Last Epoch News

We are in the process of updating skills to make them feel more responsive. This work has included changes to their animations - so before we explain the adjustments we'll be making, we'll be taking a brief look at the different phases of skill animations.



Each skill animation has three phases, which are;

• Anticipation
  
• Impact
  
• Follow Through
  

When looking at each of these, there'll be a GIF of my Mage - he's called Meatier, because of course he is - casting Fireball with the name shown during that phase of the animation. We've slowed down the GIFs so that each distinct phase of the animation is easier to see.


Anticipation

Anticipation is the part of the animation which occurs before the skill takes effect - which in the majority of cases is when a skill deals damage to an enemy or heals an ally.

This is often used in boss fights as a visual cue for dangerous abilities. An example of this featuring a player-controlled character is when the Mage pulls his hand behind his head, before dramatically throwing it forwards as he conjures Fireballs to unleash upon his foes.




Impact

Impact is the moment during the animation in which the skill takes effect; for example, the moment in which the Fireball skill's projectiles are created and begin moving forwards.




Follow Through

Follow Through consists of the character transitioning back to their regular standing pose. It is sometimes partially skipped so that characters can move sooner after activating a skill.






In Patch 0.7.6 we are updating many skills with some of the following changes;

• Some skills are having the duration of their anticipation reduced, and the duration of their follow through increased. What this does is allow the impact - when a skill deals damage or heals - to occur sooner, without changing the total animation time.
  
• The follow through part of an animation can be partially skipped, allowing characters to move (but not use skills) sooner after that skill is used. The proportion of follow through which allows you to move is different for each skill. We are reviewing the proportions for every skill, and many skills will allow you to begin moving sooner after their use. This prevents a character from being trapped in place for too long.
  
• Each skill has an 'ability time' which dictates how long a character must wait before using the next skill. We are shortening this for some abilities so there is less of a pause between skills. This change is being made to fewer skills than the previous two.
  

Here are the skills we will be updating;

ACOLYTE

• Hungering Souls
  
• Mark For Death
  
• Marrow Shards
  
• Rip Blood
  
• Sacrifice
  
• Summon Bone Golem
  
• Summon Skeleton
  

Necromancer

• Summon Skeleton Mage
  
• Summon Wraith
  

MAGE

• Elemental Nova
  
• Fireball
  
• Focus
  
• Glacier
  
• Lightning Blast
  
• Mana Strike
  
• Snap Freeze
  
• Static Orb
  

Sorcerer

• Black Hole
  
• Meteor
  
• Volcanic Orb
  

Spellblade

• Flame Reave
  
• Shatter Strike
  

PRIMALIST

• Maelstrom
  
• Summon Thorn Totem
  

Beastmaster

• Summon Frenzy Totem
  

Druid

• Entangling Roots
  
• Spriggan Form abilities
  
  • Root Wall
    
  • Vale Blast
    

Shaman

• Avalanche
  
• Summon Storm Totem
  
• Tornado
  

SENTINEL

• Shield Throw
  

Forge Guard

• Forge Strike
  

Paladin

• Healing Hands
  
• Judgement
  
• Sigils of Hope
  
• Smite
  

Void Knight

• Abyssal Echoes
  
• Devouring Orb
  

Hey everyone!

We're excited to announce that we're bringing Last Epoch to PAX South!

Members of our development team, our art team, our Creative Director, our Narrative Director, and our Game Director will be there - and we want to talk to you!

Whether you want to give us some feedback in person, ask us some questions about the game, or just jump on a computer and play it for a bit, make sure to pay us a visit.

We'll be there January 17th - 19th!

You can find the official PAX site here: https://south.paxsite.com/

If you plan on attending PAX South, make sure to follow us on Twitter and drop us a Like on Facebook so you don't miss any of our messages surrounding the event;

We can't wait to see you there!

[h3]Earthquake[/h3]

• These changes are to compensate for the loss of a guaranteed stun on the Entangling Roots tree in 0.7.5, and make some balance adjustments.
  
