Let me bring some criticism about LE here

[Heavy]

Regarding Lich Mastery:

I can agree that the Lich tree is a bit chaotic, but you can achieve alot of things with it.

Keep in mind that the Lich tree is very very old and will probably get a rework similar to Spellblade or FG.

Also we do miss Warlock, so maybe once Warlock makes it into the game Lich can get more indentity, when maybe some things move over to warlock and get more specialized (this is just an assumption)

I would not call Lich “inconsitent”, but rather a very versatile mastery.
And that’s a good thing.

@tetrees

Okay, I chose flurry. It has really nice attack speed. What do I see next? Ailments chance reduced by 40% from flurry hits and it has poor support for bleed in the skill tree.

Flurry is probably the most insane skill ever for any ailment to this day.

First things first: Just because a skill doesn’t has crazy support within the skill tree, that doesn’t make this skill “bad” for a particular playstyle. There are so much other sources of ailments for example.

But now the important part: Flurry has insane bleed support.
The 40% reduced ailment frequency is just for balancing reasons, because otherwise the skill would be beyond broken.

Flurry does have 40% bleed chance (+ physical shred) every 3rd hit with one node + 69% bleed chance for every hit via the adrenaline nodes.

PLUS 30% Bleed Effect (which is multiplicative)

This is probably the single best bleed skill in the game, besides Puncture obviously, which also has baseline bleed support.

@tetrees

Do you like the ailment mechanic in the game? Is it okay for you that if you want to play DoT you need to attack all the time as fast as you can? Isn’t it strange?

LE is doing Ailments very differently compared to any other similar game and that’s great.
I don’t want the same ailment mechanic from other games.

You definitely need to build different and that’s cool.

@tetrees

Are you okay with this clunky thing when you need to stop to cast some buff? Like when you need to use puncture while using really fast flurry? Does it feel right?

I personally don’t see a “clunkiness” in using different skills. (Except some exceptions like Devouring Orb maybe).
You can scale attack/cast speed and make such buidls alot faster and smoother.

@tetrees

Are you happy with bladedancer mastery skills? Doesn’t it look like assasin’s creed kiddo something? Do you feel that those skills in reality are slow and clunky?

I think Rogue in general and especially Bladedancer is one of the must smooth and fluid things ever.
There are soem very few nodes that can make a build “clunky”.
But what one persons call clunky, the next person call it “change of playstyle”
(Example the Skill Node in Shadow Cascade, which removes attackspeed scaling or the Baseline Skill Dark Quiver)

@tetrees

Still there is a lot of bugs in the game. Is it okay that Volatile reversal never worked as intended which basically ruins most of the VK builds? Is it fine?

While there are obviously alot of bugs, i would not state “there are alot of bugs”, especially for the current state of development this game is really well polished.

VR not working as intended is a known issues.

But i have to give the devs alot of freedom for this, because that’s probably one of the most complex skills mechanically that exists in the game.

[Heavy]

First thing:

Your current health does not affect the stun formula, only maximum health.

Second thing:

The Low Life support in Bladedancer is a niche playstyle.
It’s not supposed to be “BD’s thing”.

Alot of masteries have this one or two weird thigns that you could build around, but they are not fully supported, whic hi really like.

[tetrees]

I said it wrong probably. I don’t mean “Low Life” mechanic, I meant when your maximum life is low (around 400-500). This is possible since with dodge + glancing blows + endurance (lets say we get a lot of threshold) your tankiness will be crazy (in terms of EHP vs Hits). But it’s completely useless since you can be stunned easily then. Dodge is capped at 85% as I remember, if you take many hits you WILL be hit and since you have low life you WILL be stunned. And you will be killed then. From the first look it doesn’t make any sense for me.

I think a lot of masteries are underworked and bladedancer one of them. Some skill trees, some masteries are still not released. I have no idea how EHG will compete with PoE, it will be just a game you play between PoE leagues. I don’t see anything special in the game. It’s slow, underworked, not optimized with a lot of performance issues since the beginning. Volatile reversal doesn’t work because of the engine they use I guess. It’s quite fundamental problem. Idk, I understand that I’m too pessimistic but it’s quite worrying that they promote very actievly some “social” updates while a lot of basic things like skills trees and masteries aren’t there yet or ALREADY need a lot of rework.

