First off, I’d like to point out that I have 700 hours in the game, with 82 hours in version 1.1, Harbinger of Ruin. All of this was in SSF mode.
My experiences in 1.1:
Totem Shaman was underpowered.
Glacier Sorcerer was mediocre.
I wanted to switch to Frost Claw, but all my Uniques failed as Legendaries.
I don’t want create next character to be disappointment.
Fighting the Harbinger after the timeline bosses was annoying.
Aberroth was too hard for my character. I even think it was worse than Uber Lilith in D4 because the loot was gated behind it.
The fight is too cluttered, the Harbingers are generally too fast… It feels like PoE Bosses with Onslaught.
In 1.0, I played many more hours with three builds: Torment Warlock, Ballista Falconer, and Wraithlord Necromancer. All three were fun gigablasters.
I see two ways for me to return:
Buffs to Circle of Fortune (if Legendaries are required to play, make them easier to obtain).
Nerfs to bosses.
I know that many people like extra challenges, so maybe don’t make the game less fun, but instead reintroduce a Veteran mode for them?
That is because all 3 were severely unbalanced and OP. They still are. So if you want, you can play those again.
Static orb is currently the most unbalanced, so you might give that a try.
You don’t have to fight the harbingers if you don’t want to. You can opt out of the fights.
You can do them with a stronger build (and aberroth as well) and completely skip them with weaker ones.
I don’t think that will happen. Harbingers and Aberroth are supposed to be the hardest content available (outside of infinite scaling from corruption and arena).
Its same as: You don’t need to bother with playing the game anymore
The game content is designed to be played.
And right now its unfun!.
There are many indirect cause to it, but main is Harbingers are to mechanically demanding in general.
Not everything has to be the same level of easy as everything else. Mechanics have different difficulties and it’s a scale.
There are also many people that think that empowered monos are too hard and unfun. Should we nerf that as well?
Should we nerf everything until everything is only as hard as the campaign?
The point of having multiple mechanics with different difficulties is so people can choose what they prefer to play. Much like in PoE you can choose to skip almost all mechanics or dip into most. Much like in D4 you can choose to skip almost all mechanics as well and only focus on the ones you like.
That’s why arena exists. Some people enjoy it even though most don’t. Should we get rid of arena because it’s “unfun” for me and you?
So yes, if you feel like you have to be able to play all available content and have it be easy, maybe you don’t need to bother with playing the game anymore. Although you probably also won’t be playing any other ARPG because they all have the same issue.
So the solution is simple:
-make a build that can handle harbingers and aberroth
-skip harbingers and aberroth and play everything else
-stop playing
That would be completeley different if there was really good loot related to the Arena. Or is there?
Other than that I would say that no content is really optional as long as loot is tied to it.
That’s surprising, is it Storm Totem? From what I’ve seen it is pretty strong right now.
Avalanche Shaman is also a solid alternative.
I haven’t played Glacier or the OPOP Flavour of the League best build Static Orb/Frost Claw. But AFAIK Glacier is good enough for Aberroth and reasonably high corruption as TheCurse on youtube was able to do it.
Volcanic orb may be a good alternative as well. I have a Frostbite version that kills Aberroth pretty well though I haven’t pushed corruption.
You played overpowered builds, but all three of them got nerfed, and now with normal builds game is not fun anymore. That’s sad, I’m in the same situation. This cycle I enjoy one OP build, but every other build I tried (about 10) felt weak, slow and boring.
Exacly I can go back farm more for Static Orb items, but its not the way (also 82h is enought).
Difficulty for SSF went overboard. And I played LE over years for that SSF experience. Over time most build was working fine or excellent. Right now?
To many spike dmg in maps
Monster DOTA is broken
Harbingers after bosses are annoying (need refight boss and some are quite long fight, you can skip but U missing out conent and habringer eye for future even more annoying fight)
Abberoth feels like D4 Lilith back in days, but have story and loot gate behind it. Maybe good for example Wudijo or other streamer but for me is “some swear words here”. I played PoE (+9K hour) and Diablo (more than PoE) over year and I place it next to Uber Lilith. In PoE uber bosses are very easy to out gear and even for not geared enough character U have best defence ever “Six Portals”
You really think so? My experience is the exact opposite.
I started with Forge Guard (a forged weapon build) and got to ~250 corruption easily. With all the harbingers I was able to do at that point. Then not enough damage was a problem, survivability less so.
