I started playing Last Epoch 2 weeks ago and I have rerolled twice since. My first toon was a sentinel which I leveled up to 40 and it felt like a chore. I wanted to create a two hander that hits slow but hard and I thought Forge Strike would give me that feeling. But it felt like its damage is way below Warpath and killed mobs slower despite the mana cost being absurd. I forced myself to level 40 hoping it would get better but honestly this whole experience made me regret ascending in the first place.
My next character was a mage expecting to have a faster gameplay than the sentinel. I would have gone with rogue but watching streamers play it made me want to play something else. So I went with the mage expecting to blast some fools with cool spells. But after several levels I found that there was nothing from the base skillset that I liked using. Lightning blast chained weirdly, Fireballās hits felt like a wet meatball, the frost spell cost way too much mana. So I am left with leveling Disintegrate since its the only one that dealt decent damage. I rushed my way into Sorcerer ascendancy hoping that the Meteor will be a better spell. But I was met with the same experience with sentinel. After leveling a few more it still felt like Meteor was doing way too little damage for its mana cost. So I dropped the toon since I didnāt want to play with Disintegrate. I tried to reroll a rogue but I have had enough and stopped playing.
I hate the fact that it feels like the game wants me to use a specific skill for leveling by making spells unviable on their early levels. It really takes away from the excitement of getting a new skill.
I donāt think the game forces you to use certain skills to level even though it does heavily favor things with reasonable AoE. When I made a cold mage, I actually really loved leveling with Glacier because it did a decent job of clearing the screen without putting me in melee range.
But I do agree that certain skills feel lackluster out of the box. Part of it feels like itās because all the good stuff is buried within the skill trees, so the devs canāt make cool base skills. I donāt think thereās a way to really solve this unfortunately.
I kind of wonder what would happen if you unlocked all the base skills for your class at level 1 and all the mastery skills as soon as you unlock your mastery. You wonāt get the highs of finally unlocking the skill youāve been aiming for, but you also wonāt have the lows of having to use a (crappy) placeholder skill till you get the skills you actually want to use.
Itās not like higher tier skills are necessarily better either, so there shouldnāt be a balance issue.
Would probably have to balance it by restricting slots for the first few levels though.
I played the campaign multiple times with personal and messy builds. The only time I had a real problem was the first time and I just had to add resistances on my gear to defeat the final boss.
Often when I find a skill weak, I change several nodes. No skill is useless or extremely weak, but itās always possible to make choices that will make a skill less efficient.
Forge Strike makes good damage and generate swords that will help you. Glacier is very efficient and can refund mana. Lightning Blast is one of the most powerful low level skills.
When I find that a skill does not work, I get some information and itās always because I made mistakes.
And letās be clear: Iām not saying there is only one way to setup each skill. But for each skill, there are several ways to make them very weak. For example when you select nodes that donāt interact, or when you select nodes that donāt benefit from the passive points you selected for your hero, etc.
There are multiple ways to make all skills efficient and powerful. And there are multiple ways to make them almost useless.
But donāt look at a skill on its own. Look at its nodes, review your passives, see the interactions. You will open a path to multiple variations and multiple ways to play.
I think you missed my point, Shtrak. I am not saying that the skills wont eventually become good. It just that I am stuck using skills I donāt find fun to play because the new skills I unlocked need specific nodes in the tree to be even be viable at my current stage of the game.
I really related to what Vidya said where I felt like I was forced to use (crappy) placeholder skills until I get to to the better part of the game.
You said for example you wanted to play Forge Strike but changed because of the weak damage. But if the damage was better, you would have played this skill. At least, thatās what I understood, sorry if Iām wrong.
That is really a question of personal preferences. I did find relatively few skills that I donāt find fun to play. And for some of them, when selecting the right nodes, you can get something fun. But as I said, itās a matter of personal perferences. Only you can experiment and tell.
If you are a new player and you arenāt getting the power you want out of your characters to have enjoyment, I strongly suggest following a build guide of a build that performs the results you want in the video, at least until you understand the game more that you can create builds in which you donāt have issues. Fireball is amazing when specād correctly at level 20+, terrible when not specād correctly before that. Same with lightning blast- amazing when specād and itemized correctly, terrible when not. Meteor has huge mana requirements so not having a strategy to deal with that ( a very high mana pool, for example) would result in a very poor player experience.
Boardman21 and Apprentice - Last epoch Builds both have many, many build guides for you to look at and Iām sure there will be something in there that you would enjoy.
I love this game, but personally, I can completly relate to OP. Skills that require 30 points in a chosen mastery have so far all been a letdown for me, and gimped my DPS when i switched over to them, while at the same time caused huge mana issues. Did a warpath/rive ā forged strike, shatter strike ā firebrand (I specced a single point in mana cost per charge and boom, mana drained instantly while dealing super poor DPS compared to shatter strike)
I can relate, part of it is choice you make on what you like. I use Vengeance and Lightning Blast on my 2 characters I currently play. Partly because many of the class unlock skills are underwhelming in comparison or they donāt fit into the build. My paladin for example has skills for multiplayer which are currently useless, smite is useless if your melee build, and the main attack I get feels weaker than the base attack skills.
