Although I’ve started playing this week, I don’t know the state of DO post changes, so I’ve took the time today to rush it a bit. Hope it’s not broken post patch because the build is nice to play 
https://imgur.com/8NtDGWQ
I am assuming it’s the nodes that allow you to summon a flock of crows. Shame, I always wanted to combine those Crows with Storm Crows for a maximum Crows build. Alas…
Anyway, onto the good and bad of the patch:
The Good:
All the Druid Changes
Totem Buffs
Sinathia’s Set Buffs
Summon Bee build finally can be viable between Swarmblade, Legendary Keeper’s Gloves and update to Bees per 10 seconds idols
The Bad
Frenzy Totem being a Beastmaster only skill now (that’s going to hurt a lot of Totem builds that use Frenzy for increased Cast Speed)
Summon Sabertooth being a Level 35 Beastmaster skill with no modern update to the skill’s nodes itself
Swarmblade not being able to use as a Beastmaster to use all those Bee abilities
Chapter 3 enemies hitting harder (for me, Chapter 3 is a much bigger difficulty spike than anything before Chapter 9).
Barely any changes to Boardman’s Set when every other set got substantial buffs.
Yeah phys looks like it could be pretty good, either 2h (my theorycraft: Druid, Level 100 (LE Beta 0.8.3e) - Last Epoch Build Planner) or dw with undisputed + rare.
That’s assuming rage generation isn’t a major issue.
The Ruined Coast is at the End of Chapter 4 - Beginning of Chapter 5. Completing Chapter 5’s Side quests and then completing the Chapter 9 quests will give you the 15 passive points, assuming you’ve done all the passive point quests in Chapters 1-4 + the new passive points that are coming in this patch.
Just so people reading this thread for the first time are aware.
Showing my math:
2 Passive Points for Chapter 2
2 Passive Points for Chapter 3
The Power of Mastery
4 Passive Points for Chapter 4 (including the Corrupted Lake)
4 Passive Points for Chapter 5 (including the Sapphire Tablet)
3 Passive Points for Chapter 9 (including Oasis Hunt and Desert Temple)
That adds up to 16 quests, so you can skip any one of those and you have your total 15, so you don’t have to do Chapters 6-8 at the very least and still have all your passive points.
this. this. this.
i think people don’t appreciate how hard it is to make sure that ALL, or at least the majority of “main” skills are viable.
personally, I think skills should tend towards OP to start, to make sure they are viable, and then can be nerfed in an incremental fashion in case they are problematic.
2 Likes
At some point the devs mentioned they’d take a look at Shaman/Beastmaster to bring them up to par.
As for Shaman losing Frenzy Totem they do now have the new Upheaval totem, which is neat.
I’m glad for the Druid rework but I hope Beast/Shaman get face lifts. Nothing major just a few touches to the mastery tree and to older skill nodes and trees (a lot of the companions have pretty aged skill trees for instance).
The exact release time is in the first line of the this thread, converted to your local time.
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My post was really more focused on explaining the problem, but I can offer some possible solutions.
The easiest would be to give characters a small generic passive buff for every unused skill specialization slot. To get this buff they need to both have the skill specialization slot empty AND have an empty skill assignment on your skill bar, so you can’t just unspec your mobility skill for the generic buff but still use it in it’s base form. That lets a 2 button build leave 3 slots empty for a bit more power on the skills they’re using, while a 5 button build gets to leverage the full power of 5 skill mastery trees. As long as secondary skills (anything without a low enough cooldown and mana cost to allow it to be used exclusively) hit hard enough to justify their inclusion in a build over the passive bonus then this system would work. In fact it would even help find underperforming secondary skills, because if one is available to a build but players choose to skip it for the passive bonus then it’s a very good indicator that the skill needs some work.
A second option would be to give each class a couple dedicated passive skills. I’d probably make one offensive and one defensive in nature, make them generic so any build could use them, and make them much weaker than active skills because they don’t have an action time opportunity cost. This is another way to give builds something to do with extra skill masteries, but it is significantly harder to balance.
The upside is that they could provide options for solving problems with a build through the sacrifice of that skill slot. For example, while skills that use cooldowns can take advantage of multiple skill slots to have multiple skills cooling down at the same time, a mana restricted build could sacrifice an extra skill slot they don’t need for an aura that helps give them more mana for the skills they’re using.
If I were going to take this approach the the passives skills would probably have a lot of double-edged sword nodes on their trees. For example you could gain mana recovery but have reduced CDR, or increased crit chance with reduced crit damage. Make it a problem that the player needs to actively solve to get the most out of it, rather than just being something every build uses because it’s better than pushing a 5th button.
The third option is be to give each class access to some weaker skills that don’t need to be actively pressed, like triggers or auto-cast skills. These also need to be necessarily weaker than active skills because they don’t have an action-time opportunity cost. This is the approach they’ve taken, but to do this well there needs to either be a lot of options or the skills need to be very generic. They’ve done neither of those things, which leaves a lot of builds stuck when they can’t find something useful within that limited selection.
