My feedback for season 2 after one month of playing (warning: long post)

silvercanopus · May 18, 2025, 5:33pm

TLDR

Dear EHG, y’all cooked something amazing. This season is the most I have played Last Epoch and the most fun I’ve had with the game, and I think that’s the case with the majority of LE players as well. I’m now quite positively hopeful for the future of the game and excited to see what else you have in store.

That said, there are still improvements to be made and some slight misses with the newly added content. I think you’ll be the first to agree with that sentiment. The rest of this post will go in detail for what I think is great about the season, what could use some tweaking, as well as some suggestions from this random player. Hopefully this post can serve as a useful data point among many.

Some Context

I started playing from day 1 of the season. It’s now been about a month since then and I’ve put in somewhere between 100-150 hours on my main character. Not exactly a blaster but I can hardly call myself a casual either.
I usually make my own build and it’s no different this time. With the hype around the Sentinel rework, I chose that class and then went with Forge Guard as the mastery appealed to me more than the other two. Having played Warrior in Path of Exile 2, I’m curious to see if Last Epoch can pull off the “immovable tank” archetype, so of course I went with Smelter’s Wrath. Mike said he’s excited to see what people can do with that skill, so surely it’s not going to be bad, right?
I started writing this review around 2 weeks after season launch. At the time, my build was handling 500 corruption and regular Aberroth pretty comfortably, but Uber Aberroth was so impossibly difficult. I was getting sick of Smelter’s Wrath play style too, and gear upgrades were getting harder and harder to come by, so I decided I was done with the character then. However, as I procrastinated on writing this post (by playing more LE of course), I got some lucky drops, discovered new farming strats, and thought of ways to further improve my build. At some point, the idea of downing Uber Abby didn’t seem so unrealistic anymore. After 2 more weeks of grinding and theorycrafting, I was eventually able to do it! I’ll give my opinions on Abby and the state of endgame gearing later.

Launch Day & Servers

Starting with this topic very briefly because I think it’s worth mentioning. This season’s launch was great, almost perfect even. There was only a short hiccup in the first couple of hours but it’s been smooth sailing after that. What a massive improvement compared to 1.0 launch! Kudos to the backend engineers and I hope you can maintain this quality going forward.
Around 1 week after season launch, the server was suddenly taken down for 4 hours of maintenance. I said “sudden” because I only heard about it when I logged in, shortly before the server was taken down. It was my usual gaming hour so it felt pretty bad to not be able to play. Thankfully, for the other major patches after that, there was no surprise server downtime. Still, I think y’all need to be more careful about that in the future.

