What I'd like to see changed based off 1.1 experience

[Xenobius]

Right.

Just to explain where I'm coming from, I have a "not too casual, not yet hardcore" 600 hours total in this game ever since I first purchased the early access version back in December 2020, so I've experienced most (if not all) it has to offer. Granted, I haven't killed Abberoth yet (my gear sucks atm and I didn't want to play a Warlock, so I get pulverized when he gets serious and Harbinger Eye farm is a pain, but I'll get there eventually), but other than that, I've seen it all.

Some of it I obviously liked - you don't spend upwards of 200 hours a year on something you hate, and LE *is* addictive, I'll give it that, but at the same time, I've racked up quite a list of things I don't *quite* enjoy.

In no particular order:

Why is there even a mandatory campaign mode more than once per season, per account? Or even at all? No, seriously, every time I have to watch the snake girl monologue with my controls frozen I literally roll my eyes and sigh. Let's face it, EHG does NOT have Blizzard's budget to build a breathtaking campaign full of cinematics that cost a small country's annual budget each. It's there, sure, but is it good enough so that I'd want to slog through it again? Not really. Maybe *once*, and only when they finally finish the *whole* thing and not leave us with another "The princess is in another castle" line. Adventure Mode? Total campaign skip? Season-wide Blessings, even, and no, not the current "lowest roll when you beat the timeline" ones, full power? Because no, crawling through the "quest Echoes" again and again is NOT a fun experience. It doesn't add anything (except frustration) to the process of rolling alts.

Why does the game hate melee so much?
No, really.
All of the deadliest mechanics, the most annoying enemy abilities are area denial ones. Puddles of goo, death rays, breath attacks, you name it. You want to play a tanky, in-your-face kind of character? Nope, not a chance. Go run around like a headless chicken, because all of that armor, dodge rating, all of that shield block, parry and life leech is borderline useless because you either avoid entirely it or die. Unless, of course, you're an INT based Ward-hog with a dozen sources of ward generation. Not fun, fix please.

Gear progression. Who thought it was a good idea to design Uniques in a way that boils down to "Unless it's LP2 it's not worth picking up"? And don't even get me started on Set items. That CoF bonus to drop entire sets? You could've replaced it with "When a set item drops, it gets immediately destroyed and converted into 2000 gold" and nobody would've complained, that's how bad it is. Also, why are LP3s and LP4s so darn rare? In my entire 600 hours, I've seen a handful of LP3 items, and I think a grand total of TWO LP4 ones. Granted, I usually get bored with a character around level 95/corruption 300 or so, but why even have a feature that is accessible only to those with excessive amounts of free time or people who play/stream games for a living? Are they your only target audience? Because my mostly-casual view on the legendary is "Meh, I'm not getting anything good out of it anytime soon". A big, BIG part of the fun in ARPGs (at least to me) is obtaining gear that makes you feel OP for a while. You barely ever feel that in LE, because with proper loot filters on, you see a decent drop maybe once a day. Yay, I just picked up an item that will allow me to survive 0.05 seconds longer in a death ray! Ugh. Not a good effort-to-reward ratio, at least not in my eyes.
If you want to reward people who aim for ladder tops - sure, go ahead, but please don't do it at the expense of the more casual playerbase. We wanna have fun too.

More or less related to the previous point - difficulty spikes are too sharp, or rather, the difficulty curve looks like a cardiogram of someone having heart attack. No, seriously. A level 20+ character can start clearing non-empowered monos no problem, steamroll the entire campaign... And get his @rse handed to him by a random poison puddle, because all of a sudden, you need 20k eHP, Armor DoT reduction and less damage over time taken, or you're toast. I don't mind difficult fights as such - I do, however, mind when difficultly ambushes you from stealth with a two-handed greataxe sneak attack. Curves, not spikes, please.

TL;DR: The game needs a LOT of work to make it appealing long-term. And with PoE2 looming on the horizon, not a lot of time to make it happen.

[tiamats4esgares]

I've played roughly 650 hours. I haven't seen a single 4 LP item, and less than ten that were 3 LP, only one of which was worth using (and that's even really only barely worth using).

They're eventually going to fix set pieces where they are worth using. Allegedly.

PoE also has useless uniques drop, to be fair. Useless items dropping is just a part of the game.

I quit playing because the game gets harder (adding harbinger and Aberroth), yet my build doesn't get better, nor are there higher stats on gear or idols or something to compensate for the increased difficulty. The difficulty was FINE where it was before. My build can do 300+ corruption, and kill bosses at 300+ corruption, and sometimes even harbingers. But I can't kill Aberroth (well not that I've tried a whole lot, but I just don't CARE)....so now my build "sucks" since I can't "prove that it's good" anymore. Stupid.

