Normally in ARPGs I gravitate toward the big flashy skills with lots of AOE and eye candy. I like relaxed farming with one or two simple skills that don’t require too much thought so I can watch movies on my second screen, that’s what ARPGs are all about for me.
For my first playthrough I went with an elemental nova sorcerer with a lot of increased range from passives and idols, this was a lot of fun as I could reach half the screen by end game. I’d like to try another class now but I haven’t really found any skill that appeals to me.
I was enjoying primalist for a while using ice thorns as they were homing and freeze everything which was cool, but the damage was starting to become an issue and then I noticed the tooltip said they can’t hit the same target twice so I abandoned that build. I may go back and try something with totems instead but they seemed pretty limited to what you could do with them.
There’s enough builds like what I’m looking for in path of exile that I could play one a week for several years but I’m really struggling to find anything I enjoy here. There’s far too many skills like swipe, fury leap, tempest strike, etc. which are basically just default weapon attacks with a slightly better animation and some gimmick.
I really want to feel powerful, slaughtering packs of monsters with fire and lightning raining down all over the battlefield but I’m just not really feeling it at the moment. This game seems to be focusing on slower, more tactical gameplay so maybe it’s just not for me.
It’s about the feel of skill or do you want clear whole screen of monster with one click? Not arguing what is better, just want to know perspective you are coming from.
I think the two are linked. In order for a skill to feel powerful it has to be able to kill a lot of monsters in a visually impressive way. I’m not suggesting there should be skills that can clear the whole screen though as there needs to be some challenge to keep it interesting.
I think there are two types of ARPG player, there’s the people who enjoy the competitive side of it such as hardcore, pushing leaderboards, and PVP. This group is all about the challenge and sees farming as a means to an end.
Then there’s people like myself that enjoy the grind and the farming itself. I find slaughtering screens full of monsters with ease to be cathartic, it’s what I do to relax after a stressful day at work. If I have to put a lot of effort into maintaining buffs and debuffs, timing things, etc. then it starts to take up a lot of mental energy, which as a programmer is something in short supply at the end of my working day.
I guess what I’m getting at is that currently the game appears to be more aimed towards the first group, which is fine, but it would be good if there were a few more skills like elemental nova which are less technical and more AOE.
I must admit that the more the game has advanced and been patched, the less powerful and fun some of the skills have become. When playing some of the earlier versions is felt like you could do some crazy and powerful builds that really gave me the buzz I crave from these games.
It is now starting to feel slower and most of the powerful skills have a drawback that you have to find a way to work around. I hope the devs can find a balance in the long run but lately it feels like the skills need more power with less of a drawback to make them more fun to use.
I will be honest, I really want slower paced ARPG - but you can have impactful skills, kill many enemies without absurdity what PoE has. I know Vermintide 2 is not isometric ARPG, but it’s good example that there is place for slower type of encounters and plowing through hordes of enemies and it can co-exists inside one game.
I feel that LE skills definitely lack some impact - feel wise but clear speed is about right in my opinion.
The best approach for this issue in isometric ARPGs has Diablo 3 (I believe). They designed group of monsters specifically to be slaughtered in huge numbers by one click, but they are also mixing monsters with more durable special types of monsters, which you have to, sometimes, pay attention to.
I want see some improvements in feel of skills and there are some things they could do - especially sound design and camera work but I hope we wont ever get to the point where PoE is in clear speed.
The more you progress during story mode the harder the enemies get. It feels like they out level the player. Having challenging content is ok. But some of the mobs in act 8 have much hp and take forever to kill. Instead if feeling more and more powerful it is getting harder for the player.
If you don’t have some cool items stored or a good amount of shards you can craft with (and you know what you are doing) you struggle a bit with content.
I actually like the absurdity of PoE but I agree that it wouldn’t really fit here. I don’t have a problem with the clear speed as it is, I played PoE quite slowly compared to most people but there’s still something about the skills that makes them feel really powerful.
I like the Diablo 3 approach, I actually have 6000 hours on that game for exactly the reasons you said. I’d love to see that style of gameplay in Last Epoch.
I believe the current state of the game isn’t a good time to see if it should be more fast pace/mobs splosion galor.
There is still a lot of skills and items to be integrated. Buffing the skills, before the whole game is “feature complet” would be a mistake.
I’m not saying it will change a lot in the end, but I think you are focusing on “feeling powerful” a bit too soon for the sake of your own enjoyment.
This is not meant to be a complaint, I think. It’s feedback on the current progression curve.
You are right, there are skilltrees and new skills to come. But on the other side there are some people that are of the opinion that story playthrough is way to easy.
Now I think is the most important time to speak about these things than after release. The current skills and how they change and balance them will say a lot about how the developers want their game to be played.
