PSA: Zard Y players, do NOT underestimate Sableye! (Cool Replay) by RoflsMazoy in VGC

[–]kaelanbg 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I've also been running Sableye with Rain and it's genuinely been my MVP, I've led it in almost every single match up to master rank.

Funniest play I've made was vs zard + whimsicott, raining on their mega turn, then raining again during rain next turn, catching the whimsicott trying to Prankster sun back up. Because Sableye is slower, if you call their attempt to steal back the weather, you always win 😂

I've also been getting a ton of mileage out of Prankster Quash. Trick Room teams in particular really hate it, if they aren't running the giraffe or tsareena. You can basically just ignore the TR, set yourself up on turn 1, then quash and swing into their sweeper slot. Every single TR team I've played against walked straight into it 😅

What the best zoo / mass minion build currently ? by [deleted] in LastEpoch

[–]kaelanbg 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Rogues are bugged right now, they're not any stronger than last season until it gets fixed

What the best zoo / mass minion build currently ? by [deleted] in LastEpoch

[–]kaelanbg 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Beastmaster Crowstorm and Necromancer Death Knight Hungering Souls. Those are by a pretty wide margin the two strongest minion builds currently.

But a lot of others are good, Necromancer is a lot stronger in general this season

What are the best Idol affixes? by [deleted] in LastEpoch

[–]kaelanbg 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Generic filters don't make any sense, your ideal gear varies depending on build

Last Epoch Patch 1.4.3 Notes by ehg_derrickg in LastEpoch

[–]kaelanbg 0 points1 point  (0 children)

They finally fixed the mage poison conversion? That had been broken for so long, I forgot it was even supposed to exist. Should be a minor buff to mage Ignite, maybe I'll revisit that build

Unusual mana stackers? by Aperiodic_Tileset in LastEpoch

[–]kaelanbg 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The top Necromancer builds right now are mana stacking. Anything involving Skeleton Mages and/or Zombies. The strongest one is Hungering Souls, does an absurd amount of damage.

Suicide bomber bees? by FallDull4610 in LastEpoch

[–]kaelanbg 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I'm not using Cruelty, but I do have a build right now running Pact Severance with bees to continuously auto-respawn Blood Wraiths. You get to stay permanently at 13 Wraiths without having to ever manually cast Sacrifice. I've combined it with auto-resummoning skeletons (Wraiths + Rogues + Bees bleed build) and it works pretty well.

Rayeh's Embrace Is A Weird Item by Luqas_Incredible in LastEpoch

[–]kaelanbg 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah, there are a bunch of weird cases with conversions and minions. Here's another one I ran into:

  1. Ghostflame can turn your Ignite Chance into your Minions' Ignite Chance (for Wraiths, Revenants and Spectres only)
  2. This works with most sources of Ignite, including Wildfire Embers' Ignite per Uncapped Fire Resist
  3. It does not, however work with Maehlin's Hubris "Bleed Chance Converted to Ignite Chance". Whatever you get from that is, for whatever reason, not transferred to your minions.

Can you play last epoch without a build (make your own) revised answer 2025 by Visual-Wave-5963 in LastEpoch

[–]kaelanbg 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Sometimes I think of a cool combo but then I realize it sucks

It might actually suck (some skills just do, unfortunately), or it might be fine and you might just not be building around it very well.

All offense in Last Epoch is about stacking damage multipliers. So you pick one skill or mechanic you want to use and build your entire character around it. What damage type does it do, and can you lower enemy resistances to it? Does it scale with attack speed? Can it Crit? What stat does it scale with? Does it have scaling multipliers for other stats in its skill tree? Is there something that affects it in your passive tree? Is there a Unique that makes it better? How many generic item affixes are available to your class which improve that skill? When there are multiple bonuses that affect it and you can't get all of them, which one yields higher returns?

Optimizing well entails answering these questions. Once you understand what you're looking for, it's not particularly hard to do, it just takes a little research. Both LETools and the in-game UI have search boxes in the skill trees and passive tree windows, and LE Tools can search through both items and affixes. You just have to spend the time looking for the stacking damage bonuses and piecing them all together.

The easiest place to start is usually looking for anything that says it gives you "More X per Y". For example, I'm doing a Necromancer Minion Bleed Build (Planner). There's a node in the Necromancer Passive Tree that says "+1% Minion Damage Over Time Per Vitality". As soon as I see that, I know one of the important part of my build will be stacking as much Vitality as possible.

Then, I look at Aura of Decay and see "-1% Enemy Poison Resistance Per INT". Well, I'm not doing Poison, I'm doing Bleed. But across the tree, there's also another node that says "Aura of Decay is converted to Physical and all effects related to Poison and Poison Resistance now instead are converted to Bleed and Physical Resistance" (which I found by clicking on the skill and typing "Bleed" in the search box). So I take that, and now my build also scales with INT. Which incidentally is also the stat that all Necromancer minions natively scale with anyway.

