The ladder is season only, so it was all farmed since the season start.
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Honestly, I hope EHG will keep imprints as they are today but also improve other ways to get items. In theory, the factions rework we will get next season could help with this.
The fact imprints stand out so much when compared to everything else is a good sign of how imbalanced and in need of a nerf they were.
And did you feel that way about Last Epoch in 1.0 and 1.1, when we didnât have the imprint system?
Well imprints are triggering constantly even during regular echo gameplay without target farming it.
I use imprints for my legendary crafting early on the season all the time and it relibly gives me the imprinted unique more often than it gives other things for most of these medium rare uniques.
A âcasualâ in this context could still been impacted by this a lot, but they might not even notice or know themselves how much.
All they had to do was lower imprint dropping by say 35% but not nerf the âexalted items drop with exalted affixes much lessâ - then monitor.
Adding corruption was cool. Imprints needed to chill, but not die.
Top 1% is a silly thing to say re impacting via imprints as one guy killed uber in like 10 hours from launch thatâs what I would say is top 1% not the guys who enjoy playing the whole season and trying to minmax a build like OP and myself or making offbook non meta FUN builds that can only survive and push things using a lot of imprinted, strong items. The more builds in a game the more fun it is. Lots of those builds, gone.
The broken builds are stupid and they need to just balance the game early in the season and tell people theyâre going to do it. Stand up, make the game balanced dont sit for 7 months and cower in the corner. Weâre down to like 4-5k players already so who cares. Honestly I made a frog build without realising it was bugged and got 19 frogs, they changed that over night - didnât care, bug or not needed balancing. These rogues are ridiculous and so does that. The new ammys and melee + frenzy, also ridiculous.
Obviously my opinion only, no one cares but felt like sharing 
That doesnât work. We can see this in PoE2 with them nerfing strong builds and everyone being enraged by it. Or by them nerfing vaal temple and everyone being enraged by it.
Most players prefer that the broken build/exploit/whatever stay in the game and be fixed only next season. They say that grinders already benefitted from it and nerfing it just means that now no one can catch up.
Nerfing those things just makes people leave because now they have no chance to ever catchup to the rest.
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Yes. Even more so in 1.0 and 1.1 - less endgame, less chase. It really is that simple.
Uber and juiced omens (and soon observer) keep the chase alive, naturally youâll want to progress your gear. Imprints were amazing for that.
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Ugh. Youâre so utterly myopic in this conversation, I donât even know why I respond. You appear to only be able to see what you type.
The imprinting changes ruined everything that was not already in a healthy state of balancing. Itâs not about âomgerd my strongest build is ruined.â Itâs about, âomgerd literally everything that isnât on some S tier build list is now utter garbage.â
You donât get to say, âitâs 100c and can kill abby so itâs not trash.â You donât play at my level and you donât share my criteria. You donât have my skill set nor experience. Donât assume I should be playing at your level and I should be satisfied because itâs good enough for you.
Why do you care so much to advocate the ruin of systems that helped foster creativity, ingenuity and fun? And why on godâs green earth are you gatekeeping whatâs worthy of discussion and who is entitled to speak out?
Your attitude on these forums is absurdly cartoonish. You get off MY lawn.
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I think as much as @Erasculio and me for example are on the same side of this discussion (even though we disagree on some specifics) and we pretty much disagree with a lot that comes from the other side it is still very much true what they said.
The phrasing was maybe a bit unfortunate, but the core statement is pretty much true.
EHG obviously always needs to look at the greater picture and there are always more than one side to any discussion. And if a discussio nis very heated and loaded with emotions EHG needs to try and filter through some things. But at the end of the day it is true, that not all opinions or statements are weighted equally. I wouldnât go as far as saying ânot worth listening tooâ. But EHG needs to decide for themselves what kind of game they want to make. And better/more loot from certain systems is not always a net positive for the game, even though a lot of people make it out to be like that. But they are simply arguing from their narrow perspective but make it sound like it is a HUGE problem that affects so many players.
This is a very good example for this whole âthe loud minorityâ. A lot of the people that do decide to give very negative feedback on it are very loud and emotionally loaded, because it affects them a lot.
But in the grand scheme of things the imprint system is still there, it still works wonders and it can still provide unparalleled loot compared to before it was in the game.
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You belong to the 1% of the top 1% of players in LE. Your attitude is âI donât care if this is bad for the game or for the rest of the 99.9%, I still want it.â.
The simple fact you say that anything that isnât overpowered isnât good means that you donât actually play to have fun, you just play to win. That is not the mindset of most players, nor is it one the devs have ever fomented in the game.
As was mentioned before, the fact that imprints were the sole source of almost all the most overpowered items for the last 2 seasons is a testament of how broken it was. And they would only become more broken this season if left unchecked, making 5xT7+ possible with corruption.
So a nerf was clearly needed. Maybe it was too heavy, although there are still plenty of players that managed to get 2xT7 legendaries since the season start. So EHG did right in nerfing it. They might have failed the balance or maybe this is just a case of wanting the broken toy to stay broken.
