Amarasta's Blade Burst with pistols

Grim Dawn Ideas and Feedback
1

Hello!

It would be pretty amazing if we could use ABB with pistols. I think we can all agree to say that currently the only builds using pistols are based on the Cadence or Firestrike lines. Removing the weapon restriction for ABB would open up exciting new possibilities. It also gives a use to the cold/frostburn based pistols already in the game.

The build idea I have would be a ranged cold Spellbreaker using Chillborer pistols, Starfire rings and a Starfury Emerald. Essentially the typical gunslinger, but with ice meteors falling every so often. All it needs to work is a nice cold auto-attack replacer like ABB.

2

ABB is an auto attack replacer now? :smiley: I am down with this though because why not.

My savagery dw pistol char says hi :wink:

3

Yeah it’s kind of one :stuck_out_tongue: I guess I miscall every left click skill as an “auto-attack replacer”.

Out of curiosity, what do you use for AoE on a Savagery ranged build? Chain lightning pistols?

4

Yah dual Exonerators + wind devils with reckless tempest bound to them. Sure as shit ain’t a great build but it’s not bad.

Can’t be auto replacer with 2 sec cooldown :slight_smile:

5

There is no bad build, as long as you have fun playing!

For example melee Stun Jacks + Flame Torrent is a weird combo and doesn’t make any sense… but it’s awesome.

6

I think it’s a good idea too. Grim dawn really need more diversity with active skill that are doing damage. Compared to path of exile this game have a big delay. POE has introduce new skill in many free minor patch, and about 10 active skill in each major update…(i think there is about 160 skill in poe that can each be mofied.) I don’t won’t to say "POE is better, it’s not my goal (and for other point grim dawn is better). But it show that there is many skill to invent in this kind of game. And it’s due in part to all this skill that there is still many player on POE that are still giving money to GGG.

One way is to allow some attack for pistol, or create more skill modifier (why not dreeg evil eyes modifier to work only in melee…).

One other way, like is doing crate is making skill on item, but i think there is not enough choice by this way.

Combine diferent masteries is what make the wealth with build. But at the we are often using same skill, just combined with other passive/toggle ability…

I hope crate will think about that and will not wait extension for just adding a new masteries.
PLease work on new active skill for existing class, and add more liberty for the
other like is asking this post.

7

Oh well no frostburn gunslinger I guess.

8

Was that comment meant to bump this thread? Is my comment meant to bump it? :wink:

But yes, I am with you. I have been finding loads of cold-damage-centric ranged weapons, including pistols, and I’ve always wondered what they are there for. I even made a character just for trying out a ranged cold damage Nightblade build, not considering that ABB can’t be used with pistols, switching to two-handed ranged weapons than, only to find ABB to be extremely unsatisfying. Eventually I made a Thunderous Strike Shaman out of that character with cold damage and ABB just complementing my build; which is a shame, I feel.

So to add to your idea - make Amarastra’s Blade Burst usable with pistols AND give it a transmuter to make it usable as a standard attack without cooldown (just like with Primal Strike and Thunderous Strike).

The only problem I would see here would be mastery page slots.
As far as I understand the engine you are pretty restricted as to where you can put a node on that sheet, there has to be enough room for it to be put there; and there seems to be only enough room for one further node that could modify or transmute ABB while you might need two nodes to a) take the cooldown from the skill and b) adjust the damage when used with pistols.

Should it be possible though then I feel that this change would offer a lot of gain for relatively little work, suddenly enabling completely new builds.

9

Definitely. :slight_smile:

Honestly I think removing the weapon requirement would be good enough already, no need for a transmuter. Or maybe add one after a while, when people have tested it and have given some feedback.

10

I agree with the suggestion. ABB is not an auto-attack replacer, but with LA I found no issue in putting it in LMB. Although I think it will be better for ABB to work like Cadence, so my character won’t struggle to get both CDR and attack speed. (I will be off-topic if I continue…)

From another angle: 2h ranged builds still need lots of love than 2h melee/dual ranged builds.

11

You could keep a rifle on swap to activate ABB/LA with, and then swap back to your pistols to unload while LA is active.

That’s a little fiddly though. I don’t see any reason why just allowing pistol use would be game breaking.