The nerfs to mobs in the maps (especially the DoT damage) was really noticeable. Also thank god for the embermage nerf, these freaking meteors stunned me almost all the time and now they are way easier to deal with.
I was lucky though and got gear for a warlock and started rolling with that. I’m also an SSF guy and don’t really play after guides, but the build ended up as a tormet warlock. It was already strong before the right gear (I guess you could call that a good league starter).
That gave me all the gear for my FG to shine. Of course none of them have BiS gear or are even close to it, but they both work well. My FG is still pushing corruption though.
Edit: Should probably add that my personal ultra-endgame goal is to be able to do 1000 corruption comfortably. I probably won’t reach that this season. My Warlock is at 800 currently and needs better gear to advance. My FG is still at 300 or something I think.
For the Harbinger fights itself I mostly like them. Their shared big attacks (like the big hammer slam and the “dodge this” spear throw) are well telegraphed. The only thing they could do to improve these fights is maybe to slow down some of the startup animation for the timeline specific moves (like the necrotic wave from the corpse dragon emporer harbinger). Besides that? Everything is fine in my eyes.
Aberroth itself I also find fun. I don’t understand the cluttering argument in the first few phases. The last phase though could maybe be adjusted. Depends on EHGs intentions. Sometimes I simply had no safe space to jump to after one of his big attacks (the beams and the huge slam) where I was safe. Mainly due to the beams comming from the middle of the arena. And I was always playing with an additional traversel skill and not evade only.
Sometimes I just jumped in the wrong direction cause I was panicking, sometimes I just couldn’t reach. In the 2nd case I had to stand in the DoT pools. And this very quickly killed me even with quite a bit of anti-damage over time gear (amulet and a certain % of armor applied to damage over time). This also happenes quite frequently and is my number 1 reason for death.
So either they want build to actually be able to tank those or they need to provide a bit more space so that you can actually reach the safe spots.
For me personally anything else in that fight is fine and fun.
I just recently fought the Searing Exarch in PoE and I found that fight very comparable in terms of difficulty (at least for me). For me personally his fireball dodge phase is just a little bit easier to do/survive (with the 6 portals though!) than Abberoth last phase.
Funny but Uber Exarch for me every rolling ball is -2-3 portal always is not instant killed at start or uber tanky build. Im very bad dodging. Also hate Maven memory with laster very high death ratio to that also. On T17 u fightning with RNG rolling map not bosses.
With my Glacial Sorc was blazing throught 300 corruption. Harbingers was many times stronger then boss it self sometime need refight 4-5time (so annoying when farming).
I had this problem at the start of the season as well. Then I got the pattern down and the fights got way easier.
I’m also not invested in PoE (the game becomes unplayable unfun for me at red maps because of visibility issues) so I’m not talking about the Uber versions. Just plain old regular Exarch. That fight (from a pure mechanics standpoint) I find comparable to Abberoth. No idea how that changes with the Uber version.
What I do agree with is that it is annoying to farm Harbingers when your build is only just able to do them (i.e. you have no rooms for mistakes because one misstep is death and the boss fight before that probably takes a while to do as well). I wouldn’t be opposed to add some kind of checkpoint after the first boss.
Maybe as part of the Forgotten Knight faction. A “the Forgotten Knight slightly changes time giving you 1 free death in the Harbinger fight”. Kinda like the Aurora (or what is it called?) amulet that gives you a second chance when you take a hit that would have killed you.
That maybe good direction. Also give more “portal” for uber bosses. U need have room to make mistate if u have limited try atempt. Was loved Last Epoch over last years patches, now? Hate how overtuned Harbingers are.
Yes, there’s specific uniques solely available from Arena.
And as for the last sentence… nope, actually not.
The game offers CoF for the SSF-style personal challenge and MG for a community based play-method.
If you don’t want to do every little thing then go MG, that’s what a market is for… to exchange the stuff you drop from the content you enjoy for the things you need dropped by the content you don’t enjoy.
It doesn’t limit the design space since the devs can provide a variety of content rather then being forced to provide everything in a similar manner.
Really?
That’s your argument? That PoE Uber-Bosses are easier to gear for?
Why do I think you’ve never done uber Fire Exarch or you wouldn’t even dare to mention this comparison?
Uber Lilith was too strong in D4 for which type of player the game is designed for.
PoE Bosses (not the normal ones, we’re actually talking about uber-bosses and freshly released bosses) are generally tough nuts to crack. Aberoth is… middling to hard… and the Harbingers are free kills the second you realize that you solely have to sustain 1 attack (the dash since it’s often too fast) and avoid the fire attack which is their biggest damage.
