Hello everyone,
I want to share my experience with Last Epoch over the past few years. First of all, I want to thank everyone involved in the Last Epoch project for their dedication and hard work on the game.
However, I have some concerns, and I would like to know if the rest of the community feels the same. Let’s be honest, for Last Epoch veterans, not all classes are currently viable in terms of speed and viability. I believe it’s time to buff some classes, especially melee ones, and improve their mediocre early game compared to ranged classes. Believe me, I know what I’m talking about, as I have 1100 hours played in Last Epoch.
I have always favored the Acolyte class because its theme is my favorite, but when I try other classes, I find them terribly bad. I’m not looking for nerfs; I want an equally good experience for all classes. It’s time for the devs and product designers to break the rules and significantly improve the early game of other classes and their branches, which, compared to the Acolyte, are quite bad.
This past season, I played up to level 80, and I’m delighted with all the new content, mechanics, and items. That makes me very happy, and I’m sure I’m not the only one. But, unfortunately, I created a Sentinel Forge Guard because I felt like it. And believe me when I say that it has quite a lot of damage, but when I see my friend playing a Mage or Acolyte next to me, this class leaves much to be desired. It lacks ward, and as we all know, this statistic is the most efficient defensive mechanic in the game. In most cases, from level 1 to 80, until you move to empowered monoliths, you don’t need to cap resistances or armor. You can stack ward infinitely as it regenerates automatically.
No other class can do this because it simply hasn’t been designed to have or produce ward. Meanwhile, other classes have to find a way to cap all resistances, armor/dodge, endurance/endurance threshold, block/block effectiveness, life regeneration, life, % life… Well, as you know, a lot of things that an Acolyte or any class with ward doesn’t need, because ward gives a lot of these: it’s life and life regeneration at the same time, making it one of the most important stats in the game if you want to survive.
I believe the focus of mob damage in the game centers around this “ward,” but not on a class that neither regenerates life nor has infinite life. It frustrates me to see my friend’s Acolyte with 4000 ward enduring all kinds of damage while a Sentinel continuously suffers, literally.
With this Sentinel, I have capped all resistances and armor up to 56%, with 1365 life… It’s not much, but it’s something, especially in early game. What I’m trying to say is that it’s time to stop updating classes that are already viable and work on those that are very bad in early game.
Additionally, I want to mention something else I’ve noticed while playing the Sentinel. As I said, this character has enough damage to handle content but not enough endurance in early season. It suffers so much that it levels up more slowly, which makes the experience much worse. This problem affects not only the Sentinel but also the Druid, whose specializations also have a very slow early game.
Another issue is how slow it is to level up to 90, especially with these classes. Finishing normal monoliths at level 74 is frustrating. Without looking at analytical data and assuming, I know in advance that players don’t usually repeat low-level monoliths. You either go to level 90 or empowered ones. And we know who this affects the most, right? Those who suffer the most in the game, which are melee players and those who don’t play with guides, not to mention new players…
And if you’ve made it this far, reader, I want you to think not just from my perspective and our experience in these types of games. Think from the perspective of a person who wants to play the game, which is already complex as it is. Let’s stop saying “look up a guide,” “Maxroll,” and those kinds of things. The melee experience is bad, VERY BAD. With the great team and community Last Epoch has, we know we can achieve what we all want.