes so early on that complement each other like in the build guide you’re following.