Hardcore problem : One Shots

Feedback and Suggestions
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Hello everyone,

I have been trying the hardcore mode, because that’s what I enjoy, and it’s been the most frustrating experience I’ve had in an ARPG.

There are insane damage gaps inside areas, a super tanky character that never took damage can get one shot instantly without being warned of any threat.

I’ve been at a point where I created super tanks to help me farm for my squishier builds, but these tanks got deleted by one attack, while they were able to sustain damage from tons of monsters and facetanking any bosses. This wasn’t even very far, one was on Timeline 55 so there were no crazy multipliers implied (Forge Guard 60+All rez/Max Endu…)

Now that this happened, I just don’t wanna create any new character. What’s the point of investing in tankiness if we can’t feel the progression of enemy damage?

I’m used to dying to difficult fights, but here I die to random trash mobs that apparently decided to crit*1000, and this is not fun at all. I’m not supposed to be able to stand in the middle of tons of ennemies without moving, and then being one shot by a random guy next screen.

Apart from that, I think many mobs need some changes in their damage, I don’t think it’s normal that some tiny AOE trash mobs can almost kill you because they are 2 or 3 on the screen insted of 1, while 30 tiny spiders don’t hurt you at all.

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Unlike other arpgs in LE you really have to be aware of what monster types are around, how they attack and monolith modifiers mixing into everything. There are just certain mobs combos that I just nope out in monolith because of how easily I can get one shot if I make a mistake. You can’t just bulk up and expect to sail through in hardcore in this game, you actually still have to respect monsters and plan strategies when you encounter them even with good gear. I find it rather refreshing coming from PoE where you pretty much just breeze through everything.

That being said laying a couple different defensives and getting crit avoid you are in a solid place to complete all the content.

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That’s not true of POE though. POE has way more unreasonable one-shots compared to LE.

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Could you upload your build into Dammitt’s build planner so we can have a look at it? Last Epoch Build Planner

Also do you remember what mob/attack killed you?

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I would agree, that the damage gap between some mob types is insanely big in LE.

This could definitely improved.

To befair, i think you just didn’t realized what exactly killed you.

Since i play LE, i never ever received a single “random one-shot”, with no clue what killed me.

If i got “one-shot” it was very clear to me.

Incoming crits are one of the most dangerous things in LE, but there are ways to deal with this in LE, with defensive affixes. (Namely Critical Strike Avoidance and Less Damage Taken From Critical Strikes).

There are “normal mobs” that are meant to be very lethal.
And i am almost certain that it was not “just a random guy next screen” one-shoting you, but most likely a mob type you either did not had much expoerience with yet or you underestimated it.

Also the few things you mentioned.
“no crazy modifers”
“max resistance/endurance”

are just very few informations.
Even if those informations are true, you still could possibly have some flaws in your defense setup.

Also we don’t know what exactly killed you, can you remember the mob type/attack?

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I was fighting the Fire Spirits bosses on a Earthquake Werebear Druid with 2.5kHP, the zone had Deadly if not damaged recently and no other damage mods

49% fire resist, 60% endurance with 650 or so threshold, maybe 2200 armor? 0% crit avoidance and I got one shot - I had 2 of them stunlocked but couldnt reach the third who was throwing magma orbs and I was just manually dodging them, when I was about to kill 2 of them I got hit by an orb and just died - im guessing Deadly if not damaged gives them massive crit/crit damage or something as I went back a few mins later to fight them and tested the damage and was about 1200 at the most

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If you hover over deadly in MoF, you can see it’s bonus.

Dealdy gives 100% more damage

Also the Orb does increased damage, the further it travels.

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Unfortunately my jaw dropped and I remained staring at the screen for 1 minute instead of recodring the last seconds of gamleplay, I will think about it next time :wink:

“You can’t just bulk up and expect to sail through in hardcore in this game”
I didn’t say I expected to sail through the game. I said I would like some warning from threats.
I don’t think it’s normal to find an enemy able to one shot me when I was able to facetank waves of any enemies right before.
Concerning the damage gaps, I can stand in dozens of fire explosions without seeing my health drop, and one tiny Ice bird can shrink my health very quickly while the resistances are both up to the same.
I just think one should hurt way more and the other way less, especially since explosions are easy to dodge, while a few ice birds surrounding you create a huge instant AOE.

My first dead char was a Necro lvl 74 dying to a Void Boss in the Timeline lvl 75 (if I remember correctly). I didn’t mind about this one because I didn’t see it’s AOE, but it seemed really quick compared to other bosses taking hours to charge a big attack.

The Forge Guard was lvl 55 in the 55 Timeline, the only modifier was +15 health and damage.
I was killed by a Rare Soul Cage with increased health alone on the screen, and while I could facetank normal soul cages which I know hurt a lot, this one barely turned and killed me before I even had time to see it’s attack incoming.

I can’t link the character because I deleted it instantly for no reason.
I had 900 health, 0 dodge, the most armor I could have with gear from this level, with ring of shields, shield bash and Frailty, Vengeance and Frailty, lunge and initiative, resistances all above 60 and necrotic at 68%, 59% endu and 450+ threshold.

My character was far from being perfect since I barely arrived in MoF, I just did everything to have the tankiest affixes possible and balanced defenses, but I still didn’t have time to see the incoming attack and use a potion.

I agree I was unaware of the threat, but that’s my whole point, I need more clues about what’s coming. I don’t wanna play softcore and spend hours testing every encounters with different setups to know what I’m supposed to do, I want to be able to figure it out on the way.

