Not sure if this is the right place to post this, but it seems the most appropriate.
Basically, from what I’ve seen, reflection damage builds aren’t really feasible in LE right now. Last post I’ve seen about a build like this was a year ago and it seems it wasn’t great.
I really like reflection builds and it’s rare that any ARPG has it. The most fun I’ve had in Grim Dawn was with one, but I don’t think there’s been any other ARPG that had a viable one. Closest you can get are builds like Righteous Fire in PoE, though that’s not the same thing.
Are there any plans on enabling this playstyle in LE at some point? And if not, might I suggest that there be?
It just needs to be endgame viable, nothing too broken, but I’ve always found that playstyle fun (why are you hitting yourself? ), though I don’t know if sufficient players would agree with me.
I can uderstand that, but as long as you have minions, people will find ways to create lazy builds. I’ve already seen at least 3 I want to try. Retaliation is just a different kind of lazy build. Passive gameplay doesn’t mean it can’t be still be fun for many people. It’s a matter of taste and that’s why you have diverse build gameplay.
For example, I have personally disliked melee builds ever since D1. Maybe because I’m a coward
Those builds seem really interesting. Now that I ran the search again I can see why I didn’t find the immovable object one. I didn’t really know lastepochtools had builds, so I just dismissed it. And no other result was relevant to what I was looking for.
Those are still not quite like a “normal” relatiation build. The point of retaliation builds is that you’re a walking fortress and you’re just running around without a care in the world, just keeping your buffs up, while everything around you kills themselves. The runemaster seems closer, though.
Then again, as I mentioned in the OP, other than Grim Dawn, I don’t think I’ve played an ARPG that allowed a true retaliation build, so that’s the only standard I have to go with. In which case, if LE does them different, that’s good. We don’t want a simple copy of what already exists
I’ll try them out and I’ll look some more into lastepochtools for builds. Thanks for your replies.
But even most minion builds are way better when you integrate some active things into it or the minions themselves have some active abilities.
So while there is always the opportunity for passive builds within that EHG tries to really encourage active playstyles over passives playstyles.
It is totally fine if you wanna do such a more passive build, but it should totally come with some “cost” (for example being less powerful).
Even GD intergrated ways to encourage mroe active palystyles with skills that scale with retaliation damage. So the builds have some active component and can deal with enemies that don’t attack or attack very infrequently.
I honestly don’t think you’re going to find that in LE. The devs really work to try to keep an active playstyle. Even pets in LE are far more “interactive aware” than most other aRPGs I’ve played.
Other thing that occured to me, speaking of Pets, Primalist has some Thorn/Retaliate basis as well as several of the pets do wolves, bear and serpent, I think? Maybe you could do something that was sort of a combination of pets and retaliate.
It’s ok. I think there is enough build diversity as is and there seems to be some basis for some form of retaliation builds already in place. The immovable object build even claims 1k+ corruption possible, so it seems strong.
Sure, most were, but there was at least one really strong AFK build, which is the one I tried out. That one, you just went up to the boss and then you could just switch to doing something else. It took longer than active skills, obviously (I think it was like 30-40mins to kill a boos that would usually require 5-15mins), but it was possible.
I’m not saying I want that build in LE and I can understand why EHG wouldn’t want that. But having an AFK build isn’t necessarily bad as long as you realize that it will be much slower. Retaliation is just one type of AFK build that can exist. Also, in the midst of hundreds of existing builds, it will just add a little more to the diversity.
Attunement stacking primalist can hit 30k+ reflect damage, this is enough to kill most enemies in a few reflects even on higher difficulties.
The problem because there is some enemy types that simply never hit you. Because thorns requires you to actually be hit, bosses take actually an eternity, and some bosses use lots of “damage over times” that dont look or feel like dots, but are. And those never reflect thorns.
Hell there is quite a few normal enemies that spam DoT attacks that dont hit you.
As soon as they create a system to allow thorns to proc based on either a threshold of damage taken, or per 1 second of DoT damage caused or what have you, Thorns will be a viable, although slow playstyle.
But currently it is held back entirely by the sheer amount of DoT attacks the game throws at you.
Don’t forget the Spriggan form Primalist, they can get a lot of flat reflect damage from stacking Thorn Shield then multiply that by their Attunement with the unique shield.
Fortunately Thorn Shield also has a spell damage AoE, though if you’re using the wand that gives you a chance for a double cast of Thorn Shield, the flat damage would be low.
And IMO, every build achetype needs a counter or mob/situation it struggles with.
There’s a fair number of items that give something along the lines of %%-%% damage reflected.
Based on the fact that there is a shrine that gives 300% damage reflected does this mean these items % can stack. So for instance, if I carry a Dragonflame Edict (20%-50% damage reflected) and wear a Valdyr’s Chalice (100%) damage reflected, does this mean I’ll have between 120%-150% damage reflected?
Yes, though the % is after damage mitigation so if it’s a big number you’re taking a kicking. Though relfected damage does ignore all mitigation the mob has.
I figured this and would be the fun (tricky) part to get to work. How to let enough damage through that you can recover fast, not get one shot and still whittle down the enemy health.
It’s too bad it isn’t the other way around. With the scale of the one-shot mechanics in the game, you still wouldn’t be hitting the enemy that much given the player character comparison of health/ward/whatever to the total health pools of many bosses.
Just a follow up, I tried both builds. The runemaster one didn’t impress me much. Feels more like a walking simulator than a retaliation build (which is fine as well, I like those too).
But now I’m trying the forge guard one and I’m having a lot of fun. It’s really slow at times, though being able to finish spire echoes without moving is funny.
I’m not sure the game is fully prepared for it, though. I just had a Lagon fight and a weird thing happened: it was very slow, as expected, since Lagon is the one that deals a lot of damage but we have to damage the tentacles. However, it was going there (really slow). It teleported me to the bottom when the tentacles were still at about 2/3 health. When it returned to the top, after a long time, Lagon died, although the tentacles were still there at 1/3 health, still attacking and everything while I was choosing the blessing. Good thing I’m tanky
Even if it did, it wouldn’t be any use for that fight, from what I understand. Lagon himself can’t be damaged, only the tentacles can. That means that the reflect damage I make is only from the tentacles sweep attack, which is quite low damage. Lagon makes lots of big damage attacks, but those are useless for reflection.
Anyway, my issue wasn’t with how long it took. I’m still undergeared and underleveled, so that’s expected. My issue was mostly with how weirdly it went with the tentacle health and Lagon dying and still leaving the tentacles alive behind him.
), though I don’t know if sufficient players would agree with me.
