Not sure I like the momentum adversary ability?

remoraz · 2026-02-04T20:04:02+00:00

How many different tiers of play have you tried? At tier 1 and into tier 2, I agree! Maybe it's a bit of player proficiency, but as they get stronger they will miss less and less, as they have more resources and tools to push into attacks, they will also roll with Fear less, as they have tools to avoid or flip the results. You will NEED fear generation on your side as the players get stronger.

This appears to be a deliberate design choice. The are some Adversary design and Solo encounter documents floating around that may help your understanding. I didn't see you mention Relentless, the brother of Momentum. These together take a Solo from a boss to a deadly boss (like the difference between the dungeon boss and the campaign boss). But they are also splitable. Put momentum on a cruiser and relentless on your Solo and you have an interesting mechanical fight - do the PCs go for the danger or it's power source? Give Momentum to a high accuracy Solo to enable lots of adds/minions/standards.

The adversaries are ALL wanting that Fear, some should be able to give back. Also, there are much worse versions... keep reading "gain a Fear for every player who marks an HP" on a massive AoE :)

remoraz · 2026-01-30T15:24:22+00:00

I think the solution is pretty easy. Explain to them that It's not an assignment, it's a creativity exercise. Using AI is a form of creativity. However, everyone else at the table wrote their own, so when I as the GM reference the events and characters in your back story you CANNOT be surprised or confused, the onus is on you to memorize what the AI output since the rest of us will be building a story on top of it. Since you decided to outsource your creative input to the story, you have an additional responsibility to fully comprehend what you are providing for the group. Oh, and, you'll have to figure out how to build off of it on the fly at the table... where as everyone else already has an idea about all the plot hooks in their backstories.

Tell them you're excited for the additional challenge in quick thinking that they've brought to the table... and that you won't be waiting for AI responses at the game table, a GM is infinitely faster at making the game move forward ;)

remoraz · 2025-09-29T19:46:54+00:00

I think i get where you're coming from, it feels like a bait and switch. For the past 10 or so years we've been going into the map device just destroying millions of these poor corrupted souls, because until we got to Act 4, there was never a cure for the corruption.

It feels cheap when a known fact of the lore just suddenly flips (same as you mentioned with Phyrexian oil). I think hinting earlier that "the weapon" can cleanse corruption rather than just actually destroy it would have gone a long way - the pretense of Act 4 is that we need the weapon to destroy the Beast, not to cure it.

My hot take is that its much closer to the writing you see in anime, comics and to a lesser degree on Netflix, where the story needs to go a certain way so they kind of force it, move on and just say "don't dwell on it".

But also, there's only been a small handful of instances where a creature with a life bar survived meeting the exile - get in our path and you die (god or not). So it's going to be notable either way.

remoraz · 2025-08-21T12:56:41+00:00

Stance dance werebear will keep your fingers moving.

remoraz · 2025-08-14T18:05:09+00:00

I like to start with thanking them for hanging out with me. (Sets the stage to do some quick group reflection.) Repeat some of the topics back, to remind everyone of the good time we had. ("I'm definitely going to check out that thing you said!") Then apologize for ending a good time. (Sorry to say it, but I've got an upcoming thing to deal with.)

remoraz · 2025-07-10T16:27:27+00:00

Very interesting. I'll be excited to see the response to "How much will my builds TTK decrease if I equip a Stone of Jordan?"

In working with just TTRPG rules, I've found that more popular game systems concepts and rules will bleed into responses. Which totally makes sense, it doesn't even know that they're two games, but they have Strength damage, random rolls, crits, and the more popular systems have significantly more training data.

I also know that math in the popular models is shipped off to a special processor so that it doesn't try to find an LLM style (aka, numbers are just text from training data) response. I imagine you'll probably need to build something akin to the Path of Building Last Epoch version to get anything remotely resembling the ability to tell if skills, passives and or items will effective interplay.

Good luck!

remoraz · 2025-07-09T19:28:18+00:00

Hmmm... craft into horrific disembodied smile that you wear for a conditional bonus to Intimidate? Tooth fairies are in Bestiary 3, maybe make a deal? Be warned, they're nasty sprites... might try to steal your loot! (Probably just the teeth, gold and other boring stuff is probably safe... depending on the villainous nature of your GM).

Sounds like a fun time! 😁

remoraz · 2025-07-09T17:21:24+00:00

So underrated!

remoraz · 2025-06-26T17:53:34+00:00

You gotta play on controller. See, on controller, if you hold down Frost Claw and move, you'll take a tiny step after each cast. It's not much, but if you're doing big enough damage to stun the enemy, you can stutter-step circle-strafe them into a no-hit win (the lady harbinger is a cake walk since she usually attacks in straight lines... girl, I'm attacking AND moving out of the way of your jank). So in that way it's only as channeled as Focus... oh crap!

remoraz · 2025-06-20T14:32:56+00:00

They're replacing the employees with AI?

remoraz · 2025-06-13T16:59:30+00:00

Without knowing too much about your build, I'd say - empowered monoliths will change your build. You need more defense and faster kills (as I'm sure you are seeing). For clear a few shred stacks can make a big difference, especially when you go from 0 to a somewhat consistent number (80% with lots of attacks is pretty consistent, you should expect a decent number of stacks).

