General thoughts after first playthrough in months

[otritono]

(Primalist/Beastmaster)
First of all: great work. Love the style, gameplay, story.

Wanted to share some of my thoughts in my way up to lvl 63 now, that could possibly improve the pacing and enjoyment:

• Summon companions at log-in. With 6 wolves in my build it takes almost a minute to summon them all. Very tedious and not necessary. I get the idea for combat that with a very low cooldown, or summon all at once, some abuse could be found. But maybe allow for this in a rest area or town and maintain a cooldown in combat / battle area.

• Enemy balancing. There are some CRAZY DMG enemies out there:

  • Lightning turret. These off-screen with high damage, even with resistance cap reached. Damage seems disproportional with rest of the monolith encounters.
  • Osprix Lightmage. The rune is nice as warning… But the timer is crazy tight, especially taking in account the attack animations + reaction time. Also the range at which they can cast is crazy.

• Endgame grind.

  • Item filers: Glad some item filters are included. Though this still seems a bit tedious. In PoE it works for the average Joe due to NeverSink filters and such. So far haven’t found really great community supported and updated filters. Also with the vast amount of affixes it is a work on its own.
  • Item/stat value: requires the Forge to see the Tier of an affix? This kind of kills all the pace. Especially for new players or with a new build looking for different affixes.
    Also the effect of ‘upgrades’ on performance is really hard to determine. Things as health and mana are visible. Though attack numbers are as well, upgrading gear seems less impactful than the increase in monster strength/health in monolith affixes.

• Arena: Really like the idea of endless waves of increasing difficulty. However mob types can really unbalance things. Some wave 25 can be much more difficult to survive than a wave 50 with easy mobs.
  Also the rewards seem very underwhelming. The barrels after 5 waves generally give more loot than a chest after wave 50. Maybe remove all loot altogether and give it at the end (Diablo III Greater rift style)

• Monolith length: There seems to be a very large discrepancy in the monolith encounter lengths. Some maps seem to go on forever and ever while others have the end target already visible on the map from the start.

Keep up the great work. Really fun game. Would recommend.

[Heavy]

@otritono

Enemy balancing. There are some CRAZY DMG enemies out there:

I can definitely agree, the difference between certain mobs types is a bit too high.
But i would rather want to increase the dmg from some of the very harmless mobs, rather than nerfing dmg from some of the daedly mobs.

@otritono

Lightning turret. These off-screen with high damage, even with resistance cap reached. Damage seems disproportional with rest of the monolith encounters.

One of the nastiest mob types for sure, but i do think it’s not that much fo an issue, since the “off-screen” attack is a telegraph and not a projectile, so you don’t get caught off-guard.

@otritono

Osprix Lightmage. The rune is nice as warning… But the timer is crazy tight, especially taking in account the attack animations + reaction time. Also the range at which they can cast is crazy.

I really like those mobs, when you pull them in conunction with other mobs you have to decide if you wann keep dodging while killign the other mobs first or kill the Lightmages first.

@otritono

Item filers: Glad some item filters are included. Though this still seems a bit tedious.

I think you should try and work with the loot filter more, it’s really quick and eas to set up a filter from the ground.

@otritono

In PoE it works for the average Joe due to NeverSink filters and such. So far haven’t found really great community supported and updated filters. Also with the vast amount of affixes it is a work on its own.

Disclaimer: shameless self plug ahead!

I did create a very generic loot filter for all the different classes, because i know the loot fitler can be overwhelming, especially for new players or palyer that don’t actually know what exactly they want.

[0.9.2] Heavy'z Casual Loot Filters for all Classes v3.1

Hey there, I decided to work on some loot filters, for more casual players that don’t want to bother to much with the new Loot Filter that much. Those Loot Filters are also a great template to create your personal Loot Filter. [image] Overview: What are those Loot Filters doing? Hide normal items from level 15 and above Hide all Items not for your class Color all class-specific affixes (Body + Helmet + Relic + Idols) for your current Class Only show the 2-3highest base types of …

I also made a Loot Filter Guide

A Basic Guide on how Loot Filter works and how to set up your own Loot Filter

How the Loot Filter works Before we begin, just to make sure we are all on the same page. The Loot Filter does work from the top to the bottom. If an item matches all Conditions of a Rule, EVERY other Rule below that will be ignored (not even checked) Example: We have several magic Items on the ground here with random affixes, but only 2 of them have Tier 5 Affixes on them [image] For this Example i did create a very basic loot filter: …

If you combine those two and try to utilize the tips i gave in the calss specific loot filter thread to make the loot filter mroe strict, you can try and learn how to make your own filter in no time.
Or just adjust my filter to your build/characters.

@otritono

Item/stat value: requires the Forge to see the Tier of an affix? This kind of kills all the pace.

You can see advanced affix descriptions with holding [ALT] and see tiers by holding [ALT] + [CTRL]

@otritono

• • Also the effect of ‘upgrades’ on performance is really hard to determine. Things as health and mana are visible. Though attack numbers are as well, upgrading gear seems less impactful than the increase in monster strength/health in monolith affixes.

I can definitely see, why that is your first impression and even with more experience this will stay true to a certai nextend.
Most of your damage comes from skill spec trees and finding good synergies.

There are some very powerfull passives and certain affixes, but generally gear and passives have very gradually power increases, no realy power spikes.

@otritono

Monolith length: There seems to be a very large discrepancy in the monolith encounter lengths. Some maps seem to go on forever and ever while others have the end target already visible on the map from the start.

Absolutely agreed.

I don’t mind echoes taking a few minutes, but some are a bit too long and other are waaaay too short.

Make the super short ones longer and reduce the length of the super long ones, to make them all more equal.

[otritono]

Thanks for the lootfilter info/links. I’ll try them out and maybe spend some time on tweaking them myself.

And thanks for the feedback in general

About the mob damage I think it is especially difficult for the devs to find the right balance. For comparison there’s PoE “kill or be killed”, where you are basically working towards 1-shotting everything in the game as best defensive layer. On the other hand there’s Diable III, where fights at higher difficulties take ages and require to perfect cooldown rotations to stay alive (with cheat death mechanics…)
I like how Last Epoch is neither of the above which makes combat feel quite rewarding. You feel strong, but never invulnerable.

One more thing on this matter are the boss fights. I think the design provides a great experience in terms of engagement, telegraphing of mechanics and learning curve. Especially during the story you are likely to die on the first encounter with a boss, however after a few attempts you are wondering how you could’ve died in the first place. Really appreciate skill > gear requirements.

[Goremanslizer]

@otritono

Enemy balancing. There are some CRAZY DMG enemies out there:

• Lightning turret. These off-screen with high damage, even with resistance cap reached. Damage seems disproportional with rest of the monolith encounters.
• Osprix Lightmage. The rune is nice as warning… But the timer is crazy tight, especially taking in account the attack animations + reaction time. Also the range at which they can cast is crazy.

/signed.
The Osprix Lightmage is one of, or even THE MOST annoying enemy in the whole game.
The timer of the rune is so short, you have to move every 2 seconds, because also the time between those runes is way too short, especially when you use channeling skills, its a mess.
In addition the damage is way too high, you get stunned…
The Osprix mage itself has a HUGE lifepool, … i mean… why? If they are that strong and the runes are OP, why has a lightwinged “mage” also have so much life? That makes absolutely no sense and this enemy alone make the game feels very imbalanced.