Last Epoch will have two balance issues fixed this week, after a player survey conducted by developer Eleventh Hour Games concerning the playerbase’s opinion on highly overperforming builds.
Recently we reported EHG expressing their stance on balance changes in the middle of an ongoing cycle, in the update 1.0.2 patch notes. While open to change with player feedback, their initial idea was to keep balancing aside until the end of a cycle and solely focus on fixing bugs. However, they have clearly changed their minds after an overwhelming feedback in support of nerfing the most broken interactions in the middle of a cycle.
The fixes in question will address unintended interactions for two nodes: Warlock’s infamous Profane Veil Vampiric Pool, and Runemaster’s Sanguine Runestones passive. The forum post reads:
- Fixed a bug where Profane Veil’s Vampiric Pool gave 40% of the consumed minion’s maximum health as ward, instead of the listed 4%
- Fixed a bug where Runemaster’s passive node Sanguine Runestones’s threshold bonus (15% of health regen applies to ward) was scaling with points allocated
These two changes will be part of this week’s patch which will include another ability change reported earlier: Falconer’s Dive Bomb. However, the Dive Bomb change was supposedly decided not in favor of balancing, but to fix a crash caused by the skill.
“These changes are being made as bugfixes, not as balance changes,” EHG insists. “These are not intended to balance builds using these passives/abilities, but to fix bugs with them which happen to affect their power.”
Whatever the rationale behind the changes, I am happy to see outrageously overperforming builds to get nerfed even in the middle of a cycle. This will result in a slightly more balanced playing field for the different masteries, considering Last Epoch has a leaderboard.
Speaking of which, EHG hasn’t stated what they will do regarding the leaderboard entries for the ongoing cycle which is currently dominated by users of the said skill nodes. They will be posting later this week “regarding the results of the survey and feedback.” I assume, we will be finding more about that then.
