Faith in Judgement

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Good Morning Folks. This character has been a wild ride. You have to remember this was a brand new character that I started late Sunday morning and cobbled together gear from my stash to get up and running. I maintained Deathless until I fought a 230ish Spirits of Fire boss… but honestly I think that was my screw up. The Maxroll guide suggested that I use Transcriber’s Graver and I did not fully understand why… so when a really sweet Sceptre dropped I swapped over to that. Essentially my attack speed plummeted because I was not getting all of those bonuses from wielding a sword, which caused me to not stack anywhere near as much ward as I was used to… causing me to take bigger hits that I would normally be soaking with that ward. Had I NOT made that mistake… I would probably still be Deathless because I have not taken another death since swapping back to the sword.

I ran the woven echo that allowed me to copy my corruption over from another character, which unfortunately did not copy ALL of the corruption over. However I did get my first item that allows you to stack corruption faster. At first I did not realize you had to have it equipped in your idol slot, so it took me a few attempts to trigger it and get several stacks of Gaze of Orobyss, but when I did it allowed me to push my corruption on that Monolith past 300. Last night I took down my Eighth and Ninth Harbingers and this morning I copied as much corruption as i could to that final timeline. Unfortunately I am going to have to kill at least one Shade before I can get it back up to 300 and take on the final Harbinger. After that I will probably make an attempt on Aberroth tonight.

My gear is still not amazing but I am sitting at around 1200 Healing Effectiveness which is the engine that you use to fuel Judgement. I had a shield sitting in my bank that I picked up from somewhere and had been holding onto in case I wanted to try out this build, and quite honestly I am not sure I can ever replace it. If I pick up a 4LP version of another shield I might slam it over onto it… but it does have a T4 sealed Physical Resistance that is pretty freaking nice. Other than that I have made decent slams with a Transcriber’s Graver and a Sunwreath and I have an LP3 version of the Graver waiting for a better sword to slam into it. Ultimately this unique gets used mostly because it is hard to get a lot of Spellpower on a Sword.

I’ve also got some scuffed Legendaries that I am using in my build. First up there is a Code of an Erased Sentinel that I am mostly using because it gives me a massive amount of healing effectiveness in addition to +1 to all skills. I would really like to have one with a useful skill on it as well, but so far that has not been in the cards. I’ve slammed 20% Increased Health onto an Immolator’s Oblation which is good… but I would really rather have an LP2 at least that I can slam maybe a high Hybrid Health roll and decent Healing Effectiveness roll on it. Finally I have a super scuffed pair of Wing Guards that I am mostly using only to get more attack speed and haste because the faster I hit, the faster I can stack ignite on myself which gets converted to spell damage… and those hits also generate a lot of ward. Ultimately I will probably use these until I can replace them with the final suggested item for the build, Immortal Vise, that drops from Aberroth.

I am somewhat disappointed in the way that The Woven faction levels. I assumed that collecting memory amber itself would eventually fill the bar. However it appears that this is mostly leveled by placing Woven Echoes on the atlas. Since I have been so focused on pushing corruption and killing the Harbingers, I have not really been spending much time interacting with the Atlas Tree. Once I have taken down the last Harbinger and Aberroth I will likely shift focus to trying to grind this up. If I can fill all of the factions bars I will consider this a very successful league. I also want to see what the other woven echoes that I have not unlocked do.

Speaking of filling bars… last night night I went on a prophecy spree and finished pushing Circle of Fortune all of the way to Rank 12. Getting double rewards from Prophecies means that my screen is about to be complete nonsense. What I am tentatively planning on doing is going on another spending spree right before I take on Aberroth. The idea is that I want to see if stacking “boss kill” prophecies that reward Unique items will cause more of the specific drop pool from that encounter to also drop. Essentially I need a bunch of items from Aberroth for the final version of this build, and most of them I need with at least LP1 on them. Mostly getting that means increasing the amount of total drops and I am thinking by stacking boss drop uniques it might fill that role. Who knows though if that is even a thing, because in theory the prophecies could be limited to generic unique drops. Either way it is well worth testing.

One parting thought is some information that Ace shared with me. One of the nodes that you probably want to pick up on the Weaver tree is Warden’s Echo. What this does is give you a 20% chance to see dungeon specific encounters while you are in Monolith Echoes. These have the chance of dropping Dungeon specific uniques as well as a really high chance of dropping Dungeon keys. This means that in theory you might NEVER have to actually run the dungeons to get the items you want from them. This is a massive win in my book and on this second character I absolutely shifted the way in which I was speccing out my tree to make sure I could fit both nodes. After doing this… it feels like MOST maps seem to have these extra encounters, just adding more excitement to the Monolith.

On one hand… I am glad I made the decision to roll the overpowered build of the league. On the other hand I am a bit disappointed that I did not make it all the way to Aberroth on a build of my own design. However I am pretty proud of the seven of ten that I got with it. I might continue to tweak that build to see if I can make it go further, but for now I am happy enough and just want easier access to high end content.

