Loot Filters and Crafting

So, I’ve been playing Last Epoch for a while now (285 hours), and I seem to have different ideas on how to go about using Loot Filters and Crafting to get the gear I want compared to the rest of the community here.

I don’t know if it’s just play time, but when I see people posting build guides and things like that, they always gear pieces that are like, T17+, or manage to have a T6/T7 Affix right where they want it.

My experience has been that this is so incredibly rare that it literally hasn’t happened for me yet.

All the Exalted stuff I see is mostly stuff that’s completely irrelevant to my build, and on the very rare chance that I do see an item with a T6/T7 affix that would be useful, AND it’s got implicits I want, I usually manage to strip that affix off with a Removal Rune instead of the random useless affixes that accompany it.

As for crafting, again, there are so many affixes and so many combinations that at best, I’ll occasionally get something that has a T2 affix I want, with nothing else in the way. And then I’ll craft on that and get up to about T13, and then it fractures and I use that for the next 50 hours.

The best crafts I’ve ever made were 2 T16 items. Most of the time I’m bumming around with T12/13 in most slots.

So I’m left wondering, since clearly I’m having this issue more than others, what it is I’m doing wrong? Do I simply have too high expectations for the quality of gear that drops, and I just need to put in more time? Or am I being too restrictive in my Loot Filter, perhaps over prioritizing getting maxed resists/crit avoidance? I’ve also noticed a lot of builds have way more health than I do, so that’s something for me to look into as well.

I can manage Corruption like ~110, and I’m just not sure where I’m going wrong.

There are lots of discussions on crafting that you can possibly go through to get an idea of the various ways players currently use it… and yes, lots of people love it and just as many hate it…

Instead of rehashing those threads, I will offer one piece of advice that I have learnt by playing over 1k hours and having over 100 stash tabs of viable goodies…

Set your loot filter to highlight ONLY items above a certain combined T level.

For example, on a high level char (75+) I never pick up ANYTHING less than a T12 affix total… This way, anything that drops, only needs another 8 levels to be a T20 and thats very doable with a bit of luck. Starting with a T4 item means you stand virtually zero chance of getting a T20… I have at least 50 stash tabs of viable items for every class and more tabs of 16+ crafts with great stat combinations. Yes, you will get bad groupings of affixes sometimes… just shatter those… but you will get a LOT of very good upgrades/crafting base items that stand a high probability of becoming T20 or close items…

The only other things I do is 1) change the minimum T level based on character level (i.e. if you are looking for something for a low char, then set the limit lower) - Remember you DO NOT need T20 items unless you are min/maxing… and 2) set a separate filter to find any really specific affixes with a T5 … this is when I am specifically looking for something for a specific build or am just leveling up or trying to find shards for crafting.

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This is really good advice, I need to tinker a bit more with the combined Tier Level options

Are you usually filtering for specific implicits as well?

I mostly only get this specific with filters if I have reached almost ideal BiS gear and the chances of finding an upgrade is unlikely so I need it to be highlighted if it drops.
e.g. I have a regular filter for my Spellblade that finds any Crystal Swords with high tier elemental damage or melee affixes.

I generally use the T levels as my primary loot filter and a quick glance at the drop in play to check if the affix combination is well matched or has something I want to shatter… I dont hide things other than plain whites and I have found if you get too specific with filters then you tend to miss things that can be Ok to use or craft on… and maintaining very specific filters can get tedious - especially after patch updates that affect items/add drops/affixes…

I’m a very lazy player when it comes to min/maxing my gear. I have a lot of high level toons but their gear is all over the place only a few can handle higher corruption timelines.

The thing is, you will never end up with a very well geared toon in a reasonable amount of time, if you don’t play systematic. If you are just looking any items with synergizing stats, every of your character will be geared different.

You will find crit avoid on good boots and gear around it. Then you will find better boots with no crit avoid and change, what means you have to change other items, too, to get crit avoid back up. This way you get into a never ending loop that eats up your time.

When I began to plan my builds effectively (not only passives and gear, but also I created really good and strict lootfilters) the change of the player experience was huge.

It’s really astonishing how differently these characters ended up in terms of power compared to my older toons.

What made the biggest difference is that I restricted my item slots for specific items with specific implicits. You can get resistance capped on you characters by just using the propper items with the right implicits and the resistances of your passive tree. Gold or bone amulets, boots, gauntlet, rings, relics, even shields and weapons can have resistances as implicits. First this seems to be an unnecessary restriction. But for me it made gearing a lot easier.

Then I set my lootfilter for endgame to that exact items with a specific colour. All my endgame gear is red. I not only filter for the affixes, but also for the proper base. Then I copy these rules and adapt them to early/midgame, making them less strict and also allow items with “wrong” bases. I set another filter to show me any items with rate affixes. And to even more avoid wasting time, I hide all item types, that are not useful for my current build.

If I play 2h, I hide every offhand item. Exceptions are unique and exalted items. The risk is that I may miss a BIS rare shield. But concentrating on the current build, focusing on the one toon you’re currently playing, will do a lot. It increases the effectiveness A LOT. Don’t waste time collecting potentially good items for other characters. Focus on one.

I am already almost res capped when I enter monolith.

Not sure if others would say this is a dumb advice, but i also am not hard focusing on getting 100% crit avoid, lately. This is not always needed, imho (not talking about arena - there you defenitely need crit avoid cap).

I have some 150+ corruption characters that aren’t capped. This happens when a very nice unique drops that wasn’t considered in my build planner. This can mess up the defensive balance of your gear.

Dammitt released a great feature on his build planner, lately. You can export a lootfilter from your planned build. That’s really awesome. If you haven’t tried, I suggest to check it out.

I basically never use Removal Runes for crafting and I think that they’re mostly a noob trap. I don’t think they’re a good value proposition with so few total affixes possible on an item unless you are playing so much that you have an assload of items to mess around with. The more affixes you want that are on the item, the worse your chances are of removing the one(s) you don’t want. The more affixes you don’t want, the worse the item is after you’ve removed them.

At end game I don’t bother crafting on anything that drops below T10 no matter what the affixes are, so if you’re fracturing at T13 I’d say it’s likely you’re starting way too low. When I’m at a stage where I’m hunting for upgrades, I usually set my loot filters up such that I have, say, 4-6 affixes I would want on a given slot, and only items that have at least two of them at T5 are let through. I’ve found this helps significantly in keeping most “hard to craft on” items away from me.

I think that because of other games, people in general tend to wildly over-prioritize getting maximum resists and crit avoidance. That’s just my opinion, though.

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Semi-related that may help: One of the things I’ve done to improve my T6/7 drop experience is create a curated list of affixes that I will never care about (ex: Minion Health Regen) or broadly consider as junk (ex: Stun Chance), and hide all Exalted drops that have those as the T6/7. It reduces the number of Exalted items I see, but it also reduced my annoyance with them significantly.

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