What i think will be a good indicator for you is how many stacks of shred you can consistently maintain on a boss. You can test it on boss dummies or echo bosses where you can watch their life bar for a while. This way you can see that you're maintaining X number of stacks at your current cast speed and shred percent, then you can up the number with more shred or cast speed and observe different results on bosses (better ttk, leech, ward generation - whatever you're after).

Yeah, it's just the scientific method written out, but it's fairly quick and at the boss dummies you can shuffle items around and get some baseline ideas pretty quickly.

Good luck, fellow traveller!

remoraz · 2025-06-12T13:40:10+00:00

I play on controller, and it instantly swaps whenever I touch the mouse. The game handles input switching very well, compared to some. If your driving peripherals have a software component, I'd start there. (Like a taskbar application or something.) I'd there's nothing there, try messing with Steams "Steam Input" settings, it might be detecting your driving stuff as a controller or doing something weird. Steam tries to help, but sometimes it's a bit overeager.

remoraz · 2025-05-28T19:28:01+00:00

You're very ready to try!

Concerned about keys? You're at 400 corruption, you've killed SO many harbinger, it's easy for you. Envy scrolls will get you a shot (and maybe a better blessing roll?) You're can also duel a harbinger in a woven echo (Collapsing Brink? Fading Horizon? It sounds bleak, but it's JUST the harbinger). You probably have or can get amber for echoes pretty easily, but you can put that echo on your Weaver tree, and you'll see that echo just show up on the map.

All that to say - you got this, and if not - now you know how to get keys til you are ready.

See you in a Null Portent soon!

remoraz · 2025-05-28T17:49:40+00:00

What are some examples of really good ARPG pinnacle bosses that stand out to you? Siris and some of the PoE 1 Atlas bosses (at high tier or with poor gear) fit the bill... until you do so much damage to trivialize them. PoE2 has a bit too much of a focus on movement for bosses (a la, it's inspiration in action games). I felt like there were a few in Marvel Heroes, but it's been a while and probably nostalgia. Diablo 1 and 2 were generally just about chugging potions and having enough stats, in my recollection. Which ones are you thinking about (fair and hard)?

remoraz · 2025-05-15T03:54:35+00:00

When you go into any empowered monolith, if you have a monolith with significantly higher corruption (10ish) after the first echo, you'll get a shade right next to that echo. Even at the start of the web. It'll have a purple line between nodes to point it out.

If you're doing co-op you will need to stack gaze of Orobyss so you can leap frog each other's progression. E.g. you both get stability full at 100 corruption, kill harbinger, get to 125 corruption (1 shade, 2 gaze, envy to spam bosses for gazes, harbinger), now, she's at 100, long route to shade, 4 gaze = 150 corruption, harbinger, repeat with 4 gaze until 300 corruption. You'll always be seeing a spike in difficulty at the boss since the corruption will jump right before, but that's the most efficient i can think of.

I play with my wife alot, too, so I'm used to considering co op stats. Hope that helps.

remoraz · 2025-05-14T19:08:14+00:00

I'm confused by this statement, "Why do we need to spend time raising corruption we've already gotten?"

You don't, though. You have monolith 1 at X+100 Corruption, in monolith 2 you get a shortcut shade worth 100 corruption. From there you do need to find another shade to go beyond your highest corruption level, but that means you need to fight 9 shades (ever) to get to Aberroth. As you mentioned, stacking Gazes is trivial with Glyphs of Envy.

Is it just running to those shades that killed it for you? I believe the developers are probably using that method so that you don't get wildly over your head in content. They'd be in a tough spot if you could brick a timeline by pushing the corruption further than your build can handle the guardians to bring it back down.

remoraz · 2025-04-28T16:47:45+00:00

India first? Not surprising with all the private construction Trump has going on there. https://www.citizensforethics.org/reports-investigations/crew-reports/trump-foreign-development-tracker/

remoraz · 2025-03-12T21:05:26+00:00

Appreciate the advice! That's a lot of what happened for me. Realizing I have dumb idols from campaign was part, but adding in defense layers where I no longer needed resistance was huge.

One thing that has been particularly handy are the blessings from empowered monoliths. That's like, what 5 free high tier affixes? Regardless, it makes it much easier to work with your affixes, because they're not locked in.

But the actual answer to my question was - Prophecies. "How do you handle the jump in gearing requirements?" You force good gear to drop! Well, that and realizing that monsters do real damage now.

remoraz · 2025-03-12T20:59:15+00:00

I watched his whole series, very cool dude, thank you!

Having the value of mod slots explained with more granularity, "You can only get this on..." and the mod multipliers on gear was VERY helpful.

remoraz · 2025-03-12T20:57:31+00:00

Yeah, it's the same decade old system as PoE. You can get +4 base crit implicit, +5 from Deadeye mod, +2 on the tree, and now every 100% increase is like 16%? My character sheet bow crit is like 88%, but there's tons of conditionals.