Also there are some mysterious monster affixes, I can’t find any information about them, in this clip for exemple :

https://imgur.com/a/rbIE4uM

The abyssal crawler has the affix : “Uses abyssal hunt”
What is Abyssal hunt? There’s nothing in the guide, nothing comes up on Google.
So how can I be aware of enemies if I can’t find infos about their stats?

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You mean the Void Bird, Rahyeh, The Black Sun?
It’s the Lvl 65 Timeline (which was lvl 68 Timeline prior to Patch 0.8.1.

If that’s the case, you are probably not the first one that dies to that boss.

It’s argueably one of the hardest mechanical fights currently in game, there are alot of mechanics that can 1-shot you, with very little time to react.
Especially when you don’t know the mechancis in advance, this boss can be very punishing, for how early it already appears in MoF.

Just to say it again, i agree that the damage gap between certain enemies is not perfect yet,

but i don’t think that you did get to less of a “warning”.

Meteors from Skymages, Breath from Soul Cages are both very well telegrahped or have a wind-up time.

The thing in LE is, that even a white mob with mechanics can kill you. Some people might don’t like this, but it is a design decision.

Also just as an extra information regarding Soul Cages Cone Breath attack (and also some other simialr abilities, like the Cone Breath from the Bitterwing ice Bats).
Those are DoT, so armour, dodge, glancing blow and block do not protect from those, since they don’t “hit”.

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No it was after this one, I don’t think it was a final boss, I can’t remember the name but I’m almost sure the Timeline level was 75.

I’ve seen a lot of soul cages by now and I knew what to expect, and I didn’t stand in it’s breath to test it’s damage. I just got in an unlucky situation where something might have crit big times and I couldn’t expect it since nothing hurt me before.

And about the design of the game, it’s not the only game where white or rare mobs can be a threat, but I think low damage from easily dodgeable sources, and high damage from undodgeable and multiplicative sources are a bad idea, especially if protection is hard to raise against them.

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Timeline 75 is “Ending the Storm”. Was it this one? The one with the Quests on Lagon’s island, with a Meruna invasion?

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Hm, there is no void boss in that timeline level range.

Lvl 75 would be the “Ending The Storm” Timeline, which has Lagon as boss (the platform crab boss that you faced as endboss of the story).

The soul cages do have one more ability, which is very wel telegraphed (the big PBAOE around them), which has a windup and a telegraph.

They only do this once they drop low enough, maybe you havn’t encountered that before and got caught offguard?

Of course your “sudden death” could be linked to a random crit. Receiving crits is always a big dmg spike, depending from what source you got crit.

But there are ways to deal with this in LE (namely Critical Strike Avoidance and Less Damage Taken From Critical Strikes).
You definitely should have one of this capped.

I don’t think there are “high undodgeable damage sources” in LE.

I would agree that there are alot of “low very easily dodgeable sources” though.

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Well, you can’t dodge the damage from Soul Cages, Bitterwings or any other DoT, that’s why they hurt so much (as you said).

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For sure that can happen but in PoE you can also build to just immune damage and still do good damage. I still find with very good gear in LE you have to still respect monsters way more often.

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Isn’t this an ARPG probleme these days? Either you are full HP or dead at a certain point in game. I can’t remember an ARPG from the top of my head where the toons we play had so much HP or resis to slowly decline in HP and it was always kind of spikey.

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True… now that you mention it, most of my chars on LE are either Lowlife (no health) or full health 95% of the time… I dont actually think I have any character on LE where the health drains per hit and then boosts back up… Obviously it does to some degree, but the restoring of health required/chosen is so fast its barely a blip and the damage mitigation mechanisms mean that the only things that really tank HP are one-shots/crits which negate HP regen/healing anyway…

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If you would notice what i quoted, you would know i meant “dodgeable” in terms of mechanically dodgeable, like avoidable ny the player.^^

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This is something that Lizard has brought up a lot that I agree with. The campaign doesnt do a good enough job teaching the player the game. There are telegraphs but even as the OP has said, he was able to face tank everything so he never learned that he would hit a point where he couldnt face tank everything. Its not a problem with monolith being to hard (because its not) but campaign being to easy that players turn their brains off and face tank everything

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I think this is a problem that stems from leech. The moment you have any form of health regen that gives you your health back insanely fast, all threats need to kill you in a less then a second or there is no threat. Im a pretty firm believer that HEAVILY nerfing health regen can result in a FAR greater gameplay experience, i just dont see anyone doing it so maybe in testing people found its not fun.

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I don’t think the boss was a final boss, just a normal echo boss or maybe an intermediate mission. I tried to find it with my ghost with no success :frowning:

“Isn’t this an ARPG probleme these days? Either you are full HP or dead at a certain point”

The last games I played were D3 and Grim Dawn. In D3 I used to die to specific combinations of Rare affixes like Frozen and Horde for exemple. In GD I used to die to unknown rare mobs rushing at me showing that I lacked some resistances which were harder to cap during the leveling process.
But most of the times it felt like I made a mistake and I had a chance to fight before dying while here I just didn’t have time to understand and react.

In the end, I would like more threat from most enemies and less from just a few.
Maybe I lost my attention every time because I got over confident from never losing health, so I wish the game maybe showed me some more gear checks before huge damage spikes.

My points was just death didn’t feel like “Wow that was a hard fight”, but “mkay what was that”?

I will eventually learn the lesson but I wanted to share this kind of “blurry” opinion, I admit.