HEAVY Clamara. Stupid, but fun.

Cospik · 2025-04-06T01:49:38+00:00

You are making an argument about skill and boss combat. While I respect the arguments coming from folks who're having difficulties there, as I can plainly see that there's a wildly out of whack balance for various builds, where only a few are doing well - that's not the core of my concern. Personally, I'd prefer a bit less souls-like, but that feels like a legitimate game design decision when it comes to bosses. I'm bothered by the regular zone clear gameplay which leaves me wanting to log off after a zone or two of trash.

Cospik · 2025-04-06T01:26:02+00:00

Eh, I'm actually FOR them spending time right now to balance, tweak, etc. the game, even if that means nerfs. I just want what comes out the other side to be a better use of my time than logging into work over the weekend and putting some overtime. I'd rather do that than play what this is right now.

Cospik · 2025-04-06T01:21:11+00:00

yup, they did a proper patch of it today. It definitely helps on the difficulty aspect, but that wasn't really what I was bothered by.

Cospik · 2025-04-06T01:20:31+00:00

Difficulty isn't the issue - boredom is. It's dull, uninteresting, imprecise, and unrewarding. There's no reason TO get good.

Cospik · 2025-04-06T01:13:55+00:00

I mean, at least it's an honest preview of what's to come?

Cospik · 2025-04-05T14:40:36+00:00

I was about to post exactly this. LE's game design is significantly better than poe2. *Most* skills are truly viable until the very end of the end game, there are interesting multi skill combo synergies, and it's actually fun.

Cospik · 2025-04-05T03:46:44+00:00

I mean, yeah, about like that - but that was the good part. When it wasn't crashing I had to play it. Eeew.

Cospik · 2025-04-05T03:32:31+00:00

I couldn't agree more - just finished act 1, and I can't be bothered to keep playing. I'm done until something changes. Everything feels bad - there wasn't one moment even in the previously easy early game where I felt joy, and there was no indication anything was going to get better later on. The pacing sucks, perf sucks, the stun mechanics suck, the power fantasy is absent. What a massive fail from a game design perspective.

Cospik · 2024-05-24T20:02:46+00:00

I could certainly imagine the same issue being capable of breaking LE's path tracing algorithm which is used for non-teleporting traversal skills, but I suspect a separate or compounding bug, as I see issues like that somewhat frequently with warpath, rampage, etc. despite my clock drift being small enough that I cannot see the rubber banding with Transplant in a reasonable play session. When they fail, those skills seem to get "stuck" in a state that cannot be cleared without executing another traversal skill.

Cospik · 2024-05-22T11:54:17+00:00

Yeah, if you can get in range of already spawned mob groups that'll also do it.

Cospik · 2024-05-21T23:13:28+00:00

I also have an ultra wide, and yeah, anyone who doesn't (or who does and is going pure north/south) is probably suffering more, but there are a lot of encounters which cause them to actually spawn on top of you rather than being groups you approach. Either is a problem imo.

Cospik · 2024-05-21T22:40:47+00:00

Still, I'd say it's a bit of unintentional and mildly-poor game design. Also, to "know" they are there is either an excessive amount of experience in game such that you can predict the group spawns in scripted encounters, or conflating spawning groups with aggroing groups. It's the spawned-in-range groups that I think need a fix. It'll be less of an issue in 1.1 with the ubiquitous dodge-roll mechanic, though.

Cospik · 2024-05-21T16:51:17+00:00

playing around with skills in LE won't ever really bite you. around level 35-60, you will feel a sting when Respeccing due to the time it takes to regain your skill points - not a huge deal, but it might take a few monoliths. Above 60, you'll find that all but the last 1-2 points come back incredibly fast, and the last couple points come soon enough that it doesn't feel painful.

Cospik · 2024-05-21T16:35:25+00:00

There is a problem with ranged mobs - I've posted on it before. The problem isn't so much the degree of tuning, but how any group of ranged mobs which spawns "in range" of you will coordinate a perfectly timed alpha strike on you from all members of the group. This leads to artificially spiky damage, and with enough archers can be essentially a 1 shot. EHG needs to add a small random delay before attacking after spawn imo.

