So many resistance and armour threads, but movement is all that matters

General
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Let me preface by saying I’m not making any claims about the squillion ward with infinite regen builds, or sentinel, which I haven’t played yet. I’ve seen them facetank everything, good on the hardcore gamers, enjoy yourselves.

I’m talking about any normal character maxing resists, getting really good armour and dodge, and investing a lot of resources into life - with only 10-30% of passives, skill nodes or affixes into damage. Traditionally what we could call a tanky build.

I’m also talking about minions, with heavy investment into minion defences.

It is all for nothing. No matter what defensive layers you have, unless you or your minions are standing in the one spot on the screen that is ‘safe’, then you all get oneshot.

There are infinite wind up aoe effects in this game where one’s only option is to be somewhere else. The delay between signalling the oneshot and receiving it is balanced only around high movespeed builds and movespeed is very hard to come by.

To address this, first it must be seen as a ‘problem’. Maybe this is by design? The devs have only really indicated willingness to address ‘untelegraphed oneshots’. But if they want to keep oneshots, why have so many subtle interactions like bone armour, life leech, life regen, healing effectiveness, aspect of the boar etc. if oneshots make all of them mostly irrelevant. The game becomes filled with even more false choices (to go with the entire bear tree :slight_smile: )

So assuming this is not by design, perhaps the dev team think they can keep tweaking and it will reach a balance. Likely not. There are too many broken interactions in this game, too many moving parts.

Fortunately, there is a good solution:

  1. Reduce, drastically, the healing spells, life/ES regen and life leech in the game.
  2. Reduce, drastically, the size of any given large hit, even the telegraphed ones this game is inexplicably so fond of.
  3. Keep the squillion health boss and ‘bosses become damage resistant’ system currently in place.
  4. There really should be no need to dramatically change any other balance (eg. damage, or CC) within the game, so this is not an unrealistic solution in terms of development resources.

The upshot will be that players can still be one shot, but they would have to be investing all their resources into damage. Any player who aims for balance between damage and defences can always take some hits, but the defensive ones can take more hits, the offensive ones can take less. Then there will be some who invest fully into defence and become unkillable tanks, but have slow clearspeed (this is fine! there is literally no logical reason why players who put in time and effort shouldn’t be rewarded for it)

By giving up the oneshot, the game would become so much richer in terms of thoughtful potion use/collection, giving actual meaning to defensive choices, playstyles, strategies for boss fights, build synergies between items, skills, and passives, thoughtful skill usage, mana management, life management, or even which level area you visit.

It would also allow this game to have meaningful roles when party play exists, and would further mean this game is not heading down the POE path where DPS is all that matters.

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You are addressing some really good points here. The question that has to be solved first (as you already stated) is

What is EHGs design philosophy?

Because if the oneshots are working as intended, there’s no need for a fix - unless the majority of people doesn’t like that particular mechanic.

I want two ponts talk about two points I see here

1. Class Identity

  • Mage: Glass Cannon
  • Sentinel: Tank
  • …
    vs
  • Freedom of Building
  • Don’t cap damage potential just based on class affiliation
  • How to maintain that class identity but also create build diversity

2. Telegraphed Oneshots

  • Are these attacks meant to be oneshots for every class?
  • Should they get trivial with highervlevel / better gear?
  • Is this an issue?

So my opinion on 1.

While I like the class identity or class roles in RPGs I think these boundaries should not be that strict in an ARPG. I remember that EHG stated they don’t want to have such a role model even with multiplayer where content is only doable with a certain setup of different character roles build for a single purpose (Tank, Healer, DD). I’m fine with that. The focus of LE should be the action packed gameplay. I don’t want to be put in the role of a low dps character right away when I choose my class.

Saying this I think there should be a specific balance between squishy-/tankyness and DPS. Things like high dps and high tankyness on a single character should be addressed as well as the opposite.

There was a lot of demand for buffing the Sentinels early and midgame clearspeed because leveling felt awfully slow compared to other classes. Why this would be logic as being a tank class automatically means lower DPS in a classical role model. But in an ARPG this is not desirable, imho.

My thoughts on 2.

I like these telegraphed oneshots. And I don’t want them to get trivial a some point. When I remember my D2 time there always were some enemies that were kind of op. Just the attacks were not telegraphed.

In LE most of the time you have the time to avoid these attacks. This keeps you at a higher attention level and prevents falling asleep and drop the head on your keyboard.