Tombs & Cemeteries

Starting with one of the main content added this season–tombs and cemeteries, which shall be shortened to just “tombs” for this review (unless specified otherwise). My first impression with this piece of content was fairly positive. The new enemies looked cool, especially the bosses. The idol enchant system seemed interesting. The narrow layout felt like a proper dungeon and was a welcome change of pace from regular echoes that are mostly open space.
However, after a while, tombs became even more stale than regular echoes. This is due to a lack of variety in layout and enemies. I still enter them occasionally because they feel more rewarding than regular echoes, but in terms of gameplay, I’m having more fun with just running random echoes.
- Suggestion: Add more fun ways to juice tombs and cemeteries that isn’t just generic pack size. Something more akin to the possessed nemesis maybe?
Besides the repetitiveness of the layout, I also find it confusing at times. Following the objective marker can lead me to dead ends, which means backtracking and feeling of time wasted. This rarely happens in normal echoes, where following the marker is almost always correct.
- Suggestion: Change the layout generation so that the path to the boss is more obvious, or make the side rooms more obvious, or reduce the amount of dead ends in general.
The narrow layout also causes certain builds to struggle more than others. While my build doesn’t mind it, I have a friend who played Rampage Werebear and that build was severely handicapped with all the narrow corridors. Additionally, it’s somewhat immersion breaking that my AoE skill can hit enemies on the other side of the wall.
One reason why a player might want to run tombs is for the boss-exclusive drops. However, oftentimes the player only wants one of the uniques and right now it’s random which boss they will encounter at the end of the tomb (cemetery is an exception). In my opinion, having RNG in spawning the correct boss isn’t a fun kind of RNG.
- Suggestion: Add a node on the Weaver Tree that guarantees, or at least makes it significantly more likely, for a particular Fateweaver to spawn at the end of tombs.
Another unfun RNG that’s present in the current system is after resetting a timeline, the player is required to find a cemetery before they can start their woven echoes strategy. It usually takes me less than 10 minutes on average to find a cemetery, but one time it took me over 30 minutes and dozens of echoes revealed before it showed up. That was quite the frustrating experience, and statistically that will happen if one plays long enough. I think it would be better if we can just start our chosen farming strat immediately after a reset.
- Suggestion: Maybe add a node on the Weaver Tree that guarantees a cemetery spawn on timeline reset, or just make the altar for placing woven echoes available at the Haven of Silk after reaching a certain rank with the faction. The latter option also has the benefit of being able to purchase woven echoes from Masque.
The idol enchant system located at the end of tombs feels a bit too expensive right now. I remember 500 amber being too expensive in the early endgame because I barely had any amber, especially since I was still replacing my idols often at that progression point. And in the late endgame it’s also too expensive because it’s competing with woven echoes. It seems like the bottleneck is in finding enough tombs and cemeteries for more enchants anyway.
- Suggestion: Reduce the cost for enchanting idols, 200 amber is my suggestion.
Something that is a minor annoyance and probably already on the list of bug fixes to be made, is that when the idol enchant table offers multiple enchants, you need to take the idol out and put it back in after every use.
- Suggestion: Make it so you can just re-enchant idols immediately.
Overall, I think you hit a nice balance with making tombs rewarding enough for players who want to run them, while not so rewarding that everyone feels forced to run every single one they come across. Fortunately for the second group, this patch also introduces new farming strategies that I will cover in the next section.

