Charisma/Willpower
each 10 points provides:
+1.0% to cooldown reduction (for action and energy consuming abilities only. Would not apply for anything passive or free)
to all pets:
+1.0% to summoning duration
+0.5% to all damage
+1.0% to health points
+1.0% to poison resistance
+1.0% to vitality resistance
+0.5% to eather resistance
+0.5% to chaos resistance
Survival/Resilience
each 10 points provides:
+0.5% to all resistances
+1.0% to all harmful effects duration reduction
Hardcore mode:
each 200 points provides:
+1 extra life
At the moment:
Physical is for the tanks, to improve max health points, to carry heavy armors, and for general survivability,
Cunning is for the melee and ranged characters who needs to make sure that they do enough critical hits to maximize their DPS,
Spirit is to improve the “magical” damage, to improve max energy, and to carry advanced magical items.
Good.
But what about the summoners?
What about the casters whose builds are based on skills with cooldowns?
And what about the players who are just tired of struggling with some damn resistances that just turn out not to belong much to the gear and the devotions they have planned to use for their builds?
The Willpower attribute (or whatever how you may want to call it) would be a key to the summoners builds who are tired of recasting their summoning every 20 seconds, while they have 30-50 attribute points remaining they have no use for, and to the casters who are tired of waiting for the cooldowns of their abilities to complete, and the Resilience attribute would be a key to all the builds who want to maximize their survivability on something else than just health points, health regeneration, armor, %chance to block, %damage converted to health and %damage absorption. Not all builds have a shield or wants to play a tank or a troll or a vampire.
This would also solve the current pretty strange situation which asks the summoners builds some physical or cunning or spirit for some items which features are mainly “to all pets” bonuses: Summoners are summoners, not tanks or killers or spam-casters.
This would allow more diversity in the building of the characters, and enable the players to focus more precisely on what they want to improve in their character stats.
And if you are going to reply like omg-this-is-too-much-people-will-be-confused-the-screen-is-not-large-enough-for-all-this-data-lol, you are lucky I did not also mention the other attribute I have in mind:
Luck/stop-the-f###ing-gayblade-drop-frenzy
each 10 points provides:
+1.0 % chance to have the drop re-generated into something related with your masteries
Because boy, I am so tired of farming for items I will never use.
I really don’t think the answer to the Physique/Cunning/Spirit system’s shortcomings is to bloat the system with new stats. Also, I REALLY don’t like the idea of a “Luck” stat. That sounds a lot like a “magic find” stat and magic find is awful.
I have a maxed pure summoner. I have around 40 attribute points remaining I really have no use for. I have used the others only to unlock some gear.
What do I do then with the current system?
To put everything into physical for the sole purpose of general survivability?
Again, I am a pure summoner, and I did pretty well and my pets now tank well for me. Since the rework of the AI, the game now manages much better the aggro, and unless I do a mistake or against area attacks, I am simply never hit enough to really care about my survivability.
So although some extra 100’s of health points may always be useful in some way, they just don’t fit to the plan of my build, and they are not really necessary. My current character is a pure summoner and I want to push it as much as possible as pure summoner.
So what do I do?
Physical? meh.
Cunning? What for? I never attack.
Spirit? I have enough energy and energy regeneration, and the bonuses to the magical attacks won’t apply to the pets.
In order to build a pure summoner, you have to have the two masteries maxed. You really don’t need much more help with the current attributes. I don’t remember having had to care about them more than like 10 times at most over my whole game with this build up to the level 85. My focus was on how many pets I could get and how they do in combat.
This is why I believe that some attributes are missing. The game enables more builds than just tanks/ranged/battle casters. Since I am also under the impression that the resistances system is still broken, I also take the opportunity of this suggestion to give the option of an attribute dedicated to resistances.
Would just put the points in Physique if you have gear reqs met. More DA and HP is always a good thing.
