Sometimes it’s funny to be killed by abilitys you don’t even see. A Birdman (whatever it’s called9 killed me with his orb spell. There was no Orb on the screen and I just randomly dropped over. I know why I don’t play HC chars anymore in ARPG’s ^^.
As someone who eventually would like to play support/healer builds in multiplayer, I absolutely agree.
If my teammates have insane sustain unless they have somehow managed to ignore all available sources of it, then what is the point of my heals? If I can heal someone for 400 health on a 2 second cooldown, but they have fully healed in this span of time just from leech or on-hit, what is my purpose?
2 Likes
I sit here and asked myself if there was a ARPG where you needed a healer ever. If you need a support to play an ARPG something feels pretty bad in my oppinion because this would make solo play a hell of a time. On top of that the ARPG meta since D1 is rather tanky so you just can take a certain beating to make your life easier.
Arpg’s are about numbers. Enough resis and HP to not get oneshot and a descent amount of HP regain in any form to minimize downtime. I realy can’t see a arpg made with a holy trinity in mind outside of certain game modes maybe.
1 Like
If such an ARPG has never been made yet… all the better?
That’d make Final Epoch unique and set it apart from the rest. Personally, I am very much a fan of deep build customization, crafting, the isometric pov in general, the basics of combat systems… pretty much everything that makes an ARPG what it is.
Everything besides it being mindless in its hack&slash philosophy. Huge damage spikes and insane sustain greatly hurt build diversity, while, from my point of view, providing no actual benefit to the gameplay, quite to the contrary - they take away the need for any active player engagement - you could spend hours planning your build, but once its up and working, you just mash buttons in a set order and hope not to get oneshot.
Maybe most arpgs are indeed purely about numbers. But maybe they shouldn’t be 
3 Likes
ARPG fans are not the same as MMORPG fans. And the healer class is strictly the domain of MMORPGs. Characters build for supporting can exist - auras, crowd control, tanking while someone else is doing the damage from behind, etc. But if you need a healer to go through certain encounters the game becomes less desirable for the ARPG people.
PoE did it well I think. Supports there contribute towards clear speed but all of the content can be beaten by a single person no problem.
1 Like
Can’t say I agree.
Again, why would ever-present one-shot burst and everyone having sustain that can regen their entire health pool in under a second be something desirable, no matter the genre?
The point of making sustain much weaker is not to make soloing content impossible, or even harder. The point of doing that is, it currently interferes with combat philosophy in a very, very negative way, from the smallest pack of whites to the biggest bad boss.
If sustain were nerfed, then one shots wouldn’t need to be a thing nearly as often anymore, and so players would similarly not need to always spec so much into defenses, making a lot more options for builds viable. At the same time, speccing into pure defense would not be even stronger, because you’d now die to incremental damage which would be able to eventually overpower your health recovery/leech even without it being 100-0 damage.
That change would give a lot of abilities purpose, which they currently don’t have. And many of those abilities are already in the game.
Current state of affairs : Healing on a separate, non-passively triggered, active ability? No point because you’re either 100% or dead. Potions? Same thing, unless you modify them into something else than pure health recovery medicine.
Poe doesn’t really have “supports”. Poe has aurabots and cursebots. People who spec entirely into auras and do nothing but follow the person who deals the damage, buffing them and debuffing enemies. That is a very flawed implementation of a support role, imho.
3 Likes
That doesn’t make sense. High damage from monsters means 2 types of builds are possible - defensive ones and glass cannons. If damage could not reliably kill you in short amounts of time only glass cannons would exist. This does not promote build diversity.
For your idea to work player damage should also be reduced because the game would become easier with less damage from monsters. Would other players agree to this?
But you are right about PoE, not the best example. Diablo 3 did it better with thier zDPS
1 Like
Before I deleted my post here was a rant about Earthquakedudes throwing Oneshotmechanics straight into you´re path! Mb EHG-Karv can dodge them but I can´t considering my age. Izaro is a Worldchampion of winding up compared to these guys. Furthermore I don´t think that there should be Oneshots at wave lower 60, if you´re fully specced into defense. If the Damage is kept plz make it that the Stones are thrown where u stand, so that you get punished for standing still. Atm the best method to fight them is being close to them, what only works if they are the only enemies!
