Hey everyone!
Here is by far my most controversially video to date. A list of my top 5 ranked best and worst skill currently implemented in last epoch.
Let me know what skills would be on your list and why!
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Another 17 minutes of my life goneā¦ 
Interesting to hear your reasons for making the choicesā¦ The synergies of skills with each other/builds/damage types are what I personally use to decide on what my best or worst areā¦ (not that I have ever tried to decide that). I love versatile skills that just fit together - and give you all those warm and fuzzy numbers over the dummies head.
Interesting that you have so many worst skills in the Acolyte and Primalist classes - methinks these two classes are the ones that most need skill reworks.
Happy new yearā¦
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Yeah the older skills are defintely more likely to be in need of a rework just by default, not a design flaw mostly just so much has changed since they were released.
Happy new years to you to 
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i donāt take any issue with your rankingsā¦ they all seem pretty justified and well explained in the video.
i like your idea for abomination, just picking which minions it would use if theyāre available instead of trying to target certain ones. iād also like if it were a permanent minion, maybe it could be LEās first mana-reserving skill or something to keep the cost-benefit in balance. i canāt really give much insight on the skill since iāve never used it. i saw ziggyd try it out on stream and that was enough to know it wasnāt a skill iād be interested in trying.
iām looking forward to seeing some of the older classes get some love from the dev team this year. as you said, itās clear there are just some things that were made at a different time in the gameās development. they need more skill synergies and intriguing branches like the rogue skills.
you also convinced me to give a detonating arrow build a try. i was more into the way cinder strike felt right out of the box, but i guess i just need to dig deeper. time for my 5th rogue, i guess. and right after i made myself make a void knight! guess heāll just hang out at the end of time until i get back to him. 
I have been messing with various Marksman builds and I keep re-skilling and re-setting all my passives because anything I tried just didnt seem to suit my personal style of playā¦ not that what I tried were not viable, I just didnt like really playing themā¦ Like you I liked cinder strike immediately, but I have yet to try a detonating arrow build and if @boardman21 is singing its praises then I had better try itā¦ 
Your abomination commentary gave me an idea. Long cast times are bad for a variety of reasons. As is consuming all your minions at once. Iād change it like this:
Its a standard cast time spell. Kills one minion by default, closest to cursor. When cast it either summons an abom with as much health as minion consumed or adds the consumed minionās health to an existing abom.
I really like the new type of content you brought up recently, because they are great topics to discuss.
You mentioned reasonable facts about all the skills and i can definitly agree with most of your list.
One of my favorite and i think most underrated skill is Dark Quiver.
Itās a completely new playstyle around the Black Arrows you gather from that skill and the synergies you can get with all the other active skills for Marksman. I have never seen such a mechanic in any other arpg and i really like the approach of timing and tactic around it.
Sure it maybe needs some adjustments to make the playstyle more enjoyable (the random black arrow spawn, the āāonly for the next hitāā mechanic seems a bit too weak) but the basic idea and skilltree of that skill is just awesome imo.
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Oh i definitely agree. Rogue skills could easily have taken the entirety of top 5 list.
While DQ can be difficult to get used to and play it does indeed fit very thematically into the marksman class and the mechanic is awesome, i would agree it needs a few tweaks to become just slightly āFunnerā to use (like being able to pick up multiple arrows then go kaboom) But yes, hope to see more skills with new mechanics like this in the future that are very thematically synergized with the appropriate mastery/class.
Good to know it is being enjoyed. Wasnt sure how top 5ās would go over. Many more to come, seeing as you can literally do a top 5 on anythingā¦ lol.
There would need to be a way to kill more than 1 minion as that its the thing I looked forward most to the skill, was being able to sacrifice a variety of types of minions to build my ultimate creation. Limited to 1 type would be kinda boring.
While i agree, this is technically the definition of channeling. I Didnt mean super LONG cast times, just a time that was more justified than channeling for 20 seconds to get 20 minions atm. If you could cap out that same 20 minion consumption with a 5 second cast time and improve that cast time with building into cast speed, well then it would much more manageable in battle.
Good video Boardman, it really got me thinking about some of the skills I would love to see get a rework.
I usually play Primalist and get drawn to minion/companion spell builds. Summon bear has always been frustrating to build around and is such an old skill now in dire need of a rework. Iām not sure Iād like to see itās spell casting ability completely removed though, just reworked. Briar Thorns donāt suit the bears theme at all, so possibly a Roar that does a physical AoE DoT or something like that. The bears AI is also really wonky as he stops attacking if you are not in close range of the enemy.
