Know that I do really enjoy this game that’s why i played already 300hours after a few months.
I pushed my character to the very end game content and I felt disappointed by some things, that why i give you my advice on the corruption scaling.
The way monolith is scaling is disturbing at hight lvl, it seems monolith were thinked to work well on low lvl of corruption from 100 to 250, but after that the scaling become really unbalanced and then make no sense at all when we push further. Indeed the base “more damage and life” due to corruption is ridiculously low (+400% at 1000 corruption) but the increase in some echo is ridiculously hight.
So when we are exploring mono at 1000 corruption the majority of echos are super easy and the only option we have to increase difficulty is to do mono with +150% damage and life (that seems a big boost as it is x 2.5) or +500%void/phys/ele damage (so an increase of x6!!).
What i suggest is a biggest increase as corruption base and much lower increases in echo, to make thing more smooth in monolith exploration. That way it will not go from super easy to getting Oneshoot everytime depanding of the exploration you chose.
For example at corruption 1000, instead of having a +400% (x5) lets go for a “+800% more life and damage” due to corruption and then for echo modifier, a +50% maximum increase health and damage (x1.5 is already a lot when you push corruption to your maximum) , and something like +100% maximum increase for void/ele/phys damage. It would be more coherent with over type of echo modifier (mark of death is equivalent to an increase of 100% 25% if you’re not overcap, deadly is x2 , and 100% crit too without crit avoidance)
If we compare a classic corruption 1000, it is actually +400% damage and health from corruption and +150-650% increase in echo so 5x2,5=12,5 to 5x7,5= 37,5 multiplier, so a range of x3 difficulty. With my proposal it will be +800% from corruption and 50-150% increase from echo so 9x1,5=14,5 to 9x2,5 =18 multiplier. The felling of difficulty tuning will be much closer to echo in low lvl of 100-200 corruption where the increase are at +30% to +60%.
Bonus, saying my character is 400 corruption will have a meaning again, and it will be better for build demos that actually chose echo that are super easy.
There are a lot of very similar and like minded opinions about this and many things already have been suggested in the past. I really hope we will get a balance pass on MoF that will include things like you suggested here.
This could also be used to solve the issue of a lot of people complaining that the corruption grind feels very tedious, because I think the first few hundred corruption increases (from 100-~250/300) feel very sluggish, because you don’t really notice a big difference between 100 and 150 for example.
The whole progression curve could be smoothed out a big, make the very first corruption pushes already more noticeable while simultaneously making the top end scaling more interesting.
My biggest gripe with the current system is, that the difference between one echo and another can be HUGE because of ONE single echo modifier.
Because these echo modifiers also scale with corruption to a certain extend.
I think if the devs move some scaling from the individual enemy echo modifiers to the base corruption scaling would smooth out things a lot more.
On top of that there are a lot of enemy echo modifiers that have a hard cap (like GB or Crit), while other have infintie scaling.
On top of that there are a lot more modifiers that impact hit/crit builds and basically none that affect DoT/Ailment builds.
Throwing in some more enemy echo modifiers that would only affect DoT/Ailment builds, like Enemy has chance to avoid ailments or Enemy take less damage over time or Enemy gets damage reduction per unique ailment on them would spice up the mix of modifiers a bit more.
This all together with issues of the echo web creation are the top 2 things that I would like to get changed for a much more enjoyable top endgame experience.
For differecne with dot vs hit build, I think the more impactfull is crit avoidance for hit builds because they often have 100%crit with +200-300 multiplier so each critlost cost a lot of damage. The other one dont seem so much powerfull (GB is just a more +50%life and -35% reduction to life leech), maybe just add a -35% damage overtime to the same echo is enought to balance it.
The only overpowerfull echos are the +% damage and/or life in any form, the fact that some have hard card is not really a problem if these one too have hard card or a really slower increase.
Crit avoidence is a must have. Less damage taken from crits is even better if you have a class that can make use of it.
On top of it I don’t see a difference between 200 corruption and 500 corruption when it comes to loot so I don’t crank up the difficulty normaly if I don’t get substeantaily better gear I save the effort for later when it’s worthwhile to play higher corruption levels.
I’ve never really tried pushing corruption so I can’t really comment, though, personally, I don’t push corruption because I’m usually bored by the time I unlock empowered monos.
I just wanted to comment with a minor correction on the below.
Mark for Death is a 25% reduction to your resists which is only a 25% increase to the amount of damage you take. Resists work differently in LE than in PoE where what you say would be correct.
What you say is true, crit avoidance is mandatory for players because we cant aford to get hit randomly with x2 damage.
But in my sentence i was speaking about the echo modifier with crit avoidance for ennemy that can be impactfull for hits players builds.
Loot in hight corruption monolith, could have a refont too but it is an other problem that has been discussed in other thread.
Ty for your reading. I pushed corruption as i feel it should be the true ladder system and wanted to test my build. I didnt care for item finding efficiency but i understand your feeling about no incentive into looting, I didnt feel a difference in lvl 500 or 1000 corruption looting, i did felt it in difficulty.
Ty for the correction!
You are right and that make my statement about balance between echo even more true.
As very well Heavy pointed out, many of us feel the endgame pushing does not scale well.
To me, the zone to grind is usually the 200 to 300 corruption, maybe a bit more if the build is stupid strong. The monolith system need some extra love for sure.
Thing I would like to see in the mono system (mostly aligns with everything said here):
Shift some power from echo modifiers to the base effect of corruption.
More interesting modifiers other than more power/less damage that forces you to play somewhat different while they are active: multiple projectiles, timers, explosive enemies, temporal invulnerabilities, summons…
Better build styles coverage: specially how DoT builds get a free pass, almost everything is aimed to fuck Crit builds, aside a few summon-related.
Extra objectives to do inside echoes and/or extra monolith side objectives, right now is about boss and echo rushing.
