1.0.0.9 - Tier 3 Constellation Feedback

Grim Dawn Ideas and Feedback
1

So i got around to testing some of the lesser used T-3 constellations procs. Namely Spear of the Heavens, Light of Empyrion, Blind Sage

1. Spear of the Heavens-

I keep hearing people asking for a buff

The devotion ability seems to be in a good place imo. It goes off frequently and does decent damage in a 1 v 1 fight. Plus it’s great to activate on-crit or on attack procs while you decide to go AFK in a crowded scenario

Problem:

Sometimes i notice Level 10 Spear of the Heavens failing to kill a single cronley thug
At the same time i notice Spear taking a chunk of an enemy’s hp bar. When i say enemy i mean a tough one like Fabius.

The damage variation of this degree is very puzzling

2. Light of Empyrion-

Already made a thread about it -http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/showthread.php?t=52618

Basically the direction of buff by adding %damage reduction is nice but the value of reduction is almost laughable considering the light shines upon you on activation it means the constellation’s proc is suited for close quarters
And the low damage reduction value isn’t very appealing

A buff to the value to say, 17-20% isn’t a ridiculous demand. And improving damage done by the skill itself would also help

Currently the strongest aspect of the skill is its racial damage to Chthonians and Undead

The nodes themselves seem to be in a fine place considering its position amongst defensive constellations

3. Blind Sage-

This was by far the hardest to test. The damage done by Elemental Seekers is so low that it’s almost laughable

While i do agree that buffing Elemental Damage would end up “breaking” Cold, Fire and Lightning individually by overbuffing them. But that doesn’t mean that a T-3 constellation proc should be so low

Firstly, the pet AI in this game is bad. Using pet attack isn’t an option in a practical battle for Obliteration, Discord or even PRM. Unless the Elemental Seekers could single handedly halve the Boss HP bar i don’t see any reason to use pet attack

Even if one were to use pet attack, they contribute very little to actual damage.

Sheep’s suggestion seems good to me

My addition to this is similar to Arcane Bomb make them apply -10% elemental RR

The nodes themselves are good though as pointed out by Sobertooth whom i sought for a second opinion regarding Blind Sage since i often feel i am little biased against it and he had good opinions about the constellation

The skill disruption and %crit node are nice but even he agrees that for a T-3 skill the proc’s damage is too low (then again he was using 1/3 of the damage). Just to be clear i did test it on Elemental build and it’s weak

Conclusion-

Compared to Blind Fury, Ulzuin’s Shower, Healing Rain, Whirlpool and Tainted Eruption these tier -3 devotion procs don’t contribute much to damage.

And this problem is much more obvious in Blind Sage considering it’s constellation with the highest affinity requirement
I didn’t include SoTH in the list while i feel it should be there it seems the community disagrees with me.

But Light of Empyrion and Blind Sage need some looking into

Oh and i didn’t test Unknown Soldier skill, not sure where to start. I need a pierce weapon w/o ADCtH on it to test out how good the returns are.

There’s a lot of red text in Blind Sage cause it’s shit

Also

I made feedback threads about-

  1. Shar’Zul’s World Eater - http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/showthread.php?t=53137
  2. Canister Bomb - http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/showthread.php?t=53064
  3. Blade Trap - http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/showthread.php?t=53130
  4. Discord Cadence - http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/showthread.php?t=53044
  5. Pants needing looking into ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) - http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/showthread.php?t=52975
2

Unknown Soldier’s ADctH is definitely noticeable, especially when I have a few of them out, but it’s not going to let you tank a bunch of strong melee enemies without other defenses/ADctH on top of it, no. That said, I only finished leveling my pierce Blademaster to 85 this morning, so he’s still pretty unoptimised - if I had better defenses and wasn’t losing huge chunks of my health every time I get smacked in the face then the health regen might be a lot more useful. It seems pretty decent either way though, and definitely a welcome improvement to what we had before. :slight_smile:

I like the idea of Elemental Seekers a lot, and I’d rather they just be improved upon (assuming improvements are still needed as you say - I’ve not tried them much recently) rather than replacing them with another generic AoE blast.