I feel like many of the skills are support skills with 1 main damaging skill maybe 2 depending on build. The support skills to me feel week and a pain to maintain with having to constantly cast, or giving buff for 4 second (the recently keyword). Spamming useless skills just to buff one skill is tedious to maintain and doesn’t feel rewarding or like i’m using an awesome skill to help me. examples, lunge, shield throw buffing hammer throw. Transplant buffing minion damage. eterra’s blessing to buff yourself and your companion.
This is really just a matter of expectations. If the cathartic person who just wants to clear some monsters and stuff expects to get the same ‘in-game’ benefits of gold/gear/xp that the competitive/hardcore pushers (it’s a drug man, I tell you it’s drugs!!! ;)) then I’ve never seen that happen in any aRPG. As it is, you can easily run MoF in the low-teens and below, clearing trash and getting that feeling of laid back slaughter. But if you want the gear and the xp to reach that level 100 then either you start pushing or you’re going to be farming for a very, very long time.
Nothing wrong with either way but I think us casual/laid back players have to also keep things in perspective.
I didn’t find this at all. I felt I was an absolute murder machine from the beginning of the campaign till the end. And I’ve felt that with each of the 4 chars that I’ve finished it with to date (in order this was: Cold-based Mage, Beastmaster, Skeleton mob Necromancer and Fire-based Mage). Never really came close to death with any of those in the campaign. Died plenty in Arenas since then though. About to hit last few maps with my 5th character, a Paladin. He has died once in campaign because I was looking at his passives and a few enemies slipped on.
OP if you want to mass nuke in 2 buttons I suggest a Fire Mage. Of the 5 chars I’ve played, he was the strongest and most OP by far. In the campaign anyways.
I’ve found the complete opposite. Right from the start of the game (levels 1-20) I’m chugging potions constantly and it takes loads of hits even to kill trash mobs, I have to keep running away from then so I don’t get overwhelmed. I’m very experienced with ARPGs and this one stands out as being exceptionally difficult at the start.
I’ve noticed a lot of discussion around the steam forums, reddit, etc. where people are saying it’s too easy while others are saying it’s too hard. The last time I saw this was in bloodborne and it turned out there was a bug that made the whole game much easier for some people but not others.
What’s your build? 'Cause acts 1-6 really aren’t difficult (certainly not compared to 8 & to a lesser extent 7), though if your build was more focussed on clear, I could imagine bosses/single target might be harder.
I am all for more meaningful encounters, you may call it tactical play, mixed up with trash mobs. Right now I am in my 40ish levels and I think the kill rate is okay, but I really miss meaningful encounters. I cannot recall any boss or rare encounter that was challenging and that is a flaw in gameplay.
I feel the same way. There should be tough enemies that require some tactical play to avoid their attacks mixed with hoards of trash mobs that you can slaughter with ease. You will still have to manage your manna etc. so as not to become overwhelmed by the hoards. This would give a nice combination of both feeling powerful and having some meaningful encounters with tougher monsters. I think this is something Diablo 3 did a really good job of, although they did get a bit carried away with the ground effects.
I like feeling awesome too and blowing tons of stuff up with AoE etc. - but I also enjoy the challenge of making tweaks and changes for increasingly challenging content. If it gets too easy it can become a bore at some point. Obviously it’s very difficult to balance a game of this type with so many variations and playstyles.
I’m on my 6th build now with this patch, and I’m finding a common theme. Most every build starts out really strong and I can tear through stuff but at some point (different depending on the build) it starts to turn the other way around. You have to adjust your defenses to compensate, and generally that means sacrificing your dps. This is really no different than PoE, it’s just that there are more established builds you can turn to in PoE. If you go with some of the build guides posted in these forums, I think you’ll see there are similar, very powerful builds to try out. I’ve noticed when I try my own thing and just experiment, which I love to do, the build generally runs out of steam for some reason or another. The builds I followed someone else’s have been more powerful, so it’s kind of a tradeoff. The guys here have done the “work” to figure out the best combos of skills/masteries/passives/gear - again, this is not different than PoE, just that we are at a much earlier stage in the game development.
I haven’t posted here in a while as im just not into LE at all anymore, I play for about 10 minutes and just logoff and haven’t played in over a month, mainly due PoE league etc
Last Epoch has had mainly nerfs since I started, There was a cool interaction with Bleeding Heart unique and Fireshield - EHG nerfed that completely.
They also completely nerfed my Warpath Holy fire Paladin for absolutely no reason at all when it wasn’t even strong - I would trigger Holy Fire a skill within Holy Aura. they changed it from 6 hits to proc to 9? or something and nerfed Warpath so you cant even sustain it while doing 0 damage. The build is horrendous now and complete shit
Theres also other nerfs which weren’t really justified as they weren’t that strong anyway
Also the mana in this game is so restrictive its just outright boring. Although I was hyped when I first got this game, I don’t even care at all anymore as I just cannot be bothered with a game with so many restrictions and bad performance and still no controller support OR loot filters