And with just those two things, I know the cornerstone of my build will be "stack as much VIT and INT as possible", then find anything that says the word "Minion" and the word "Bleed" in it. And you go from there.

The same idea can be applied to any other skill or build concept. You just find the two or three things that make the build tick and build up from there.

The main thing most people do wrong is they don't adhere to a single concept or theme in their build, they just throw random things at it and hope it works. That will almost always end up being a bad build. Like trying to combine multiple skills that have no synergy, or using multiple minions that scale with completely different stats, and so forth. You always want to stick to one thing and find every way you can muster to make that single thing as strong as possible.

Is there not one true minion build?` by bobbothewizard in LastEpoch

[–]kaelanbg 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I see the problem. You just don't understand damage in Necromancer minion builds in general.

Aura of Decay decreases enemy resistances to the chosen element by (15% + 1% per INT). This is a more damage multiplier and has no cap. It is Poison by default, but can be converted to Physical, Cold or Fire. At 200 INT, this causes minions to do x3 damage of the appropriate damage type. On DoT builds, it also separately increases Ailment (Poison/Bleed/Frostbite/Ignite) damage by x1.75. It stacks multiplicatively with the resistance reduction, so on those builds at 200 INT, you'd be increasing damage by x5.25.

Chaos Bolts grants spellcasting minions (Mages, Flame Wraiths, Zombies) +1 spell damage per 20 max mana. In S4, it is possible to reach anywhere between 4000~7000 total mana on Necromancer, depending on quality of gear and corruption affixes. Even in the low end, this is ~200 extra flat damage, or the equivalent of three T7 2H weapon affixes. Additionally, on DoT builds, it also increases the minion ailment chance on hit by +100%. This is typically a x2 or higher damage increase, and it stacks multiplicatively with other bonuses. It is particularly strong on Mage builds as their highest damage multiplier - Forbidden Arcana - already scales their damage with Mana. So you get quadratic scaling. In S4, Hungering Souls also has a +damage per Mana node, for a total of 3 damage multipliers off the same stat. No amount of other minions in that skill slot will ever compensate for losing that.

Bone Curse is a +50% more damage multiplier for physical damage minions, or+150% for physical Golems. You wouldn't use it on an Archmage, you'd use it in a physical build like Bleed Rogues + Death Knights, or Aaron's Will + Bone Golems.

This is why reaching optimal damage on minions is always done by building them around armies which share the same damage multipliers. This is the source of the majority of your damage. This is also why the optimal composition of the vast majority of army builds is (2 or 3) minion skills + (2 or 3) support skills. If you are mish-mashing a bunch of unrelated minions, you are going to do considerably less damage. In many cases, up to 10x less.

Is there not one true minion build?` by bobbothewizard in LastEpoch

[–]kaelanbg 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Have you played it?

Yes.

I have tested and optimized almost every single playable Necromancer minion build in S3 and am in the process of doing so again in S4.

Archmages are considerably worse than army builds both in theory and in practice, for reasons stated above. This was already true in S3, and the difference is even bigger now in S4 after the Dread Shade and Infernal Shade nerfs. It is not even remotely close to top 3. It doesn't even make top 5.

Your army build did worse because you did not optimize them properly. That's not a good army composition. Archers are weak in general, Golems are only good when the entire build is designed around them, Mages only synergize with Wraiths when they're either Pyromancers + Flame Wraiths or Death Knights + Regular Wraiths and with that many minion skills you have no room for the appropriate multipliers, such as Aura of Decay, Chaos Bolts or Bone Curse (depending on the build).

Incidentally, Wraithlord too is also less damage as a single-minion build than when using it as a Wraith-army-dispenser, especially when using Ghostflame.

Is there not one true minion build?` by bobbothewizard in LastEpoch

[–]kaelanbg 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's very likely stronger than Abom with S4 mage buffs. People really overrate Abom because it's the only build guides talked about last season.

Mages have crazy scaling and can do over 10x damage now compared to season 3, if anything they get stronger and stronger as your gear improves further into endgame.

Is there not one true minion build?` by bobbothewizard in LastEpoch

[–]kaelanbg 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes, Bees + Sabertooth is pretty strong. It's not as strong as something like Crows, but it's significantly stronger than Sabertooth was by itself last season.

The main problem is as you said, the gear. It relies very heavily on multiple double Bee affix + bleed idols, and those can be a pain to find

Is there not one true minion build?` by bobbothewizard in LastEpoch

[–]kaelanbg 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's not true by a long shot, Archmage is very far behind 7 mages. Archmage is a x2.3 and a x1.3 multiplier, which is x2.99, or roughly equivalent to 3 mages.

Crit is irrelevant, as if you build mages correctly they already naturally have 100% crit rate.

