200 Waves of Crucible & SR 90 will greatly impact what would be considered good builds

Grim Dawn General Discussion
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Of course, a lot is going to change between now and 2024, but the clamor of “a build is only good if it beats all the Superbosses, Crucible <4 minutes and SR90” is only going to be cemented by these future changes. In my playtesting, SR75 seemed to be a great line separating the decent builds from the unusable concepts, but if we’re going to have SR loot up to SR90, that’s going to greatly shift what people consider worthy to share with others. What’s the point of having a SR75 build if it doesn’t get you the loot that SR90 gets you, huh?

This may be a first impression, but I think this is going to tremendously hamper build diversity, greatly pushing players toward completing sets and even then takes a large amount of min-maxing just to be able to see the build as “good.” The mental roadblocks are real, and it’s going to hurt player standards more than help them. I like testing things that aren’t inherently obvious through sets and item influence to see if I can make something fun and playable, and I’m not the only one who likes this (@lMarcusl’s threads of SR progress are a delight to read).

TLDR: These new standards are going to fundamentally change the perception of builds, and not in a direction I particularly like. 170 Crucible is hard, but fair. 75 SR was definitely fair. What will Crucible 200 and SR90 bring in terms of build variety? A whole lot less than what we have now.

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only by a few pro builders, all the rest of us are gonna enjoy good builds that are good as in fun to play

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I’m a bit split on this. For purely selfish reasons, I kinda preferred when the game was finished in terms of endgame scaling, cause I could commit to making build overviews with the knowledge I won’t have to overhaul that shit later. With +10 farmable SR levels (not sure whether Ascendant will factor in as well with the DLC or not), that goes out the window. Guess I’m gonna have to get all my overviews out before 1.2 comes out cause there’s no way I’m going back to retest all that shit.

From a less subjective point of view, I wouldn’t necessarily see a problem, but a lot depends on how we take it as a community. Like, if everything else were to stay the way it is now and we just got loot drops all the way to SR120 or something, I don’t think the standard would necessarily become “farm SR115-116 or don’t bother playing”. It would move to the next 2 shard spread that’s still time-efficient. If doing SR85-86 yields better loot but is like 40% slower than SR75-76, people are going to stick to the current standard most of the time and build diversity won’t be affected.

The positive I see in this is rewards for people who like to push higher shards. Right now, even if I’m interested in testing the limits of a build, there’s no particular incentive to go try it out at beyond SR80, cause what’s the point? You’d test it for the sake of testing it but it’s not a useful accomplishment cause you can’t ever get any quantifiable in-game reward for doing it. Even the testing I’m doing right now for SR75-80 is pretty useless for most people, but I do it cause it’s the highest content you can do where you still get something out of it. Going beyond that would be meaningless for me. By making SR farmable up to 90, people who like to test their limits get to have a reward for doing so rather than being specifically disincentivised to try harder content. Meanwhile, the people who are doing SR75-76 now are not gonna be any worse off, their rewards aren’t getting nerfed or anything. So it’s just a little sumthin sumthin for the pushers, with no negative to others.

The fact that loot stops at 90, though, means that this milestone is still reasonably achievable for many builds, and therefore people might feel like that should be the new standard. If the goal post was moved to 120 it’s more likely people would just take it as “stop where you feel comfortable”. So, as I mentioned, a lot depends on how we decide to take it as a community. It might turn into PoE Ubers (which became the stamp of build quality for a lot of people, even though they aren’t really worth farming) or the status quo might stay the same and the people who like to push will just get a little extra pat on the back for trying hard.

We’ll have to see how much else beyond that will change. Between overhauled mutators and shrines, the addition of Sunder and god knows what changes to the enemy RR situation, it’s possible SR75-80 will become easier so that the increased cap will esentially become what the old farming range used to be in terms of difficulty and we won’t really feel that much of a change.

I could be convinced one way or the other, but my current stance is much less “excited about the expanded testing playground” and more “miffed that I just started publishing endgame testing results when it’s all gonna go in the bin”. I’m personally not particularly concerned about endgame build variety cause if I find SR85-90 build restrictive you can bet your sweet butt I ain’t gonna play it. If I have to choose between build diversity and the ability to do the hardest content, build diversity wins every time in my books and I’m gonna do all I can to promote that mindset, if that ends up being the case.

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Temporary fix would be to make loot reward not changing from SR 75 to 90, but even with the reward in SR 90 I hope grind farming at SR 60 still the most optimal way to get those purple.

Regarding for those that push high SR, first thing first is to see how the -30% efficiency of adcth work on all build, and there seems a push towards passive regen in the next patch, in that case regen build might be the best one to push high SR, or those Vitality caster that have many ways to adcth from skill, single source adcth like from AA weapon damage might get hurt though.

