Echo vs Eternal Items

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TL;DR: IMO for an item based game, the basically-hero-kit items shouldn’t get all of the love. Between set bonuses and both Eternal T3 upgrades and 5th abilities that are both significant power spikes, Echo items have always felt out-of-place.

Echo items are dime-a-dozen in Ascension, sure, but generally speaking so are Eternal items. Unless I have a very specific build in mind, why exactly would I take an Echo item over any given Eternal item? Echo items cover far fewer combat use cases, several Eternal items are basically just direct upgrades to Echo items, and in return for using items that are typically equivalent-at-best to Eternal items, I lock myself out of at least one set bonus, a significant heal from transforming, a 5th ability, and whatever upgrades, utility, etc I would get from Eternal equipment.

If I want to support my team literally at all? There’s no Echo item for that except maybe the Shield RMB to eat damage, or maybe Scimitar RMB if an almost-melee range exhaust is sufficient supporting. Or maybe a ranged slow. Beyond that, the only way I’m “supporting” is by just dealing damage and hoping that “just dealing damage” is enough.

If I want to apply meaningful CC? The best Echo items can do is a melee-range exhaust (Scimitar RMB once again), two at-range slows, and knockback from the Shield. As before, the only other alternative is going for damage.

No stuns, no roots, no pulls, no huge circular AOE slows, no walls, no AOE team buffs, no blinds, no tethers, no piercing, no stealth, no team healing, no DoT, no teleport.

One source of knockback. One source of crushing. One source of exhaust. Two sources of slows.

Everything else is either generally selfish utility or general-use damage. There are so many combat mechanics that are present exclusively on Eternal items, and those mechanics basically don’t exist in the game at all once those specific Eternals get rotated out.

I’m generally of the opinion that Eternal items, or at least Eternal kits as a whole, generally cover too many bases and individual items often do too much, but I feel like Echo items could stand to do even a tiny bit more if they’re meant to stand on the same stage and generally be as relevant as Eternal items.

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On further thought, I want to single Invulnerability Amulet out.

TL;DR:

It feels like it gets special treatment purely because it’s an Echo item.
It feels like its stats are better than they should be given everything else in the game that does anything even remotely similar has at least some downside, some caveat, worse uptime, or some some combination thereof.

Everything else that provides immunity even like similar has some caveat built-in to the immunity.
Shield block has a healthbar.
Leodin spear makes you move super slow and also only works in a single direction.
Leodin crown prevents you from taking any actions.
Mending Hands silences you despite lasting for the exact same duration. I’d argue that having just as visible a VFX and being single-use would be enough of a balancing factor for Mending Hands that it wouldn’t need to silence you, but neither Invulnerability Amulet nor Last Wish get the same treatment.

Invulnerability Amulet has none of that. It doesn’t slow you, it doesn’t silence you, it doesn’t debuff you in any capacity beyond the absolute bare minimum of it being an Echo item instead of an Eternal item and forcing you to lose out on set bonuses.

It doesn’t even have singularly bad uptime. It has the most overwhelmingly average cooldown-duration ratio. 12 seconds cooldown on 2 seconds of full invulnerability during which you retain full control, movement, etc., is incredibly good.

Why does Invulnerability Amulet get to be so good and arguably even better than any of its direct competitors, while most other Echo items are equivalent-at-best and some (the bow) are basically strictly worse?

On the same note, why do other sources of invulnerability/immunity/etc. have some downside while Invulnerability Amulet gets all of the upsides with literally none of the built-in downsides that the others get?

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The larger echo item conversation does not really interest me that much anymore, ive said my thoughts on them months ago and i feel a lot of my feedback was actually considered and listened to. They made barrage amulet less useless, bow’s ability now can be held instead of having to be cast upon button press, scimitar isnt just a better dual axe anymore - they each have better identity as to why to use one over the other.. Echo items are in my opinion much better balanced now than the few patches before they nerfed invuln amulet and did the quality of life changes previously mentioned. BTW, invuln ammy lasts 1.5 now, not 2 seconds.

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That being said: you are absolutely cooking with the reply with Invuln amulet. The item is still so disgusting OP and brainless; Im so tired of fighting resilience/vitality crown, invuln amulet, dual axes and shield. It is soooooooo boring and effective and mindless. Too much survivability crammed into echo items at the literal press of a button. No thought needs to go into how to best use said survivability. It is frustrating to play against, to say the least.

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I agree that most are better now.

Essence Crown also gets to be a usable item as well nowadays, which is nice.