I don’t mean there has alway to be this kind of thread in any level. But this spices up combat for me. These attacks are well telegraphed and have long wind ups so they should hit you like a truck if you are too lazy to move. Maybe it’s not needed that getting hit always ends in the players dead. But leaving the player with only 10% hp and trigger panic mode is nice.

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Telegraphed one shots are fine for me only if they are telegraphed properly. I do think life leech should be a lot less effective or rarer or have noticeable downsides that you have to take up the chin. It acts as a crutch way too often. Healing should be there only as a get out of jail free card once in a while, i.e. 20 second heal, healing skill that reduces your damage for x seconds, etc. But that would push this out of the ARPG genre to be more tactical instead of having a pew pew gameplay.

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An alternate, but equally simple solution might be to have potions become way more powerful. People who hate getting oneshot could give up some damage for potions that auto cast when you get low or would normally die . Ie - You literally cannot die while you have potions, but you have to give up a lot to hold them. People who like ‘dodging flashing lights at the risk of death’ for minutes on end can choose gear that has no potions, but gains a movement skill, or gains a nice damage boost.

A similar idea would be items that gain ‘% reduced damage taken from all sources + % reduced damage dealt from all sources’. People like me could choose these items, and people who like to ‘git gud’ and challenge the leaderboards can simply not use them.

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I disagree, there are a few exception i would agree with your statement, but generall having only boots with minor movement speed equipped is more than sufficient.

Could you give some examples of what telegraphed abilities you think are not avoidable without “high” movement speed? (We also should clarify what exactly “high” means for you)

The only ability of the top of my head that i 100% agree is not dodgeable with an enormous high movementspeed(like 50-60%) or a movement skill is the AoE from the Emporer Of Corpses (Lvl 100 Timeline Boss). But since that is currently the very last and highest boss(besides the empowered timelines) i think that this is fair.

I also agree that movementspeed is hard to come by, but i think that is great, because than it’s a very deliberate player decision to go for it, instead of something else.
I never had the feeling i HAVE TO go for movement speed, although it really “feels” nice going from like 10-15% movementspeed(from boot implicits) to like 30-40%+ movementspeed if you have a really high movementspeed affix.

Well, all of those mechanics you mentioned are really strong and do help against smaller and larger hits alike.
Also most of “oneshot” mechanics are in fact facetankeable, if you really want to do that. Of course that requires alot of investment, but it is possible.

I really dislike that statement. For some unexperienced player this might hold true, because they “think”: “oh nice, now I have X% dmg reduction i can facetank some of the bigger hits now”, only to realize, that this is still not the case for a majority of the cases.
But i wouldn’t call that a bad thing, players with that kind of mindset need to learn their lesson.

TL:DR

  • I think all of the “one-shot” mechanics currently in place are absolutely fair and reasonable

  • It’s still possible to facetank a majority of them, if you really want to (with enough investment of course)

  • Movementspeed is fine IMO

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Before the thread will be inevitably dismissed or downplayed, i’m going to post that i ofc 100% agree with OP

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Reading these posts there are some things I agree with and don’t agree with.
One thing I would like to understand is what everyone considers a one shot?

Is is something that is designed to be a one shot no matter how you are geared? Example if you do not move out of the way you will be one shot no matter what. Because there is nothing in this game designed to be that way at the moment.

Or is it something that will one shot you because you are either 1) Too low level 2) Not geared properly to handle it or the build you are running is lacking some where. 3) you are running an infinite scaling system and are bound to just get out scaled.

I think the second is more of the case. Even with a character with 0 resistances can take at least one hit from empowered monolight bosses. And before it is said This is not based on skill other than knowing how to build a character. I got hit that is lack of skill imo :smile:

To to get to that actual major post of the game. Good players that can run any content with ease Movement Speed is your best defense. You want to aim for a minimum of 40% in my opinion. Now would I like to see crazy movement speed like in other games… No I think the speed of last epoch at the Low, medium and high end is really good at the moment.

What I would Like to see is instead of having to stack everything on one character. to be able to build each way on it’s own sufficiently.

Example: I ran Low Life Lich with 60% to 101% movement speed buffed. Minimal res and armor as possible. Focused on life, dodge and damage, it actually made playing lich very enjoyable for me and Lich is my least favorite and played class.

If there were more ways to do this I think the game would be better for it.

Currently In monolith you can build anyway you want to and get 10 out of 10. This is good for coming up with wonky meme builds and builds that would otherwise do bad in a challenging environment.

But is bad for the build diversity in what balance should actually be and teaching people how to actually gear their characters. ( not going off topic on monolith difficulty so don’t take that from this post).