Weaver Tree & Woven Echoes

Before the season launched, when content creators were hyping up the new endgame system, I admit I was skeptical. However, after trying it out myself, I must agree. The Weaver Tree and woven echoes together elevated the endgame of Last Epoch to a whole new level.
Every passive point on the tree feels good to get, all the way to 50. Even now, I still wish that I can have a few more. Obtaining those points by completing woven echoes is also fun. “Gotta catch em all” like Raxx would say. And thank you for not putting any points behind Uber Aberroth. Even if my build was ultimately able to take him down, I can’t handle being stuck at 49/50 points for so long. And for the more casual players, not being able to get that last point would probably feel even worse.
I love that respeccing the tree is so cheap. I certainly took advantage of it by trying out many different strategies and still had plenty of memory amber to spare for woven echoes. I would hate to feel like I’m being punished for experimenting.
The best part of these two systems is the agency they give to players to decide what they want to farm. I probably don’t even need to ask for this but…
- Suggestion: I would really like to see more tree nodes and woven echoes added in the future, preferably ones that enable new farming strategies. If giving too many passive points is a concern, you can rework the less-used woven echoes. Some of them are just not interesting enough, like the act 1 boss rematch. The exclusive uniques are too niche and can easily be moved to the global drop pool instead. For a lot of players, they would just run it once and then never again, which is a shame I think.
Out of every node that I’ve tried, my favorite is the one that makes it possible to get ambushed by Shade of Orobyss. Oftentimes I’m just farming, in the zone, when suddenly I get jumped by this guy. I find that so funny that I have this node allocated despite not needing anything from Shade.
While on the topic of Shade, I will say the tree node that makes it so that killing Shade doesn’t increase corruption shouldn’t be part of the tree. It’s a QoL at best since we can maintain a stable corruption via the Sanctuary, and it annoyed me when I went to raise the corruption in a different timeline but forgot to unspec this node.
- Suggestion: This functionality should just be an option after you kill Shade in his echo, not something you have to sacrifice Weaver Tree points for.
Another fun node is the one that adds dungeon monsters to your echoes. It’s a useful node for anyone hunting for a dungeon boss unique, but it’s also just a fun node because it adds these monsters that you don’t normally encounter in monoliths. My only problem with this node is the monsters from Soulfire Bastion are significantly deadlier than the others.
- Suggestion: Nerf the Soulfire Bastion monsters, and this node will instantly feel much better.
Speaking of deadly monsters, the champions in Pillar of Skulls and the Osprix in Oerden’s Watch hit significantly harder for their corruption level.
- Suggestion: Maybe tune down these two woven echoes. I feel like the Osprix are overtuned just in general, especially the ones that bring down meteor on you, so maybe you can nerf them everywhere too.
In my opinion, the Shade ambush node and the dungeon monsters node are a good way of adding variety and challenge that is also optional. I would like to see more of this kind of node if possible.
As for favorite woven echoes, I find myself going back to Unclaimed Trove a lot. It’s just a strong echo when paired with the cache nodes on the tree. Lostwood Folly is also super rewarding because it gives a ton of memory amber. The crafting echoes are surprisingly pretty fun too.
One strategy I’ve tried is to run Woven Beacons to try to get the imprinted woven echoes as quickly as possible. I had fun with this strat when farming the Majasa shield, because that woven echo normally costs so much amber. However, this strat is missing a QoL in the form of being able to search for woven echoes on the echo web. The boss echoes are easy to see, but the normal ones like Unclaimed Trove can be hard to spot when zooming out.
- Suggestion: Add to the filter on the top right of the echo web screen, the ability to highlight woven echoes.
While on the topic of echo highlighting, it surprised me that glyphs are also highlighted when I click the rune option. I guess runes and glyphs are lumped into one category? However, I’m in a position right now where I don’t care about glyphs at all, only runes, and it’s annoying that I still have to differentiate the echo reward despite highlighting what I want.
- Suggestion: Separate runes and glyphs in the highlight category.
Something tied to the Weaver Tree and the woven echoes is the new Woven faction. I think this faction is just fine. As a story enjoyer, I was excited to learn more about the lore of Eterra but sadly this faction is pretty light in terms of dialogue. It’s unfortunate but I understand the need to prioritize gameplay first.
What I will complain about is the Woven faction rank-up requirement. Why does it take so long to rank up this faction? It’s crazy that I managed to reach level 100 first with my character and max out all of my other factions before this one. Granted, I wasn’t actively farming memory amber via Lostwood Folly at that time, but I don’t think players should be forced into that one woven echo if they want to rank up this faction in a reasonable amount of time, especially when precious Weaver Tree points are locked behind it.
- Suggestion: lower the rank-up requirements for the Woven faction.
One last thing about this whole Woven stuff, and I think this is the missing cherry on top of this whole expansion, is that we’re missing a new pinnacle boss fight tied to the faction (I don’t count Uber Aberroth as “new”, sorry). I was half-hoping we would be able to fight the Weaver herself. I don’t know how that’s going to fit with the lore, just saying it would’ve been amazing.