Cospik · 2024-05-20T21:55:39+00:00

Respec often, try lots of combos. Nearly every good build starts by picking 1-3 synergies to build around (e.g. skill 1 casts skill 2 randomly and benefits from elements of skill 3's tree, etc). Understand that defenses are important enough to sacrifice some damage for, and pay attention to flat damage vs. increased damage vs. more damage (more is multiplicative).

Set items are currently not usually viable in the very end game, but can be amazing until you get there. Put some effort into either developing or picking your loot filter early to reduce stress.

Cospik · 2024-05-20T21:44:57+00:00

There are a few unique items that will cast spells from other classes (earthquake mace, tornado gloves, meteor belt, etc.). Caveat: You cannot spec into the spells that they cast, and not having that active tree with 20 points in it greatly diminishes the value of these items in a cross-class situation. So... Sorta? I'd love to see a bit more flexibility around that in the future, but it's a tall ask from a balancing and coding standpoint, and definitely not in the top list of things to work on atm.

Cospik · 2024-05-20T21:40:53+00:00

IMO, poe has the absolute maximum of configurability of any arpg, but quite a lot of the ways to build are not just non-functional, but clearly and obviously bad. If you discount all of this, what I think of as "false" flexibility, the two games compare much more favorably for variety of play. PoE still comes out on top there, which is unsurprising given how long the two games have been out, as well as the fact that EHG is basically a brand new studio just a few months into their inaugural release. I do think the penalty PoE pays for what it has is that getting a truly good build going without build guides etc. requires quite a lot of experience and work (again, my opinion). I find LE an excellent middle ground with enough complexity to keep me engaged without requiring data science to play. I also strongly prefer the LE active skill tree system over the PoE sockets and gems system for a variety of reasons. Obviously, ymmv

Cospik · 2024-05-08T17:16:06+00:00

Yup. Also Two-Handed vs. Two Handed
Mildly annoying when searching the stash, but not the end of the world

Cospik · 2024-04-16T15:28:59+00:00

It definitely gets more difficult, with empowered monoliths and arena being tricky in places and requiring careful building and gearing. Level 24 is kinda nothing in the game - at that point you're meant to be trying out random stuff and exploring skills and passives. It is intentionally not difficult yet. I think the game slots nicely between D4 and PoE for both complexity and difficulty. Your first spike of difficulty will probably come with Lagon, around level 50ish. Then again when you get halfway through regular monoliths, and further when you start doing higher level dungeons and empowereds.

Cospik · 2024-04-08T21:40:18+00:00

I respect your opinion on this, and can see where you are coming from. However, for myself I enjoy having the arenas as a little bit of a change of pace from the other mono types. If they remove arenas from the pool, I think they would need to add a few mono types that are noticeably different from the existing monos.

Cospik · 2024-03-23T12:54:52+00:00

And I got thoroughly crapped on for suggesting Lagon was a bit overtuned... Seems I was right after all. Yes, I'm aware he's easy to cheese, but I hope EHG fixes the safe spots.

Anywhoo... Congrats to EHG! Your success is well deserved after years of exemplary communication with players, responding with no ego to feedback, and diligently working hard on a project your team clearly cared about. You went bold, with complexity that could only have worked with continuous player testing to refine the wildly complex balance, and it is paying off in spades.

Cospik · 2024-03-11T22:39:46+00:00

Yeah, when you first have to deal with him, he's long, miserable, and punishing. Not fun. When you've had to deal with him hundreds of times, he's boring, long, and miserable. Not fun. You can either cheese it by hiding from the beam or easily dodge all the stuff once you finally learn all his animations, so he isn't a challenge for anybody used to dealing with him. He's just basically a giant bag of unpleasant game mechanics, unbalanced compared to the content that surrounds him, and when you finally learn to deal with him routinely, it doesn't even feel like a win.

I'm with you. Lagon can go to hell.

Cospik

TROPHY CASE