They may feel bad but they are needed. Suppose there is not enough damage to kill you fast enough. Then making a defensive build or investing in defenses past certain point becomes obsolete. Lets get back to the MMO example - if the bosses or whatever the players are raiding could not kill the DPS fast enough the entire tank class becomes obsolete. Same here because the whole point of an ARPG is to find loot and the best builds to find loot are the fast ones with a ton of damage.
So no, this magical balance where one shots are not a thing but at the same time every build is viable is something of a fairy tale. At least I haven’t seen it done properly. The game always becomes too easy.
That´s exactly why Crunbum is Right! They just feel bad, and a game shouldn´t go for things that feel bad!
€: Deleted my last post! Will rewrite!
Well, I guess it depends on where the developers see their game on the casual <-> hardcore spectrum.
Or Softcroe <----> Hardcore! 
You can choose which mode you want to play. You cant really switch the game difficulty though.
First of we´re talking about bad game difficulty. Second of I don´t choose, I eather play hardcore or don´t play (3.9 anybody) if the game doesn´t fit my needs! Third, a casual gives a fuck about being Oneshot. Random Oneshots are game design for casuals!
€: I´m sorry, every 2nd word is put in Capitals!
Unfortunately it is next to impossible to determine what game difficulty is “bad game difficulty”. Because there are so many people with different gear, different skill trees and different player skills determining a golden standard for one shots is…too much work I think.
This is the definition of a choice. You either do something or you don’t.
Not necessarily.
You said that if there is not enough damage to kill you fast enough then investing in survivability past a certain point becomes pointless. That too low damage means tanks aren’t needed and everyone can safely run glass cannons then.
That is not the case - once again, a big part of survivability is sustain. Nerf that to the ground, and even a medium nerf to damage, such that it won’t oneshot anymore except in very specific and warranted circumstances, becomes something that does not really lower difficulty.
I’ll break it down in one, very simplified example -
Current situation :
Player A: Has 1000 EHP, against whatever this particular enemy has to throw at him, and also has 2000 EHP worth of leech per second.
Monster A : Can deal 950 Damage with a single ability. Cooldown 3s.
Monster B : Can deal 1050 Damage with a single ability (110% of creature A). Cooldown 3s.
Outcome : Player is effectively unkillable to A and dies instantly to B. The fight is effectively a binary stat check - do I have enough to survive any singular hit I receive? If yes then the encounter poses zero threat, if no - it can be close to unwinnable depending on build.
The (imho) more desirable situation :
Player A: Has 1000 EHP, against whatever this particular enemy has to throw at him, and also has 250 EHP worth of leech per second, due to it being nerfed with a heavy-hand of health recovery from all sources (potions, regen, leech etc) being soft-capped with diminishing returns past a certain point (for example, 20% of max hp/second), and all such health recovery outside of dedicated healing abilities changed from instant to over-time.
Monster A : Can deal 600 Damage with a single ability. Cooldown 3s.
Monster B : Can deal 660 Damage with a single ability (110% of creature A). Cooldown 3s.
Outcome : Over any given period of 3s, the player will at worst take 1200 damage from monster A, while recovering 750 life without healing abilities, extra recovery from potions or outside help. Effectively, they are losing 150hp/s and will likely die after around 6s of tanking such damage, or potentially much, much quicker if multiple creatures gang up on them.
Which is, sadly, almost a non-factor with insane sustain because there is little window for multiple attacks to happen between being at 10% health and back at 100%.
Furthermore, Monster B with their 10% more damage than A only poses a slightly higher degree of danger in this scenario, rather than going from nigh-complete safety to lethal danger on the scale.
This, in a nutshell, is what I am trying to advocate. Now, obviously the numbers are just made up for the sake of illustrating the point - but what I’m saying is that a huge nerf to achievable sustain, and a moderate one to (most) monster damage, would result in a more intutive combat progression, and far less “stat-check” based one, making room for actual tactics and thinking.
This could, of course, trivialize content, but that wouldn’t necessarily have to be the case. For example, one option for endgame content that could go a long way in such a situation, is if creatures within a given instance (lets hijack the term “time rift”, for that), grew stronger (increased damage dealt) with each minute that passes while within that endgame instance.
Effectively, you would be on a clock to kill them fast - otherwise there would come a point where you would be very likely facing oneshots.