Imprinting

This was initially included as part of the Weaver Tree section but it’s gotten long enough that it deserves its own section. Let’s talk about imprinting.
While a huge chunk of the tree is clearly inspired by Path of Exile’s Atlas Passive Tree, imprinting is an innovation and one that I have fun playing around with this season. It adds so much to player agency by giving us the ability to target farm things that weren’t possible to target before.
Imprinting went through a roller coaster this season. At first people said it was really strong, but then a patch introduced some bug fixes and people said imprinting got nerfed, and then another patch later introduced bug fixes to revert that change. At this point I have no frickin idea what’s going on and what the developer’s intention for the power level of imprinting is, I’m just going to talk about my personal experience with imprinting before patch 1.2.4, which is the period when I engaged with the system the most.
At first, I wasn’t getting very much out of this system. I didn’t see it proc that often and when it did, the result was mediocre. But as I learned more about the rules of imprinting and hearing other people’s successful strategies, I was eventually able to get some really good items out of it that pushed my build pretty far. Turns out, it’s not as simple as “just put the item you want more of” because of all the hidden rules. Frankly, “similar” is as helpful of a description as “nearby” is in PoE. I think it’s better for the game if the system is explained better, so here are some suggestions to that effect.
Suggestion 1: Add a warning sign if one or more parts of the imprinted item is drop-restricted. I’m aware that you can imprint a boss unique and still have it proc, giving you similar items except for the exact same unique. But I’ve seen so many questions on whether you can imprint boss drops or not, that I think this should be made more explicit. Same for items with experimental affixes, faction bases, harbinger bases, or other drop-restricted items that I can’t think of right now. If there’s zero chance of getting the same item from the imprint, there should be a warning sign.
Suggestion 2: Add to the description that forging potential is also imprinted. I bet this tripped a lot of people up the first time because it’s not included anywhere in the description. Also this was changed recently so that an imprint with low FP has a higher likelihood of producing copies with increased FP. Maybe that should be included in the description as well.
Suggestion 3: In a similar vein, include in the description that LP also matters when imprinting. I think this was confirmed by Mike in one of his streams. Also include in the description that imprinting a legendary item is the same as imprinting that unique with LP. That’s a cool tip to know and it really shouldn’t be kept a secret.
Suggestion 4: Include the chance for each imprint slot to proc. This information is available in LE Tools so I don’t know why it’s not also included in the game. Give the information or keep it hidden, just be consistent about it.
Suggestion 5: Something that you’re probably already working on, is to add some kind of notification when the imprint procs, or an indicator on the resulting items that can be included as a filter rule. Either method works for me, I just want something to let me know that the system is working.
Suggestion 6: The top-right imprint node specifies that it can only proc on “regular echoes”. What does this mean? I initially thought it was non-woven echoes, but then I had it proc while running Unclaimed Trove (had 6 hammers drop from one monster, one of which is very close to my imprinted hammer). I think it should be explained somewhere what “regular echoes” mean.
As for the power level of imprinting itself, I do think it’s quite strong. I found it to be one of the more reliable methods for farming multi-exalted items. Whether that’s fine or not is up to you, I would understand if it gets nerfed next season. Just saying that as a player, I feel rewarded for understanding the system and making decisions on what to imprint with the limited slots that were given. However, this is going to tie to the next section which is the state of endgame gearing, specifically with the power creep of legendary items and the failure of set crafting.

The State of Endgame Gearing

Something that I don’t see get discussed a lot, probably because the majority of players are fine with it, is in regard to how powerful legendary items are right now. Some builds even prefer to use only legendary items. Whether that’s fine or not is up to you, EHG. However, speaking as someone who’s using both legendary items and set-crafted items, the disparity in the crafting process between the two is so big that it’s pretty sad actually.
More specifically about the legendary item power creep, the floor is raised considerably now thanks to the guaranteed slam change. This feels really good, actually. It removed so much of the frustration involved with slamming. You can nerf anything else about legendary items, just please don’t touch this.
As for the ceiling of legendary items, it’s now easier to find multi-exalted items via farming nemesis on the Conquered Tower woven echoes, and then imprinting it to drop similar copies for Havoc/Redemption crafting bases. And then, once you’ve slammed a double T7 legendary, you can reroll it in the Gauntlet of Strife woven echoes to make sure the item is well-rolled.
This season, I was able to craft a Null Portent with T7 strength and T7 health, as well as a Countenance of Majasa with T7 block chance and T7 block effectiveness. Both are well-rolled too. I would never dream of finding these kinds of items in previous seasons. And you know what? This is fun. Really fun. It took a lot of effort to make those items and I feel rewarded by the end of it. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same with my set-crafted items.
I’m now at the point where, if I wanted to upgrade my current set-crafted item, I would need to drop an item with the same base type and the same T7 affix, an open prefix so I can craft/seal the set affix, and hopefully the other affixes are not useless too. While I have found success with imprinting multi-exalted items, I didn’t find it particularly great for dropping T7 items of the same base type. And when the imprint procs, the resulting items can be bricked if it has a useless affix, necessitating the use of Rune of Removal, which eats a lot of forging potential even if it’s successful at giving me a clean base to work with. Oftentimes I find myself running out of forging potential before I can even max out all the affixes, and certainly not enough to even use Rune of Refinement and Rune of Shaping, so then I’m stuck with a low-rolled item at the end of it all. The point is, crafting exalted and set-crafted items feels so constrained by forging potential, which was probably the intention when the system was designed in the first place, but feels bad now because legendary items seemingly have limitless potential.
If you are sympathetic to the above sentiment and are interested in buffing exalted/set-crafted items, I have a few suggestions that hopefully don’t also add more power to legendary items:
Suggestion 1: Give more weighting to the base type in the imprint system, so that the resulting items are significantly more likely to have the same base type.
Suggestion 2: Reduce the FP cost of Rune of Refinement and Rune of Shaping. Legendary items already have limitless reroll attempts, I think exalted items should get a similar treatment.
Suggestion 3: Add a rune that removes all non-exalted affixes,. It doesn’t even need to give back affix shards, it’s just to make it easier to get a clean base to craft with.
Suggestion 4: Specifically for set items, I’d like to see more powerful set affixes and bonuses added in future seasons, preferably in slots that are often filled with generically strong uniques (e.g. Red Rings, Nihilis, Shattered World).
I think the above suggestions would go a long way toward making exalted and set-crafted items compete with legendary items. Or at least, make the crafting process less frustrating due to FP limitation.

