Feedback from an experienced necromancer player

Feedback and Suggestions
1

I haven’t been able to play the game in the past month, so some things might’ve already changed. I just noticed a .txt file on my desktop with feedback so I figure I might as well post it anyways.

I’ve played summoner/necromancer in every single RPG. It’s my favourite build. I’ve got about 1600 hours in Path of Exile with 10 different summoner builds. Almost all of them are level 95+ in HC. At one point I had a top 10 HC ladder character. I have a lvl 100 HC summoner in Grim Dawn. I know at least a little bit about summoners/necromancers. I’ve only played 20 hours in Last Epoch thusfar, didn’t have enough time.

I love Last Epoch, but there are some serious issues with how summoners work, so here’s my list (also some general feedback):

  • Minions don’t travel through portals, they will always travel to the waypoint - biggest annoyance. Can kill HC characters
  • no indication of blood infusion on minions. You need either a symbol above their heads or an indicator on the floor.
  • areas seem lifeless, and I think they’re too zoomed in. I didn’t notice any big differences in areas. They’re all basically the same: platforms connected with small corridors. I can’t remember a single area. I have vivid memories of all PoE and Grim Dawn areas.
  • There are no significant power spikes. I haven’t found a new weapon or skill that suddenly changes my damage output significantly.
  • no visual indication of fire arrow unless you resummon archers (is it even working without a resummon)
  • stats for skills (especially minions). How am I going to decide if 75% stun chance is good if I have no idea how much stun chance they have now?
  • Can’t change audio device
  • Does Rip Blood cast by Golems benefit from the Rip Blood skill tree?
  • Immortal (summon skeleton skill) should be instant return. It’s completely useless with sacrifice skill. The sacrifice build is extremely strong (insane ward creation), but you will always take other skills over this one. And without sacrifice build you will most likely try to not have your minions die every second (and you probably won’t care if one dies sometimes)
  • After you respec minion skill, they will still casts skills they don’t have anymore. You have to resummon minions to reset them
  • When Skeletal Mages cast Sacrifice, does Gravetide affect the damage output? Do Idols with ‘increased minion spell damage’ affect damage output?
  • Zombies Awakening passage skill bypasses the added CD from Dreadfull Horde
  • I got one-shotted by the Partriarch and Matriarch in The Wengari Fortress. I still had 1000+ ward left when I died. Honestly, I don’t even think I got hit. I was a long way away from any danger, and just got the message I died out of nowhere. On HC :frowning:
  • Sacrifice cast by Skeletal Mages does not benefit at all from the Sacrifice skill tree (do any skills that aren’t directly cast only cast the basic skill? That would destroy the entire purpose of the skilltrees)
  • Please disable mana use in town. Summoning all your minions can be quite annoying
  • Selling items give way too little money. It’s just a hassle to pick up any item basically.

The biggest thing for me is that skills cast by other skills (sacrifice cast by skeletal mages for example) doesn’t benefit at all from the sacrifice skill tree. This is so counterintuitive and doesn’t make any sense at all. Why would you have this interaction if it doesn’t do anything?

2

Heythere, welcome to the LE Forum!

I will not comment as much on your “summoner feedback”, since I myself do not play or enjoy summoner playstyle in any capacity.

But I wanted to point out a few more generic things you mentioned:

I think summoner playstyle do lack unique/set items that really stand out.

But the greatest power spikes in LE comes from specialisation slot unlocks and hitting major nodes within skill spec trees, I think that’s also the case for summoner.

I think you could argue if this is good or bad, but gear usually doesn’t have major power spikes. (Except build enabling or build elevating uniques or getting a really good rare/exalted weapon for melee builds)

Minions do snapshot, so when you change anything within their skill spec tree, or change stats on your gear, you need to resummon them, to apply all the new bonuses

If you press “G” In-Game, you will find the Game Guide, which tells your everything you need to know about ailments and mechanics like stun, freeze etc.

For things like stun and freeze it’s especially difficult to give the player valueable information about these chances, because they are dependent not only on your own (or minion) stat, but also on the enemy stats (most importantly HP).

Maybe, when we get a updated character sheet, we will at some point get something like “Last enemy hitted” with statss against that particular enemy, who knows.

Minions do use their own skills, they do not use skill spec trees at all, unless specifically mentioned.

Bone Golem is very old and with some of the newer summons the devs actively try to name skills minions use, differently, than the player versions, so there is less confusion.

It’s very hard to judge what to do with this feedback I guess, because we don’t know the circumstances.

I personally thinkg the Matriarch/Patriarch Duo is one of the coolest Bosses in the game, very fair, very well telegraphed, very dangerous.

