Poorly Telegraphed High Damage Abilities

[Sarno]

When playing ARPGs we’ve all had the experience of something that’s either hard to see - or, worse, a projectile created by an offscreen enemy - and your character consequently dying abruptly to damage you could not reasonably anticipate and plan around.

The purpose of this thread is to help us get concentrated feedback regarding the source of this frustration, so that we can review the damage and range of particular abilities.

In order for this to work, it is vital that posts in this thread are informative and kept on-topic. While all feedback has merit, I may move some posts to other threads if I believe that doing so would help maintain a focused and informative conversation in this one.

Please try to include the following information;

• The name of the enemy
• A description of the ability
• Your current location
• Anything else you consider pertinent

Thank you in advance! We genuinely appreciate your help in making Last Epoch the best it can be. I can’t promise a prompt response to every post, but we will be periodically reviewing posts in this thread and making adjustments where needed.

[GeoGalvanic]

Nice, I look forward to posting lots of clips in this thread Might be worth posting this in Social Media.

To start off with I suppose I’ll bring up Soul Spear (mostly skeletons, mostly imperial era/arena).

It has a general propensity to be initiated from off screen, the animation is pretty subtle (for me) and is super quality damage.

I feel the damage is fine, but the animation could be more obvious and range decreased.

[Aishi]

[deleted]

[Angry_Roleplayer]

Ohh i’ve got a lot to add:

1. Death Screech by Aviline Chimera or any Chimera
2. Glacier/Avalanche/Meteor from Highland Bear (not sure which of these are still there)
3. Abyssal Sundering by Void Maul (multiple deaths)
4. Fire Circle by Smoldering Lithrac
5. Void Explosion from Voidform
6. Ice Barrage by Ice TOuched Archivist
7. Void Explosion by Voidfused Armour
8. Melee Attack by Ahuizotl
9. Fireball by Void Touched Scholar
10. Lightning Blast by Hiveless Phrax
11. Death Bolt from Oculus Mortis (i believe these can AOE machinegun if cast in a group of monsters)
12. Soul Spear by Imperial Hoplite
13. Void Explosion by Voidfused Earth (very nasty, always stuns, overlapping AOE stacking)
14. Fireball by Osprix Warrior

UNAVOIDABLE DAMAGE and 100% death to non-leech character

1. Void Arrows by Void Prophets. Died 3 times
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-31pbcs0ipw
2. Oculus Mortis and the big “cow” guys are super annoying for such builds since you can’t literally do anything against homing missiles.

[GeoGalvanic]

@Angry_Roleplayer

Death Screech by Aviline Chimera or any Chimera

My issue with the chimaeras is not their damage or animation, but that the chimaeras themselves do not look menacing or dangerous. I also can’t see a difference between their peck attack and screech attack animations.

@Aishi

personally have not been been afraid of soul spear after familiarizing myself of the green swirling FX associated with the skill

I don’t know if a very low graphics thing or just my eyesight, but I see very few vfx from mobs, all I generally see is their physical animation, which is pretty slight in the case of the hoplite.

@Aishi

removal of void mauls from arena made it relatively less interesting

I’m agreed on void mauls being important. They’re one of the few mobs that have decent “Chase”.[quote=“Angry_Roleplayer, post:5, topic:15075”]
UNAVOIDABLE DAMAGE and 100% death to non-leech character

1. Void Arrows by Void Prophets. Died 3 times
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-31pbcs0ipw
2. Oculus Mortis and the big “cow” guys are super annoying for such builds since you can’t literally do anything against homing missiles.
   [/quote]

These can be avoided by running towards the mobs. They’re also important as sustained damage sources. Without threatening sustained damage we will only die to spike damage, which I find far more frustrating.

[Aishi]

[deleted]

[JustLoveHnS]

With my low level experience I can’t say that I have any problems with recognizing damage and its source. But there IS a problem with an ability to REACT on it. This became especially noticeable when I started to play with pure range damage dealer. Yeah, glass cannon, but still.

On my opinion main problems are …

• enemies often have their attack range equal to screen size or even exceed it!
• enemies attack from their maximum range, which means (with previous statement) that they ABLE to attack before I even detect them!
• and yes: unavoidable damage. There’s a lot of it. A LOT.

Just watch my example: Sentinel, pure hammer thrower. No pets to cover, no leech to recover. Maximized range. Yet still I’m unable to use this advantage. Most projectiles are homing. When I’m detected they fly just from everywhere. And look at Void Pillars - 50% chance to see their void blobs flying from outside the screen.

