ok, so if I play an Acolyte and I selected Necromancer as a mastery, and then put points into Warlock but none in Necromancer, what class am I actually playing?
Half a Warlock, a Necromancer who is part Warlock, something else?
Now tell me of any game out there that allows you to play more than 1 class on the same character?
Mastery class I can agree with. Class specialization I could agree with. The jump to CLASS is leaving 50% of the definition out of it.
You can select partial trees from the 2 other masteries for your class, in combination with your chosen mastery.
I know of no game that allows you to select a main class and half of 2 other classes.
Final Fantasy could come close, as they allow you to select what they call a job, which is very similar to a mastery in Last Epoch. But not two.
What class would a Necromancer with points in Warlock and Lich be? What would it even be called?
It’s fine that you like D3, but D3 is very far from being the greatest of all time.
He would be a necromancer.
A backend developer that can help around in the frontend is still a backend developer.
A surgeon that also knows a bit about proctology is still a surgeon.
A midfielder that has enough skill to fill in gaps in defense of offense is still a midfielder.
A physicist that has knowledge about astronomy is still a physicist.
It’s not a hard concept to grasp. You can specialize and still know stuff from other fields.
Can you name another game that allows you to play a class + a partial class or 2?
To my knowledge there’s none, but maybe I am wrong.
Qualify “game” with “similar ARPG game” and I can’t think of one.
Unqualified, though, yeah. Anything based on D&D 2e+ ruleset. Off the top of my head: Baldurs Gate series, Avencast, Neverwinter Nights series, that tower one (that was fun, what was it?). Turn based RPGs though. And in those, classes are more locked than in last epoch - unless you count reloading an old save or editing files I guess.
This is directly against their philosophy. Here’s their stance as of December: Locking in Mastery Feels Bad - #16 by EHG_Kain
Agree or disagree, EHG wants the mastery selection to be what shapes the class fantasy of your character.
From a lore perspective, Elder Gaspar guides shades of our former selves (those that tried to restore the timeline and prevent the Void and failed) whom also trained in these masteries to our current self, the Traveler that still exists in this timeline (a bit timey-wimey). The skills of those past selves (shades) are guided to us and empower our abilities further and also explains our ability to “dabble” in the other masteries.
It’s a required step in our evolution as the savior of time and foretold holder of the Epoch. Without this empowerment, we would have no chance against Rahyeh, the Immortal Emperor, Orobyss, anyone.
There are class cinematics that no longer exist in the game, the introductory cinematic upon character creation is now a homogenized “Traveler’s” story and background on the story of Eterra (which provides MUCH better context than the individual class cinematics of pre-1.0).
I have recordings of each of those class cinematics and go over the lore and “feel”/fantasy of each for anyone interested in that kind of character identity and less concerned about the “meta” of a given patch 
Here’s that video if interested:
Last Epoch Lore - Overview of ALL Classes and Masteries | Class Cinematics Included
You can only access the first half of the passive trees of the two masteries you did not choose so this character will not progress very far into end game.
But that was not the point of the question. What would such a class be called? A Necrolock?
They could have avoided all this mumbo jumbo is they would have you select 1 out of 15 classes from the start. Then you would not have heard me making an issue out of it, because a class is a class.
But when you make it into this odd class and subclass system, you will get these questions asked.
Titan Quest, Grim Dawn, any D&D game that allows multiclassing.
Yes, but they could also be called an astrophysicist, infact, my degree was Physics with Astrophysics. Though astronomy is moderately different to astrophysics.
Whats so different then? if you are fine to level a character again to try a different class I don’t see how LE implementation that’s is basically the same is then “not good game design”.
That’s exactly it - It’s not different. But if they stop being obtuse, they will have to admit to themselves that they don’t actually have anything that’s it’s legitimate to be mad about.
You are a necromancer, because you get access to the necromancer signature ability, whether or not you use it. You also have access to the second half of the necro tree, even if you decide not to use it. It’d be weird, but yeah. And you also wouldn’t have access to the signature ability of the warlock. You’d be a necro who is pretending to be, but is not, a warlock.
And as said by someone else, Grim Dawn is all about speccing into more than one class on the same character. And Titan Quest. And Baldur’s Gate 3 can be, and various other games.
It literally says 15 mastery CLASSES. Masteries are the classes in LE.
Theres 15 of them. The 5 base class are a tutorial to what the 3 classes might entail
If you have a degree in physics and knowledge in astronomy, you’re not an astrophysicist. If you have a degree in both, yes, you could be called that. But we’re talking about “half classes” so that would be more equivalent to having knowledge (half class) without having a degree (mastery).
If you play D&D (or BG3 or any D&D-based RPG) and multiclass fighter and wizard, what are you? A fightizard? That’s a silly thing to get hung upon.
Not to mention that, in direct answer to your question (again) a necro would still be a necro, whether he used warlock stuff or not.
It’s not new, as has been pointed out, but if it were, it would actually work against your point: if the devs make something new that doesn’t exist, they get to set the rules they want on it. Your point would only be valid if you could say “this is the same as game X so it should do the same”.
And while it is the same (or similar in concept) to the examples already given, those examples, for the most part, also don’t let you change it.
There’s something my dad made up, which he told me when I was little and I was frustrated about rules in movies, he said “How do you kill a vampire?”
And I was like “Stake through the heart, garlic, sunlight…”
And my dad was like, “No, you can kill a vampire however the fuck you want, because vampires don’t fucking exist. You can make up rules for any kind of thing you want.”
- Max Landis
Are you sure?
Rift… well then Rift is an mmo and no hack and slash game.
Back in 2014, you had to have the Druid at lvl 30 and the Arcanist at lvl 15 to become a White mage.
For Paladin you needed Gladiator 30 and Druid 15.
Other classes also had to reach certain levels for certain skills, such as the Thaumaturge. He had “Swiftcast” (= next spell is cast immediately) at lvl 26, if i remember the lvl correctly, and every caster needed this skill.
FF14 allows you not only one job, but all existing jobs. So you can have 4 tank jobs, 4 healer jobs, 5 melee jobs, 3 physical ranged, 4 magical ranged and then here are 3 gatherer and 7 or 8 crafter. All in one character if you want.
In PoE. I can be a warrior that has a bow as weapon and uses magic spells and minions. So what class am i? Still a warrior
Jelkhor Detonating Arrow build begs to differ. You have to choose Marksman to get the skill but you put only 8 points in Marksman to get dexterity and put all your points elsewhere. It’s one of the strongest builds in the game.