I proposed making the stats we already have do more than they currently do a while back - I proposed that Spirit contribute to resistances, Cunning add dodge/deflect chance, and I forget what I proposed for Physique. Long story short, it got nowhere and I doubt the devs even read the thread. So, I mean, you’re not alone in thinking the stat system as it is needs some tinkering done to it. But I don’t think we need NEW stats, I think the stats we already have need to do more/be more interesting.
I think that loot system has to be adjusted. For example, the drop chance of any unique item is 1% and we have 50 such items. Say i get my first ever unique item. Right after that this particular item’s drop chance is cut by half(becomes 0,5%) while the other half is evenly distributed between other 49 items, so each of them gets 0,0102% bonus to drop chance.
As for the other part I think that diablo3 paragon level system is a better solution. That is, after you reach level 85 paragon levels become available. Every level you get 1 point that can be assigned to one of a number of parameters: +1% all resistances(may be divided into primary and secondary), 1% cooldown reduction, +5% to all retaliation damage, +1% to attack speed, +5 to off/def ability, +0,5% health and so on. Each parameter has a limit of, say, 20 points.
I am not as tired of getting same items all over again as of playing through Ultimate without leveling up anymore.
I agree with the drop system. I hate the game when it drops like 2 or 3 times in the same game something that I already have in the first place. I mean… come on… first I am not some gayblade so please stop dropping items on and on and on for that one class, and second I have way enough backscratchers and perdition items in all my chests and I really don’t need them more.
But there is a problem here: a redrop can be a better drop. You may find some gear with better stats, or more suited for your class, so it is not too bad. And you can also store it for another build you have in mind, while keeping your current build complete gear-wise.
I don’t like that paragon system: you need the resists when you need them, not when your build is maxed. The idea of different attributes is to enable you to precisely build your character the way you want, and the way you need, all along the game. The game is about choices, finding synergies and balances.
In order to ascertain how many general character attributes the game needs, you need to ascertain how many general types of character this game enables:
At the moment, according to how I see the game, I can see 5 general types:
Tanks: melee fighters with weapons and armors, supposed to withstand massive damage, can handle most situations in the game thanks to their survivability,
Ranged: ranged fighters with weapons, can handle most enemies as long as they do not come close enough,
Casters: spells spammers, can handle most enemies as long as they are not resistant to their attacks and cannot kill them in one shot with some quick or strong attack,
Support
Summoners
Since the game do not feature any stealth, sneaky tasks, the rogue/thief type one could expect in a usual RPG does not appear here. This is an ARPG. Same with the healer. Everybody in Grim Dawn is more or less supposed to look after his survivability by itself.
We can remove the support type from this list, since “support” by itself does not mean much, and most supportive features in Grim Dawn are passive skills (the auras). Unless you play in a very organized team, there won’t be much support expected from the other players when playing multiplayer games beyond just killing the monsters before they kill you, and sharing the loots with the most relevant players.
So… we are now back to 4 types, and to my point. And while I value the fact that the tanks need some cunning to make sure they hit enough, and the ranged need some physical to withstand some damage when things get messy and some spirit if they do magical attacks, we are still back to my point. And I do not believe that putting all the mechanism of choice and reward on 3 types only is fair and stimulating enough compared to what the game features. If there are people confused with 3 options as attributes, I have a system for them: offense/defense. Done. If you die too many times, put more points into defense, and if you don’t kill enough, put more points into offense. Simple enough now?
The game deserves more than this.
I agree with the problem of the attention of the developers, but this is pretty usual and expected. You have first to deal with time management: the developers cannot spend all day reading each posts of the forum. You then have to deal with decision-making: which idea is the most relevant? This one that requests that rework of that feature or this other one that basically requests the opposite? Then come the egos: those players don’t like how I have designed this game because they don’t understand my genius, and then come the mood: the game is fun for you because you play it, and only when you feel like to, and that same game may not be the same fun for them, because they have to work on it every day, whether they feel like it or not. So the troubles and the interests of each one here is not the same. This is the same story with each fanbase and the producers of the media they enjoy. So nothing unusual here.