Off the top of my head, I cannot think of any other ARPG that grants full skill access from level 1. In a perfect world, all players would find the early-access skills enjoyable. For myself, I enjoy Rip Blood for Acolyte (even for my future summoners) and either Vengeance or Warpath for Sentinel. Those are my two favorite classes and Iāve never felt like leveling was a chore.
This is not unlike PoE (where most of our new members are coming from). You start out with Split Arrow, Freezing Pulse, Summon Raging Spirit or some other level >10 gem and eventually progress to the good stuff that opens up around level 31-38.
While I understand wanting to rush to the end game, but as you eluded, many skills take gear or skill node modifications to really shine. So, even if you had access to every skill in the game from the very start, Iām not sure your opinion of them would change all that much.
So far (admittedly I am only part way trough story line, but with multiple characters) I didnāt find any skills too weakā¦ I didnāt look at the guides an tried to build the skill tree myself - yes some skill tree nodes i messed up and few times had to restart the whole tree, but in general, if you do not mess up ALL of your skills, you can recover the point withing 1-2 of gameplay while progressing a bit slower, but still progressing.
(i tried that in PoEā¦ failed miserably - my character couldnāt clear act 4)
I found some skills are better for my gameplay then others, but thatās a personal preference not skills fault.
Overall, as a casual player, I enjoy this game ā¦ the only time i felt i wanted better skills was before reaching level 3-4ā¦ so from my perspective the devs did an amazing job
I donāt want for them to unlock the every node for each skill at level 1. Its just weird for me how they set themselves up for disappointment when introducing new skills. Especially one you receive from ascendancy.
Imagine getting a questline where three supernatural beings gives a you a choice on which power you want to receive. You would expect the skill you get is amazing right? But it canāt even easily clear the next zone youāre suppose to be in. So you gotta use a placeholder skill first while it levels up.
I just want my skills that I get at level 25 be usable at level 25 zones.
Edit: without feeling like Iām downgrading from the current skill I am using
Maybe I am wrong but, I feel this is slightly linked to the way the skill xp works.
When you get a new skill, the later in the game, the bigger the xp gap between this skill and your already trained skills.
I do believe that plays a role, even putting aside the skills that require passives or items to shine or even be playable (which is fine and interesting to a point).
The fact that early skills are strong and sometimes stronger: rive, wandering spirits, swipe, lightning blast, ā¦ also makes high level skills feels bad sometimes.
You can clearly see the rogue skills being more balance for example in that aspect I believe, it has useful late skills and the early ones are not (all) trash.
Aura of decay is unplayable without key skill points (poison to armour shred) and almost always done the same. There clearly is a problem with that skill and while the rogue look clean and polished, aura of decay seems like an unfinished proof of concept.
Imasgine you just picked up a skill IRLā¦ lets say you picked a bow and tried to shoot it, ot picked up a throwing knife or a sword for te first timeā¦ how good are you going to be (even if you are amazing athlete )ā¦ this is level 1 characterā¦ once you unlock second skill slot it starts with more skill points - RL example: you are ok with a sword but you picked up a rapier ā¦ some moves are similar so you start up from a better place then someone who never used melee weaponā¦ for me THIS is immersionā¦ not a god gave you a skill and all the knowledge and reflexes needed to use at at master levelā¦ have you ever seen that IRL? Tell me about a skill that you on day 1 were able to use as a master, even if you are talented? Or any time you learned advanced skill BEFORE the basic skills comprising it?
My experience is that all skills are equally potent. Just because a skill is gated behind a mastery or a huge amount of passive points doesnāt mean it is ābetterā than a lvl 1 skill. You can build around Lightning Strike or Meteor and make viable endgame builds for both skills.
Forge Strike is a great skill. It has really huge buffs/debuffs, aoe, great ailment support for ignite and bleed.
So I get that some skills give the impression of being lackluster when first unlocked. If you do not know exactly how to build them you might end up experimenting in a way that doesnāt work out.
But from long time experience I can just say there are near to 0 useless skills in LE. Every skill can be key for a specific build.
Smite is a great mobility skill. It has a great attack speed buff that is important for melee ailment builds. I play Smite in most of my characters just for the left branch of the tree. The kill threshold of fissure is huge as it will deal the killing blow on bosses.
People stating that skills are useless just havenāt experienced all the different build possibilities and synergies, yet.
So please donāt let the first impression mislead you to false assumptions.
I defenitely get where you are coming from. I had similar impressions when I started. I learned that theres always a way to make something work in LE.
