The new defence system and its future

Feedback and Suggestions
41

Biggest problem is EHG trying to reinvent the wheel with sub-optimal resistance and Glancing Blow

Glancing Blow should NEVER EVER of been added…ever unless it was a Sentinel passive only and resistance should of always been % based

The only issue I see is older players who cant adapt, but …face it you guys are just beta testers. Developers want to make a good game and if they lose players on the way so be it

But the system prior with Protections and Glancing Blow, etc was badly designed however you want to look at it

Prob why those guys didn’t want arena checkpoints, as you get to have a higher rank as you simply have ALL day to play

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42

Great post! Great to read! A lot of thought was going into it. Then again isn’t it boiling down to: If the devs collected the needed data we dearly need rebalancing in certain areas that are a bit out of hand right now.

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43

Lizard should not be listened to. He should be obeyed as EHG’s savior.

Lizard… always post feedback. Always. I want the game to have incredible longevity too.

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44

So I have sat back and watched and read replies wanting to see what other had to say before I chimed in.

Simply because I don’t want people thinking that only 1% or testers are trying to control the narrative as i have seen comments made before.

To me this entire thread simply boils down to 3 things.

  1. Chase. This game has had a big issue with chase items for a long time. Then we get t6 and t7. Then next patch the have become irrelevant. There is no chase in game not reason to grind endgame of a few blessings. Which results in lack of progression past 75 gear wise.

  2. Build identity. I feel outside of block and ward for spell blade pushing actual challenging end game content. There are very ways to build differently. I would like to see some be class specific in proficiency.

  3. Gear tax. While I feel this is a good thing I feel it currently limits what we can do too much. If I can only gear for a few thing on all of.my gear slots and no way to maximize my preferred playstyle. I feel it makes bearing feel pretty bland as my options are already chosen for me.

This all only applies to challenging content. Bc if the content isn’t challenging then gearing doesn’t matter. Vice versa if you are just getting one shot and mobs ignore your gear.

I know that the game is in beta. But if feelsnlike the core of the game is being changed and remolded I hope it is fore the better and the longevity of the game.

If there is no chase and not interesting ways to progress your character. People will only play for a few hours and move on.

I thinknthe changes are a good starting point but I want it to be just as easy on the surface. Then deep enough that I can fall in and get lost for hours.

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45

An excellent post. I love, that you included some very good constructive suggestions and i hope, that the devs really take a closer look at those.

One little sidenote on the overcapping discussion: Poison might be worth it, because of the inbuilt shred. (I haven’t done any math though, because i suck at math and i’m lazy :smiley: .)

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46

I’ve been a bit slow to reply here, I agree with Lizard on most things in the post and he did a really great job of explaining his thoughts on things.

I wanted to add something to the thread, like my main takeaways - and it looks like Rimed has that basically covered. (This is a really good summary of the broad points Rimed.)

I want to add a bit,

On the Gear Chase,

Some people get defensive when Lizard or someone else says “it takes a weekend to reach cap”, so I’ve been testing this a bit - seeing how quickly I can get a character geared enough to push 150 Waves and clear all Monos. I was able to do that in 20 hours on Sorc, and I’ll be close to that on the Werebear I’m working on now - and that’s with distractions, chat, breaks, holding the cat, etc.

And once that goal is finished, from that point my main upgrades will be slowly getting %s of dodge, armor, and HP - not the most compelling reason to log back onto the character.

This is beta, I understand there are systems we are missing - but, I do want to emphasize, that the gear chase is extremely important to me. I am able to get a character to an average or above average level in hours of playtime. And then from there, it’s just watching defensive stats move up by a % here and there when I want to improve that character.

Build identity

I agree with this completely, and especially the points Lizard made in the post.
Outside of a few affixes and items, most of my gear is interchangeable between all characters.

I would like to see more ways through Passives and Gear for classes to really feel like their own thing defensively.

Gear Tax

As it stands now, there is very little room to add non-defense affixes to gear. You pack your gear with defensives, and you are left with room (if it doesn’t fracture) for Leech? Main Stat? Those are nice, but it doesn’t make me feel like the class I’m playing, and it doesn’t feel like it’s tying my build together. More affix space could help with this, because then you could also be getting stats like those Increased Cold Damage, for example.

Which in that example, it’s hardly about the damage, it’s about being Cold Damage class, and not a Capped Resistance Class, like all of the others.

At the end of the day, I want my characters to feel unique - both in Passives and in Gear. I want to have a reason and to be excited to play them for longer than 20 hours.

I feel like Lizard brings up a lot of valid points here, and several solutions too that could help add longevity to Last Epoch for both myself and others.

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47

I would like to correct the statement - it is true for majority of builds, but there are exceptions. For example my 2 handed cold melee Shaman build using Tempest as main attack (in the name of builds diversity) skill suffers from the lack of damage. I thought it should work good as it works in Grim Dawn for Shaman using Savagery as auto-attack skill with WPS buffing damage but it turned out my assumption was wrong and I have to rely on spell damage from Totem and Avalanche.

P.S: BTW, really excellent review on defence system! :grin:

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48

(Apologies as this is not on topic for this thread).