There's really no reason to continue playing once you get over 300 corruption because just...what's the point?

[Xenobius]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από tiamats4esgares:

the game gets harder (adding harbinger and Aberroth), yet my build doesn't get better, nor are there higher stats on gear or idols or something to compensate for the increased difficulty.

This, so much this.
You are reliant on ultra-rare, once-in-a-lifetime drops from the moment you reach 200 corruption or so. There is no feeling of "I'm growing stronger bit by bit" at all. And there definitely should be.

Also, all things considered, I recently started to think that +Skill Level affixes are... A bad idea. Like, really, really bad. There are situations when interesting builds pretty much require you to grab nodes you will NOT be able to reach without having +skill levels on your gear, and given how starved for stats character are, I really think that such affixes should not exist at all. Just add a natural post-level 20 skill progression, allowing players to reach skill level 25 by level 95 or even 100, so that those last points CAN be reached with persistent grinding, but for <insert deity of choice here> sake, don't make it RNG-dependent.

Another thing to note is how much of a crutch "armor mitigation applies to DoT" and "Reduces damage over time taken" affixes are. Maybe you shouldn't have made enemy DoTs so absurdly deadly in the first place, eh? Because something that normally CANNOT be dodged, blocked or mitigated by armor is OP by definition - and given how everyone and their dog usually has MULTIPLE sources of extremely deadly DoTs in the endgame takes it to pretty absurd levels.

[ninakoru]

Agree with some point but mainly:

The game does not take into enough (if any in many cases) consideration melee playstyle, so ranged and fire-and-forget playstyles are just superior in any way.

I don't like 90% of uniques, are just noob traps or useless that may be useful to level other char. Is a similar design that PoE with lots of trash uniques, but worse. The LP system salvages the whole thing a bit.

Difficulty is a big concern, many people leave the game early because is too easy too long. You hit a roadblock like Lagon or Empowered and is a WTF because the game teaches you you don't need to care about anything until it suddenly matters.

[phadin]

To be fair, a good chunk of uniques, in this and many other ARPGs, are not meant for endgame. They're cool things you can pick up while leveling that make the leveling progress itself a bit smoother or easier, but are not intended for endgame builds. How many end game PoE builds use Tabula Rasa, for example. It's great for getting a powerful skill going while leveling, but no one would use it fighting high tier maps or pinnacle bosses, you want some 'real' armor for that.

I haven't played too deep into monoliths myself, but I kinda see where people are comign from regarding melee build. I started playing a shapeshifting primalist here, my plan to be a werebear and just maul everything. At this point though, I spend most of my time popping between werebear and swarmblade to keep the locust swarm going, and most things just die to that. What conribution my actual melee damage provides is minimal, even though both use the same melee damage bonuses. the swarm is just far more deadly then my melee abilities could ever be, with the benefit of being AoE and not requiring any real action from me other then get near the enemy.

I haven't seen an inssue with survivability yet, though I haven't hit any corruption monolitsh or anything as I'm still only level 70 and just finished my second monolith. If the issue is DoTs, I'm hoping the clear debuffs ability I have on Roar and when shapeshifting will resolve those. Both events also trigger big self-heals as well. Still, it does seem problematic that there are damage sources that basically ignore all defenses. Particularly since the game is designed with a penetration mechanic that eliminates a lot of the value of Resistance. (admittedly, i like the way it handles resistance in that respect. It means missing some resistance cap is not an instant one-shot vulnerability in this game)

[Tyyne]

Gotta agree on all the parts, especially on the melee-part. Let's take the Sentinel as an example. There's literally three melee attacks that can be built around (and it has been so for a long time: Rive and Warpath. Rive because of the node that let's you pull the mobs toward you (and how wonky the pull effect still is, Emperor of Corpses says hello), letting you move a bit while you attack and Warpath because you can move all the time while whacking the mobs. I'd love to use Vengeance as an end game skill but it's just so bad dps wise (even at +7-8 skill points from helmet & Renegade's Will) it's not even fun. Even when you go dualwield with the Will and Palarus' sword and bonk enemies with Smite, it is still way worse than just smiting the mobs directly. Healing Hands can be specced as melee but, again, the ranged version is superb compared to the melee one. Haven't tried Shield Bash (yet) but it seems that they finally managed to add a 3rd viable melee option for late game.

[Xenobius]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από phadin:

To be fair, a good chunk of uniques, in this and many other ARPGs, are not meant for endgame. They're cool things you can pick up while leveling that make the leveling progress itself a bit smoother or easier, but are not intended for endgame builds. How many end game PoE builds use Tabula Rasa, for example. It's great for getting a powerful skill going while leveling, but no one would use it fighting high tier maps or pinnacle bosses, you want some 'real' armor for that.

