Dying a lot. Am I doing something wrong?

[Yaridovich]

I'm getting really, REALLY frustrated with the game because ever since I got to the desert area, I just can't stop dying every 2 and a half seconds. It feels like many of the enemies from that part of the game and on can cause insane amounts of damage. Sometimes I don't even see my health bar move, I just go from full health to dead before I realize what's going on. It's not even always bosses or rares, sometimes it's just normal enemies doing that.

I'd understand if it was a higher difficulty level, but... I only recently started playing, haven't even finished the game once yet.

I just managed to kill that tree boss in the Tomb of Morditas and I swear I got close to just alf+f4'ing out of the game and uninstalling. I understand that some attacks are telegraphed and you're supposed to move instead of just standing still spamming skills/potions, but I'm really questioning the design of some of the enemies in the game. The boss in the Tomb would hit me with these strong attacks that stun my character and, being stunned, I'm then unable to move away from any follow up attacks, then I'm just dead and have to start the entire fight all over again. And even though I could just let my summons chip away at the boss and keep them healed with Eterra's Blessing, that's just not a fun tactic for me to use.

So I wanted to ask if there are any advice to help me out, maybe I'm doing something wrong, but... I'm just really out of ideas. I'm obviously trying to stay as well equipped as I can be. And I'm not just spamming click on everything, I try to move away when I see an attack is coming, but... Having to fight enemies that can deal this much damage is just not fun.

For the record, I'm playing a Beastmaster with Summon Wolf, Summon Raptor, Eterra's Blessing, Summon Frenzy Totem and Swipe.

[Stephanos]

this game fell down when i realized how much bad is the crafting system...this game mechanics don't provide a friendly approach.so i decided to give up...before the update was released

[Stephanos]

i mean eveything is cool in the game and work well...but why should i play if i can't progress and make better equipment

[Sleazy Ninja]

We need more info. What are your resistances at? How much hp do you have? Basically we need to know all your stats

[Lyncher]

Originally posted by Sleazy Ninja:

We need more info. What are your resistances at? How much hp do you have? Basically we need to know all your stats

This. Most (not all) damage in the game can be tanked through with enough survive ability. Since you don't mention anything related to stats plus you say you are dying constantly the only conclusion to draw from that is you just have poor survive ability and need to invest better into it.

[Yaridovich]

This is my defense values:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2623506261

[ling.speed]

Ouch...
New characters or chapters will usually end up overtuned on launch especially in EA, and i think there is a spike of difficulty in lastest chapter.... BUT

These defences are suuuuper low.
Primalist is my least played class but i don't think glass cannon summoner would be a good at all, so getting defences should be the best course of action here.

Since you have so little of anything, just getting any relevant defence will be big (be it: physical resistance, +HP, %HP, endurance +threshold and %, fire resistance, armor, poison resitance ... and look for defence nodes and other specialized ones like crit avoidance and glancing blow, reduced damage over time taken etc).

You should also look at specializing more, trying to do too many tropes at once is the most common cause to be weak. Pick more narrower range of things your character should be good at which will free resources for it's support and end up stronger that way.

[andrew.thiele]

Outside of the great defensive options Ling.Speed has suggested, there are some general passives you can take to increase your survivability.

Beastmaster has some of the strongest defensive passives available in the game. If you're not already, I'd advise looking into the following nodes:

• Berserker - Primalist node that grants up to 25% damage reduction when below 35% health.
  
• Ursine Strength - provides up to 8 strength (which scales most pets & offers you armor) and also provides 16% damage reduction against nearby enemies. Nearby enemies are generally those within 5 meters (the ring that circles the training dummy has a radius of 5 meters). So you'll want to stay within this range of enemies to ensure you're receiving this buff (while avoiding all strong enemy attacks, if you can).
  
• Boar Heart - grants you Aspect of the Boar when hit which reduces damage taken by 15% (you'll want at least 4 points in this to get to the next node).
  