Forge Guard & Smelter’s Wrath

Okay, one last major section in this feedback post and it’s dedicated to Forge Guard and Smelter’s Wrath. Boy do I have some feedback regarding this class and skill in particular. Mostly the skill. I’m sure there are better Forge Guard builds out there that I haven’t tried because I wanted to push Smelter’s Wrath as far as I can, and I’d say I pushed it pretty far.
Overall, I think there’s a lot that can be improved with this skill. Personally I would like to see the skill being reworked from the foundation, but I understand why that would be a low priority considering we just had a Sentinel rework and that barely anyone plays this skill (though maybe more people would play it if it wasn’t so jank). Maybe just save this section as some notes for when we have another Forge Guard rework 2 years later.
Starting with what Smelter’s Wrath has going for it, its damage is actually pretty decent. Not the best but certainly far from being the worst. Provided I can survive the entire channel duration, I can usually delete everyone in my vicinity. The skill also gives a defensive buff while channeling, which is a nice consideration from whoever thought of it. I was actively pursuing the fantasy of being an “immovable tank” and I certainly got it with this skill.
The area size is also fine, it covers a good amount of the screen by default. However, the decision to make this unscalable (increased area of effect instead increases charge speed) is pretty lame, I have to say. Right now there are a few enemy types whose attack range is just outside Smelter’s area and it’s annoying that I have to walk and recast the skill to get them.
- Suggestion: Remove this restriction. I feel that I should be able to invest into AoE if I wanted to. You can then make attack speed scales the charge speed, which would make more sense.
Another problem caused by the unscalable area is that whenever I get a shrine buff that increases my AoE, it’s actually a nerf because it speeds up the charge time and due to how this skill works, it often makes me no longer able to one-shot enemies. I’m surprised there’s no way to disable a shrine buff like in Path of Exile. With the variety of builds and shrine buffs in this game, surely they aren’t always going to have a positive interaction, and this complaint will show up again and again.
- Suggestion: Add a way to disable shrine buffs.
Still talking about the area, the default cone shape of the skill is just not great. It’s awful when you’re fighting an enemy that moves around a lot, like exiled mages and the agile harbinger. And when fighting packs of enemies, which is like 95% of combat in this game, they tend to surround you because there’s only so much space in front of your character. As a result, you end up missing a lot of them with this kind of area. This makes the nova node pretty much mandatory, but that node is unfortunately gated behind 3 points of armor shred node that frankly just doesn’t do anything. 3 points is too much for a tax, I would say.
- Suggestion: If you still want to keep the conal area, at least increase the angle of the cone significantly. It should be 120 degrees to start, with maybe the possibility of being increased through passive nodes. Also, please rework the node prior to the nova node so it doesn’t feel awful to take.
Moving away from the topic of area, this skill has a weird anti-synergy with its passive nodes that speed up the charge time, and passive nodes that increase damage per charge time. It makes scaling the skill kind of bad because you’re constantly trading off damage for speed or vice versa. Meanwhile, other skills get to increase their speed or damage without gimping the other. I think this should be reworked from the ground up.
- Suggestion: Instead of counting the actual seconds of charge time, make it so that you’re charging from 0-100 power at a rate of 50 power per second (the numbers here are for example only). The passive nodes can then either modify the charge rate, modify the max power, or give benefits at certain power thresholds. I think the skill would feel much better to scale with this system.
