For the last couple days I’ve been having an absolute blast on one of the most unique play style builds I’ve ever played in an ARPG with Void Knight. The build was made for using two hand weapons, but I quickly realized (by level 50 or 60) that upper tier arena makes 2h nearly impossible since there just isn’t enough mitigation without a shield.
I’ve been desperately altering gear trying out deflection stacking and dodge stacking, but ultimately ended up having to go Sword and Shield to let me go higher in arena levels.
My suggestion is that, as Void Knight has several masteries and skills that are geared towards two handed weapons, perhaps there could be other forms of mitigation available within the void knight tree (perhaps attached to some of the 2h skills).
My suggestions would be:
Since there’s so much void damage protection, maybe convert some damage taken to void damage;
Adding ward generation / retention into the Void Knight’s arsenal;
Making Void Knight a Dodge focused specialization;
Creating a new Void Barrier system to fit with the theme.
I’m loving the play style of void knight, I just think that it needs a little help for any style other than S&B to be viable endgame.
Shields offer a lot of protection and you should feel more squishy without one. You simply need to stack resis like a mad man when you play a 2h build and then you should be better of. On top of this stack glancing chance and dodge chance and your build should work.
That’s one reason why I like my bear druid. Yeah you are stuck with that darn sper but a good offence helps the druids defence as well, so you hit descent def stats far easier.
With the Void knight I felt pretty eak untill all my resis were over at least 50% and armor even higher with a lot of added leech.
2H Void Knight is also one of my favorites Thing in this game, especially since the mastery passives void Knight feels really cool with those echoing skills.
As @Irrelevant stated, it should be a noticeable diffrence wearing a shield or not, otherwise shields wouldnt have much of a Point. Stacking resis and what is even more important especially if you have some leech going on (which is really easy to get as void Knight) get a huge Health pool.
It is such a diffrence having 500 or 900 hp
But Void Knight for me is an offensiv powerhouse, with alot of leech and strong aoe, you basically can aoe every small Mobs within a fracture of a second and just Need to care for the big bad guys. Especially when you use 2H you Need to avoid telegraphed abilities and dont stand still.
Although i like the general mechanic, i dont think that should be integraded into base kit of any class, as there is already a unique that is doing a similar things the other way around(which is also really good for void Knight) → Decayed Skull - Official Last Epoch Wiki
I think such exotic mechancis should remain a gear related build choice
Acolyte and Mage are already the main contender for ward as Primary defense(in many builds) and it would be boring to give every class easy access to ward.
One of those Things or both combined can actually be really interesteing, mechanically and thematically as it fits the “time affiliation” theme of the void knight.
My suggestions would be Maybe a 0/5 or 0/10 Point node that is optional in the skill tree that give dodge equal to current mana(e.g. 0,1% or 0,15% dodge for every Point of current mana) if maxed out. (devs could further improve on such things and try to add more interessting nodes/specialisation tree nodes that revolve around a big manapool or current/missing mana)
Thematically you could rename his ressource to void Energy and maybe give him some visual effect that is increasing the more mana he currently has.(Some void-ish glow/aura)
I completely agree with both of you, 2h absolutely should feel more squishey for more offense and require more of an active defense to be able to survive on that style of build, I just found that there was a shortage of nodes to allow that. There certainly are some and I’ve been trying out some of the ones I ignored before like Singular Purpose and Counter attack and found they actually help quite a bit.
Agreed on the glancing blows, I have double glancing blow stacked on most of my gear and it is quite helpful, but it makes the options a little flat.
I’m not saying it’s not doable, I just hit wave 85 (and died due to a stupid mistake) using a polearm with a 73 VK; I just think there’s a good opportunity to grow the unique style of the Void Knight in their passives.
LE is like many other ARPGs and it’s pretty simple. Build enough tank or go home! Enough resis and HP are needed as well as a way to sustain dmg intake. For the most 2 Handed builds I played this ment to stack so much resis and other mitigation and hp I don’t felt a dmg difference between 1h/shield vs 2 handed. Somehow it always ended up to be about the looks rather then the playstyle.
that’s what i noticed in my games, it doesn’t matter much if it’s 1h or 2h or shield, wand, or whatever … the style of doesn’t change, what changes is “only” to appearances.