They’re free kills. (Outside of the Lagon one, that one is a mess)
Imagine 99,9% of builds being one-shot by a single balls, having a second boss on the side trying to kill you all the time and having to get through 50 Exarchs in life at once to finish the fight.
That’s Uber Exarch
That for example is a viable option, a re-try for Uber-Bosses could be a thing given that it allows EHG to design them more varied and hence allows for some mistakes at least during the fight.
Dunno if I’d go that far but they surely aren’t very hard. Personally I think they are fun to fight. I just hope they will add more models and animations somewhere down the line. Having only 2 models for all the Harbingers was a bit disappointing.
I doubt they will do that though. New animations especially cost hella lot of money and time.
Oh boy most of my builds are already one shot by the normal balls version. That does sound… challenging. Dunno if fun though. I doubt I will ever find out.
Yes. I have 21 40/40 in PoE. And yes ubers are manageable with few days of play. I will be honest with U with 1 portal Uber Exarch / Uber Maven (bah most of them) they would be total nightmare.
And yes, likely we won’t see new models for a while, it’s expensive but at least it doesn’t hinder the functionality of the game, which is a good thing.
So… you’ve got how many thousands of hours experience in the game plus build up muscle memory from how many years? Given you got 21 40/40… that means without taking into consideration the delayed leagues it’s 5 1/4 years of play time, which would mean if you started playing Last Epoch the moment it came into the Beta we could make a reliable comparison.
Don’t get me wrong… I’m a Standard player in PoE, for me content generally is limited by my potato of a PC which simply does go down to 1 FPS for some things… but the bosses aren’t a major issue for me unless I make a new character and play with that one and without accessing my own stash for personal challenge reasons.
As a beginner you’ll beat Aberroth in LE likely after some training against him… as a beginner in PoE you will most likely not beat Uber Exarch for a decent while, a very long decent while.
Oh absolutely. And those two we have are done well enough. I like them. and thanks to the timeline specific moves they also are not identical. Fair reuse of assets in my opinion.
You’re mostly right.
My frustration comes from the fact that the difficulty spike introduced by the Harbingers is quite significant, especially when combined with the unlucky item rolls in the Templar Sanctum.
Take something like Orian’s Eye, for one example. There’s a 1 in 386 chance of it dropping on Amulet roll, then a 1/3 chance of it rolling not bad, 1/6 for LP, and on top of that, a 1/4 chance for Mana slam.
Now add to this failed Wrongwarp, few Enigmas and Unstable Core and U are out mind.
Before, you did it for fun only. Now? It feels like you need it just to make so you have edge over Harbingers.
I dont like idea playing MG, if i wanted play Trade then I just play PoE.
Yes, and that brings us back to how loot is handled in LE, funny how it’s always coming down to that.
Obviously it becomes frustrating to progress towards content when the itemization doesn’t allow you to do so in a fluid way. Not even short-term or long-term… just… fluidly.
Having to roll the lottery on 386 drops with a 1/3 chance (1158 amulet drops) with a 1/6 LP chance (6948 amulet drops) with a 1/4 slam chance leading to a whooping 27792 amulet drops total to achieve it… yeah, obviously that feels like garbage, I can only agree.
It’s not as terrible in CoF with a +10 amulet per prophecy.
Still, a 1 in 386 chance is like a lottery. There’s a 1/3 chance for 1 LP on CoF and Egg of the Forgotten, which is close to 1/2 in total. The star of the show is Legendary slamming, with a 1/4 chance. The combined probability is 1/386 x 1/2 x 1/4, which equals 1/3088, or roughly 300 prophecies on average.
So going back to root of problem and some solution:
Buffs to Circle of Fortune (If Legendaries are required to progress, make them easier to obtain)
Allow the Eternity Cache to be reusable once is “failed” (2nd reroll attempt on same item combo) at certain levels of the CoF.
Even better, let players choose one affix to be guaranteed for transfer at the final level of the CoF.
The 150% increase in boss drops helped significantly, but the 2x experimental drop rate is still too low.
“Nerfs” to Bosses:
Reduce the speed of the fastest attacks or significantly lower their damage.
Introduce checkpoint at boss phases.
Implement a multi-attempt system similar to what exists in PoE (6 portal).
is not instant killed at start or uber tanky build. Im very bad dodging. Also hate Maven memory with laster very high death ratio to that also. On T17 u fightning with RNG rolling map not bosses.