The Fun builds keep getting worst

Feedback and Suggestions
1

I dont plan to comeback to Lasp Epoch and let me explain why.

They keep making the fun builds not interesting or boring :

1- Autobomber Void knight.
We had a super fun autobomber build but instead of keeping it autobomber and adjusting the dps they just removed the options ( unless you numlock but still semi autobomber) and rely partially on smite like 90% of sentinel builds )

2- Bulwark Fire Earthquake Druid
We had the super fun build where you could rush and then proc earthquakes by smashing the ground, but no it was too fun they had to change it so you can’t abuse it and ''play the way you want. Now you need to swipe or do other stuff.

3- Judgement Auradin
We could have a build where you use judgment as a persistent aura, instead you need to do it every 6 seconds with a very slow clunky animation and rely on javelins … You can’t Numlock it because they added too much cooldown reduction on purpose in the tree and via the item

4- Metero Sorcerer
Abusive mana cost, unless you use a skill where you stop moving completely to channel… ( yes just to cast meteor )

5- Sigils of hope : Boring/Annoying mechanic

6- Hail of arrows : Convinient option removed

7- Implimentation of traversal mechanic : Cant spam teleport and surge anymore for example.

Instead of changing the builds the community find and love they should fix the dps if its considered op . But change the essence of a build to force you to swipe ‘’ or '‘smite ‘’ or channel stop animations ‘’’ to then be able to use ur build is just not right.

make it op, make it balanced, make it trash i dont care but Let it be. IF trashing an entire build / essence is the only solution they found, it is a dogwater solution in my opinion. Im confident they can figure out something without trashing it or make it clunky boring. ( fun or boring is subjective but on the massive skills avaible im pretty confident most of people would enjoy at least 1 autobomber , 1 true auradin or the bulwark the way it was regardless of digits ).

As the community developped the subject, here are some great exemple of what is lacking the most for Sentinel .

Sentinel Buillds

1- Lack of convinient builds

2- Alot of builds rely on buffs ( you have to stop to cast sigils, for exemple )

3- Most of builds rely on multiple skills ( too many builds needs smite for solo target or javelin to buff dps or other multiplier and it starts to looks a bit like diablo 3 in way,

4- no straight foward builds unless your melee.

8 Likes
2

I’m not sure what you mean by a permanent aura paladin. I don’t remember that ever existing. But judgement aura is still very strong.

3

I think neither Meteor or any build utilising it was ever nerfed in the last 10 patches, quite the opposite skill and builds using it was buffed multiple times.

It always had the mana cost and there were always ways to work around it and with the new passives in the sorcerer tree really made it really easy to get enough mana sustain

4

Build 1: was OP and only fun if OP is fun to the player using it.
Build 2: was OP and only fun if OP is fun to the player using it.
Build 3: what are you talking about?
Build 4: was buffed and today I saw a vid of a content creator dropping meteors left and right.

So far I think it’s good to tone down OP builds because keeping op builds and buffing underperforming builds is powercreep entry level.

5 Likes
5

If you buy into a “live service” ARPG and not expect things to be rebalanced – some nerfed while some buffed – then I don’t know what to tell you, but you’re clearly doing it wrong.

Even old offline games like Grim Dawn have had builds nerfed and shuffled around over each patch update, it’s just the nature of the genre.

To hold that against EHG and Last Epoch just seems odd. Do you expect them to never rebalance their game and nerf certain things deemed too strong? To what end?

2 Likes
6

I personally don’t think anything should be considered “OP.” It’s either fun to play or it isn’t. Sure a build can be strong enough that it trivializes the game to a certain extent, but if what you’re doing is fun and still requires you to think, plan and anticipate certain things, or some things happen that you can’t anticipate and have to adjust for, then they can still be completely engaging and enjoyable. Unless we’re talking about some kind of competitive play like PVP, the idea of things being overpowered should basically never enter into the calculation if something should be allowed. If there’s not enough challenging content, that’s a separate problem. Just add some more challenging content. That’s the solution to that, imo.

7

Well they also added the meteor belt… and nerfed it badly in 0.9 public, probably too fun? :crazy_face:

Well, they murdered Marksman and nobody cares, good luck with your complains.

1 Like
8

Last Epoch isn’t designed as a power-fantasy, so allowing things to become “OP” without taking steps to bring them more in-line with other classes and builds is problematic.

I know it sounds cool and would be fun to just never really nerf things, but balancing in these games is important, with or without PVP.

PVE ladders is competitive. You need fair balancing for it to work. This idea that because it’s not PVP that it can’t be overpowered or that balancing and nerfing things isn’t necessary isn’t the right way to look at it, in my opinion.

3 Likes
9

I disagree. Any adventure game is a power fantasy by default. The objective certainly isn’t realism or strict simulation, by any means. However, what I disagree even more about is the idea that’s relevant.

There is no such thing as “overpowered” in a single player game, because overpowered as a term implies that it is unfair or broken to detrimental effect to the experience playing the game, IE making it less fun. It is technically possible to make a build so powerful it trivializes the content, but it’s not necessarily less fun as long as what you’re doing is still engaging and interesting.

But here what I’m mainly referring to is the relative strength between builds or classes. If a certain build is more effective than another one, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s less fun to play. In fact, you’re correct: Powerful builds are fun to play. It turns out that there’s already a lot of them in the game. All builds being balanced perfectly against each other to do about the same damage or have the same effects wouldn’t automatically be fun either! In fact, there’s a good case to be made that noticing that would cause the game to seem more bland that it otherwise might. A lot of developers of various games do a lot of work to try to hide that being the case in their games, especially the ones that involve direct competition like fighting games.