My focus is less about whether Echo items are good, because on average I don’t think they’re specifically weak (except IMO the bow still completely sucks) from a numerical standpoint. Their damage is, overall, quite good. The cooldowns are…average.
It’s more about whether they’re interesting, do anything interesting, have interesting gameplay mechanics, etc. compared to Eternal items. My concern with Echo items is that they represent virtually none of the game’s combat mechanics, and people are basically forced to use Eternal items unless they have an incredibly specific build/combo in mind, like reset crown nukes or being excessively durable through the use of resilience crown + invulnerability amulet.

Basically every Echo-based build, though, I can think of are just…OK. None of them actually get to be good, and none of them have anywhere near the immediate and obvious payoff as something like Reset Crown + Damage-boosting Amulet + Dahla Sword + Irenna Sword.

There’s other combos that are good, yes, but it feels like there’s still a significant gap in value between the two sorts of builds, and then yet another gap between any Echo-based build and anything based on using Eternal items.

The best Echo builds aren’t anywhere even remotely near to what any variation of basically any Eternal shattered builds have in versatility or utility. Putting aside damage and durability from set bonuses, Tsushi as a build had access to so much utility and CC in those two kits that Echo items fundamentally do not get. Even ignoring the most recent hallmark shatter build, most Eternal shatters still get to do more than anything focusing on Echo items.

Which is exactly my point.
I’m not sure if I’m more annoyed by how good it is or by how annoying it is to play against, largely because it’s so annoying to play against on account of how good it is.

It doesn’t really matter how long it lasts, because it’s one of several near-or-full invulnerability items in the game but is the only one that doesn’t restrict the user’s options during the effect at all, unlike something like Leodin Amulet that makes the trade of being invulnerable in exchange for not being able to do anything while invulnerable. And, to add, it doesn’t even have a bad uptime, low duration, high cooldown, etc.

Of all the gimmicks that Echo items get in any amount, the fact that they get “excessive durability with no actual cost” as one of the very few combat mechanics that they represent is, in a word, baffling.

Fortitude Crown is, at least, only a DR. Essence Crown is also quite good now, yes, but they’re also both survivability items that are competing with other survivability - if you can only pick Echo items, in-combat self-healing is competing with out-of-combat fortitude regen (not much of a competition since the regen gets stopped by taking any damage), movespeed buff + CC immunity, and damage taken reduction.

Invulnerability AMULET is, notably, not really in competition with anything else in the same way, because no other Echo amulet offers direct survivability. Slide amulet is good but that’s not really its job.

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they’re echo items though, their function is to be simple stepping-stones that you start out with to fill your slots

otherwise they’d violate all the in-match progression of assembling a build and levelling up your equipment
I’m not against them being balanced better but they should genuinely be the most niche items available so they’re relegated to covering specific weaknesses or matchups post-earlygame (the healing crowns and resilience/invuln echoes already sorta do this)

imo the other decent option to give them depth is just adding more of them and making them upgradeable (but then they’re eternal items in a no-setbonus-flavour)

also probably no hard cc on echoes because it would make early fights really punishing with the shortage of consumables and often asymmetrical strengths
also also, rework invuln amulet into ethereal shift ^w^ (like 2s of walkspeed banish)

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I generally disagree that they should be the most niche options.

Niche because of what they do or don’t do? Yeah, sure.

Niche because they’re Echo items? That feels excessively limiting and significantly unfair to Echo items as a concept given Eternal items are not universally non-niche.

I think there’s a lot of space that Echo items can fill without directly stepping on the same spaces that Eternal items currently occupy, but I also think that it’d be perfectly OK if Echo items directly compete with Eternal items in more meaningful ways given shattered builds are allowed to include more than just Eternal items, and giving Echo items more options/value/impact (by new items, changing existing ones, letting them be upgraded by some method, a hypothetical Echo set bonus, etc.) would add significantly more options to builds. Options that won’t get rotated out.

I don’t really think it’s healthy long-term for the two item categories to end up as extremes just because they’re two different categories.

  • things that always exist and can’t be expected to change much if at all but are niche and if you don’t like them then you better hope there’s eternals in rotation that you do like
  • things that are allowed to be versatile but aren’t always present so I hope you don’t enjoy any specific kits

I’m not sure that they need to be upgradeable to compete more with Eternal items. Having even just a few more Echo items for a few more options would likely do wonders, especially if those new few aren’t more ways to do the same things that enough existing Echo items already do (i.e. something other than slowing enemies or direct survivability for the user).

Upgrades would help for sure, given how impactful some T3 upgrades can be.