@Sol77 Sanchez posts a LOT on Steam Forums and LE official forums making broad sweeping claims about the viability of builds. He makes dozens of posts weekly. This context is important, especially for your critiques of DJ. While you argue about semantics, definitions and metaphors, Sanchez is telling new players on multiple platforms that they will never do damage with the majority of skills in the game, and that most builds are not “viable.”
I agree with DJ that we should be calling out these statements for what they are; false. It’s not fair to inexperienced players / readers that they should lose hope in even trying a build because Sanchez claims it isn’t viable … When what he really means is it’s not optimal.
LE may be the greatest ARPG when it comes to build diversity and build viability. Meaning, you can succeed with pretty much anything you think is cool, as long as you understand the fundamentals of how stats and mechanics in the game work. I think it’s best if new players and readers understand that first, before they are told what’s “viable” (a.k.a optimal) by some random person on the internet.
Point taken, I’m with you in calling out extreme cases. I haven’t read much from Sanchez but I often see you and DJ posting on the other end of the spectrum
Flame ward has like a 90% pick rate. Auras in PoE could be compared/juxtaposed to item bases in LE, which are much stronger here than in PoE, so a lot of builds just go with the same few base items (eternal gauntlets, oracle amulet, citadel boots as well to some extent - it’s often a BiS if you don’t need a specific unique in this slot).
To be fair, we usually only do that when someone is saying categorically that only a few builds are objectively viable.
If they simply said they’re not competitive or as strong, I have no issue with that and will even agree.
But newer players reading these things and getting these statements as advice will actually be driven away thinking this game is too hard and they’d be forced into a build they don’t like to be able to play.
EDIT:
i will grant you that. Some skills are very strong and almost every build uses them, like Flame Ward, Sigils of Hope, Warcry, Smoke Bomb or Shade.
But I already agreed that PoE does have the most variety in theory, simply by number of combinations.
End-game in PoE is by the community declared as ‘red maps’ and the vast majority of builds can comfortably run T16 maps nowadays.
GGG has implemented T17 maps to have content for people which find T16 re-running too boring since there’s no risk and as a sort of precursor between the ‘common bosses’ and the ‘aspirational bosses’ with Maven being the first one to aspire towards basically.
A viable build in Last Epoch is a build which can comfortably run empowered monoliths, not those which can do Abberoth, that one is also currently the ‘aspirartional’ content we have.
Hence the argument still stands.
Yes, in-game investment mostly.
But a functioning build can be simply slapped together by a decently experienced person in Path of Exile. Despite being awful in build creation as I never was interested in it outside of the top-tier areas it just came over time. So someone interested in it can have it down in 2-3 leagues… which is still darn long.
That’s called ‘meta’ and has absolutely nothing to do with viability or not.
Never has, never will.
Something non-established doesn’t mean it’s ‘bad’. It’s just not established.
This is greatly misrepresenting these few active forum users you are referring to.
Like me, DJ or @Llama8
The vast majority of these threads are not about “winning” or being “right”.
There are many many people coming to the form and state things very factual. E.G. X is bad design, this NEED to change. etc.
We just want to show people different perspectives.
To be fair though the heavy forum users often also relate to statistics and are - some of them - heavily invested into the game for one reason or another.
It’s after all why they engage with the game even outside the actual game. For the majority of people their interaction ends with the ‘logout’ button. Or alt+F4
Makes those people not more ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ but often putting the different perspectives inside which people usually - and who can fault them? - not think about. Which is how the generalized and factualized statements which nonetheless don’t hold true even come into existence in the first place.
Factualizing a statement without it being so is dangerous sadly, hence why the pushback on that usually is quite big.
Which relates to me regularly saying ‘words have meaning, terminology is important’.
And yes, despite saying that I do make those same mistakes as well, it’s normal, which also means I don’t hold it against someone for doing them, I’ll correct them for doing so though… and I hope they do when I make such mistakes.
Sure. but the majority of LE players don’t finish the campaign, much less reach empowered monos and even less reach 1k corruption, so that does make competitive players a small minority.
But who claimed that we are a majority or that we are any representive part of the community? Right nobody did.
That is why I said your statement is greatly misrepresenting.
While for the semi-regular forum user I understand it can be annoying or frustrating to see and read the same few active forum users over and over again. None of them really thinks they are representive or their opinion is worth more or something in that direction.
I just despise people coming to the forum and claiming things as facts or black and white, while they are not.
As for dungeons, they can be added to monoliths. let them meet rarely, with reduced rewards. But this will solve a bunch of problems at once. Right now this content no interest for most players ( push corraption and farm blessing has more priority )
Temporal Sanctum is in the interest of every player.
Lightless Harbor also is in the interest of every CoF player when they play for a while. For MG it’s useless.