I’m thrilled to see how it will come

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We don’t even know what’s coming in the new expac regarding items, skills, and empowered epics. It could very well be the case that SR 90 would naturally be the new measuring stick instead of SR75, since there will inevitably be power creep as a result of more powerful items introduced to the loot pool. People will always try to push higher (I already commonly see SR90 mentioned in build title submissions).

It’s just wayyyyy too early to have this discussion, there are too many unknown variables.

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The expansion and the changes to SR and Crucible are two separate things, though. SR and Crucible changes are coming in 1.2, DLC sometime in 2024. So there’s gonna be quite a while where the expac power creep won’t be there.

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I guess this can just be the awkward adolescence period of building before the expac drops :scorv:

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From what Zantai said on stream, it sounds like that will be the case: you won’t get better or more loot after 75, you’ll just still drop loot.

Crucible, I hope there’s very few builds that are viable to 200, so long as there aren’t achievements tied to beating that level. Especially with the new Ascendant mode, I think Crucible will just become more niche as a min-maxer playground or just a fun side mode.

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I’ve just rewatched the stream, cause I was absent for some parts of it, and I didn’t hear that mentioned. If it was like you say, I’d be all for it, just a pat on the back for people who like to push higher. In that vein, I don’t see a reason to lock gear at 90 either, we could just get loot rewards all the way through and it’d be fine, the cap is pretty arbitrary. But I’m not sure this is the case, I think the rewards will keep scaling just like they will in the new Crucible waves. And that might result in the restrictiveness OP mentioned. That I’m not particularly excited for.

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ngl, main reason i never bother with higher SR than 80 is pretty basic: 0 loot
i don’t have to get scaled rewards, ie i wouldn’t have to get 20 legends and 80 MIs on SR 90 to bother with it, i’d just have to get something for my time to not feel like it was entirely wasted
i’m just not a pure challenge incentive type person
if higher challenge runs give loot or plateaued loot i’d think it was fine and even great.
if it starts to become an actual incentive, because scaled loot, unique loot/better loot returns vs clear time etc, then i’d maybe be less excited
because even as is, i prefer to build my chars for sr 65-66 clear capability than 75-76, because it just opens up so many more viable meme options

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Ha, they made SR85-86 much harder than it was before by scaling up enemies’ HP faster. For me, it is more like 100% slower. Also SR90-91 are the new highest rewards.

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long time poe-er here.

imho, having aspirational content can be good for the game but only if it doesnt force players to clear them.

the current GD that i know has aspirational content in the form of secret celestial bosses and pushing crucible/SR.

to me GD’s current implementation is good. i dont feel at all forced to clear the secret bosses nor do i feel like i need to push crucible/sr. there is nothing too gated behind the encounters. sure the secret celestials have very specific MI but they’re quite niche and the beauty of GD’s itemization is there are a lot of strong contenders for the gear they drop. in fact after tinkering around in grimtools i 've convinced myself that my BIS are not from the celestial bosses.

im actually fine with infinite difficulty scaling for content but as long as it does not FORCE players to clear them. if SR 999 or crucible 9999 exists it should be fine as long as all you get is extra loot. it becomes NOT FINE when powerful and exclusive gear can only drop from them.

this is a problem that exists in POE and its one reason i’ve quit POE. when POE was first announced i found the graphics, simply ugly. but what drew me in is the promise of classlessness. unfortunately the devs kept pushing the amount of power a player is expected to have so high that to me POE is no longer as diverse as it used to. a lot of veterans would tell me i m wrong and that it’s diverse as ever. sure you can have a million different builds now and its definitely more diverse now with its tons of new skills/items/ascendancies, but how many of them are actually viable?

when poe first started having 100k dps was considered “godlike”. now, if you dont do at least 2-3 million dps you’re likely to not be able to clear most content.

the big difference between poe’s aspirational content and GD’s current aspirational content is that POE’s ass content is almost mandatory. want a void stone? kill uber elder+shaper, exarch, eater, maven. want atlas passive points? clear maven invites. want the very best versions of end game gear? clear uber pinnacle bosses.

its to the point that players are making bank by selling clearing services.

also i cant do stupid shit like make a melee 2handed witch. its simply unviable now.

i have stopped recommending POE to friends a long time ago as the best way to play POE right now is to look up a build guide and follow the guide in order to play.

i hate that. i love diversity and i love the ability to “make my own build”. this is where GD shines so bright. it’s like a complex puzzle game that has a lot of room for trial and error. i currently have a occultist+necro pure melee with no pets. is it meta? no. is it good? debatable. but its mine, and it works the way i want it. i’ve got it to 100 and cleared ultimate with it and i thoroughly enjoyed doing my own thing.

if GD introduced harder content and gated BIS drops behind the content, its almost certain that build diversity will suffer as a result.

i do not wish for that.

if there is harder content that the devs expect us to clear, the devs need to give us more power to compensate. seeing theres no announcement on increasing level/devotion cap i think that is not the case.

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