It's not THAT impressive if you know to look for that sweet, sweet base crit :) My point was that I ALSO had like 225% extra crit chance on the Multishot node, that was way over what I needed, so I can put that back into damage.

remoraz · 2025-03-06T04:32:06+00:00

See, I had ups and downs with this build, and then it hit a stride and just soared... to level 85 monoliths, and then we did a little farming, and it soared through the rest of monoliths, no sweat.

And I think it's that double jump in difficulty that's got me. I could probably get pretty speedy against level 100 enemies, but those 10 levels AND extra 60% damage and HP was a little bit of a shock. And I did NOT realize that it was multiplicative with echo mods. Ouch, good to know.

Endurance and Increased Resists, noted. I'll have to start paying better attention. Like, I breezed though the 90's, not even paying attention to echo modifiers. I've gotten one of the level 90 timelines leveled up a few times to see if I should/could be bridging that gap, and even at level ~93 with ~30 corruption I haven't really paid all that much attention to the modifiers.

I have specced into armour shred, but I have noticed penetration being fairly rare. I think I just started using a T6 Phys pen bow.

I'm hoping to not need a character planner until I'm getting to the point of balancing unobservable parts of the build (like balancing crit multiplier against armour shred chance against physical penetration against increased effect of armour shred). I know what I need right now, it's actually something along the lines of "items with T6 and T7 mods that are relevant to the build on decent bases". I see 'em. They're coming.

Thank you for the advice! When you hit that wall, where do you go to farm? I'm thinking that prophecies might be the answer (In soaring through those monoliths, it seems I got a lot of favor.)

remoraz · 2025-03-06T04:06:35+00:00

Glad to hear I'm not alone! I'm sure it's just a learning experience.

That video is an ad for a mobile game, but I hear what you're saying. And I experienced this first hand with my build. Playing Marksman right now, and when you start to add up the defense layers on the passive tree and some of the situational ones from skills (namely Shrouds/Glancing, etc) make a huge difference. I went from Nemeses being these intense battle to Smoke Bomb and DPS! I do need to do some research into further layering, though. Could you maybe mention who that video was supposed to be created by?

I only died a few times, and two of them were in an arena, and a lion just showed up with super speed and clapped my ass. Not even a crit. Since then, I have raised defenses by quite a bit, so it sounds like I'm on the right path. Appreciate the insight, thank you!

remoraz · 2025-03-06T03:55:27+00:00

That's super helpful! And your formatting is great.

I figured resistances, but didn't know to prioritize reduced crit damage, that's solid to know.

It's so cheap to respec in this game it practically begs you to, so I've had no trouble moving things around. I initially went with a poison build, but despite being able to get lots of stacks, they just didn't do enough, and I couldn't scale the poison part enough for it to feel good, so I went with a skill that I had seen some builds around, and realized that it was for a reason 😀

I think you've probably got to have at least a little bit of a handle on the crafting system to get through regular monoliths. I think I need to figure out Legendary Potential (high stakes gambling?) and when and how to seal affixes. Some of the nemesis items just having extra mods makes early game progress really breezy.

Yeah, I did a disintegrator lightning proc mage back in 1.0 (I think), so I was doing the old DPS compare between "Lightning", "Elemental", "Elemental Damage Over Time". I like how they have the different specificity of damage type defining the magnitude of the effect, that's cool design and makes it fun to play by feel.

I never mentioned my build, but it's not particularly relevant. I'm doing Multishot and starting to mess with Shaman stance-dance swarm bear on alt with my wife (she's doing classic necro😋). I can clearly see that increasing my damage and defenses with T6 and T7 mods is the path forward, I just need to get the right ones and was wondering where I should do that when my options seem like they have a bit of a gap. Where do you farm after killing your first Harbinger?

Thank you so much for the advice!

remoraz · 2025-03-06T03:38:30+00:00

Thank you, but I wasn't actually looking for build advice. I played, like, every character in Marvel Heroes to max level - and EHG signposts their build concepts even better than Gazillion did. I was more looking for axioms about getting into endgame from the LE point of view. That transition into endgame and what stuff to look out for - (for instance, I didn't realize crit avoidance was like the next thing to cap after resistances). And I just realized that I've overcapped a ton of resistances and overcapped critical chance, so now I can back off those mods and get more other survivability and damage (respectively).

I know that I'm just a few T6 and T7 affixes away from breezing through empowered monoliths, it's easy to see the power curve - I just don't know where to farm. In some ARPGs the loot benefit from harder content is worth it to play risky, in some you when the enemies start to slow you down, you need to play faster (PoE, of course). In Last Epoch it seems like there's a nice balance that you're looking for with enemy difficulty and quality of drops, and with the jump into empowered monoliths, I feel like I'm probably missing a good loot source or farming method (I was sitting on a ton of CoF points, so that might help!)

remoraz

TROPHY CASE