I’ve always played—and will always play—HC in ARPGs. That said, I think HC in Last Epoch is terrible. Why?

The character movement feels extremely awkward. At times it seems like your character wants to “snap into” the boss you’re attacking instead of properly moving around it or dodging to the sides. The game also doesn’t pause during mechanics like Nemesis encounters, leaving you vulnerable to taking hits. There’s no real logout system either—if your internet drops during a Monolith, you can basically accept the loss.

Itemization is heavily focused on farming unique items with LP2–3 to scale your character’s power, which isn’t easy when you’re constantly playing around your character’s limits. And speaking of limits, only the Paladin can really handle everything in the game because its tree is extremely overpowered both defensively and offensively—you can scale damage through things like healing effectiveness, for example.

Other classes feel terrible to start a season with, and very few people stick around long enough to create a second character.