• Porcine Constitution - grants up to an additional 15% damage reduction to Aspect of the Boar, and increased health regen.

You'll also want some form of sustain, and for most builds this will likely be life leech as its the most powerful sustain option currently available in the game (for the amount of investment needed). You'll likely want to put one point in the Savagery node and then as many points as needed in the Lamprey Teeth node to provide you and your minions life leech.

So, in short, increasing your health pool, resistances (by using items with resistances as implicits and/or with item affixes), adding a sustain option (with life leech), and taking some or all of the damage reduction passives will drastically increase your survivability. As you level further you'll also want to add secondary defenses to increase your survivability further.

The Beastmaster tree also has the best access to Endurance Threshold, so it's a natural secondary defense to choose for Beastmaster. The Life in the Wilderness and Avian Shelter nodes will increase your endurance threshold, health, physical resistance, and provide many of those same benefits to your minions.

Other passive nodes that could be helpful:

• Barkskin - Druid node that provides % Endurance and Armor. If you haven't reached the 60% endurance cap with gear than this node is mighty helpful to do that.
  
• Blood Claws - Druid node that provides you even more life leech (if needed) as well as physical damage penetration. So this node is more for your damage, if you continue to use Swipe (or another damaging skill that does physical damage).
  
• Hunter's Restoration - Primalist node that offers up to 10% increased health and a marginal healing amount. The additional health is fairly substantial for the minimal passive point investment.
  
• Any node that offers Strength as this gives Armor which protects against physical damage and is 70% as effective against non-physical damage. Most nodes that offer strength also have other great benefits as well. The Ancient Might node is a great candidate for later levels. The Primal Strength Primalist node is less enticing, but still a good consideration overall.

Good luck moving forward in the game!

[Fenris]

Originally posted by Yaridovich:

This is my defense values:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2623506261

Don't search anymore. You've created your character like a glass cannon (All in the damage, nothing in the defense).
Your resistances are too low. (O% phys, 0% necrotic, 4%void, 10% fire....) Only these low numbers will make you been killed quickly and often (Not even speaking about no dodge, no life leech, etc... on top of that).

The problem is that the game has a campaign too easy (like too much arpgs where the min maxing is about to take almost only damage related skills, neglect the defense, and play glass cannon), so people don't need to invest in defense before the chapter 6 or 7.
And when it happens, people don't understand why the die so often, because before they didn't die (or less often). They need to rework and scale up the difficulty between chapter 2 or 3 and 7.

Invest only in damage, critical, etc... won't work anymore at some point. Up your defenses. A character dead don't DPS anymore :)

[Yaridovich]

Originally posted by ling.speed:

Ouch...
New characters or chapters will usually end up overtuned on launch especially in EA, and i think there is a spike of difficulty in lastest chapter.... BUT

These defences are suuuuper low.
Primalist is my least played class but i don't think glass cannon summoner would be a good at all, so getting defences should be the best course of action here.

Since you have so little of anything, just getting any relevant defence will be big (be it: physical resistance, +HP, %HP, endurance +threshold and %, fire resistance, armor, poison resitance ... and look for defence nodes and other specialized ones like crit avoidance and glancing blow, reduced damage over time taken etc).

You should also look at specializing more, trying to do too many tropes at once is the most common cause to be weak. Pick more narrower range of things your character should be good at which will free resources for it's support and end up stronger that way.

To be fair, I'm not really trying to do too many tropes at once - I'm just using melee and summons, that's about it. Eterra's Blessing is for keeping me and my summons healed and Frenzy Totem to further buff us.

But I had a feeling that my defenses would be told to be low. The problem is, this being my first character in the game, I don't know how much is high or low, in terms of how much is needed to survive. I've been mostly relying on regen (health on kill/ on hit) and healing to stay alive. Problem is that if I take too much damage at once, sometimes I don't have enough time to react and use Blessing or a potion.

Originally posted by andrew.thiele:

Outside of the great defensive options Ling.Speed has suggested, there are some general passives you can take to increase your survivability.