Joining the Judges

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Good Morning Folks. I pretty much spent the entire weekend playing Last Epoch, and I regret nothing. For those who have not been following this particular rabbit hole, I have been playing what I think is my sixth incarnation of an Ignite Warpath Paladin. It has been pretty enjoyable but as I began pushing corruption it started slowing down significantly. I am sure there are probably tweaks that I could make to the build to resurrect it, but honestly I am pretty happy I got as far as I did. Generally speaking up to this point on a character I have made it into Empowered Monoliths, and cleared a few of them before ultimately dipping out because running Monoliths got tedious. Now with the Tombs of the Erased expansion, there is so much additional content that I can easily rip through a dozen without really realizing how many I have done. This is a massive win for Eleventh Hour Games as a whole because I am hearing the same sort of “lost time” paradigm from others.

More than that I have made it further into the endgame than I have on any other build to date. I’ve cleared seven of the ten Harbingers and have been working my way up to 250 corruption so I could attempt the next one. However once I crossed that 200 corruption barrier, things slowed down considerably. The corruption 200 boss and harbinger fight took a good 10 minutes to get through. I had the sustain to and tankyness to keep going almost indefinitely… but I just got a bit tired of the amount of time it took to push through the bosses. When I crossed the 225 line even the Echoes themselves got a bit tedious… which was not helped by the fact that I ran around with Ace this weekend and saw the kind of speed their build had. Essentially they went down the Heartseeker path and could melt Harbingers in under a minute.

I could in theory just respec my level 97 Paladin, but yesterday I decided to go down a different path and just level a brand new one. I am joining the bandwagon of Judgment, more specifically the faux Righteous Fire variant. I don’t quite have the point that turns it into an aura but I will be picking it up next. I started the character around 10 am yesterday and by 9 pm I was on my third Monolith Timeline. We will see if Monolith Lagon is who finally takes my Deathless tag away from me… but Judgment is stupidly powerful. I had a few pieces of gear in my bank that could be repurposed for this mission and am running around 800 Healing Effectiveness, and the suggestion for Uber Aberroth is 1500 Healing Effectiveness for reference. I spent a bit of time writing a brand new loot filter just for this build, and the main reason why I did not respec my other character is I could still in theory use it to farm items.

Even without the Aura the gameplay is pretty enjoyable as you effectively run around for awhile grouping up the mobs and then dropping a single Judgment on the entire pack destroying everything at once. Vengeance is used to as your builder attack, which is proccing Healing Hands which deals fire based damage in an AOE splash while also healing and building ward. I’ve also specced Healing Hands to be my movement ability since I tend to prefer it to Shield Charge in this game. Truth be told the AOE Fire Splash from Vengeance is more than enough damage to clear with and bosses just sort of melt. When I did the Rahyeh timeline the boss did not actually get to fire any abilities off before it was dead. What is wild is on narrow maps you can sort of bait mobs to walk into the Consecrated Ground left by the Judgment which melts anything that walks into it.

Other than Judgment Boy, I have been playing around with a Wolves Primalist that I will eventually turn into a Squirrel build. This is something that I never quite got off the ground in previous seasons and since I have a bank full of the helms, I figured I might as well make a go at it. Aaron Action RPG dropped a video over the weekend about a 1000+ corruption version of the build. The only item that I do not have laying around from this build is a Vessel of Strife. This means I will probably need to farm some T4 Julra to get one of these to drop, which in theory once the Judgment build is entirely online should be a piece of cake. I am sure I could technically do the fight on my Ignite Warpath character but it would take a heck of a lot longer.

I am hoping that by the time I finish leveling through the Empowered Monoliths on my Judgment Character that I will have enough gear to handle higher corruptions. There is a Woven Echo called the Confluence of Oblivion that in theory will allow me to copy the corruption levels of my Warpath paladin over to my Judgment Paladin so that I don’t have to spend quite so much time pushing it up again. I will have to fight all of the Harbingers again, but in theory using Glyph of Envy and some crappy Exalted items I can force my way through the timelines pretty quickly. Mostly right now I just need levels more than anything. I’m currently level 65 and really need to get into my 80s before pushing very far into Empowered Monoliths. I have some more gear in my bank for when I hit my 70s and can start wearing it. Hopefully between that and whatever I happen to find as drops I can push this character up pretty quickly.

Right now Last Epoch is delivering a sufficient dose of dopamine, and since Ace finished out the Harbingers and took out Aberroth I kind of want to do that too. I could probably do it as Ignite Warpath but it would be more of a struggle than I really want to deal with. Essentially this feels like when I build a Penance Brand of Dissolution character in Path of Exile when that was the new hotness. Sure I would have loved to have my own personal build make it all the way through the bosses… but getting seven down seems like good progress.

AggroChat #520 – Prophecy Fulfilled

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Featuring: AmmosArt, Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, and Thalen

Good Morning Folks! We are down a Tam this week and went into this with no topics on the docket…  and still managed to pull together a full-length episode.  We talk a bit about our experiences attempting to preorder the Nintendo Switch 2, and what a massive cluster that was. From there, we talk a bit about the worst-kept gaming secret, the Oblivion remaster, and how magical this product is.  Magic: The Gathering has seemingly lost its mind, and we talk a bit about the Omenpaths thing and how poorly ideated it is.  Finally, Last Epoch is still a heck of a lot of fun, and we talk about some of the experiences, especially around playing with other folks.