Just don’t pick up loot, “just to sell” items :stuck_out_tongue:

As mentioend above, minions simply use “their own versions” of the skill, they have nothign to do with the players version.

3

No, minions have their stats (& skills) set when you summon them. If you put more points into the summoning skill you then need to resummon them.

No, minions use their own skills.

There would likely be balance issues with that if it were instant, since you could keep spamming Sacrifice.

See above.

Yes.

As above, no, it’s not supposed to. The devs have said that they are going to rename the minion’s skills to avoid any confusion, but that still hasn’t happened yet.

Because the minions are their own entities & use their own skills. It was a bad idea IMO for the devs to use existing player skill names for minion skills.

4

I could spam Sacrifice. I spam spawned skeletons with 3 at a time (and only melee skeletons) and my skeletal mages casted only sacrifice. Every single sacrificed minion had a chance to summon an exploding zombie. And of all that created an near endless loop of death. And with it a very high amount of ward (2K+ ward at level 30) and endless mana.

Unfortunately, that defeats the entire purpose of this game then. And that’s a hard pass for me. I really hope they change it, because it will be an extremely fun take on the RPG genre. The combinations then are almost limitless. Without this feature it’s just a bland game with extremely easy skillbuilds.

5

Path of Exile has a great way of showing the exact stats of every skill. On the information window you can select a skill and you get a complete overview of stun chance, crit chance, dps, miss chance, etc. The Game Guide of Last Epoch doesn’t show even 10% of the information I want to min/max everything.

6

I know, but this is a little bit of a 2 part thing.

We have:

  1. General access and availalability of information In-Game
  2. Specific Information about all the stats a skill currently have

For No.1 Last Epoch’s Game Guide is superior to PoE’s Glossary in every way,
For No.2 LE currently does not have that, but they are working on it.

Edit: It’s even a 3 part problem, because there are also stats that are reliant on what enemy you hit and what stats the enemy has. (And that even PoE does not have)

7

For you, perhaps, but the way EHG have done it has it’s own internal logic/consistency. Once you’ve spawned your minions, they are their own entities & do their own thing. It’s just one of the differences to other games, like PoE. It has it’s pros & it’s cons.

If the minions used your skill trees then if you took a minion that used one (such as Skellie Mages/Sacrifice or Bone Golem/Rip Blood), that would be cool & it would mean that you would be able to use a skill tree to further customise the build, but it would also mean that there’d be one fewer skill slots for you to use. It would also thematically make the minions extensions of yourself (like the Rogue’s Shadows) rather than there own entities which is what EHG are going with.

So while you see it as only a downside (and it certainly does have downsides), it is also an opportunity to take other skills to make your build.

The glass can either be half empty or half full depending on how you want to see it.

Additionally to what Heavy said, the devs are, hopefully, getting a more expansive & detailed character screen in in the next patch to give us more of the info we want. How detailed it will be & what it’ll look like we don’t yet know.

1 Like
8

The update to the character sheet probably isn’t coming in patch 0.8.5, as per Mike during the January 28 dev stream as shown below (it should start at the correct time – which is 3:32):

9

“We’ve got moke important stuff to do right now” says the non-accountant.

I am very disappointed @EHG_Mike.

10

I don’t really see how that would limit the skill slots. You just have to choose.

Sure, but I’ve already tried all builds in 20 hours. It’s just extremely easy right now to make a build that works. It limits creativity, and makes it too one-dimensional for me. There’s little to no theory crafting involved. It almost feels like Diablo 3. For me, it’s just a big wasted opportunity while it could’ve been one of the greatest RPG games of all times.

Also, it’s not limited to minions. I played a mage character (don’t know the name) based on lightning, and certain skills could trigger other skills. But what’s the point if you don’t have any benefits from the skill tree of the triggered skill? That defeats the entire purpose of having skill trees and triggered spells. I was so incredibly excited when I saw how those skill trees interacted which each other only to find you they aren’t interacting at all.

I understand that it’s a concious choice, but it’s an incredibly bad choice to make. And one that is very hard to defend.

11

True, but their wiki is too large to put into a game. PoE game wiki is without a doubt the greatest game guide ever made. I could theory craft for at least 10 hours before starting a build.

12

Because instead of choosing just 1 skill (Bone Golem), you’d be automatically picking 2 (Bone Golem and Rip Blood). But yes, it is a choice, as you say.

And you’ve got to end game with multiple builds in just 20 hours, very impressive.

Player skills proced from other skills/gear/etc do use the relevant skill tree, its just minions that don’t use the player’s skill trees for similar-named skills.

13

You obviously havent seen:

Last Epoch Tools

or

Tunk Labs

:stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

14

And the devs have said that they have a plan to fix (minions) snapshotting.

15

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