Soulfire Bastion is useless simply, with that I agree, albeit it can be used early on at least for some quick exalted items in comparison to the earlier gameplay and hence used in conjunction with either swift baseline gearing or even Julra.
Also the implementation of dungeons into monoliths wouldn’t make sense because of their size and setup style as well as the utterly disproportionate reward level they provide.
Well, since he didn’t get into details, we can speculate. But I suppose he don’t mean for dungeons to just be added to monoliths as they are, and not as “just another echo”. He even mentioned the “reduced rewards”.
I don’t hate it, and would certainly lead to me doing more dungeons overall… Dunno, they could be like their own (reduced and limited) Timelines where you make path trough a few echoes of your preference til you get to the boss.
People already complain about the RNG factor which the Julra legendary mechanic entails, which would need to turn even more severe and hence leading to even less exalted items being available as a base for creating them. That’s after all the limiting factor of this system in most cases, not the LP base.
Also the dungeons entails full-scaled boss-fights, one of them being even multi-phase, which is beyond the difficulty for the timeline bosses even.
A complete re-imagination of the dungeon system.
A re-work of the dungeon system.
Balancing for the dungeon system.
All of the are fine. Integration with simply reduced rewards? That’s a mess to happen, a massive one, especially in the current stage of the game.
That’s an option, albeit what differs from a normal monolith run then?
Content needs variety, making everything some sort of ‘the same’ is how Path of Exile started to struggle for several years as that one setup they had began to be saturated. Delve eased that up for a while as did Heist to a smaller degree… but there was no variety, re-running the same content becomes - by default - boring and not enjoyable. The mind craves for variance at times, not too much… but some, and from the basis as well.
EHG already needs to diversify while also at the same time build their existing mechanics in depth as they lack that still. Such a massive change on top? Why?
Improve the existing design since the basic framework not only functions but is good, it’s just empty and boring for now.
I don’t know… was only digressing on his idea.
But if EHG was to do something like this and asked for my opinion, I’d say the Dungeon Timelines could be something along the lines of what we have to do in normal monos, before being able to fight the boss… There could be a set of missions we have to accomplish in each map before getting access to the boss.
But the way it is now, I’d rather play without any legendary or exclusive items than having to go through those boring dungeons over and over… Timeless Sanctum is the worst, and not because of Julra…
Absolutely could be! Never saying something against that.
But Last Epoch struggles from diversity of their system. The game is well set up for a new release, it though has some severe shortcomings like the vast amount of bugs, partially missing balance and their trading faction being flawed at the most fundamental aspects of fundamentals - sadly so.
What Last Epoch needs is more depth inside their main gameplay loop, hence monoliths. More of shrines, more of Nemesis, more of exiled Mages… but instead of ‘1 enemy’ or ‘just click on it’ actual mid-scale mechanics offering some kinds of interactions.
Imagine Legion, Breach, Incursion, Harvest… such interaction types, variety, breaking up monotone aspects of the game.
EHG tried instead to diversify in similar manners as Path of Exile showcased with their Labyrinth, Grim Dawn’s Arena… the current mechanics are basically 1 to 1 copies of that for Arena and a bad - quite bad actually - copy of the Labyrinth from Path of Exile. There is no innovation, there is no iteration. It’s a plain copy or even a lackluster one.
The Arena copy works, it does what it should, it has a place, it offers a unique experience different from monoliths.
Dungeons don’t, not because they can’t but because they’re badly done. The cure mechanics of them are nice, both timeline switching for Sanctum as well as attuning oneself to a element in Bastion are great designs but underutilized heavily. And the light in Harbor? Useless outside of the boss-fight, utterly so even. Failed design simply.
It also offers a different variance compared to monolith gameplay. One try, dual-zoned (+ boss) but… empty! Utterly and absolutely… empty. It needs mechanics inside. Areas you can only reach by using your light in Harbor, leaving it hence behind put opening places to reach dangerous things behind. Areas where instead you need the light with you since it’s otherwise deadly.
For Bastion it’s traps, keeping people out, enforcing to switch your element with timing and positioning to progress through the area instead of simply cleaning out mobs.
In Sanctum it’s puzzles, shifting between timelines to open areas, to progress through revealed and closed passages instead of simply finding a way through it. Pieces you find in the ruined era but needed in the divine one, changes done in the divine era which make paths in the ruined one… those types, not simply doors.
And each of them needs to offer side-areas with rewarding and unique outcomes which make you want to go in and tackle that content.
That’s how dungeons are done, not this lackluster mess we got currently to say it openly.
It needs not to be demolished or fused into existing things which reduces variance… it needs to actually create viable variance in gameplay.
I resent the implication that I’m a chubby hubby, I’m almost not a chubby hubby & I’m significantly lighter than I have been in years so I’m clearly not a chubby hubby either…
