This is just my thoughts and feedback on the current state of all the classes and masteries in Last Epoch. This is heavily based on my playtime and experience on these classes as well as slightly on videos I’ve seen on Youtube/ Twitch streamers.
Sentinel
Good class, after the 1.2 updates. Some skills suck after reworks like Volatile reversal and Lunge but overall most seem in a decent spot except everything Forge guard.
Void Knight: Its a solid mastery in all spell, melee and ailment(timerot) versions, Echoes are a solid gimmick. Only issue I have is that void is the only damage type option(compared to every other mastery having multiple dmg types). Giving it some Physical or Necrotic options would be cool like a unique mace that makes Erasing strike Physical and some additional phys dmg scaling in its tree.
Paladin: Very versatile mastery, good at almost anything(phys crit, fire crit, lightning crit, bleed, ignite, electrify) and gets a ton of resistances/health/endurance from its passives and holy aura. Impossible to find problems with it.
Forge guard: Terrible mastery, bad exclusive skills and worse at almost every skill than Paladin/Void knight except maybe Shield bash. Its also a horrible minion class with barely any options for minion crit/dot/spell damage scaling. It gets a lot of defensive scaling but doesn’t have any offense to back it up. Stacking up defense to stall out enemies doesn’t really work in LE as a lot of bosses have high damage telegraphed abilities that you are simply not meant to tank. Forgemaster’s might is a perfect example of why Forge guard doesn’t work, it’s a massive damage and movement speed debuff in exchange for a solid defensive buff on a mastery that already doesn’t have enough offense and plenty of defense. Smelter’s Ass, Forge strike, Forged weapons all desperately need a rework. Updates to Manifest armor(like maybe a way to consume a Forged weapon for AoE attacks) and a way for Ring of shields to actually deal solid damage(even if its linked to a set or unique) instead of being limited to utility would be welcome as well.
Mage
Solid class overall, a bit undertuned defensively with all the ward nerfs tho IMO. I guess this is because they balancing around Flame ward but I find that skill annoying as it becomes an almost mandatory pick. Would like it if we had more ways to proc Lightning Aegis. Also why hasn’t Spreading flames got the Timerot treatment?
Sorceror: Some people were saying the nerfs were a bit too much, especially considering the current powercreep in LE. I’d say I kinda agree, Static orb was deleted and there really isn’t any other skill that scales off maximum mana(except Disintegrate which is even more garbage). Maybe adding some type of damage based on mana scaling on a passive or something would help Sorc.
Runemaster: In terms of passives, its very strong but its whole gimmick in Runic Invocation sucks. RI is an awkward skill and I don’t think EHG has a solid plan on what to do with it as they just keep nerfing the popular invocations and giving mostly pointless numeric buffs to the weaker ones(which really need mechanical changes). I also hate that RI is essentially reliant on two uniques Fundamental criterion and Reowyn’s fortress for its damage.
Spellblade: Its a solid mastery IMO, arcane shielding is a good buff and the Dex/Int crit scaling allows for a lot of variety on both spells and attacks. Could use some DoT scaling and DoT mitigation though IMO.
Primalist
Strong class, with a bunch of variety in melee, spells and minions the melee side is kinda weak right now tho.
Beastmaster: Probably the best minion mastery right now? Like every companion is solid, Bear is overtuned, Saber is good, Wolves and Raptor pack are solid, Crows still strong, Scorpion’s doing alright. However, I also consider Beastmaster a melee mastery and that side isn’t doing too good especially with multiple unjustified nerfs to Earthquake(player EQ not bear EQ) and using Wolf/Frenzy totem to support a melee build feels really bad in LE right now(even with cd Swipe healing them every 2 seconds).
Druid: I don’t think Druid is in a good spot, its strongest skill is Storm bolts and that says a lot. The Transformation specific skills without a dedicated skilltree like Spriggan’s Spirit thorns or Swarmblade’s Swarm strike/Locust swarm all suck. Transformations seem to be mainly getting used as a mana battery and for passive buffs which is not good IMO. I would like to see their actual skills to get massively buffed and become viable options.
Shaman: Its missing a skill, I think thematically a Earth/Water based spell would be the best fit(Rain/Swamp related). Also the passives around indirect Storm bolts are extremely dumb, Druid already uses Indirect storm bolts so Shaman should have more synergy with Storm Stacks. On the totem side, Upheaval/Swipe totems would be better on beastmaster I think due to its minion melee dmg and exclusive frenzy totem so the only viable totems for Shaman are Thorn and Storm, if Tempest strike totems were reworked into viability then Shaman would get some more variety. Overall I think its in a much better shape than before though.
Rogue
Offensively pretty good, defensively not on par with other classes IMO. The reason is that its defenses are RNG based and it is highly reliant on stacks of dusk/crimson shrouds for defense. The class exclusive defense Glancing blow is pretty difficult to cap on most setups making it inconsistent. Its also missing multiple skills compared to other classes. IMO Rogue needs an additional defensive layer on top of dodge to make up for its low health pool and increased damage taken(Sniper’s gambit/Dual wield). The best way would be to give it native Endurance threshold scaling as ET has very good synergy with dodge since it helps mitigate dodge’s biggest weaknesses Oneshots and DoT. Best way is to make passives that give ET based on dodge rating so dodge can also mitigate DoTs like armor already does. Also buffs based on ‘not being hit recently’ are very useless in current LE unless you are offscreening everything, these should be changed to remove the buffs when you take a hit that drops you to low life.