A big part of why they are probably struggling with this is because the passive/triggered effects are always done as a modifier to a skill that is active by default. This means that the skill’s base power has to be on par with other active skills, making it very hard to balance a version that requires active use and a version that doesn’t. It’s also the cause of the limiting factor for builds. If there were multiple options that were easy to fit into builds and generic in power it would become possible for a one-button build to stack 4 triggered skills and out-perform a 5 button build. Unfortunately by making them so restricted, they instead leave any build that doesn’t fit the narrow niches they’ve carved out feel pretty bad.
It also doesn’t help that apparently an auto-cast skill stole the car of one of the developers years ago and they swore a blood-oath of eternal vengeance, so they are stuck using only triggered skills which further limits what they can do.
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I for one am a big fan of seeing how things feel in real-time rather than making judgements based on paper. Theory and reality can be two very different experiences.
5 Likes
Also lose a lotta crit chance for crit builds. Idk why it got swapped with scorpion which seems pretty useless for non beastmasters since aspect of viper(the main primalist poison support) is also beastmaster exclusive.
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Lets gooooo!!!
They already have examples of the solutions in the game.
Holy Aura - This represents skills that are toggled on and provide a passive buff, but also have a more powerful active state by pressing the skill button. The active state has a duration and a cooldown. There are further options within the skills tree that lets the passive buff drop during the active duration in exchange for a more powerful active use.
Enchant Weapon - This represents skills that are active use skills that can be specced to automatically recast when the cooldown/duration expires. Being able to spec the skill to auto-recast comes at a cost of reduced effect.
Primalist companions - This represents a skill that can be used and it stays in effect. While the skill is in effect (like a passive), the skill changes to something else to be used as an active. Summon Wolf gets replaced with Howl for example. You don’t have to use the active part, but it does provide extra benefit.
These options give players the choice to use fewer active skill while still getting a benefit from having all 5 skills specced, while also giving players that want to use more buttons the ability to extend the power of those same skills.
I feel like all classes should have a few of these options available.
I just have to point out that those examples still require actively pressing the skill to get the most out of them, so part of the power budget for those skills goes into that active use. And as you mentioned those types of effects are limited, which was kind of the point I was trying to make.
Holy Aura should really have an option to toggle its active effect to be auto cast for players who are willing to give up control over when it is on. Enchant weapon should get the same, it is insane to me that there’s even the option to spend skill points to get the same functionality that you get for free with the numlock trick. It’s also useless for a lot of mage builds because the bonuses are focused on melee. I haven’t experimented with non-pet Primalist builds so I don’t know how useful companions are in a pure support roll, but again they have the issue that they really aren’t a full passive when the skill has part of its power budget dedicated to an active component.
Also Holy Aura is exclusive to Paladin, Enchant Weapon requires Spellblade mastery, and there’s really no equivalent for Rogues or Acolytes. So yeah, I agree that there are some pretty big gaps.
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No, I disagree. People want to know how many (and what type) of crafting materials they earned during a run. Once they are done looking, they press one button and it all goes to the forge.
That’s just false. You can open your Forge anytime you want. There is no need to “look at” what you looted, specifically.
2 Likes
It already does with the kindling blade node.
I think he meant that LE should have an “awareness” of “Aura” skills, and when you press the hotkey it “toggles it on” and when you press it again it “toggles it off”. No points required.
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So far we haven’t been able to for runes or glyphs and Idt this has ever been a problem…
Besides you can just open Forge and see the count before and after the run, It should definitely be easier than counting how many are in your inventory.
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I disagree. Players that use 5 active skills should be rewarded for their extra work. As a player that only wants to hit 2 buttons, I understand that I am leaving some power on the table.
If you want the “passive” abilities to be just as strong automated, you are flipping the problem to the other side instead of looking for a balance. Your situation would make players that have 5 active skills just less efficient. They are working harder for no benefit. That isn’t balance.
Also, I was just using those skills functions as an example. I don’t care about the specific skill, just how the game already has passive functions as proof of concept.
Think about it this way -
When using Holy Aura, do you press the button every 10 seconds regardless of the current situation or are you using it tactically?
If you’re pressing it every 10 seconds, is that really good gameplay? Do you enjoy that button press, or is it just a tax you have to pay to get some extra power out of the skill? Would your play experience really be worse if there was an option to just not press that button and get the same effect? Are you even thinking about pressing it at that point or is it just muscle memory?
If you’re using it tactically, well then you’re already getting a benefit over someone who auto-casts it. By taking control and using it yourself you get to select when the stronger buff is active. The auto-cast player is sometimes using it against trash so it’s on cooldown against the elite, while the player that controls it manually has the ability to save the cooldown for when it is most important.
The point is that the skill design leads to 2 possible play patterns. One is bad, just a mindless click that offers no real gameplay. The other is good, a tactical use of a skill that offers the player a real decision. Even if it didn’t cost skill points, negating the bad one through an auto-cast option doesn’t obsolete the good one because the good one still has advantages through optimization of the limited uptime.
4 Likes