Hello, like alot you I’ve spent a great amount of time playing ARPGs from d2, poe, grim dawn, d3, wolcen, torchlight etc…
Last epoch checks alot of boxes for what makes a great ARPG, here are my two cents after playing 3 classes 2 to 70+ over the past week.
Pros
+Classes are different and skills are interesting
+Combat feels great, skills feel powerful
+Skill tree for each skill is awesome and it makes you want to experiment
+Monsters, great mix between range, melee, slow, aoe etc (except for queen beetle, lower the health, c’mon)
Procons
+/- Endgame - Too early to tell, arena gets really dull, once i hit 100 i felt kinda happy and didn’t feel like reviseting, great xp i guess but it’s not a fun grind, i don’t really care for the “leave and get reward” idea, i want to push my character and then get rewarded, not chicken out. Monolith i love it, but let me pay with some currency to add more mods to the map.
+/- Uniques - Somewhat bland uniques and set items, but really it is too early to tell
+/- Crafting - Interesting, needs more too it obviously but i have a good feeling
Cons
Mana, I get it you don’t want your game to be a “speed meta, poe smash and run” kind of deal. BUT mana generators are REALLY bland in this game, in 10 second I’ll have 7 seceonds of fun and have to spend 3 seconds mana generating with some boring skill. That is super frustrating. Give the players more options here. If you don’t want a speed meta be careful with movement skills instead.
-Character sheet, should be able to import more of the build info, so i can check my current skills stats.
I fully support mana management being an integral part in building a character, and it not being trivial (i.e. PoE) to infinitely cast/attack/use skills. However, there needs to be FAR more options for mana recovery that characters can build into. I like that there is a significant opportunity cost to sustaining mana and different skills need to invest more in sustaining mana, but at the end of the day with enough investment, most-to-all skills should be relatively sustainable.
Good example: Acolyte. Transplant with Rip Blood tree requires investment of two skill trees but allows for good mana sustain. Summon Skeletons refund mana when killed, allowing Sacrifice builds to somewhat sustain mana if specced properly. Additionally, lots of skills cost Health instead of mana, making use of exsanguinous counteract cost of skills for Acolyte.
Needs a little work - Sentinel. Firstly, volatile reversal seems super bugged related to restoring mana. If those bugs could be fixed, that would be a huge improvement. Other than that I guess there’s Urzil’s Pride with armor stacking for mana regen, and void skill mana cost idols to help with other skills, so it’s okay most of the time. Just please give more skills the void tag when void-related nodes are taken.
Needs a lot of work - Mage (unsure about Primalists). We all agree that sitting around casting Focus for Mages is no fun. Mana strike is almost equally no fun. Outside of those two skills, there really aren’t other good options for restoring/sustaining mana. In a class that prides itself on large mana pools (see Sorcerer martery bonus and Focus lightning wave skill), there really should be better Mage-exclusive ways to increase base mana regen rate.
Finally, agree that Queen Beetles have a little too much Health. They aren’t very threatening, but when it takes 30+ seconds on an average not-incredible build to kill a rare enemy, that’s pretty anti-fun.
Agree with your view here mostly. I don’t necessarily want every skill to be sustainable since that kinda imply there is no real need for mana management. But I don’t feel there is a real alternative play style of using low cost or mana generating skills to manage mana available.
Sure, we need very high damage, very high mana cost skills as a balancing measure. But it’s opportunity cost. For example, with enough means of lowering mana cost / increasing regen, the question then becomes something like: do I accept not being able to use this skill all the time, or am I willing to sacrifice 2 gear slots, one spell skill tree, and 15 passive points to be able to use this initially high-mana-cost skill more often?
Then the balance centers around trade offs between mana cost and survivability/damage in other regards. It adds additional complexity and MOST IMPORTANTLY gives players more choice and more build diversity.
Of course we wanna use the big !BÄM! skills always and forever. Max damage and infinite mana. This would be great.
I am ok with the current tradeoffs. More casts, less damage. More damage, less sustain.
What has to be fixed is the balance between low mana skills and the mana eaters. Some low mana skills like fireball or lightning blast are really nice and can be build to do a lot of damage compared to mana investment. Desintegrate on the other side has no real use in any build because damage output or utility compared to mana cost is very bad. Skills like this need a overhaul.