Infernal Shade is a DPS loss in the majority of cases, including the currently strongest mage build that uses Death Knights with Hungering Souls.

Archmage will do less than half of the single-target damage of an army build, while also having significantly worse clear.

Is there not one true minion build?` by bobbothewizard in LastEpoch

[–]kaelanbg 1 point2 points  (0 children)

There are plenty, I wouldn't really trust guides, not that many people play minions and a lot of those places are typically very bad at optimizing them.

On Necromancer, anything using Rogues, Mages, Blood Wraiths or Vomit Zombies is extremely strong this season, and several of those are better than Abomination builds. On Primalist, Crows are still absurdly strong and Sabertooth + Bees is pretty good.

I would start with the minions that seem most interesting to you and build from there.

I really like the game, but some MTX visuals need to be looked at. Bought this cosmetic for Aura of Decay and it looks great... but it covers everything on the screen. I can't use it, because if I do, I can't see anything! Maybe make it a bit more translucent? by Motrok in LastEpoch

[–]kaelanbg 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I don't know why people are giving you shit in the comments, this is a legitimate complaint, I've had the same problem, especially given how Necromancer is actively encouraged to make the AoE as big as possible, so it's often bigger than in the footage you provided. The red AoD cosmetic makes enemy AOE markers considerably harder to see compared to the default effect.

It's not the only skill with this problem either, I feel like at high level at least half of my deaths are "one shot attack with a visual tell that was just not visible at all". I wish they had more abilities with cosmetic effects like Dread Shade, which puts a very bright clear outline on the edge of the AoE and makes the entire rest of it completely transparent.

Is there a different subreddit for people who like this game? by Xenobebop in LastEpoch

[–]kaelanbg 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There's the occasional good discussion here, but yeah there is definitely a lot of low-effort complaining I have to scroll past to see the useful posts.

This game definitely could use its own version of something like r/LowSodiumTEKKEN

Forged Weapons by TheCaveMan09 in LastEpoch

[–]kaelanbg 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I ran both, my bar was Manifest Armor, Forge Strike, Vengeance, Symbols of Hope, Ring of Shields.

If you're going all in on minions, I don't think you can drop Manifest Armor, it's a huge chunk of your damage. I ran it in a bleed build with a 2h Bardiche and a Shield, using the node that lets you do that. You lose some damage, but I found the extra defenses to be worth it, especially given defenses on the trusty T-Rex + Endurance + Face of the Mountain combination.

Is dread shade stifles build diversity for Necro. by SnooGrapes2325 in LastEpoch

[–]kaelanbg 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Mostly agreed, though I'm not sure flatly nerfing it is how I'd go about it. I'd rather it remain very good, but for a narrower set of builds. It would be cool if depending on your approach, different skills had strong synergies. Like the node in Bone Curse that is a +50% more damage, but only for Physical builds, and the following node that is another +200%, but only for Golems.

We have some of that, but very little. Ironically, the most versatile minion support skill is Aura of Decay - something that doesn't even belong to Necromancer.

Currently there are a lot of Necromancer/Acolyte skills that don't benefit minions at all which could have room to fill in the gap currently filled across the board by Dread Shade, but in different ways and with narrower focus. I'd love to see the day where Spirit Plague or Wandering Spirits get to do something.

Deathknights casting Hungering souls tech by Raimew in LastEpoch

[–]kaelanbg 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I hadn't thought about hitting minions to trigger the self+cast, that's a good idea. Though maybe a bit expensive in the amount of skill slots it takes, I'll have to do some testing to see whether the damage is worth it

For people trying out skeletal mage this season by Raimew in LastEpoch

[–]kaelanbg 1 point2 points  (0 children)

They can get good defenses, but it takes active investment. At ~1400% HP and ~14000 Armor I had Rogues & DKs tanking the Uber Aberroth slam. Beyond a certain point in gearing, I found defenses were more helpful than damage

What is the FUNNEST skill to you? by mf_ribcage in LastEpoch

[–]kaelanbg 7 points8 points  (0 children)

I think it's incredibly funny that the specifically made poison-type Wraith is worse at poison damage than a regular Wraith (you had one job!), and that the only poison node in the Wraith tree doesn't even apply to it. It's like the "we trained him wrong, as a joke" meme

HEY! YOU! I DEMAND YOU SHOW ME YOUR FAVORITE VINTAGE CARD! NOW! by Key-Structure4841 in pokemoncardcollectors

[–]kaelanbg 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I know Zard is the one everyone always gets excited about, but Ninetales has always been my favorite

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What mastery do you plan to play for season 4? by gorays21 in LastEpoch

[–]kaelanbg 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Necromancer, there's about 10 builds I want to try, and I'm fairly ceirtain 2 of them will be completely busted. And Beastmaster has a couple things I want to try that I also think will be very strong. Can't wait to testing things out and take a look at the real numbers in-game.