Well! Just tried Last Epoch. Completed the story so far. Expected nothing. Pleasantly surprised and looking forward to see where this road leads. I will be waiting for future updates / release. Very excited! I have some feedback and suggestions I’d like to share.
AILMENTS
Not really necessary I guess. But I think it would be a neat idea to give each damage over time ailment a unique debuff, to give the debuffs identity. These are merely examples:
Ignite: Enemies that burn take 1% more damage from burning ailments per burn ailment they currently suffer, up to a maximum of 8% (for players and bosses, more for regular mobs).
Poison: Enemies that are poisoned have 4% less healing effect per current poison stack on them up to a maximum of 32% reduced healing effect (for players and bosses, more for regular mobs).
Numbers and mechanics are just examples. Just some debuff tied to dots that give dots a unique identity. I think that ailments should have a bit deeper gameplay strategy element beyond “I did green dot, now I do red dot”. Make choice of ailments for those of us that want to focus on damage over time, matter more in that one player might want 50% bleed / 50% ignite. One player with his build might want 100% poison. Another person’s build might want 33%/33%/33% bleed, poison, ignite. Just a thought.
NECROMANCER
What I truly enjoy with a Necromancer in LE, is the move away from the tiresome trope that Necromancers has to have “lots of expendable minions” (Though LE has lots of that too). A Necromancer is simply a magic user specializing in death and raising the dead back to life.
I’m not sure why the trope “Necromancers are all about having lots of expendable minions” came from, I mean I guess D2 mostly. I loved that game but come on. I was so glad to see LE being different, by allowing us skills that reduce number of summons to get QUALITY over quantity. I think this was amazing. “Horde style” is still very present too.
The reason the Necromancer in LE struck jackpot with me was the build flexibility and potential, especially manipulating minion numbers. You could have 1 superbeef fire golem holding the from, supported by a horde of fire archers. Or a single very powerful Deathknight Backed up by a platoon of elite warriors (-50%W number +Stats).
There is so much potential here. Anyway TL;DR:
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I think Necromancer could still need more permanent summons. At least one temp summon turned to perma would be nice. Or a skill that changes them to it.
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I think the basic summon skeleton skill could also use a pure support skeleton. A skeleton priest that heals other minion (or the player with reduced effectiveness). Or have their own curse they use to debilitate enemies. Anything that isn’t pure damage or healing would be awesome. So that summon skeletons could also provide build opportunity in terms of indirectly supporting you and/or your minions.
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The Abomination looks cool as hell. And the IDEA behind Abomination absorbing your minions to gain new skills based on their skills, is very cool and creative. Unfortunately - and this is just MY OPINION - I think the Abomination needs a complete rework. A model that cool, with that size… it should be the end-tier tanky bruiser front-liner imo. Permanently so.
I suggest changing the CORE DESIGN of Abomination to be permanent, and eat corpses near it (including your own dead minions). Gaining the rare modifiers of rare mods (skill) from rare monsters, or gaining skills based on eaten corpses of allied minions (same skills as in the tree now).
I’d rather see the Abomination have mutually exclusive upgrades for BODY PARTS.
By that I mean: 3 direction passive skills, picking one locks the others. For each bodypart. Hands with spikes that stun and bleed. Hands in mummified bandages emitting rot, giving it poison aoe attacks. Or fiery fists for example.
Same for legs. Either legs that gives it charge, legs that gives it higher passive movement speed, or legs that lets it jump.
Body: Either thick hide for lots of armor, with plates attached to it. Also gives reflect damage. Or a skeleton with a whip mounted on the abomination, periodically buffing your minions with frenzy or haste.
Or a bloated body making it bigger, which makes it explode brutally on death as skeleton vanguards and parasites crawls out of the carcass.
As for the head. A two-headed version, where one head spits poison and the other spits bloodsplatter. Or a head that breathes fire. Or a head that roars, buffing your other minions.
Tail upgrades. Occationally swipes enemies with the tail for AOE. Or give it a poison stinger for single target dot. Or make the tail have pockets with hives, unleashing insect swarms from time to time.
The great thing about Abomination - it’s an abomination! It having customizable body parts makes perfect sense. Also its skill trees could give it various auras (choose 1 out of 3) etc.
Abomination as is… it was very creative, and a cool idea. I just think something like this would be better.
Again. What I like about Necromancer in LE - is the customizability. And the ability to build away from the tired old trope that necromancers has to be “lots of minions over quality”. I like that you can play horde, elite few in a hit squad, or a mix of these. Please utilize this more! Hell - if Necromancer was the only class in the game I’d still buy it - seeing the potential.
- Poison arrows for archers. Charge for skeleton warriors. Assassinate for rogues (lower damage vs normal, magic and rare mobs - but way higher damage against bosses). Skeleton mages could use 1 alternate active skill each. Like frost nova, fireball, cross-cleave for deathknights (cleaves in a scissor fashion, big damage AOE melee attack on CD, with a chance for a devastating critical. Meaning IF the cross-cleave crits, it crits with +100% damage multiplier). Skill to make wraith or volatile zombie permanent. Dread shade x1 but infinite duration. Infernal shade also having a skill that turns it into a perma-buff for a minion chosen but has a downside. One more permanent aura for bone curse.
Anyway this is long enough. GL with the continued development of the game. Looking forward to seeing how it will end up looking when it’s done.
BTW I actually really like the time travel element of the story. That was actually a real surprise for me because I usually hate that stuff in fiction. But seeing how it enables so much gameplay wise - and seeing how it’s actually very compellingly used in the story - I actually enjoy it a lot.
Thanks for reading (if anyone managed to suffer through this wall of text).