Beastmaster has some of the strongest defensive passives available in the game. If you're not already, I'd advise looking into the following nodes:

• Berserker - Primalist node that grants up to 25% damage reduction when below 35% health.
  
• Ursine Strength - provides up to 8 strength (which scales most pets & offers you armor) and also provides 16% damage reduction against nearby enemies. Nearby enemies are generally those within 5 meters (the ring that circles the training dummy has a radius of 5 meters). So you'll want to stay within this range of enemies to ensure you're receiving this buff (while avoiding all strong enemy attacks, if you can).
  
• Boar Heart - grants you Aspect of the Boar when hit which reduces damage taken by 15% (you'll want at least 4 points in this to get to the next node).
  
• Porcine Constitution - grants up to an additional 15% damage reduction to Aspect of the Boar, and increased health regen.

You'll also want some form of sustain, and for most builds this will likely be life leech as its the most powerful sustain option currently available in the game (for the amount of investment needed). You'll likely want to put one point in the Savagery node and then as many points as needed in the Lamprey Teeth node to provide you and your minions life leech.

So, in short, increasing your health pool, resistances (by using items with resistances as implicits and/or with item affixes), adding a sustain option (with life leech), and taking some or all of the damage reduction passives will drastically increase your survivability. As you level further you'll also want to add secondary defenses to increase your survivability further.

The Beastmaster tree also has the best access to Endurance Threshold, so it's a natural secondary defense to choose for Beastmaster. The Life in the Wilderness and Avian Shelter nodes will increase your endurance threshold, health, physical resistance, and provide many of those same benefits to your minions.

Other passive nodes that could be helpful:

• Barkskin - Druid node that provides % Endurance and Armor. If you haven't reached the 60% endurance cap with gear than this node is mighty helpful to do that.
  
• Blood Claws - Druid node that provides you even more life leech (if needed) as well as physical damage penetration. So this node is more for your damage, if you continue to use Swipe (or another damaging skill that does physical damage).
  
• Hunter's Restoration - Primalist node that offers up to 10% increased health and a marginal amount of health. The additional health is fairly substantial for the minimal passive point investment.
  
• Any node that offers Strength as this gives Armor which protects against physical damage and is 70% as effective against non-physical damage. Most nodes that offer strength also have other great benefits as well.

Good luck moving forward in the game!

Thanks!

So regarding those skills, what I already have is Life in the Wilderness, Hunter's Restoration and Lamprey Teeth.

The problem I have with Berseker is that it's too conditional - having to wait until health gets that low to get that bonus usually means that I'm just about dead anyway. I'm never a fan of "gain DR when health is low" bonuses in games in general - you need DR to avoid your health getting that low as much as possible, so getting DR when health is already low often turns into a case of "too little too late". I feel like second wind effects are much better in situations of low health instead of DR.

I'm also admitely not a fan of Ursine Strength - the Strength bonus is nice, but having to spend 8 points just to get 16% DR seems like way too much of an investment to me.

That being said - there is Endurance in the game so maybe it's good synergy?

Regarding Druid skills, can I still spend point on those even though I've chosen to specialize in Beastmaster?

I have been looking into maybe getting access to Aspect of the Boar. I intend on getting Primal Aspects later on since a lot of my offensive plan relies on using Aspects.

In any case, might be better to just post screenshots of how my current passives look like:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2623813376

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2623813376

[Yaridovich]

Originally posted by Fenris:

Originally posted by Yaridovich:

This is my defense values:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2623506261

Don't search anymore. You've created your character like a glass cannon (All in the damage, nothing in the defense).
Your resistances are too low. (O% phys, 0% necrotic, 4%void, 10% fire....) Only these low numbers will make you been killed quickly and often (Not even speaking about no dodge, no life leech, etc... on top of that).