[Heavy]

@tetrees

But it’s completely useless since you can be stunned easily then.

completely useless is a bit of a overstatement IMO.

I can see where you are coming from, but since the stun chance is calcualted on the damage post-mitigation, all defensive layers except dodge do lower the chance of getting stunned a little bit.

Of course health is the best way to counteract gettign stunned and if you don’t build health that’s just a build decision.

You can build health on any class, evne rogue. Health is literally one of the best defensive layers, since health gives you the most eHP from all defenses, because it is decent in value and affects all incoming dmg, regardless of damage type or if it’s a hit or DoT.

So if you are having bad experiences with getting stunned. Build more health, simple as that.

I could see uniques getting added to the game that grants you stun immuntiy or maybe some very rare affixes that reduced stun duration or something along that lines.

But IMO stun needs to be a mechanics that you actively need to think of and build accordingly.

@tetrees

I think a lot of masteries are underworked and bladedancer one of them. Some skill trees, some masteries are still not released. I have no idea how EHG will compete with PoE, it will be just a game you play between PoE leagues. I don’t see anything special in the game. It’s slow, underworked, not optimized with a lot of performance issues since the beginning. Volatile reversal doesn’t work because of the engine they use I guess. It’s quite fundamental problem. Idk, I understand that I’m too pessimistic but it’s quite worrying that they promote very actievly some “social” updates while a lot of basic things like skills trees and masteries aren’t there yet or ALREADY need a lot of rework.

That’s fair feedback, but for the current state of the game i think LE is in a very good shape.

I personally do see alot of special thigns in LE and if you don’t feel that way, that’s ok too.
But obviously you did care about it enough to give feedback in the forum and that’s always a good first step.

VR not working even if it’s already implemented for over 2 years is concerining i agree.
But the skill is just too cool and fun to jsut remove it IMO.

I don’t see anything majorly wrong with the passive trees, other than some new an update/overhaul.

I don’t know why you think Bladedancer is “underworked”.
Not sure what you mean by that.

Both masteries of rogue are excellent in terms of synergies, versatility and overall gameplay experience IMO.

[Shtrak]

What is the problem with Volatile Reversal? I’ve used it in several builds and I never had an issue with it. Just curious, how does it not work?

[Heavy]

The mana refill portion is literally working “unpredictable”.

There is nothing controlable about that

[Shtrak]

I must be lucky then, it always worked fine for me and refilled correctly.
Or if it did not, it was not noticeable.

[XLVI_carpo]

It should not refill you mana to 100%. This is what it does for me in 70% of cases. The other 30% it’s not refilling at all.

Its very chaotic

[XLVI_carpo]

In general I’m with @Heavy here. I’m absolutely ok with the current ailment mechanics. But in addition I’d like to see a compensation mechanic for slow attack speed builds with 2h weapons. Could be just plain ailment support or passive skills in specific trees.

I can’t see any issue with the Rogue. Imho it’s the smoothest and fastest class to play and the opposite of clunky.

Also theres a lot of automated triggered skills in LE, especially Rogue (i.e. Shadow Cascade on Dancing Strikes and Shift, Acid flask on Shift, Multishot on Flurry,…). I’m an adult playing Dancing Strikes.

So to answer the questions:

@tetrees

Do you like the ailment mechanic in the game? Is it okay for you that if you want to play DoT you need to attack all the time as fast as you can? Isn’t it strange?

Nope, not strange. Different. But I get your point and have nothing against adding additional ailment mechanics that work differently.

@tetrees

Are you okay with this clunky thing when you need to stop to cast some buff? Like when you need to use puncture while using really fast flurry? Does it feel right?

If you don’t like the playstyle you could use a different build. Personally I’d go with either Puncture or Flurry, but not with both skills together. I can see this playstyle feeling kind of clunky. So I’d skip this approach.

@tetrees

Are you happy with bladedancer mastery skills? Doesn’t it look like assasin’s creed kiddo something? Do you feel that those skills in reality are slow and clunky?

Absolutely happy. Best feeling and most polished class in the game for me. I’m not playing to much to not have the other classes feeling too clunky in comparison.