You can be sure that they were monitoring the results of imprinting these last 2 seasons and are monitoring them this season as well.
Much like all those âS-tier builds that are the only ones that arenât garbageâ clearly need to be nerfed. Uby shouldnât die in seconds. 20k+ corruption shouldnât be possible. And in this they clearly failed by a lot.
But lack of success in balancing one part of the game doesnât mean everything else should remain broken.
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Reading the above, itâs funny to see your claim that I would be myopic.
Do you realize that the point you keep repeating is âmyâ level, âmyâ criteria, âmyâ skill set? You, you and you?
Meanwhile, what I (and others) have been discussing is whether the imprint nerf is good or not for the game as a whole. Not for âmeâ. But for âusâ.
So, again, of course people who abused a broken system would complain when itâs fixed. That was obvious. Just like people currently killing Uber Aberoth in one second will complain once their builds get nerfed - they may as well say that their experience and their fun and their way of playing the game will be hurt.
Does it matter?
No.
The feelings of a few (a very small few) are not worth listening to if they would keep the game in a worse shape for the majority.
In factâŚ
Thatâs exactly what you donât get. Itâs not your lawn.
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Itâs still technically there, but it canât really provide anymore.
I had a 776 axe imprinted for over a week and only saw maybe two 77s drop. It no longer drops items with the same affixes the way it used to. This has been tested by people running hundreds of Troves and Vault maps (check Reddit), and by me as well I play 10+ hours a day, have multiple alts, and have imprinted plenty of 77 items just to test it.
From my experience, imprinting a 77 mostly results in single 7s. Occasionally you might get a 77 from a 77 imprint, but anything higher than that? Basically never.
My friend has had 777 Rogue armour imprinted for about a week and a half since getting it in Nemesis. We play together constantly heâs a speed runner, so we chain echoes back-to-back. He imprinted 60+ Vaults, and I brought 80+ Troves heâs also done troves with other people. From all of that, he didnât get a single 77. Not one. Youâll never get a 777 again.
It just doesnât provide unparalleled loot anymore.
I even tested unique imprinting with a 2LP Jungle Queen because technically that âcanâ work. Over two days I got two belts and the rest were completely random uniques. I even checked my Werebear, whoâs had 776 gloves sitting in his imprints for who knows how long not a single pair dropped.
Nemesis is clearly the provider this season. People are buying hundreds of them hoping for good items (77 / 776 / 777), then praying the item doesnât have a seal and has rolls on the white tiers. Itâs far less rewarding, much more time-consuming, and with crafting being such a gamble even with 65 FP you often brick the item and just log out for the day.
They could have simply toned it down instead of effectively gutting it. That way, players who enjoy the imprint system could still use it, and those who enjoy gambling with single LP items could stick to that path.
Even if someone hits a 777 slam on a well-rolled unique, theyâre probably not going to corrupt it anyway. Getting LP3 on rare items is already extremely difficult regardless of whether youâve got a dozen 777s ready to slam onto it. I have a 766 slam on my WP titan heart and a 76 slam on his vise gloves - you can check my profile, theyâre not corrupted and neither is my 77 world splitter. Those things are too rare to attempt that kind of heart break on.
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Is there any room in this discussion for âI think imprints needed to be changedâ and âI think they went way overboard nerfing multiple things at once and I have no confidence they are monitoring or have a handle on the real cause of the problemsâ.
Itâd also be way cool if things like this could be discussed without âwell back in earlier patches we didnât have these fancy thingamajiggers andâŚâ
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Yeah agreed, this black & white dramatic thinking never helps to fruit some actual good discussions. Its all just doom & gloom. Happens with a lot of thinkgs regarding nerfs in video game across any genre.
The imprint system is very complex behind the curtains and we donât really know how exactly it works or what kind of formula/algorithm it uses. But I think there is a world where EHG adjusts it so that it can be better and more useful in certain scenarios while still being nerfed in other scenarios.
Yes. This is the base statement of anyone crying out about this. It was broken, it isnât broken anymore, they want it to remain broken.
The issue is that Erasculio, Heavy and I have been arguing that. We all say that the nerf was necessary and thereâs a possibility it was too nerfed. Iâve said often that the need of a nerf isnât really debatable, we just need to debate how much of a nerf it needed and if it was too much.
The other side, though, keeps arguing with only one argument and that is the one I quoted above. They had a broken toy, they want to keep their broken toy.
Personally, Iâd wish imprints were changed into something more intuitive, rather than the obsure mechanics behind it we have now which are all too reminiscent of PoE and their obfuscated crafting mechanics.
Iâve suggested before that imprints should just have a small chance to drop an exact duplicate of the item you imprinted, with a small chance of improving a small aspect of it, like a tier increase, a sealed affix, a little more FP, etc.
This way players could work on improving their items slowly over time. The exact rate of the drops and the improvements would need to be balanced, but this would be a much simpler system. And one that is what new players looking at imprints actually expect it to do.