I was bitching for years with those stupid different resistances for fire and burn, and now they have finally merged them, so, hey, little victory here. Maybe someday they will finally merge the cold resist with the freeze one.
While this kind of categorization might apply to other RPGs, I don’t think that these categories accurately sum up what can be built and played in Grim Dawn. All builds in the game are designed to do damage and kill enemies. The real differentiation in roles comes in how they do it. You have Ranged, Caster, Melee, Summoner, and Retaliation/Reflect. Tank is a potential subset of all those categories, as is Support. Tank is more likely to be found as a subset of Melee and Retaliation/Reflect (the latter in particular, by necessity), whereas Support (as much as it exists in this game) is more likely to be found as a subset of Caster. There is occasional overlap between categories, muddying the definitions further. Think of it as a huge Venn Diagram with circles overlapping other circles, rather than a cut-and-dry, rigid categorization system.
Witch Hunter, Saboteur and Trickster (Any combo of Nightblade/X, potentially, depending on the build) tend to fall into the niche occupied by rogues/thieves in other games - speedy melee DPS, focused on offense over defense. Stealth and sneakiness is not the only domain of the rogue archetype.
This entirely depends on how you and your friends play. I know of one person at minimum who designed a very successful support Sorcerer to run with someone else’s Blademaster. I didn’t actually watch them play, but to hear them talk of it, it was a very successful endeavor. Support is as much as you choose to make of it in Grim Dawn.
I completely forgot my another idea. A new artisan or a new feature for either blacksmith or engineer - combine items. Say, you get some item twice. For example, a Chillblaze. One has 35% cold damage, 48% Frosburn dmg, 30% reduced freeze duration and 30 offensive ability. The second one has 40% cold damage, 44 % frostburn dmg, 35% reduced freeze duration and 29 off ability. You combine the two items for some crafting materials and gold, obviously, and you get 1 Chillblaze out of 2 with only the highest parameters - 40% cold dmg, 48% frostburn dmg, 35% reduced freeze and 30 offensive ability. This way you can craft a perfect version of any item.
would require a whole different item system (from a technical perspective) and also makes retroactive changes impossible, so I do not see this ever happening
You can’t even touch the affixes manually from a technical pov. The only way to do so (through a mod) is completely reroll the item with an extremely complex blacksmith recipe, and it wouldn’t be perfect because you cannot eliminate the RNG factor. The item system in place wasn’t designed for complex crafting.
because the values for each stat are not stored, what is stored is the seed a RNG then uses to determine the values withing a range given by the affix
So you cannot take the maximum of two values for each stat without changing the entire logic
once you have done that the item has specific bonuses and values saved in the item, removing the currently existing flexibility to change what stats an affix gives and what the range for each is.
With the seed/RNG approach you can add or remove stats, since you have as many values as you need, simply get the next number from the RNG, you can also change the range and the RNG value will scale accordingly automatically
My bad, gentlemen. Too much Diablo in the past…Not unique(green) items of course. The legendary(blue) and epic(purple). You find 1 legendary or epic item twice and you combine them into one same item.
Once again, one Chillblaze has 30% cold dmg(max 40%) and 45% frostburn dmg(max 50%). The other Chillblaze has 29% cold dmg and 48% frostburn dmg. You combine them and get a new Chillblaze with 30% cold dmg and 48% frostburn dmg.
If later you get one more Chillblaze with 40% cold dmg and 40% frostburn dmg you combine them once again and get a new Chillblaze with 40% cold dmg and 48% frostburn dmg.
If you get one more Chillblaze with 35% cold and 45% frostburn then there is no point in combining them so you just dismantle it at the Engineer’s.
If later you finally get a Chillblaze with whatever cold dmg and 50% frostburn dmg you combine them one last time and get the perfect version of Chillblaze with maximum stats as it appears here: https://gracefuldusk.appspot.com/items/1921-Chillblaze
Charisma is an absolutely stupid idea. CDR is one of the most broken stats in this game, and you propose a way to hit 100% for any build fairly easily.