3

My issue with Spear is that it’s a T3 for Aether/Lighting, specifically. There are many ways to do Lightning, and many ways to do Aether… But mixing the two is FAR less common. By comparison, we have Abom for Chaos/Poison-Acid, Hourglass for just stats and CDR, so it supports ALL skill rotation builds well, Dying God which is visibly Chaos only, Leviathan for Cold…

I can keep going on, but the thing ALL other T3 constellations have in common is that they all, in stats and in their skills, support a specific and common build type. Even Mogdrogen manages to be taken on both Bleed and Pet builds, though more often on Pet. How often is Spear taken on an Aether/Lightning build specifically? And how much MORE often might it be taken if it was solely Aether or Lightning?

I can’t say as I’ve used Light, I tend to use Tree when I’m over there, so I can hardly comment.

As for the Seekers…The idea of an AOE around them doing damage is nice, but hardly works in practice. I think if they removed that, and instead made them explode quicker, and for reasonable damage, it would sort out much better. Also, Energy Burn on their Detonation hardly has a place there, nor really does the Stun. The constellation itself is taken for damage, so having the skill do something other than damage or damage buffing in some fashion is hardly of use.

4

-Well LoE isn’t usable by most builds

-I didn’t mean add AoE to Seekers, i mean add an AoE skill that goes off like Blind Fury (around our player)
I said remove seekers and turn final node into an AoE skill

You say you like Seekers, do you like the skill or do you like the damage it does?

Cause if they want then they can add seekers to something else as a proc, that’s a Tier - 3 constellation and i’d prefer its proc isn’t some subpar piece of shit skill

5

The Seekers already are AOE, and they already have the “Detonate” skill. It’d probably be easier to remove the other skill on Seekers, the “Burning Presence”, and then re-balance Detonate, compared to asking Crate to make an entirely new skill. IMO, the Seekers all seemed to Detonate in good places, the Detonate just didn’t do much damage. Old habit, I always ask Devs for things in the easiest possible way for them to do it, so that they have more trouble going “it would take too long”, or “it’s not reasonable to do that”. It is reasonable for them to do exactly this, alter an existing skill in the fashion of the many other rebalances they’ve already shown themselves capable of doing.

6

Okay then how about this

Just make them detonate in the presence of an enemy and make the radius large and have them apply 10% Elemental RR on the blast like Arcane Bomb

Sound good?

7

I like what the Seekers are - I’m a big fan of player-scaled summons, and I’d rather they just find ways to improve it than create a new skill entirely. Sure, it might not be the only wisp summon in the game (the rest of the Wrath of Agrivix set seriously needs to hurry up and drop already so that I can make a wisp build :frowning: ), but I still find it a more interesting choice than another player-centred AoE blast.

If the AI is really so bad, they could probably just increase the detonation range so that it has a greater chance of actually hitting what you want it to. I’ve not used them recently so I can’t comment on whether or not I think they’re underpowered, but since the cooldown on them is pretty low I can imagine them being a decent constant extra source of damage if buffed a little.

8

Each elemental node could still get like 1-2% OA without breaking anything, maybe even replace their respective 20% resist. Main problem of Sage is the ridiculous requirements that make it only somewhat reachable on top of Leviathan.

Damage from only Elemental Seekers + Necrosis (0 procs or other rr sources) with ~1400% cold and about 600% each lightning and fire + the 300% bonus from 650 spirit for anyone interested: https://youtu.be/YV8FDXE9JmY

9

I suppose I wasn’t clear. The only part of that I wasn’t already suggesting was the RR. Just make them floating kamikaze bombs, I think. As far as I’m concerned, the radius is actually fine, it’s just that the damage is so tiny you hardly notice that most monsters have been hit. I suppose RR wouldn’t be BAD, per se, but I’d rather just have more damage, rather than some damage and the RR. That’s mostly a preference thing though, and I’d be happy either way.

10

I like the seekers. It’s a pretty cool skill. The burning presence skill is more useful than the detonate skill imo. It does decent damage:
Burning presence = 5000 (per seeker per hit, crits for 8000+)
Detonate = 6000

Yes, the detonate damage can be increased.

The problem I had with this is that I’m using it on a caster. So the burning presence is less useful because you try not to be in melee range. It will be much more useful on a Battlemage melee build. It is similar to the Targo’s hammer proc on my Commando, but the hammers do much less damage i.e. ± 2500.

The seekers do even more damage than the meteor shower on my Pyromancer which is about 3000 fire and 1500 burn p/s.

