Insta kill frustration in hardcore mode

[humanitasdenegata]

Hello everyone.

First of all, congratulations for bring us this wonderful project. The game would be amazing in the future, sure. At the moment is nice, very playable and has a lot of fun. Thank you !

I really like this betagame but i have a problem i never had before: the instakill deaths…
I was searching about instakills at forum here and steam too, but only a few and nothing important in there, so here is my post to express my frustration.

I am a veteran player of ARPGs Diablo like, and i usually play Hardcore, so i can get a lot of fun playing this mode.

I can not get it, please helpme to understand it: I tried 3 necros, 2 centinels, 1 mage, every death was an insta kill by an AoE enemy skill. Wt.? I am not a pro, but when you try different builds, gears, characters… it is always the same, level 15, 40 or 53 doesnt matter, i always die the same way, i have no time to react when its comes, too quickly. "You are dead, a meteor, a void misil, …whatever ranged deadly skill… ".

After i learned how to play in hardcore i can remember three deaths, one in Diablo2 Hardcore Hell and two in Torchlight2 Hardcore Elite, i could describe it detailled cause those are the only 3 deaths i get in years of play. When i play a game in hardcore i take it easy, i play slowly, i explore everything, i level up slowly repeating areas til my character is strong enough to continue… In Last Epoch ALL my attempts are fails! lol ?. All my experience, my kind of play is useless in Last Epoch, what is happening ?
I think that ‘sometimes’ the damage of AoE from ‘some’ enemies is INSANE in a very short period of time, so player can do anything to survive.

Thank you for your time people, you are awesome. And Thanks everyone for support a great project like this.

[SirYodi]

Hello there

I got to disagree with you here. I have been playing hardcore mode only in this game and one of the biggest reasons why I like hardcore so much is the lack of unfair or unlucky deaths. I agree that there are some hits that are quite likely to insta-kill you but they are often made so well that you can see it coming and you should have time to avoid them. Of course, sometimes you may get stunned or something else and can’t get out of the way but it hasn’t felt unfair yet.
That being said, there are monsters that are much more dangerous than others, and if not aware of it, it may result in a quick death. For me it took about 15 tries to complete the current campaign and reach the end game, but learning both mechanics and monsters along the way lead me to situation where I can rather easily complete the campaign without fear of dying. Especially after collecting items with my previous characters.

Since you know the style of playing hardcore mode, the best advice I could give is some Last Epoch specific mechanics:

• Glancing blow, this is very important defensive tool, and I try to get all the way to 100% before reaching final bosses of the campaign, of course getting it sooner is always better. It halves the damage you receive from hits and with decent protections will keep you alive very well. Be aware that it doesn’t work on damage over time (more about that later).
• Second mechanic that works bit different than in other similar games is health. Especially the general hardcore tactic of stacking a lot of it. Since having high max health reduces the effectiveness of your protections, it’s not as good a strategy as it is in other games. That being said, it is still helpful to have more health, but it is not as good as it might seem.
• Then finally the monsters to look out for. For me the biggest scares are monsters that have damage over time attacks. Not really effects like bleed or ignite but just attacks that are damage over time. The worst are probably those small “ice bats” (can’t remember name) that channel the ice cone attack. The damage is so high and it hits so often that it might be seen as insta kill. Whenever I know those mobs are in the map, I will play it safer still and avoid dashing/teleporting in the possibly wrong place. Other similar dangers are those necrotic soul cage monsters (quite easy to avoid when you know to expect the attack) and those fire construcs (especially the unique boss version).

Hopefully there is some help and you manage to stay alive and tackle the end game on hardcore soon .