For a CDR Arcanist build, you can hit ~45% fairly easily. That means at 550 charisma, you would hit 100% CDR in campaign.
And pet builds don’t need buffs, they have eaten tons of nerfs in the past because they can put out the damage of far riskier classes without any real player action.
I agree. Very good points.
Although I would consider all builds into retaliation, reflects, blocking etc as sub-builds of tanks: if you cannot tank enough with them, all your retaliation or reflects or whatever are not going to make much sense.
That’s a good idea, if you don’t apply the highest parameters/perfect version part:
Perfect items are not going to help. The players have to make choices. So I would keep the new blacksmith idea, but just make it an item-reroller: you bring him several items of the same type, and he makes you a new item of that type. And you hope for the best with the stats.
I would also like that guy to also be able to supply you with something useful if you bring him tons of money or components: All my late-games builds are full of useless “iron bits” and components and I have also wondered what really was the point in gathering all of those… Diablo II gave the option to gamble, this was a good way to recycle massive amounts of gold.
If you already have some cooldown reduction with the current build, then yes your current 45% + those extra 55% with the attributes would make 100% reduction.
So what? You made the choice the lose health points (by not putting those points into physical), “normal” attacks damages (by not putting those points into cunning) and energy and magic damages (spirit), so one would expect to get something valuable in return for that loss, don’t you think?
I have no problem with a character profile that gives the option into faster abilities over general damages. If you believe that the +1% for 10 points rule is too much, let just reduce the cooldown reduction in items by 10-25% and the attribute to +0.75% or +0.8% for 10 points in that would be it. I have never said that this attribute would require no testing and tuning, I just think that the players who would like to play builds based on abilities with cooldowns should have some option to reduce those cooldowns.
What difference does it make at the end if one caster can cast 2 times that spell within a minute and does each time 100 points of damage, and another who can cast 4 times that spell within the same minute but makes only 50 points of damage each time? Isn’t this game about customization? Recasting spells would be energy consuming anyway, so a player would have to find the right balance between spirit and charisma/willpower. 100% cooldown reduction is not going to make much difference if you cannot support the massive energy consumption the spells will do, so putting everything into this attribute is not going to make overpowered builds if these attributes and the related skills are well balanced.
It is not that simple. Being a summoner means a little bit more on the battlefield than just ordering your pets to attack those guys over there, sitting in a corner and wait for them to get back and finally stand up and review the loot on move on to the next camp. I was also under that impression before playing a summoner. I have never liked much those pets/familiars/summoning ideas in ARPG, and used to play my characters all by themselves. And I have then tried a pure summoner (no attack skills, I have focused all my skills and devotions and gear into pets. I was just curious to see how it would go), and I can tell you that this is challenging as well. A different challenge, but still a challenge.
You will end up with a strong army, that you will have to manage to keep it strong, so you will have to stay close enough so your pets remain free to move around and attack, and within range of your healing abilities, and yet away enough not to catch too much attention from the enemies. No, it is not that easy: Grim Dawn is fast action and things can change very quickly.
And this is where the point of that attribute is: if the summoners have to put some points into that attribute instead of into physical for instance, it would make them more into what they are supposed to be and less into what they are not supposed to be: more summoners and less tanks. At the moment, pure summoner builds have no real use for their attributes, since none of the bonuses currently supplied by those attributes are relevant to his build. So what is he going to do with them? He is going to put everything into physical, which is going to allow him to carry armors that only the strongest tanks are supposed to be able to get. Is that supposed to make sense? The “riskier class”/“real player action” are the ones who should be able to get the best armors for the warriors and the best magical items for the spellcasters, not that stupid summoner who had no use for his attribute points and who has decided to put everything into physical. The current system does not make much sense on that matter.