So if you’re “balancing” your game to be less fun overall for people to play for the sake of something like a PVE ladder, I’d say that might be a good business model. But it could also make for a very boring game that lacks in the variety of experiences that it’s willing to offer the player, and thus a worse product for the regular people who are just trying to have fun playing a videogame.

This is actually why I’ve advocated in the past and continue to advocate for PVE ladders to be their own separate things with their own rules and mechanics. Maybe damage smoothing is a thing you need to do in ladder and then remove that if characters drop out of the ladder at the end of the season into standard play. I’m all for the spirit of competition, but balancing any game around the top 0.1% of the players and what seems fair for and to them doesn’t make for the most exciting game. Just ask anyone who has been suffering through League of Legends the last 5 or 6 years.

TLDR; Fun good. Balance? Not necessarily fun.

4 Likes
10

This is why I’m happy EHG doesn’t let fans and forum posters handle their balancing. Just a massively different stance on what stipulates fun, balance, and what warrants being labelled “overpowered”.

You ever played Warframe? That game has a serious problem with towing the line between “balanced fun gameplay” and “power fantasy”. It’s a real issue where power-creep takes hold and you basically dig yourself into a balancing development pit.

But I also believe things can be overpowered in a single player game. That’s a distinct difference between how you and I approach video games, I suppose.

1 Like
11

I don’t necessarily believe anything. I play videogames enough to know that a build being good, or indeed, better than a bunch of the other builds, doesn’t automatically make it less fun. Even some builds that trivialize parts of the content are still enjoyable and engaging because what you’re doing is fun itself.

Having fun for the sake of fun, and enjoying videogames, is my approach. That’s what I would hope every developer out there was primarily concerned about. Otherwise, nobody would really want to play their game in the first place.

3 Likes
12

But if the devs want builds to be roughly a certain power level and sone are significantly higher than that (especially if they trivialise the entire game) tjen how can that not be considered OP? I agree with most of the rest of what I read.

Or more fun. Personally I’d rather have most builds around a particular power level so that there’s more interesting builds available to choose from while still being able to do most stuff in the game.

2 Likes
13

LE isn’t only a single player game. With the addition of leaderboards LE needs to bring a balance for the most likely biggest part of the playerbase, those who play online.

It’s fine if you enable cheat codes in single player games but having stupid OP builds in a Hack and Slash game is nothing different to cheating compared to non OP builds. This isn’t healthy in a online game and even less in a competitive online game with leaderboards.

If you are into OP stuff just play offline and get as OP as you want by using whatever methodes you want. As long as you don’t interfere with others and the online mode you should be fine when you oneshot the world.

1 Like
14

Let me make something clear, my point is I dont care if ""autobomber ‘’ or ‘’ judgement auradin ‘’ or Bulwark earthquake or meteor is op or not, my point is make it fun, let me have at least 1 auto bomber build without relying on numlocks or let me get my real auradin without having to cast a slow clunky animation every 5 seconds . it can even be underpowered but make it fun… I personally loved the autobomber void knight not because it was op but because it was an autobomber build .

1 Like
15

it was never, but it could be and should be, i dont care how strong it is I just want to be able to play these build a certain way.

16

Not a question of buffed or nerf but the way it plays , its true theres other ways arround but you need quite a ridiculous ammount of mana regen if you dont want to rely on pausing to channel mana.

1 Like
17

op or not is not the question, its just the way it plays , having to swipe beetween my earthquake rush is just unpleasant , they force you to be melee right clicker at the same time. it was very fun the way it was implimented, if op was an issue they could of just fixed the digits instead of transforming the build into an hybrid

18

It depends on your definition of “fun”. I think MS->Void Cleave->Erasing Strike combo like playstyle and I think it’s fun. Then again the build is trash tier because as soon as you can’t attack without downtimes or sluggish animations you drop dead in higher difficulties.

Having automated builds that deal no dmg and have no chance to get to the endgame is terrible design and not fun at all… at least from my point of view. EHG want people to press buttons again and again because they think that’s some kind of feat people need to fullfill. That’s not my cup of tea but I can life with their descission.

1 Like
19

exactly , how many autobomber build there is ? We only had one

How many auradin build righteous fire / holy fire type we have ? We have one but the way it is is unplesant to my opinion

We had a cool build with the earthquake bulwark that was unique , you see not my type of tea to start doing hybrid melee things with swipe , it was just fine they way it was.

1 Like
21

We have 0 Autobombers anymore because you need to interact. Putting DO on autocast makes you stutterstep 24/7. A friend of mine played the autobomber build in some MP sessions and he still facerolled the content so there are 0 issues with the build there is only no automation anymore. EHG don’t want auto or walking sim builds so everything is fine with this.

RF builds are in PoE. If you talk about PbAoE skills there are a lot because a lot of skills do consistent damage arround our toon starting with the onvious Aura of Decay as well as Judgment and even Warpath for example is a PbAoE technicly but it’s channeled. All said builds can’t be automated so again it’s like EHG wants it to be.

No idea what you talk about when you say “Earthquake Bulwark”. Earthquake build sure… but Bulwark? Must have missed something. Last time EQ was OP was in 0.8.4 when Bhuldar’s Wrath was stupid OP. Please do me a favour and share a link to the EQ Bulwark stuff you talk about if you don’t mind. Thanks in advance.

Belive me I understand your point of view and I often enough ask myself why I have to press buttons again and again and again because pressing a button or holding a button or activating a button is all the same to me. The only skill involved in it is if you use want to use letters or numbers in the right order ^^.

Then again it’s EHGs IP and if they want people to jump certain hoops then so be it. The automation topics have been arround from time to time and EHG always said “No!” (to make it short) so I don’t think you have any chance to get skills back that work automaticly outside from those we have.