@tetrees

Still there is a lot of bugs in the game. Is it okay that Volatile reversal never worked as intended which basically ruins most of the VK builds? Is it fine?

No, it’s not fine to have bugs in the game. Is this a real question?

These are very subjective statements / questions so opinions do vary a lot, I guess.

Cheers

[CaiusMartius]

@XLVI_carpo

Its very chaotic

One might say, “volatile?”

And I also agree with Heavy that finding niche examples of stuff doesn’t mean that the masteries aren’t working or have identity. I’m not sure every idea that someone comes up with should (or even can) be covered. I think the OP isn’t actually expressing this but many of the points in the OP seem to indicate a desire to come up with an idea and execute it. I don’t know if that’s always going to be viable.

And I liked the way DoTs work in LE. Except when they’re used against me.

[Shtrak]

@XLVI_carpo

I can’t see any issue with the Rogue. Imho it’s the smoothest and fastest class to play and the opposite of clunky.

I don’t like the Marksman, I find it boring and not interesting, but it is very well designed and built.

[XLVI_carpo]

@Shtrak

I don’t like the Marksman, I find it boring and not interesting

You see that @TriKster ? Let’s hunt him down!!

[Shtrak]

It’s not specific to Last Epoch.
I have the same issue with Wolcen and a rather similar issue with Diablo 3.
Exceptions are in Diablo 3 with the Multishot build which feels better than in LE (personal opinion) and with the GoD build which is basically a spin to win, not feeling like a Marksman.
All other Marksmanship specializations I could try in other games were boring for me.
But even with that, I find the Marksman very well done in Last Epoch.
I hope you poor little heart will survive, my friend.

[Vidya]

@tetrees

1. Do you like the ailment mechanic in the game? Is it okay for you that if you want to play DoT you need to attack all the time as fast as you can? Isn’t it strange?

I’m okay with it for the most part, but would like better support for slower attacks. Poison has a unique mechanic, so I’m okay with it the most. Bleed and Ignite feel a bit too same-y for me, so wouldn’t mind seeing one of those being converted to something you’d expect from a more cast-and-forget style DoT.

2. Are you okay with this clunky thing when you need to stop to cast some buff? Like when you need to use puncture while using really fast flurry? Does it feel right?

With your specific example, you’re taking two spammy attack skills, so I’d say it’s working as intended.

That said, I think one of the reasons why it feels clunky is because of the game’s emphasis on 4 second durations combined with really spammy, basic combos that make your rotation (if you even have one) really repetitive. In your specific example, I’d guess if you only say had to insert puncture every 12 seconds or something, it wouldn’t feel like your flow was being disrupted as badly.

3. Are you happy with bladedancer mastery skills? Doesn’t it look like assasin’s creed kiddo something? Do you feel that those skills in reality are slow and clunky?

Mixed bag for me.

Dancing Strikes - Easily my favorite bladedancer skill in terms of how fluid and mobile the skill feels. The fact that it chains with itself with each attack looking unique, and the forward double slash spicing things up so that you can’t just spam it around and expect a near 360 degree attack makes it interesting to use.

I think LE’s best feeling spam skills are ones like this, Rive, and Cinderstrike which chain with themselves. It makes the 1-button spam gameplay more visually interesting, and the ways the skill trees get designed become more interesting too (which part of the chain to emphasize).

I like how well it’s supposed to work well with the BD’s flow passive as the buildup to a combo finisher.

I wish the CD would be reduced by 10% by default because that’s when the skill starts feeling good (there’s a dev post explaining the speicifics of why the 10%'s a big deal).

I think the skills it can trigger gives it interesting potential, but is held back by the skill itself having a cooldown and the proc chance being kind of low. The upper left of the tree (the ailment portion) seems kinda pointless because of the cooldown mechanic. It has enough branches that could be useful even when not directly boosting your primary source of damage.

Shadow Cascade - Dislike. It feels more like a support skill in that it’s designed to be used by your shadows and to be your mana generator. It also effectively shuts out all the other skill choices for your shadow attacks.

That’s not this skill’s fault entirely since the other choices aren’t too attractive. My opinion of this skill would be higher if shuriken and acid flask were good choices for shadow attacks.