First, summoner-oriented items are supposed to require summoner-dedicated attributes, not tank attributes or casters attributes, and second, that attribute should in return supply the summoner with what he needs. He is not asking much for health points, offense abilities, personal bonuses into physical or bleeding damage or whatever, all he wants are bonuses for his pets.
So now we have a choice: either we admit that this game should allow players to go for summoners builds, and we make sure that the game is well designed for that option, and give all the options and restrictions to make sure that this build is going to have around the same overall challenge and efficiency the other builds have, or we decide that summoners are not allowed here and we simply remove everything related with pets and we all go for melee fighters, ranged fighters, attack spellcasters and that’s it. I am fine with both choices, but please don’t say in one hand that you are ok with letting some pets in the game and in the other hand not ok to have the game setup for those pets.
The necromancers in Diablo II can get 38 (16+2 permanent and 20 temporary) pets with them in the current version, up to 61 total in previous older versions. I have never heard about summoners in this game being overpowered. Ever. It has always been about the sorceress and the paladin. How come?
In Grim Dawn, my best army was 8 pets strong. I believe someone who would fully go quantity over quality could get maybe 15 at most, with 2/3 of them with lifetimes under 30 seconds and meaningless damage output. This is too much? Seriously?
You don’t quite get how overpowered CDR is. At 80%, you literally become 100% unkillable as an Arcanist or Nightblade, 100% on a Demo or Soldier gets the same effect.
At 100% CDR, your life-save devotion would proc EVERY time your hp drops below the lifesave proc value. That means your hp could never go below that point.
Also, you don’t understand how the math of CDR works. Every 1 % more CDR you have is exponentially more valuable than the last. Going from 50% CDR to 60% CDR is an increase in cast of 20%. Going from 90-95% is an increase of 50%. 100% CDR is literally infinite in value, with the only constraint being the mana bar for damage output, but you are doing similar damage to a normal build per cast with 0 CD and 100% invulnerability instead.
If the life-save abilities are going to make the builds unkillable, I see two options here:
reduction cap: cooldown reduction is capped at x% for everything involving health regeneration.
Example: 50% reduction cap.
reduce the efficiency of the reduction bonus for those abilities.
Example: 50% efficiency. Which means 120% cooldown reduction means only 60% for those abilities.
Exponential problem:
Everytime a linear curve is applied on a percentage, an exponential problem is likely to occur, since a +1% bonus does not mean the same when you move from 00% to 01% than from 99% to 100%.
The only key here is to no longer use a linear curve for that reduction.
One way could be to stop applying the percentages as a sum, but to apply each of them to the result of the last one: 2x20% would no longer equals 40% but would equals 36%, and it would be impossible to reach absolute zero since the lower you get and the less effective the percentages become.
You are going very technical here and I value that, but I just cannot tell for sure if you did ignore on purpose the fact that that idea was for the spells only. I have never said that this should apply for anything passive and especially for anything requiring no energy points and no action. This is my mistake, but I am under the impression that you did ignore that part of that suggestion just to express what I sense like a fear for change. I did not think about this and you have a good point here, so I need now to make this more accurate: the core idea was only for the abilities that 1) require an action from the player, and 2) consume something out of the character’s pools (likely energy). I fully agree with the fact that an automatic and free ability originally designed to apply within a specific timeframe and under specific conditions and that would then be constantly re-applying because of some tweak or loop or lack of restrictions would likely make no sense gameplay-wise.
A 100% cdr devotion existed before and it was extremely overpowered. Things like energy cost were irrelevant, anything you would need it on died in seconds.
I’ve played CDR cap builds. I am speaking from first hand experience how busted overpowered they are. I have called out for a CDR cap repeatedly, and my favorite build was removed from the game because Crate rather than implement one deleted the mechanic required for it to work instead. Every time a CDR cap build has existed in the game, it has been overpowered.
It won’t work, it won’t be balanced, drop it. Save yourself the breath/keystrokes.