Does that incentivize you to go glass-cannon? Sure, but then you could get one shot even without the bonus damage. Whereas tanky characters could take longer and still be able to persist and complete the area, but they couldn’t hold on forever either. Which is a good thing for both sides of the coin. But that is just a random, rudimentary idea.
5 Likes
What you are trying to advocate is characters running around trying to either regen or get their health potions off cooldown before they are able to re-engage. Which will drop down the speed of gameplay. Is this what you truly want? Are one shots so scary to you that you are fine with wasting your time waiting for your health to regen?
Is there rly a point in having to click “resurect at last checkpoint” cause there was a monster that was designed to Oneshot you, so that the game isn´t to easy?
€: Play HC or don´t play is a choice btz. but not a choice between SC and HC!
The one shot is not a boom you are death type of deal. It can be circumvented with the proper gear. What you guys want is scenarios that kill you instantly to be reduced to a minimum. Even in PoE there are very few things which will kill you no matter what. For most “oneshots” you can gear up and tank them. The problem is, as I said, this fear of being killed instantly while either your gear is poor or your skill choices are bad.
But I digress. Have any of you played Grim Dawn? At the start it is exactly what you guys are suggesting - no way to sustain your character, you depend on potions (which are on cooldown) and constitution (which regens your health while you are outside of combat). This means running around waiting for either to heal you up. It is only acceptable because eventually you get your leech, you get your instant heal abilities, you get your super regen so you don’t need to rely on running around like a chicken anymore. Changing the game to make it more running and less fighting will be for the worst, trust me.
1 Like
“There are very few things which will kill you no matter what”.
Listen to yourself.
There should be no such things. Each and every death should (ideally) be a result of the player playing poorly and/or overestimating their build, or maybe getting DC’d. Not the result of an RNG explosion of multiple strong inter-synergy mods stacked on a powerful monster base, that potentially result in a monstrosity stronger than any of the game’s bosses.
Being killed instantly when you are undergeared or specced entirely into offense and have, purposefully or not, neglected your survivability is not the problem - being insta-killed when you have spent most or all your points solely into defenses that are mostly applicable to the encounter, are properly geared for it, and can’t be said to have been able to predict the attack/ability that killed you beforehand due to a lack of a proper visual representation adequate to the level of the threat - now that is an issue.
Do not mistake not ever getting oneshot by anything that isn’t a heavily telegraphed lethal-ability as being unkillable. The two are not the same. My point, which I keep on repeating, is that most deaths should be the result of incremental damage instances that have over time dwindled one’s hp, overpowered its recovery and ultimately dropped it into negatives. Rather than a single instance of huge damage that usually happens every 20 minutes or so, with the player being at full hp the entire remainder of their gameplay because everything else merely tickles.
As I said, I am new to Last Epoch. Currently level 40-ish because I didn’t have that much time to play. Yet, there are monsters that, despite my 700+ health (which is a lot of for lvl 40), 80%+ mitigation in every resistance, and juggernaut stance + forgeguard dmg reduction (15/30% less damage taken respectively) - still kill me in one shot.
It rarely happens, but it does when the RNG aligns. And none of those oneshots are from bosses, because those are easier to balance than random rares with random affixes, and typically are no threat at all because my survivability is always greater than their damage dishing out potential in a very binary way, making me unkillable against them, as they have cooldowns and limited dps on their own, and I just leech/regen whatever little damage I take back in an instant, thanks to the absurd level of sustain that (imho) should not be possible to attain yet currently is the norm achievable without any investment but 1-2 pieces of gear.
Is this what the ultimate challenge of an arpg should ideally look like? A randomly rolled, randomly placed rare with no backstory or intentional purpose?
I can’t speak about lategame yet, but I have no reason to believe it would be any different.
Besides - you say that what I am suggesting would result in having to run around like a chicken to regen back your health. I say - no it wouldn’t, because that would not save you in a game balance where life recovery is much scarcer and slower.
If you are not actively fighting and just running around, then you are not leeching back any health, nor are you replenishing your potions. And that means you’d die even faster, because if you’re at, say, 40% hp (can’t imagine why you’d run away if you’re any higher), then a stray if powerful attack could hit and kill you just the same, running around or not.
It is simple enough to give monsters tools to have a chance at dealing with a hit-and-run playstyle just the same as a head-on one. Not to mention, the rogue class or one of its subclasses will likely be based around such a playstyle anyway, and so I can’t say I am convinced by what you’ve written.
2 Likes