I would also put Summon Sabertooth in the top worst skills. The Frost Nova and Ice Vortex part of the tree takes far too many skill points and even when fully invested it doesnāt feel good. The cooldown is still too long and the AoE is too small for it to be useful. I hope a future Primalist rework will allow for more companion spell caster builds apart from Summon Spriggan. The Shaman and Druid masteries have nice buffs for minion spell damage, so all it needs now is more variety in the companion skill trees.
Anyway, thanks for the video and Iām looking forward to the next top 5 
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I gave @TriKster a 
because of
ā¦ And because I love him. This letās me look over the fact that he wants to put Dark Quiver onto the top list 
.
Jokes aside: DQ isnāt my style of gameplay from first impressions. So I never got used to it, yet. But I get thatās itās a very unique and interesting skill. And to quote Stanzwar āOften the best skills are those that polarizeā.
While I like Detonating Arrow it wouldnāt have been my #1 choice. This would have been shift.
On my top list I would have had Bone Curse and Death Seal. Both skills have great synergies with other skills, have damage conversions.
Also I love Smite and Devourung Orbs. And Warparh. And Smelters Wrath ( Sentinel )ā¦ Fireballā¦ Volcanic Orbā¦ Lightning Blastā¦
Ah fuck it! 5 is not enough for a top list if best skills 
But all skills on your top list are great and I agree with your points.
On the worst side I wouldnāt have had Black Hole. Itās performance is a bit underwhelming because of the reasons you brought up. But I like the tree on paper. Tweaking numbers to make the different routes more impactful would be cool. Reduce cooldown, increase damage of the fire conversion, increase the CC effects and use the Meteor Tree.
As you said, Abomination is a skill I was hyped for but that somehow disappointed me. The non permanent theme is something I donāt love that much. At least I would like a skill tree route to make the minion permanent. The clunkyness of this skill, time investment vs reward, is too much.
There could be a third category of skills that are popular by having a very limited / one dimensional skilltree:
- Lunge
- Vengeance
Cheers!
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It was indeed very hard to narrow down to 5. Literally every rogue skill and half the other skills in game could be justified on the top 5 list.
I also like the tree on paper, but every reason you just gave is why its on the list 
it ls in dire need of all those improvement to achieve the eye candy popping goodness feeling.
Glad to hear your also enjoying the content 
thereās almost nothing you cant do a top 5 on so expect plenty more
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Totally agree with most of it! Make bear great again! I wanna live my fantasy the āMan and the Bearā! At the moment itās just not worth it to go with solo bear 
Or bear at all reallyā¦
So what about the top 5 2h melee weapons for a rogue build? I know somebody that would cry tears of joy 
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Do you think that perhaps skills that move enemies around (Static Orb/Black Hole), might become more useful simply by the inclusion of additional players that are able to capitalize on a higher concentration of enemies in a given space?
Isnāt there already a passive for consume more minions per time. Turn it into consume more minions per cast.
The idea of playstyle with my suggestion is we summon the abom then keep reinforcing it by summoning and feeding minions into it. Its not limited to 1 type. You keep feeding them in to keep it alive. That is why I had the āadds the consumed minionās health to an existing abomā line there.
Ive posted a few times regarding Abomination, you would have to read my post history
but the skill needs a unique to make it playable for longer periods as you couldnt put the nodes I want in the skill tree while keeping the identity of the skill but currently im positive nobody plays this skill for long
Interesting video.
Of course this is one way to see things, but I overall agree with all the worst skill presented here.
Thing is if we take your criteria separatly then suddently some others skills pop up ,especially the last of your criteria, regarding versatility/diversity. If you only take that into account then even some of the most used skills will fall into this category (Iāve already made a specific thread regarding those problems).
So as good and well explained your video is, the constraints you are putting on your criteria hide unfortunately other critical problems regarding skill trees.
A problem I faced while trying to narrow down 120 skills to 5. Its harder than it seems and why the constraints were necessary.
Bear should have a retaliation tree, a taunt tree, an āintimidationā tree (fear, slow, enemies deal less damage, etc.), and maybe a tree that is just aggressive brute damage like charging attacks and increased damage.
Yes bear has such a puny amount of added damage, while half of his skill tree is taken by some caster crap and he has no way of buffing allies/debuffing enemies.