Good Morning Friends! Last night other than my habitual Tequatl was pretty much a night devoted to Last Epoch. While I have run up a Paladin to 68, there is some stuff about the build that I am not really feeling. So much of it depends on Shield Charge and right now with the movement abilities and rubberbanding… it just sort of feels janky. I think once Shield Charge is as smooth in this game as it is in Path of Exile, I will probably return to the build and enjoy it quite a bit. For now, I have shifted focus back to the class that I played during the test builds, the Acolyte turned Necromancer. Last night I finished the story that exists currently and began working on the Monolith in earnest.
I’ve been mostly following this Fire Necromancer build which I believe originally came from Aaron of the Action RPG channel on YouTube. Ultimately it shifts your Skeletal Mages, Bone Golem, and Exploding Zombies into fire damage and then buffs everything with Dread Shade and gives you permanent Wraiths. Aaron has a unique in the game now that is designed to go with this sort of build, and when you find it you can shift up a little bit and go into a build that can give you up to 4 full-size Bone Golems. I think that is my ultimate hope to find Aaron’s Will and shift into that sort of a setup.
At the moment I am just not really feeling Dread Shade. Like I get that this is probably the superior choice for the build because its aura buffs everything… including me. The problem is… I just can’t afford to stand anywhere near my pack of horrible children. This means that the Dread Shade isn’t of much actual benefit to my survival. I also keep forgetting to resummon it, because it disappears periodically when whatever it was attached to dies or when I shift zones. Since I don’t get an actual minion icon for it in the same row as the rest of my minions… I keep forgetting about it meaning that I am getting zero benefits from it most of the time.
Instead, I have decided to shift things up a bit and drop Dread Shade and pick back up Skeletons. I ran a Monolith this morning and managed to get enough points to make them useful. Essentially I am bouncing around to pick up all of the bonus skeletons, and then Dread Phalanx which makes them stronger but cuts the number I can summon in half, and Shambling Steel which makes them all melee. Combined this gives me four beefy melee characters that are pretty freaking fast… not as fast as my exploding zombies but still able to soak up any threats that are headed directly at me. This is ultimately what I did on the test realm and after switching it up, the build already feels comfier.
So at any given time, I have nineteen horrible children following me around. The full list includes:
1 – Bone Golem
3 – Skeletal Mage Pyromancers
4 – Skeletal Dread Phalanx
2 – Perm Wraiths
6 – Exploding Zombies (this is my spam ability)
3 – Skeleton Vanguard
This will in theory go up significantly when I pick up Aaron’s Will and can start fielding multiple bone golems on the field at once. In testing, I took the trait line that split my golem in half and gave me two less effective ones, and I did not go down that direction because when I did get multiple golems… I want them all to be the big tanky boys that I have currently.
What I need to work on more desperately now is my survivability. I am exceptionally squishy and failed a monolith echo last night for the first time in a while. Essentially if you look at my resists… they are pretty pathetic and the total lack of any physical resist and poison resist means that when one of those hits me… it effectively one-shots me. Having more bodies on the field to soak up more hate definitely helps, but I still keep to chain potions during dicey situations to keep standing which is not a position I want to be in long term. Part of the problem is I am still wearing some items from around level 6… so I hope as I dive further into the monolith I will start finally finding some reasonable upgrades.
I’ve realized that I am apparently in the minority in my feelings regarding Diablo IV. This is honestly probably a good thing because I want that game to be something that most people are going to enjoy. Personally, I think Last Epoch is more my speed. I do plan on giving it another shot over the weekend when the open beta happens and maybe trying a slightly different Barbarian build. I do want to try playing with some friends to see how the D4 group game feels. However, for me, the mix of Last Epoch and Guild Wars 2 seems to work extremely well. I still need to try some of the dungeons in Last Epoch. I’ve been stockpiling keys for a theoretical future date when I grab a friend and do them. Since they are a limited resource, it feels like I almost need to save them like I would a puzzle ring from Diablo III. Additionally the later I wait to run them, the better the rewards will likely be.
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