The problem with LE Uniques is, many of them are not "early game starters" in any way, shape or form. We're talking items that require level 80+ just to EQUIP - and even then most of them feature stat distributions that simply don't allow them to function below LP2 at the barest minimum, with LP3 finally making them solid options, because you can compensate for terrible base stats they have with Exalted affixes.

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από phadin:

I haven't seen an inssue with survivability yet, though I haven't hit any corruption monolitsh or anything as I'm still only level 70 and just finished my second monolith. If the issue is DoTs, I'm hoping the clear debuffs ability I have on Roar and when shapeshifting will resolve those. Both events also trigger big self-heals as well. Still, it does seem problematic that there are damage sources that basically ignore all defenses. Particularly since the game is designed with a penetration mechanic that eliminates a lot of the value of Resistance. (admittedly, i like the way it handles resistance in that respect. It means missing some resistance cap is not an instant one-shot vulnerability in this game)

The problem with DoTs in LE isn't the Poison/Bleed and the like. You *can* cleanse those, after all. It's the fact that the game handles every single continuous attack as "Damage over time". Void zone that spawns under your feet? DoT. Laser beam? DoT. Fire breath? Yeah, it's DoT too. Sand tornadoes the snake enemies spam? You guessed it, that's DoT. Snowstorms, small and large? Same.
And since it's classified as damage over time, your Evade, Armor and Block stats are suddenly worthless. Oh, and many of those effects also tend to tick insanely fast, multiple times per second. Yay! (not).

[Ravenkid9266]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από Xenobius:

The problem with DoTs in LE isn't the Poison/Bleed and the like. You *can* cleanse those, after all. It's the fact that the game handles every single continuous attack as "Damage over time". Void zone that spawns under your feet? DoT. Laser beam? DoT. Fire breath? Yeah, it's DoT too. Sand tornadoes the snake enemies spam? You guessed it, that's DoT. Snowstorms, small and large? Same.
And since it's classified as damage over time, your Evade, Armor and Block stats are suddenly worthless. Oh, and many of those effects also tend to tick insanely fast, multiple times per second. Yay! (not).

If you migrate to https://lastepoch.tunklab.com/bestiary and look up the monsters it gets even stranger. I mean tunklab has the EHG stamp of approval and has complied with EHGs previous stance of hiding some information, but when you try and look up monsters by DoTs what do you find?

Despite a robust tag system there are no entries for DoTs, leading people to believe that DoTs are rare enough to justify how difficult it is to build defenses for.

To be fair though, balance is hard in a game with so many moving parts as LE. I mean take ward for example it took EHG how many years to realize ward is a problem despite claims to the contrary? So its a lot easier to create faux difficulty by making attacks intended to provide difficulty DoTs because they bypass so many defensive layers. Same with Evade, there are attacks that should be evadable that are simply coded with "unable to dodge" leading the casual player to believe it was just RNG.

[Xenobius]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από Ravenkid9266:

when you try and look up monsters by DoTs what do you find?

I don't think there's even a search option in Bestiary to show enemies capable of dealing damage over time.
You can, however, open any particular enemy spreadsheet and look for stuff with the "Is Hit = NO" line.

So if you just lost your HC character to say, Frost Lich Formosus on your first attempt at an Empowered Monolith boss, you can look him up and see that the thing that (likely) killed you was a small white Ice Vortex barely visible on white snow-covered ground :D

[Ravenkid9266]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από Xenobius:

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από Ravenkid9266:

when you try and look up monsters by DoTs what do you find?

I don't think there's even a search option in Bestiary to show enemies capable of dealing damage over time.
You can, however, open any particular enemy spreadsheet and look for stuff with the "Is Hit = NO" line.

So if you just lost your HC character to say, Frost Lich Formosus on your first attempt at an Empowered Monolith boss, you can look him up and see that the thing that (likely) killed you was a small white Ice Vortex barely visible on white snow-covered ground :D

Right that is my point exactly. There are tags you can search for, but nothing mentioning DoTs. Normally I could count this as creator prerogative, however there is a distinct feeling of EHG influence. What do I mean by that, well back in the day EHG was quite adamant about keeping drop rates hidden. Something that all of the data sites with the EHG stamp of approval complied with. Tinfoil hat? perhaps but the point stands.

A player who finds their way to the bestiary, perhaps from the reddit where it is linked, has to take tedious levels of legwork to discover how prolific DoTs are and they are not just ailments. *

So what is the goal? When I find a situation where I am confused I tend to shift my goals until the outcome makes sense to extrapolate the goal. Seems a lot easier to have a DoT tag given the goal is to provide information. So why is there not one?

Edit*: I suppose there is some distinction for DoTs and non-hits, although in this context they are pretty interchangeable.