11

I am a fellow Wisps fan :smiley:
And investing more into detonation sounds nice

Actually RR solves a bunch of issues, first and foremost the lack of elemental RR. So RR applied on Seeker detonation would strengthen your main damage skills

Imo, the resists should stay. And small %OA bonus would be nice

Did you test it how it feels in an actual battle?

To test out a specific proc you need to unbind other devotions and remove other procs sources (items)

I tried Seekers with Obliteration and CoF. 1.2-1.5k Elemental Damage and the damage didn’t feel impressive enough. The other T-3 devotions were clearing screen much more
Not to mention the mixed setup consisting of Tempest + Shower or Leviathan + Shower is much better for single target and AoE than Seeker can ever hope to be
So more damage won’t cut it. RR on the other hand sounds appealing. Btw, detonate is also per seeker and multiple detonations on large hitbox like Queen or Ben don’t make them flinch

EDIT:

No comments on Light of Empyrion?

It seems they added Damage reduction 12% for 10 seconds. Imo they should reduce duration and increase reduction value.

12

And there’s nothing to comment on, the Сrate made a big mistake by making a in damage’s reduction to Light of Empyrion 3 type (x%, which only has the source with the largest decrease), which automatically makes it completely useless, because that tyrant prefix, that active ability from the blood of Oleron - they both do the same thing, only better.

If (dreaming is not harmful) Light of Empyrion would have a reduction in the damage of the first (x) or second type (-x%) it would immediately become much more interesting.

13

Completely agreed, they need to buff the value or either go with your suggestion. The Granted Skill needs work

14

The Elemental seeker proc from Blind Sage isnt really usefull beucase as it has been said, it is not practically efficient. Monsters usually die before and/or the elemental seekers dont stay alive long enough for the next pack of monsters.

My thoughs? The Elemental Seeker should proc quite fast and detonate ON impact when it touch an ennemy. Also, the speed at which they move should be fast enough (aka fastttt!!!).
The AOE (how big) part depends on the damage itseft and how often it procs.

15

Yeah most people seem to be with Detonate and i agree

I also would like to add -10% RR to max level Detonate. Kind of like a sentient Arcane Bomb

This would help the lack of RR on Elemental Builds. I mean let’s face it, i could pick Tempest and Ulzuin or Ulzuin and leviathan and make a much better Elemental Build than i can with Blind Sage

With all the ridiculous requirements for the constellation -10% RR for the worst supported damage type isn’t much on a T-3 constellation

I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask for a stackable RR value on a T-3 constellation as not every build has Elemental RR

Only two classes can support pure Elemental, Occultist and Inquisitor (Exclusive Skill is like Veil of Shadows and applies Elemental RR). Demolitionist can support Elemental through conversion which would turn it into Fire/Lightning

16

I just started experimenting with Blind Sage and I agree that elemental seeker is laughable. Not only that the burn has tiny AoE, the detonate usually doesn’t go off due to monster die before the time and the seeker doesn’t live long enough.

Even when it detonates, the damage isn’t that great. I have 15k DPS and the detonation deal 6k? That doesn’t even add 0.5 seconds of damage for me.

My suggestion however is not inline with other suggestions here: I would say remove detonation entirely, buff the burning presence AoE to at least 3 meters, and increase the burn damage by 3-5x, with an optional choice of decreasing RR by -1% to -15% by level to all monster within the AoE.

That would make the seeker more reliable, or else I would just stick with Crown + Crab for elemental damage, they are better and require less investment

17

how about make it proc more than one elemental seeker. for example 4-5 elemental seeker at once on max level, since elemental seeker don’t have summon limit.

18

Crab, crab

Fucking crab. Why do i keep forgetting i need to test this :furious::furious:

Thanks for the reminder

Anyways, Blind Sage needs RR in the skill whether its detonate or anything else. Cause otherwise i’d rather go Leviathan + Shower or Tempest + Shower or ToL on elemental builds

19

when you do test it, don’t judge it at lvl 5. Start judging it al lvl 10-12. You will notice many areas are considerably easier, magically.

20

I don’t start judging a skill/devotion till its max level. Yeah i plan to browse GrimCalc to get into boss fights that use types that barrier protects us against

Except Unknown Solider, don;t think i ever picked the final skill