Humility is cool, but then you come and shit all over my build without ever playing it or understanding the specifics of how and why certain end-game builds work, well…
I (and I am sure many other prominent builders) will try Nex and Ortus along with a lot of other stuff. It’s going take some time to figure out what’s the new performance benchmark is and what should one expect from non-shielded melee builds in general in Forgotten Gods.
But from my experience (which you sometimes neglect and call “hundreds of hours of theorycrafting”) it just doesn’t look like those builds will be viable. Moreover, I really doubt that even Sabouter will be viable for end-game with those swords, but mainly it’s due to the fact it’s a Sabouter, one of the weakest melee classes, and besides Nex and Ortus and (nerfed) Elemental Harmony set it doesn’t have a lot of direct gear support. But sure, we will try.
I gotta ask, if it’s not for fun then why are you doing it?
I’ve spent my own large share of time testing/polishing/optimizing, but it was because I enjoyed exploring the large and complicated build space just for the sake of it. The most exciting part of the expansion for me is the massive shake up of the meta. Don’t get me wrong, the new content is absolutely amazing, but it’s the build possibilities that will hold my attention for months if not years.
From what I’ve seen so far is that the overall balance is a lot better now(at least with pets). My formerly strongest builds got nerfed into the ground, other ones got buffed, and there are many, many new possibilities that I’ve only begun to scratch the surface of.
Anyway, I think you’ll have a lot of fun with FG as long as you don’t let yourself be consumed by the inevitable pendulum of balance.
Yes, of the game. Gladiator crucible balance is a very delicate affair for builds like this one, which is a dw medium armor set with much lower flat damage reduction sources relative to other builds. It relies on % defences, dodge, fumble and phys res + the life steal sustain. Killing slower means more hits connecting and when those are from Nemesis the danger is especially high.
The issue is % defence vs flat absorb. The former dies very easily when swarmed hard boss/Nem but the latter has the potential to not care at all because damage can be reduced to 0. Then add to this the existence of total res reduction debuff which harms %defence a hell of a lot more than flat asborb tanky characters (because 0x1.4 is still 0).
Realistically there is only so much more armor/defence a character like this can get to survive and to push success to 100% without the heavy cost of less damage. Maybe it is not possible to clear in 12 minute or below and hence dead in FG but I know it is not as simple as 30% slower because 30% less damage.
It’s fun when the build is finally ready. I was talking about the process when you keep bashing your head against the wall because everything seems to be in order on paper but build still dies too much and you have to try every option available. Especially when you are trying to make some specs that Crate thought would work but don’t really work well (or at all) in practice.
For all of you guys complaining about “possibly - maybe - somehow dead builds, which don’t clear 150-170 in under x minutes”.
A character/items/item sets/devotions in this game should be considered viable, if they have a chance >0% to complete the main campaign / the crucible / some shard of the SR.
Builds which clear them in about >50% (crucible) of the cases should be considered as strong.
Builds that clear the crucible in 100% of the cases without any needs of knowledge or something like game sense should be considered OP and need to be nerfed.
I really dont like the modern attitude where on a scale form 1-100 a 85 is mediocre and a 99 is good and to be perfect you need to score a 120.
i dont know what i’ve missed over the years playing GD or maybe other ARPGs, but if there is something that guarantees success throughout the meant to be challenging game modi, it simply deserves the ban hammer.
Further I dont know, I’m spending quite some time on building new chars, primarily strange conversion and niche builds and some of them clear the crucible 150-170, maybe not on a reliable 100% rate, but merely 40-45% and about 80% with knowing how to defeat which waves. The thing is it would take them maybe 15 - 20 minutes to clear.
Builds that make speedruns through Cruci / SR /whatever might or might not come will always be at the borderline of the Sacred Hammer of NERF. And they might get hit, but if so they also deserve it pretty much.
I find it strange that when the latest bigger patches hit the world of cairn some fellows on these forums thought that their time spent was discredited by Zantai et al. But believe it or not Zantai will never target attack you personally(might differ, if you attacked him first). He will always see the health status of the game.
To end this post i’d like to see that all the people on this forum come back to the friendly, familiar and helpful state.
Dude, it’s your prerogative to play the game however you want. But please do not make claims like “build can do Crucible 50% of the times hence build is strong”. It’s just not true. If a build clears it in 15-20 minutes and also struggles to do - it’s a weak, build, there is no way two ways of saying that.
Grim Dawn offers almost endless variety in possible build combinations and thanks to that we can differentiate betweent op, strong, medium, weak and shite builds. Your weird ass conversion build with no proper gear/mastery/devotion support shouldn’t be as strong as a solid polished build that uses all synergy from items/gear/devotions it can get.
I have made over 20 Crucible Gladiator farmers that come in all shapes and sizes and all can farm it with a very high success rate, most of them can do 3 runs during a duration of 3 blessings with a help of a Vanguard banner. Are you telling me they are all oupie and deserve nerf hammer? Or maybe I just make good builds and put some time into making them good?
reminds me the day when i first put on elemental balance rings in 1.0.0.4 on a saboteur and them being nerfed to the ground shortly after. stormreaver lightning totems? firestrike? overguard?
in fact i don’t remember a single thing that i used that wasn’t nerfed consecutively.
this game has always been about build makers finding something strong and devs nerfing it and the cycle repeats.
maybe its necesary to keep the game alive, but it kind got old for me, its essentially just learning the whole meta, and then relearning the meta every month with a new round of nerfs.
Pretty sure double blitz wasn’t nerfed. Markovian was even buffed to support blitz. But hey, you’re back! Wonder if you’ll find something for crate to nerf again this time Personally I’m glad that aside from binder (which was bonkers no matter how you built it in the past) I never used anything that was considered in the very top of builds. Dem nerfs don’t hurt me as much as they hurt you guys.
(as opposed to offense = defense)
Personally I’m glad that aside from binder (which was bonkers no matter how you built it in the past) I never used anything that was considered in the very top of builds. Dem nerfs don’t hurt me as much as they hurt you guys.