Topics Discussed:

  • Nintendo Switch 2 Pre-Order Mayhem
  • Oblivion Remaster
  • Magic the Omenpaths Nonsense
  • Last Epoch is Still Great

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Corruption is Cumbersome

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Good Morning Folks. I’ve been playing Last Epoch almost exclusively at this point and I have not only progressed into the Empowered Monoliths but reached a point with my build where I am beginning to thrive there. Right now Last Epoch has legitimately some of the best systems design in isometric loot chase action role-playing games. Some of the new crafting options for example are exceptionally fun because they lean into this pattern of “do a thing” and then “get a crafting bench”. Temporal Sanctum as a concept was really neat, but the problem with it has been the generally shitty state of dungeons as a whole. These new systems however feel like they understand the failings of dungeons and are effectively making better versions of them.

Since I am doing fairly well in Monoliths I have begun actually caring about trying to progress the Forgotten Knights faction. This is essentially a ladder to progress your way through the endgame and involves stacking corruption and then fighting harbinger encounters at these new corruption levels. Mechanically the Faction concept is pretty cool and I have enjoyed the way they have implemented a brand new one with the Weavers. However for a game with such amazing systems design work… it is all the more jarring when you encounter a legacy fragment that is not so well thought out. Basically the entire process of stacking corruption sucks, and while they have attempted to band-aid this… I feel like the entire design needs to be rethought in a major way.

So essentially each timeline has its own corruption level which determines how much additional difficulty that timeline has. Like I said they have added band-aids in the form of a catch up mechanic to bring one timeline up to the same level as your highest progressed timeline, as well as a specific type of woven echo that lets you transfer corruption level from one character to another. However the general concept of corruption just feels bad at least compared to the other systems. Ultimately you want to build up timeline stability which allows you to fight the boss of the timeline… which adds a Gaze of Orobyss stack… which then allows you to gain more corruption when you kill the Shade of Orobyss and reset the timeline progress. This whole song and dance of limping your way through corruption levels just feels poorly thought out.

After you have reset your timeline the first time, a new node shows up called the Sanctuary of Eterra which lets you fight a little boss fight to reduce your corruption and dial back the difficulty of your timeline. This entire process was aggressively fine earlier in the life of this game, but now that we have seen the type of systems that Eleventh Hour Games is capable of producing… the entire structure of corruption just feels really bad. Clearly the team has learned a lot of lessons in system design in the years that have past since the idea of timelines and corruption was first “ideated”. I just think that they can do much better, because the entire thing feels deeply cumbersome and unwieldy.

Ultimately what I would like to see is something akin to the way that Greater Rifts are handled in Diablo III and the Pit is handled in Diablo IV. Essentially once you have reached a specific corruption level you can then set the level of your timeline up to that corruption level via a drop down or slider… and make this value be set at an account level. This makes it beneficial for a player to push as far as they can possibly go… and then easily dial things back a bit to a very comfortable and clear farming level. I cannot tell you how much it makes my eye twitch that I need to get to 175 on my timeline corruption to do the next Harbinger but it is very likely that I will overshoot that number at be running it at 178 or something like that. Having a way to clearly set the difficulty of each timeline would go so far to making the whole corruption concept feel a bit better.

I also feel like the whole concept of timeline stability is not the most amazing system in the world, but I see it as a sort of necessary evil. It serves the role of keeping someone from simply farming the same boss over and over and is an alternative to the Path of Exile design of collecting key fragments. I would rather grind Monolith Echoes and fill up an arbitrary bar than attempt to farm 10 Maven Fragments to get a key. I feel like both Corruption and Stability were designed hand in hand, but also feel like Stability can function entirely on its own without the existence of the current state of Corruption. I think EHG understands that the corruption system is problematic, otherwise they would not keep trying to apply quality of life band-aids to it. Gaze of Orobyss itself was a band-aid to allow folks to raise it faster and the account corruption transfer woven echo is brand new attempting to stabilize a different problem. Mostly I think it is time to take the sledgehammer to the system and just make it better instead of spackling over the holes.

Ending on a more positive note however… I cannot fully explain the level of joy it brings me to run around with my Travelers Backpack in Last Epoch. This is an item that was given to early players of Last Epoch in honor of them selling 500k units. You can see a higher detailed version over on the Last Epoch Forums, but it is full of so many references. It has the original kickstarter era Last Epoch logo, the rolled up thing at the top I believe is based on a desk sized mouse pad that they sent out to early backers, and there is even a tiny Mike head transposed on top of what I think is a Bee model. The map that is rolled up on the side of the backpack looks similar to the old kickstarter-era world map. Mostly it is just a really fun tchotchke showing that you have been around for awhile. I kinda hope they do more things like this in the future as they continue to transition between phases of the game.