The problem is that the game has a campaign too easy (like too much arpgs where the min maxing is about to take almost only damage related skills, neglect the defense, and play glass cannon), so people don't need to invest in defense before the chapter 6 or 7.
And when it happens, people don't understand why the die so often, because before they didn't die (or less often). They need to rework and scale up the difficulty between chapter 2 or 3 and 7.

Invest only in damage, critical, etc... won't work anymore at some point. Up your defenses. A character dead don't DPS anymore :)

Definitely agreed on that, I feel like there is a huge difficulty spike after a certain part of the game is reached. It goes from stomping most of the game easily to suddenly taking huge amounts of damage and dying all the time. Feels like it lacks scaling.

[andrew.thiele]

Originally posted by Yaridovich:

Regarding Druid skills, can I still spend point on those even though I've chosen to specialize in Beastmaster?

Yes, all passive nodes on the left-hand side of the chain within the Masteries you are not mastered in can be taken. Only your Mastery allows you to select the entirety of its passive tree. So you can select half of the passive nodes of each Mastery you are not mastered in. Also, you can respec your passives in the End of Time at Chronomancer Lerinne.

Well, I'd start working on your resistances (eventually reaching the 75% cap) & health pool first, and then my suggestions about possible passive node selections & secondary defenses. You may be surprised just how valuable these additional defenses become as you progress into the endgame. Good luck!

[Yaridovich]

Originally posted by andrew.thiele:

Originally posted by Yaridovich:

Regarding Druid skills, can I still spend point on those even though I've chosen to specialize in Beastmaster?

Yes, all passive nodes on the left-hand side of the chain within the Masteries you are not mastered in can be taken. Only your Mastery allows you to select the entirety of its passive tree. So you can select half of the passive nodes of each Mastery you are not mastered in. Also, you can respec your passives in the End of Time at Chronomancer Lerinne.

Well, I'd start working on your resistances (eventually reaching the 75% cap) & health pool first, and then my suggestions about possible passive node selections & secondary defenses. You may be surprised just how valuable these additional defenses become as you progress into the endgame. Good luck!

Awesome, thanks!

[[LWT]Karpiu]

Just as expected, the "magic" behind dying all the time disappears after seeing resistances and build. The later you go into the game, the harder it becomes, and you have to adapt to the difficulty all the time by thinking about the best possible options for your build. Yes, the campaign difficulty scaling in LE is off, but overall it is still easy. True min-maxing will start in endgame.

andrew gave you some good and direct advices already. You have to balance out your character, you can go glass cannon, but it usually takes a lot of skill (and proper items) to dodge death with these builds and they're not for everyone, they don't work with every class/mastery either. Normally, you would always invest in some kind of defense (in addition to resistances), be it armor, dodge, higher health pool, leech, shield (ward) or whatever else. Last Epoch has many defensive mechanics that give survivability, but many of them are not just passive "+armor" type of thing, you need to read all the skills and nodes descriptions carefully. and look for synergies between passive and active skills. Tooltips help with understanding everything. Good luck.

[ling.speed]

Originally posted by Yaridovich:

Definitely agreed on that, I feel like there is a huge difficulty spike after a certain part of the game is reached. It goes from stomping most of the game easily to suddenly taking huge amounts of damage and dying all the time. Feels like it lacks scaling.

Yeah difficulty definitely is spiky thou part of it is due how different acts test different defences. Like for example, that cold resistance must have been very good for whole Lagoon act. Latest act really tests physical resistance and recovery strength, as there is a lot of "hard to get away from" damage. So start with switching gear to get 50-75% physical res, get some leech and/or potion generation.

Also i'd aim for around 12-15x your level for HP in most cases.

[Fujioka Tomio]

Originally posted by Stephanos:

this game fell down when i realized how much bad is the crafting system...this game mechanics don't provide a friendly approach.so i decided to give up...before the update was released

this really, i've seen threads like months ago and they all say the crafting **effing blows**

Or i guess its just me i failed a 99.9% chance on an sword in a game for +1 and i failed
thats why i don't do any upgrades anymore till i have a lot of resources and have a really good chance..