Giving content creators early access to new seasons is hurting the game.
By the time launch day comes, top builds are tested, guides are live, and tier lists are everywhere. The game is already “solved”.
Last Epoch is an ARPG—discovery and theorycrafting are half the fun. But early access hands that experience to a few, leaving the rest of players following the meta instead of creating it.
I’m playing Erasing Strike VK myself. It’s strong—but knowing it was the best before I even logged in took away the thrill of discovery.
Let the whole community explore together.
Thanks for reading.
EDIT.
Seems like many don’t share my view based on the replies, and that’s fine I love the season anyway.
Only a fool would enter a new season without a powerful build. Unless you’ve got ten hours a day to grind … Most players would rather sacrifice a bit of fun than cripple themselves from the start.
The human brain is wired for efficiency—always hunting for the path of least resistance. If you didn’t know that, now you do.
Oh man… If I know there are already optimized builds out there—ones that guarantee a smoother, more efficient start—why would I deliberately gimp myself ?
It’s not as simple as “just play your way.” The problem isn’t that people follow guides—the problem is that these guides exist days before the season even begins. That alone shifts the entire playing field before anyone’s even logged in.
Only a fool would enter a new season without a powerful build. Unless you’ve got ten hours a day to grind … Most players would rather sacrifice a bit of fun than cripple themselves from the start.
That’s a weird statement… I’ve never looked at any build or guide precisely for the reason you mentioned. I block every single content creator for every single ARPG. I even have a special tool that blocks out all ‘build showcase’ tags on reddit. And I completely agree that at least half the fun is theorycrafting builds and looking at the wiki (or lastepochtools in this case).
Still I manage to get to endgame on every single character in every single ARPG, even on HC. And I only play for 1-2 hours a day, tops. Especially in Last Epoch, it’s very easy to respec, so there’s plenty of room to experiment and get a build that works.
If you’re not following these guides or builds, why are you responding to me?
Clearly, there are players who care and are upset that the season or league content is figured out in advance. So why do you support content creators having access to this information?
So you want to explore what builds are powerful & experience the joy of discovery, but you don’t want the risk of not having a powerful build so you watch streamers to find out what builds are powerful tather than “creating the meta” yourself. 'K.
You mean, when the patch notes come out because the community clamours for them so they can work out what builds are likely to be powerful?
You are contradicting yourself. You want to go into a season with a strong build (which would need to be tested) as it’s foolish otherwise, but you’re also upset that the builds are already figured out from CT and theorycrafting. Which is it? Also… There a many more builds that develop in a season, but creators like maxroll aren’t gonna post every possible build. There’s plenty of room for discovery.
So, Erasing Strike VK was very strong in the previous season aswell. This top build was already out there on the internet, documented and tested.
How is it any different from what you are complaining about?
Are we supposed to “forget” every build ever created in the past, because it might be good in the next season?
PS:
I’m pretty sure the human brain is wired for laziness. Spend the least amount of effort or time. That’s probably why you think you need to grind 10hrs/day to grind to play your own build. But you don’t
I am dying at this lmao, good replies everyone. The game is a lot better without someone yapping in your ear telling you what to do/what to think. It’s also great if that’s you’re cup of tea, but don’t be such a yum yucker. you’re going to have a lot more enjoyment in life if you work on opening your perspectives!
I have to disagree. A lot of the mainstream platforms are creating the meta. Whatever they post a large majority of the playerbase is following and replicating.
In most cases these platforms have a good understanding of the game and there is a high chance that this is also one of the better builds and very close ot the meta.
BUT
They are effectivley dicdate the meta for the most part. Because what they put out is very often the flavour of the week/month.
Hypothetically if they would release a subpar build, as long as its not atrocious, but still “good enough”, a large majority of the playerbase would still play it, because they simply don’t test anything themself and blindly following build guides.
This was especially more true this season because we had so much informations before the patch came already out.
There is still a lot to discover but I agree withh @Waiden that all the knowledge prior to the patch release dimished some partsabout the new patch.
I especially think that updates to databases like LEtools prior to the patch was a mistake.
Todays gaming landscape is crazy, people are so entilted to have all the knowledge right when a patch comes out (or even beforehand).
I understand the will to theoreycraft and plan ahead of time, especailly when the patch notes are out, but you don’t need to have these exact planners for that and especially not ALL THE NEW UNQIUES datamined already.
I don’t agree with the hyperbolic title, the season isn’t over, but I agree that with all of that there is less cool discovery.
Kinda, but not really?
If they release a subpar build that is just kinda decent and players are having a hard time going up from 300c and they see another guide that has a build that just cruises 500c on yellows, then they will switch. Not only that, but they will start to distrust whoever posted the first guide as well.
There are plenty of players that start playing what is supposed to be a meta starter build and wait for the real meta to emerge and then switch to it after a week.
This I agree with. The updates to LETools and the new build guides should only be posted once the servers go down to be able to start the new season.
They weren’t datamined, actually. Aaron did a full video on all the new uniques. So it was part of the hype week marketing.
There is no way a casual player who just starts with a random build from one of these sites knows how good or bad it is compared to some other potential meta, as long as they are in the same ballpark. Yet the sites with the biggest reach will dicdate what is the most popular build.
I should have put “datamined” in quotation marks…
I know it was part of the patch marketing.
I just think its dumb in a game that is all about the loot to spoil everything before hand.
Even BOTH of the Uber Aberroth Uniques got spoiled… teasing one of them half or one line of them might be cool until people discover, but revealing everything is just dumb IMO.
That’s not what he said though, he said “leaving the rest of players following the meta instead of creating it.” Which means that he thinks the meta is, or should be, created by normal players, except those normal players don’t understand the game mechanics well enough (as evidenced by threads on here) to create said meta.
That was not the premise though. You said they release a guide for a build that isn’t atrocious and say it’s a meta build. That is very different from being in the same ballpark.
Content creators and sites will dictate what is meta or not as long as their builds actually perform at the top.
I love the season anyway.