• Mana cost reduced to 55 (from 70).
  
• Added damage effectiveness increased to 250% (from 200%).
  
• Added a new node that adds a guaranteed stun and a cooldown.
  
• Added a new node that increases stun duration and cooldown duration.
  
• Small changes have also been made to the requirements of some nodes.

[h3]Erasing Strike[/h3]

• Added damage effectiveness increased to 200% (from 170%)
  
• Strength scaling changed to 5% increased melee damage (from 4% increased melee damage).

[h3]Forge Strike[/h3]

• Characters with Forge Strike specialized will receive a free respec for its tree
  
• Added a new node behind Put to the Sword that increases bleed effectiveness.
  
• Forged by Fire can have 4 points allocated (up from 3), and adds 10 fire damage per point (up from 7).
  
• Mass Production now adds a 5% chance to summon weapons (it previously stated 8% increased chance).
  
• Well Forged Weapons now grants 25% increased summoned weapon duration (it previously stated 20%) and can have 4 points allocated (down from 5).
  
• Removed the Patient Strike node as its damage increase was not working.
  
• Slightly adjusted connections and requirements

[h3]Maelstrom[/h3]

• Cyclone now prevents Maelstrom from freezing enemies, but also grants 5% increased global physical damage per stack of Maelstrom.

[h3]Sigils of Hope[/h3]

• Each Sigil grants 4 fire damage (down from 5)
  
• Each Sigil grants 25% increased health regen (up from 20%)
  
• Characters with Sigils of Hope specialized will receive a free respec for its tree.
  
• Iron Sigils grants 40 armour per point (down from 50).
  
• Meditation now doubles health regen from Sigils rather than providing 100% increased health regen per Sigil.
  
• Sigils of Despair no longer doubles the added damage, but now also grants 15% increased void damage per Sigil.
  
• Sign of the Guardian grants 1% block chance (from 2%) and 15 block protection (from 5).
  
• Adjusted some connections and requirements.

• The death screen now shows the type of damage that dealt the killing blow in addition to the name of the ability.
  
• Your skills are no longer put on cooldown when you transform back to human form. Cooldowns are tracked while transformed, so if a cooldown has 10 seconds remaining and then you transform for 8 seconds, that cooldown will have 2 seconds remaining.

• Improved Avalanche’s sound to be less jarring.
  
• Fixed Solar Auxiliary enemies not having impact sounds for their arrows.
  
• Fixed Wengari Raider enemies not having impact sounds for their melee attacks.
  
• Adjusted the volume levels of enemies in Chapter 7.

• Further reduced the damage of Fire Paladin’s Earthquake attack.
  
• Reduced the damage of Holy Fire Novas from Rare Osprix Vanguards by 12%.

• Improved the performance of Avalanche’s visuals.

• Fixed item tooltips getting stuck open in some situations.
  
• Fixed item tooltips displaying icons with incorrect colors if you had hovered over a shard beforehand.
  
• Fixed duplicate set items causing tooltip to show a higher tier set bonus.
  
• Fixed instability in tooltips not being shown when moving the mouse between items.
  
• Fixed the hybrid health leech affix having a tier 3 range of 70% to 20% leech, rather than 17% to 20%.
  
• Fixed being unable to use Shield Rush if you changed your weapon, which made it seem as if you no longer had a shield equipped.
  
• Fixed Flame Ward not granting 30% less damage taken as stated on the tooltip.
  
• Fixed a bug where "while channelling" stats did not work with Warpath.
  
• Fixed Flame Ward's Barrier node not granting less damage taken.
  
• Fixed bugs where Forge Strike’s Mass Production and Well Forged Weapons nodes had no effect.
  
• Fixed a bug where Forge Strike’s Put To The Sword node did not increase attack speed.
  
• Fixed Maelstrom’s Votex node increasing the damage of Maelstroms cast on yourself, rather than just those cast on your totems.
  
• Fixed various bugs with the buff display for Sigils of Hope.
  
• Fixed a bug where the Faith for Sigils of Hope triggered on every hit, rather than just hits that dealt more than 25% of your health.
  