Also dislike the upper right branch. Until you get shadow daggers (and shadow dagger proc chance gear), which is really your only reason for even going that way, you have to really gimp your damage because you get throwing damage, your AoE becomes unreliable, and you lose attack speed scaling. What I dislike about throwing damage is outside of some weird cinder strike oil coating build, there’s no throwing damage support in the passives.

Synchronized Strikes - Like the idea, but I find the 1-button spam gameplay it promotes to be boring as hell. Dislike how it effectively takes up two skillbar slots because you’re going to be taking Shadow Cascade if you take this.

Lethal Mirage - Like the idea, just not sure how to justify fitting it onto a bar. That’s not a criticism, I actually wish there were more choices like this. Really like the combo finisher playstyle it promotes because of its cooldown and how you really have to build for it for it to work.

Overall - The big issue I have with all of the bladedancer mastery skills is that none of them synergize effectively with ailments. That isn’t necessarily bad, but when you combine that with the bladedancer mastery’s shadow bonus (which isn’t useful for ailments either) and the lack of any kind of really cool ailment capstone ability to look forward to, it just feels meh.

I also find the shadow mechanic to be a bit disappointing because they don’t do much outside of Shadow Cascade/Synchronized Strike builds. Would be nice if there were more ways to take advantage of the shadows outside of shadow dagger or Synch Strike builds.

[Gandhar]

@tetrees

But there is another problem. We get to the next very strange point in the game. Common ailments such as Bleed for example are scaled through attack speed mostly (armour shred and physical shred are also ailments and they also scaled with the attack speed). It’s a very strange thing. If I want to play DoT I need to continuously attack as fast as I can.

Yep ailments need a lot of work so you can utilize different playstyles other than stacking ailment chance, attack speed.
Since ailments dont scale from hit damage and have their own base damage (as can be check in character sheet) it always shoehorns you into high attack speed and ailment chance. Using it with a slow 2h would make the damage lackluster in the current state.
Which brings us to the point that doing ailment/dot damage in LE is very one dimensional in regards how to scale.

I assume the devs are aware of it and have some (at least) basic ideas how to make it work with slow attack /slow cast speed skills.

[Llama8]

@Vidya

@tetrees

1. Do you like the ailment mechanic in the game? Is it okay for you that if you want to play DoT you need to attack all the time as fast as you can? Isn’t it strange?

I’m okay with it for the most part, but would like better support for slower attacks. Poison has a unique mechanic, so I’m okay with it the most. Bleed and Ignite feel a bit too same-y for me, so wouldn’t mind seeing one of those being converted to something you’d expect from a more cast-and-forget style DoT.

I think having most other DoTs scale with hit rate & % chance to apply would make it quite difficult to balance a damaging ailment that scales with duration instead. I think it would be more interesting having poison with it’s inherent shred, one of bleed/ignite with a higher base damage but otherwise the same & one that can only have 1 cap but scales damage & duration instead.

[XLVI_carpo]

This brings me to a suggestion:

Why not buff ailment support of 2h weapons by increasing the stack duration? (I’ve seen bleed duration somewhere already… was it a Rogue skill?)

So 2h weapons apply bleed in a slower rate but get a duration buff so after a certain amount of time your stack counter is equal to somebody that uses 1h.

For short combat situations fast weapons have a faster stack application rate. But on the long run you would be able to apply more stacks with a 2h weapon because the stacks don’t run out that fast.

[TheRealDeal]

@tetrees

But it looks like uncontrolled combo-wombo mambo-jambo jumping around.

Made my day

[Ghostlight]

@tetrees

Common ailments such as Bleed for example are scaled through attack speed mostly (armour shred and physical shred are also ailments and they also scaled with the attack speed). It’s a very strange thing. If I want to play DoT I need to continuously attack as fast as I can. Isn’t this very inconsistent?

My Poison-based Lich uses Reap, Wandering Spirits and the Transplant/Rip Blood combo to apply its Poison stacks, so this would hardly be described as attacking as fast as I can. In fact Attack Speed is a completely useless stat for me as I do not attack directly at all (other than Reap every couple of seconds). So, yeah, there are exceptions.