Related to charging, and this is probably a big ask, I would like to suggest a node that allows you to walk (at a reduced speed) while charging. This can be an alternative solution to the unscalable area mentioned above, as this would solve the issue of enemies being slightly out of range. And if we can also turn, that might also solve the issue of the awkward area shape. I think this kind of node would just make the skill feel nicer to play, especially on WASD.
A big issue this skill has is in regards to clear speed. Waiting 2 seconds to kill every pack of mobs just doesn’t make a good ARPG experience. That’s fine if I can save this skill just for tough enemies, but I have yet to find a good clearing skill that complements SW. Other skills would require me to invest into attack speed, crit chance, or minion damage, all of which are kind of wasted on SW. I don’t know, that might just be a problem with Forge Guard as a whole (lack of synergy), or it might be a skill issue on my end. I’m still actively trying to solve this problem and as such, I won’t give any suggestion yet.
Another annoying thing related to clear speed is the random echo modifier that makes monsters have 35% crit avoidance. I have thoughts and opinions regarding the echo modifier system that I won’t include in this post because that seems like a topic for another day, but I’ll just focus on this one mod for now. This mod feels so bad to get when playing this skill. Because SW only deals damage every 2 seconds (3 seconds with my variant), losing that 35% chance means I have to recast SW and wait the full duration again.
- Suggestion: Remove or rework this modifier so it gives 35% less crit damage taken instead of 35% crit avoidance, it’s the same DPS reduction but feels a lot less frustrating.
Another very annoying thing to happen while using SW is getting pushed around while using the skill. You get pushed by enemies but the game treats it as if you’re still in your previous position, and sometimes the game even tries to move you back. It’s just so jank. The huge beetle monster is a good example of this issue, and unfortunately also Aberroth who likes to charge at your face.
- Suggestion: Don’t have a good solution in mind but please just fix this somehow.
A less serious problem I have with this skill is the animation. I think you can take a look at Supercharged Slam in PoE 2 for inspiration, I find that skill’s animation to be quite powerful. With SW, though, your character just stays still and then swings his weapon up for some reason. At the very least, the weapon should be swinging down.
- Suggestion: Easier said than done, yes, but please improve the animation.
Lastly, something not related to Smelter’s Wrath but instead about Ring of Shields. I feel like all of FG skills have at least one problem, but I’m choosing to rant about this one skill specifically just for a moment. It just feels so clunky compared to what Paladin just got, Symbol of Hope. The block chance buff from Symbol is basically permanent while it’s conditional and temporary for Ring of Shields. Symbol also has better health recovery buffs, offensive buffs, and also an option to be cast for another 25% damage reduction. And the only gimmick of Ring of Shields, which is to block projectiles, doesn’t even work against Aberroth when I need it the most. I thought I would do something smart by making the shields stationary to block the purple balls, but they don’t collide for whatever reason. Bummer. I think this skill would be improved a lot just by making it behave more like Symbol of Hope.

Summary

Game is fun, thanks for the amazing season, looking forward to the next.
Tombs & cemeteries: Fun for a while but becomes repetitive. Keep these optional, but please make it easier to access the altar for placing woven echoes.
Weaver tree & woven echoes: Excellent addition to the endgame, hoping to see more juicing potential with these two systems.
Imprinting: Fun new way to target farm gear, the rules just need to be made more transparent.
Endgame gearing: Right now legendary items feel a bit too strong, but also fun to chase. Would like to see some buffs for exalted and set-crafted items.
Forge Guard & Smelter’s Wrath: Fulfills a certain fantasy but could use a lot of improvements.

Gregory_Portman_PL · May 18, 2025, 8:36pm

Great read! Thank you I wouldnt write it better. Just my thoughts