Marksman: Bow skills could use some love, Outside of Flurry and Hail of Arrows that can abuse Black arrow/Crystalwind buffs, actual bow damage is kinda lackluster. Dark Quiver needs a rework, especially if EHG wants to keep boss fights with tons of effects covering the arena like Uberroth and Rampant coast beasts. Detonating Arrow could also use a rework. Heartseeker is cool but I’d like to see another bow skill too. Bows kinda underrepresented in LE compared to PoE or Grim dawn’s guns IMO.
Bladedancer: I’d like to see more viable melee skills, most of the melee skills in Rogue(Cinder strike, Dancing strikes, flurry, puncture) are all generators/buffers or proc based (like puncture for shadow daggers) meaning the only options are Shadow cascade or the extremely unique reliant Lethal mirage. I think this will be the focus next patch which is good. On the throwing side, I think its fine as you got Shurikens, Umbral blades, Acid flask and Net.
Falconer: Its a strong class, can actually reliably cap Glancing blow unlike the other two. Falcon and Ballista are quite strong and I’d say its actually balanced with Falconer’s squishiness. I’d like to see more supporting Falcon though, particularly the node where Falcon can apply your ailments is currently limited to a specific few ailments. Letting Falcon apply shock, doom, frailty and other ailments too would be cool.
Acolyte
I think 1.3 buffs/reworks have put it in a pretty good spot except for its exclusive ailments Plague and Damned being exceptionally outdated and many of the minions being weak. Damned has low base damage and doesn’t have the application chance and penetration support other ailments do, especially compared to electrify (which is also an exclusive ailment).
Lich: 1.3 reworks pretty good, I like what was done with Death seal its a very good option but not mandatory. Reaper form decay still sucks though, EHG needs to rework escalating health drain(also on minions like wraiths) and maybe remove it if they want to have long fights with Invincibility phases like Uberroth.
Necromancer: 1.3 reworks were not enough in this case IMO, sure Abomination is in a very good state(best its been and I’ve played it since like 0.8) but there’s still a few issues there. Most other minions are just bad though especially comparing to Beastmaster or Falconer.
Warlock: Like Sorc, I think this class also is just a victim of constant nerfs and powercreep but it still has a very strong baseline compared to Sorc. One issue I have is that the Double hit damage per curse passive doesn’t work with Harvest or Chaos bolts since they already do double damage which is stupid as it should stack since they are different sources. Also I feel like the curses are really kinda boring, when Warlock was first teased before 1.0, I thought each curse would have a unique scaling and be strong enough to constitute a viable build around it. Sadly, outside of Torment and Bone curse+Penance they don’t really seem to be worth building around and are rather just additional debuffs to grab and fuel warlock’s per curse bonuses.
Additional thoughts:
-
With 1.2 Timerot, Doom and Abyssal echoes that are ailments with limited stacks got a massive mechanical change in that “They will only be replaced if the newly applied ailment would deal more damage than the remaining damage of an existing application of that ailment.” It is now 1.3 and other ailments like Plague, Spreading Flames, all the acolyte curses, etc. which also have limited stacks, still have not received this functionality. Why?
-
Poison is inherently worse than all other ailments in LE right now which is kinda sad due to the silly 0.9 changes. Poison has around half the base damage of other ailments like bleed, ignite, frostbite but with an additional 60% penetration at 30 stacks (used to be infinite pre 0.9) this additional penetration does not compensate adequately for the low base damage as it stacks additively with other sources of penetration(diminishing returns) while the higher base dmg ailments like bleed and frostbite scale much better with increased/more damage multipliers. Lich is one of the only classes poison can actually put in decent work right now and that’s due to heavy passive/skill support.
-
Stun and Freeze are awkward right now, these are supposed to be helpful enemy control utility for players. However, they can cause many bugs which actually ends up being more detrimental to players. In some cases the enemy attacks continue even after they are stunned and they are free to attack even when they should be stuck in animation. Stun also causes some enemy attacks to skip animations. Particularly against Uber Aberroth, stun is really bad as he recovers almost instantaneously into his next attack and it can break him out of long animation attacks that are supposed to be a dps window for the players.
-
The BIGGEST problem with Last Epoch IMO is the amount of bugged/ unintuitive interactions every time you try something new or non-meta. This is unacceptable for a game that is fully released(EA excuse doesn’t work anymore). Sure balance is also always a problem like last patch Falconer was killing Uber in 20 seconds and this patch Bear is killing Uber in 20 seconds. But honestly when items/skills don’t work as they are supposed to, that is what really kills interest in the game.
-
Idol Enchants are a solid addition but the process to get them is poorly designed and absolute dogshit. Firstly Weaver’s will is trash since you not only don’t have control of how high it rolls but also no control of what mod it chooses and how high the mod you want goes. Secondly rerolling is fundamentally flawed, If I get say T5 or T6 version of the enchant I want, I can’t reroll for T7 because it will remove my existing mod. Instead I need to farm a new idol with the exact 2 affixes as my existing idol, with affix rolls that are as good as my existing idols(especially awful since we don’t have idol imprinting) and then keep rerolling that new idol till it gets a T7 enchant. Also 90% of the time the weaver’s will just adds a useless enchant instead of increasing the tier on the enchant I want. Absolute waste of time and not worth the grind.