Yip. I am playing Rive VK & Shield Throw Paladin and I agree 100%. Although playstyles are different, both of my characters have very little problem with the big guns and disproportionately more trouble with white trash mobs… The number of times I have had to “rebuild” parts of my chars to handle trash mobs far outweights gearing to take down bosses. Everything from speed of attacks, offscreen range barrages that you cannot move out of the way of, shotgun AoE/Dot patches all over the ground that tick half your health… and all from white mobs that die to a single shot from any of my attacks - very frustrating to be able to facetank a MoF boss but die to a pack of Ice Elementals.

49

Agreed. I have only played about 300h out of my usual average of 1000h+ or so for aRPGs and while I understand its not finished and in beta, I am already in this boat and I have nowhere near the number of chars that others have.

Thankfully, there is time & opportuniy to address this… They have very obviously fixed the new play progression so heres hoping the next focus will address end-game and long term play in some way…

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50

Hello,

First, it’s a great post and feedback.
I don’t agree with all in it.

I agree with build identity, same if I really love the differents passive tree.
Your post feel really oriented Arena.
You want to max every defensive system, and find it too easy.
I agree with you.

But I really hope that other end-game system will not force you to do that!
I hope that we can only max/envest in 2-3 def system and take offensive gear.
Gearing for offensive is always more fun.

Doing mono boss run, with managing gear for an equilibre between off and def is far more fun for me than arena.

I am sure that affix mecanism change, like class specific, will be coming. (like fire aura, spark,… for spellblade).

I want def to be choseen between some and be avaible throw class for main (like ward on hiy for spellblade/ block for sentinel).
I really like to be able to chose an defensive way different from my base class:
I like to go block in spellblabde, you’ve got node on some skill that add block chance or ward on block. I would love to get more of this kind of mecanism.
Like dodge on spellblad would be great and would make pure dext spellblade possible.

But for all of that, I am agree that defensive systems must be more exclusive with each other, or at least more difficult to stack.
So fan of arean will have to gear “hard” (so end-game objective) too max all. And for runner like me, it will be more fun to max 2 def system (with hight gear tax) and go offensive.

Don’t forget that they really did good job, and that all tank sub-class have some DR passive in their tree. Ok passive is too easy to get for end-game goal. And yes, I feel too that they need to make harder to max any one of the defensive system.
But I fell any defensive system must not be mandatory unless you want to go max arena

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51

But they didn’t, that’s what this thread is about.

I hope we can all agree going the new system will kill LE’s combat eventually. The game will slowly turn into a one shot fest, you kill them or they kill you. I do not need this type of game, I liked LE’s tactical gameplay.

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52

That depends on your definition of what a “good job” is. Is it a lot easier for players to understand? Yes, absolutely. Is it perfect? No.

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53

To me this isn’t just an end game system thing. but a gearing issue how every you want to gear your character there is only so far and so much you can do and it caps rather quickly.

Another case in point you don’t have to gear for monolith much to be able to do it. I have ran a reflect/ retaliation mege with no gear at level 40 clearing the entire 55 timeline. on the other side I just took off my gear but weapons and boots and can pull an entire echo at ;eve; 100 empowered and face tank everything. I am not trying to boast or anything like that but to make this makes gear feel irrelevant

So the gearing for endgame doesn’t really matter. Same for arena bc you will get one shot anyway and this was not really the case before.

TLDR: Gear doesn’t matter much right now either you will get one shot when you get hit anyway in arena or you can just face tank the entire monolith system naked. your passives and skill matter more than anything

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54

They did a good job on the new player experience, for sure yes.

But that’s not really the point.

The game is great right now if you want to take a walk in the park. It’s horrible if you want to try to climb the mountain.

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55

Great post Lizard. I hope the devs pay close attention to what you have laid out here.

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56

In what way? I’ve not had any problems getting to & clearing the higher levels of the monolith.

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57

It’s not about difficulty of monolith. Monolith you can clear with just skills (no gear needed).

I’m saying all the players that wants to invest in gear got screwed because there are no mountains to climb anymore.

Monolith is a walk in the park.

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58

Really good summary of the impact of gear on the current patch

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59

It is yeah…

Again this is not a bad thing, its good that begginers have a “safe” place to have fun and learn the game, but the “Empowered Legendary” monoliths should be harder and It should requier some sort of “gear/skill check” to challange players.

Like @Tibone summerized perfectly, we now have mono where gear does not matter becouse it is too easy, and arena where gear does not matter becouse you get 1 shoted no matter what gear you have.

Interactive combat moment
Another one!

I didn’t want to talk too much about difficulty in the post. Like you mentioned, the problems covered in the post regarding identity and chase still need to be adressed regardless of the content’s difficulty.

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60

There will be a point in Arena where it will outscale anything you can find in the game. Arena then becomes a game of not getting hit. I don’t know why that means anything is wrong.

I think the top players may have a little bias here. Monolith is not too easy for me. Finding the gear isn’t easy for me. I am currently stuck on Mono Lagon’s second phase. The tentacle waves wreck me when they stack up.

There should be a nice balance between gear check and skill test when it comes to the games content. Maybe that balance isn’t there yet, but it isn’t so far off as some people claim it is.

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