• Fixed a bug where the Decree of Flame node for Sigils of Hope had no effect.
  
• Fixed a bug where respeccing the Sigils of Despair node for Sigils of Hope would have no effect until the character was reloaded.
  
• Fixed the poison chance granted by Skeleton Mage’s Putrid Essence node not being converted to ignite chance for Pyromancers or chill chance for Cryomancers.
  
• Fixed the Diode node for Static granting too much added crit chance.
  
• Fixed Storm Totem’s Stormrider node granting 30% movement speed per point rather than the stated 10%.
  
• Fixed the Paladin’s Shield Wall node granting 5% block chance per point, rather than the stated 3%.
  
• Fixed a chest being difficult to open in Maj’elka.
  
• Fixed Artem’s icon disappearing in the Council Chambers in some situations.

• Optimized the visuals for Abyssal Echoes, Bone Slam (Bone Golem), Blood Splatter, Detonate Corpse, and Glacier.

• Reduced the damage of Flame Paladins, Ice Weavers Osprix Vanguards, and Rime Giants.
  
• Increased the damage of Yrun.

• You can now right click on the modifier or support item slot to empty it.
  
• You can now swap out modifier and support items by right clicking, even if an item is already in the crafting window.

• Fixed Runes and Glyphs besides Rune of Removal and Glyph of Stability not appearing in the Crafting Items tab. The items themselves were not deleted, so you will have the correct amount of each type after updating to this patch.
  
• Fixed being unable to view comparison info and other data for items on the ground using modifier keys (alt and ctrl).
  
• Fixed Runes being deleted if they are in the crafting panel and then replaced by a Shard.
  
• Fixed Heoborea failing to load if you had loaded multiple characters in a single game session.
  
• Fixed a bug where Frozen Ire did not remove its per level bonus when unequipped.
  
• Added more failsafes for item loading and saving.
  
• Fixed being able to drag items while holding right click.
  
• Fixed the sound for dropping items also playing when items are picked up.
  
• Fixed the Mirage Staff base type not fitting in the hands of the player correctly.

[h3]Earthquake[/h3]

• Now unlocks at Shaman level 10 (down from 15).

[h3]Ice Thorns[/h3]

• Improved targeting on slopes.

[h3]Reaper Form[/h3]

• Damage that brings you out of Reaper Form now bleeds through to your regular health. If you have 500 max health, and 100 remaining health in Reaper Form, taking a 200 damage hit will leave you on 400 health, not 500).

[h3]Sigils of Hope[/h3]

• The Decree of Flame node can now have a maximum of 3 points allocated (down from 5). Characters with more than 3 points in this node will have the extra points respecced for free.

• Increased the gold value of staves and catalysts.

• Updated the appearance of bees summoned by the Keeper’s Gloves.

* Fixed an error with loading certain types of shards which prevented some characters from being loaded.
* Fixed exiting to character select and then loading another character causing a variety of odd behavior, including enemies idling in place after death and load screens getting stuck.
* Fixed a bug where an item's fractured status was not being saved correctly.
* Fixed some drop rates for Uniques being incorrect.
* Fixed a bug where shards would rarely fail to drop.
* Fixed a non-functional type of Rune dropping.
* Instability is no longer shown on the tooltips of items that can’t have instability.
* Fixed an oversight where Increased Elemental Damage could not roll on staves.
* Fixed Wandering Spirits’ Spectral Putrescence node not adding the poison tag to the skill.
* Fixed Flame Ward’s Selfless Sorcery node mentioning another node by the wrong name.
* Fixed a click sound being played multiple times when loading a character.
* Fixed Earthquake having a minion tag in its tooltip.
* Fixed ground affects unintentionally appearing on the Primal Sabertooth.


Runes and Glyphs besides Rune of Removal and Glyph of Stability are not present in the Crafting Items tab.

• We have found a fix for this issue which will be in a patch soon, and the items have not been deleted. This fix was found after the patch process had started for this release so we decided to get these fixes out first.