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This is I think one of the core issues they were trying to address with this nerf, the fact that imprints were a viable upgrade path. It was pretty well known towards the end of S3 that you could imprint, get an upgrade proc, re-imprint, wash and repeat to go from single exalted to T7/T7/T7 eventually. If they want the progression to go through other game mechanics, then imprints shouldnât drop more LP or exalted tiers than is on the item.
The other real issue was the combo of the bottom right imprint, troves echo, and weaver nodes that added items to chest drops. There could have genuinely been a much weaker nerf or even avoided changing the drop rate by changing that interaction. Honestly you could really simplify imprints by just having a weapon imprint, armor imprint, relic/jewelry imprint and they all only trigger on drops (this solves the spamming of the cemetary that gives 6 chests at the end too that triggers the bottom left imprint). If theyâre worried about the economy, go with a weaver faction tag that prevents selling imprinted drops on MG, limit imprints to not accept bricked legendaries, or limit the number of times an imprint works before you have to refarm and reimprint an item.
I just donât like that they nerfed the drop rate AND the chance to roll affixes AND the chance for certain echoes to spawn when imprinted. Thereâs been no updates from them, weâre all just speculating assuming theyâre on top of it and itâs not even like we have confidence the next season will be around soon with updates to this.
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Thatâs the ideia.
âMy toy is broken and I want it the way it wasâ: the entire point is not taking it back to how it was.
âI hate the game now and wonât play it like thisâ: if this single mechanic was so impactful, thatâs a clear sign that it had to be balanced.
âŚHowever:
âThings are fine as they are right nowâ: see, thatâs not what we are saying. What me, DJ and Heavy are saying, in different ways, is that there is room for improvement. Just not compleyely reverting the current nerf back to how imprints were last season.
Speaking about me personally, I would rather have other systems that worked alongside imprints, like the revamp to factions we will get next season. But anything that changes what we have right now without just breaking imprints again is fine by me.
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I donât think that was the issue, really. I think the issue was just the rate of the upgrades. At the end of season 3, just looking at the arena boards, the top players had most gear with 2xT7, plenty with 3xT7 and even a few 4xT7. With corruption coming, this would mean everything would go up and 3xT7 would become common.
They might have gone overboard with the nerf (although, as I pointed out, there are still a bunch of players with 2xT7 in the current season) but all they wanted was to prevent this.
As I mentioned before, I donât think the game has enough content currently to justify triple exalteds being common.
Whether they keep the current system or simplify it to something like my suggestion, they both can be balanced in a way so that you can slowly upgrade your gear (it is, after all, the whole purpose of the system) but in a way that wonât result in 5xT7 gear being printed during a season.
Exalted items are open-ended so that they can become achievable as LE gets harder content. They introduce something that is harder than the current content so they make 3xT7 more achievable to compensate. Then harder content again and now 4xT7 is more achievable. Etc. This is the theory behind it.
If you allow 4xT7 or 5xT7 gear to already be achievable now, then the next step will have to be either 2xT8 or adding a T9.
Things will spiral out of control with that method, much like they did in D3.
Itâs hard to have a discussion when one side is mostly saying âa nerf was necessary, maybe it was too much or maybe thereâs an alternative to the current situationâ while the other side just says âthe nerf should be gone and things should go back to the way they wereâ.
Some people will try to meet in the middle, but the most vocal ones just want imprints to be like they were before. Much like some vocal ones just wanted to keep printing a dozen red rings a day before they fixed that.
EDIT: As a PS Iâll just add that the main issue here really isnât the imprint nerf. Itâs the huge imbalance in builds that exists. You have builds that could have full 4xT7 legendaries and still wouldnât catch up to others with just 1xT7.
If builds were decently balanced where all or most of them could do all content with 1xT7 (even if some of that content would require a bit more investment or a bit more skill), then this wouldnât be the issue it is.
The problem is seeing builds obliterate everything with barely any investment while other builds have no chance at all to even kill Uby, even with super duper gear.
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I donât think heâs necessarily saying they should put it back to what it was. It sounds to me like heâs saying the pushed it too far in the other direction. Because the more you dilute the item field (every time you add new affixes, new uniques, new items, etc) the old numbers of how things were dropped change.
And I kinda agree. I think they went a tad to far in the other direction.
But I also understand they might not be done tweaking it and itâll likely get another adjustment in the next major patch. Theyâre gathering data. Theyâll know. And theyâre also probably informed by things they know are coming out in the future.
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So what? In my honest opinion, while taking the acquisition backlash and drop of playernumbers into consideration, this is one of those features EHG should absolutely lean more into.
Imprints in combination with LEâs other crafting / itemization features has (or had) potential to be genre defining. In my opinion, anyway - and Iâve played most arpgâs on the market.
Imprints didnât change at all in function. They just donât drop as much. So itâs still as genre defining as it was.
Also, why do players only like things with obscure mechanics that have to be datamined and consulted on 3rd party sites as âgenre definingâ. We already have that in PoE where you need a PhD to understand how crafting works.
Every single step in crafting/gear progression in LE is extremely intuitive and easy to use by even the most casual player. All of them except imprints which doesnât actually do what people expect it to do.