I think we need to limit our range and enemies’ range to something less than a screen. At least.

[Bankaikiller]

So the biggest enemy issues I notice. Soul cages, and immortal eyes. immortal eyes are the worst though, they launch 100 necrotic homing bombs at you from miles away, this has been a very frustrating problem on a lot of builds I play with, please Nerf those fuckers

[Quilliam]

90% of the times I die in Arena it’s because I get literally 1-shot from full HP by a Soul Spear from a Hoplite that’s outside of my screen, especially hard to react when its coming from below as the screen is shorter below and above and the hotbar takes up space as well.

Maybe reduce cast range to at least the most powerful mob abilities in the game?

I’m pretty sure that when you’re standing on “high ground” some of the spells visually travel under the map making them invisible, like the outer rim of the arena where there is an uphill ring around the entire map (hard to put into words with my english abilities sorry). I’m still relatively new so I haven’t noticed which spells yet, but I’m pretty sure I take hits when there is visually nothing on the screen traveling towards me, a hotfix would be to make the Arena flatter at least as it is the most important area in the entire game it should also be the least buggy imo. Most ranged player abilities also interact weirdly with terrain and the Arena should be predictable.

There’s also a spell I think should be removed from low levels at least, or make it shorter ranged so you can kite it easier. I can’t remember the name exactly but it is a black and red beam a mob locks onto you (under the mobs name it says “retaliates with xxxx”) which is almost impossible not to die to when doing certain builds, if a tanky mob starts casting this on you there’s 0% chance you’re gonna kill it before it kills you, even if you start with full HP, full Mana and full on pots. Even tho I love this game to death I do firmly believe that ARPGs should be more skill based (i.e you should be able to dodge pretty much all ranged damage), this is like a gear-check ability that belongs in a MMORPG or something. Same kinda goes for the affix some mobs has “regenerates life” (the “regenerates life after not being hit for a while” affix is fine). Gear-check abilities do not belong in an ARPG (just my opinion )

TL;DR: Make Arena more predictable and bug-free (should be #1 priority in the entire creation of the game as it is 90% of the game in the long run), and remove gear-check abilities to make Arena and Hardcore mode more enjoyable.

Sorry if my reply is semi off-topic and poorly informed as I’m a bit new but I do firmly believe the Arena and its game-play is the most important long-run aspect of this game and thank you if you read it =)

[Sarno]

@Quilliam

thank you if you read it =)

[Sirris]

On the last monolith run I did the Monument of Ruin’s highly telegraphed smash attack FOLLOWED ME…as in auto targeted me and changed directions to track me. The mods were haste and frenzy on the monolith. Which don’t cause this as far as I know. As I dodged back in random directions i was hit 4 times killing me…pretty ridiculous.

[Sirris]

Don’t stand far away. Circle at semi close range. You will barely be hit:)

[magaiti]

Warpath Forge Guard
Wave 109
1162 hp
100% Glancing Blow Chance

Maybe that big guy did have enough damage to one-shot me,
but the death screen says “slain by a Devouring Void from a Void Maggot”
So I’m not sure if this is something poorly telegraphed or just a misleading coincidence.

Last damage I can see is 147 from the guy’s slap and then 1068 out of nowhere.
The maggot thing was waving rather inconspicuously.

remade the highlight, because previous one had problems (unvoluntary skipping to the end)

[Macknum]

The lil ones exploded as it seems. At least thats the only thing I see there ^^.

[magaiti]

I’ve analyzed the recorded video frame by frame. It was a single big red damage number (1068) that killed me from a nearly-full health. Lil maggots should have popped a bunch of small numbers, afaiu.

[Macknum]

Maybe they add dmg from the same ressources up? Or the explosion of the lil ones debuffed you somehow so you get killed by the troll? I have realy no idea, all I saw after rewatching it several times was you get killed after the lil ones exploded.

[tO_Ot]

I’m very new to the game, not sure if 19% lightning resistance was too low, but early game wasn’t easy to stack resistances.

Hardcore masochist. 19% lightning resistance.
Got one-shot from The Husk, can’t avoid it fast enough.

Edit: It was 38% (163) lightning protection, as the Fire shield is still up before my char dies.

[ReimerhArts]

Hehe yea, 19% lightning resistance is already not a whole lot, but if you’re also playing on HC Masochist, then you take more damage on top of that.