I think currently with 1 infinitely scaling system and one system that is just an extension of the story. I don’t know if we have enough if the vision or endgame systems to understand what is the balance of the game as a whole yet.

Right now I feel it is a bit of a mess and as things start getting fine tuned and others added it will become a little more clear.

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Most of my deaths in this game came from standing too long on an aoe puddle which I couldn’t see cause there were like 50 enemies on the screen throwing stuff at my character whilst my fps went down to less then 10 even though I have a relatively new mid tier pc. So fix the fps issues and I’m fine with “telegraphed” oneshots

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I don’t see so many problems with one shot in this game … Sometimes it occurs in monolith when I don’t even read the modifiers, I just prioritize the increase in rarity, and even then it is not so common to happen (Playing with a wizard, 75% res, 20% amour, 0% dodge and block chance and only 2k fixed ward, obviously without using leech mechanics). The most common is that it happens in the arena on a high wave … but we don’t know how much a character should achieve in the arena to be considered balanced, strong, OP, so you can’t consider the one shots there.

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I can live with one shots. I absolutely hate puddles and DOTs reaming me within 1 second.

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Ive fairly long held the philosophy that ALL forms of healing should be a fraction of they want. im talking scale of 1/10 of what it is almost. make potion drops more rare, and nerf the high end damage a good amount. I think if you did this you could have a far healthier game thats easier to balance that isnt full of one shot esque situations. BUT maybe EHG has tried this internally and felt it doesnt work the way I think it would either.
Edit: ill add that i think the amount of balance rework and even system reworks that would be required to make the game balanced around far lower sustain is probably too much to actually make it happen
edit 2: i actually like the state of health regen. requires a really good amount of investment to get to a decent state. multiple blessed affixes and a lot of vitatlity and passives. or you could just get like 5 passives and get 5% leech and out do anything health regen can do.

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same… after 130 is just impossible, i ve very tanky/healer build,with 2k2 hp, cleanse all ailment, my dps only from burn/bleed, i ve all resist over caped, i ve lot reduced damage received from using vengeance, with 130% atk speed, many buff from orange stuff (axe hit bleeding give tp 200%+ phys dammage) ect i dont have ranged skill so i cant keep kitting. Untill arena 90ish i can face tank every think, even stay a bit in aoe on ground, after i ve to move away, run/hit/run/hit ect untill 130ish, i kill slowly, sometimes my life do yo-yo,but it is fun… after i m just dead from 3-4 big void scorpion doing them aoe on me exactly same time together… I die each time there is 3+ of rare mobs with ground aoe rushing me. resist should reduce those damage, i ve boots, i m not naked feet like a hobbit ; ; cant block them can t dodge them, if i put my shield on ground and walk on it, those ground think not hit me :stuck_out_tongue:

And on my beastmaster i ve 40% reduced damage (10 % from armor) +30% if i ve less 35% hp + resist caped & 20% glancing blow and still die at 130 arena too (melee poison build + pets).

When i say i die mean i m oneshot by “dots” in less than 1 sec, no time to react, only way is to run all time i guess…

I know i should do spell/ranged & kitting but I DON T want, 15y of mmorp i play hunter, i wanted melee for once as there is no hunt yet…

both my toon play with high speed melee hit & dot, without crit from gloves

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You need to make sure you have 100% crit avoidance too. You should be able to get a bit higher wave in arena playing melee then 130 with both vengence sentinel and SS/Swipe primalist. Yopu dont need to move constantly but you do need to step out of dots and should be aware what mobs cause dots so you can start circling around them as they attack

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I think OP brought up a great point for discussion.

In general, I feel like EHG does a fantastic job at telegraphing one shot attacks. So my sense is that if a “traditional tanky build” can tank and recover from these attacks, it does feel like the windups will get trivialized. But I also take your point that in an ARPG it is important to feel the progressive impact of gears - both offensively and defensively.

I don’t have a good sense if your suggestion is the panacea we need. But this is certainly a point the devs should think about.

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There are definitely a few attacks that are maybe a bit too quick for the damage they deal (looking at you bombardment attack from Void Rayheh), but I don’t get the sense that most of the attacks enemies can do have both of these problems (too fast to be reasonably avoided and too much damage to be reasonably tanked). I wonder if some of the more unbalanced attacks that are exceptions were fixed if the problem would largely sort itself out.

As for the arena, the scaling around wave 100 or so does seem to pick up quickly. This is likely an artifact of the dev’s attempts to keep most arena runs from lasting too long, but maybe it would be worth considering whether that scaling should be smoothed out a bit more.

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