12

There are “interesting” implications of allowing ABB to be used with pistols to say the least. For example, you could construct a build around ABB that trivializes all trash. Take whatever pistol you want, Star Pact, Blizzard and a Rolderathis Tome of Shattering…now all trash is permanently frozen for eternity.

Yes, you will say…but 90% of the builds trivialize trash. That is true, no doubt…but they don’t do it by using just one single item and one skill.

13

Your build example can currently be done by using a 1 hand melee weapon, it does not only work with pistol.

There are already a number of builds/ways permanently freeze trash mob. Easiest one is OFF and a little bit of CDR. You don’t even need a MI with a rare suffix or blizzard, and it freezes the entire screen of trash mob more reliably than your example.

14

one handed pistols wont be good because of offhands, they cdr and the skill is based on cdr, would be too good against two handed ranged. With meelee I think you would be closer to the enemy so it would matter less, I’m for against any kind of offhand when you are using a skill that has such low cooldown

15

So just for the record - we got what we wanted, “phase one has been initialized”, so to speak.
Now let this skill be tested and let’s see if the change was ok and balanced enough.
If it should be, given that no additional modifier was added to that skill, there’s still room on the skill sheet for that transmuter that removes the cooldown from ABB and adjusts it’s stats accordingly. :wink:

16

A transmuter to remove the cooldown at the cost of bringing back the 2H weapon requirement would finally give The Northern Wyrm an actual use case, so I fully support that idea. The cast speed on that gun would actually be able to do something. Unless the no-cooldown ABB were made to scale with attack speed of course. I don’t really know how that sort of thing is determined.

17

Agreed with the transmuter idea. Ir would promote build variety and make cold damage more useful (out of the elemental types, imo cold is the worst atm)

18

I’ve been theorycrafting around this for a while and haven’t come up with much good.

First off, there’s the itemization issue: No legendary pistols deal acid, poison, or frostburn. Arcanum Sigillis only deals a small amount of cold as part of its elemental portfolio. No legendary pistols have +all nightshade skills or bonuses to any individual nightshade skill, other than the PBlades bonus on Demonslayer’s Life-Ender. (There are also no relevant MI pistols, and and only one relevant faction pistol.)

That’s not necessarily a problem. We can farm vendors for a Venomfang of the Defiler or a Frostborn/Glacial/Rimefrost of Shattering- or just use an Elite Death’s Revolver, or the few relevant blues. (Chillborer has no cold conversion making it questionable, and the blues situation for acid is pretty bad.) But the problems go deeper than itemization.

Why use ABB in the first place? What make it different from other spammable weapon attacks? ABB itself isn’t that great an ability- it’s got a high power cost on a short cooldown, which means it’s not really sustainable at ultimate levels, and tops out at 200% weapon damage anyway: it’s not going to light up the single-target DPS chart. Most people stop at 6/16 in order to get 100% weapon damage (for full activation of weapon effects like Viper) with a sustainable power cost. The real beauty of ABB is Lethal Assault.

Lethal Assault adds a bunch of flat and percentage damage to acid and cold, plus 100 OA (max 190 at 22/12), to all attacks for four seconds. In this sense it works very much like Cadence’s modifier Deadly Momentum. What makes ABB+LA interestingly different from Cadence+DM is that Cadence only continues to activate if you keep spamming Cadence, while ABB can be reactivated every 1.8-4 seconds while you use other attacks in between. So, the two main target audiences for ABB are players who have lots of WPS skills replacing their basic attacks, or, players who are weaving other (non-basic) attacks in between ABB activations. If you’re just going to hold down ABB LMB and you don’t have a bunch of cold or acid from passives or WPS, you’re probably better off with Cadence.

So, if we’re using pistols, we can’t use the Nightshade melee WPS line. (And soldier WPS have no cold or acid, so no synergy there.) So the point of pistol ABB is, or ought to be, to weave in other attacks in between activating ABB, in order to take advantage of Lethal Assault’s flat damage and OA bonuses. So, what should we weave?

There are basically no weapon-based attacks anywhere in the class arsenal that deal cold or acid damage. Arcanist has nothing weapon based except (kinda) CT. Occultist has nothing weapon-based at all. Shaman has no cold or acid. Demo has no cold or acid. Soldier has… transmuted Cadence, with a max of 17% conversion to cold. If we look further afield to item and component skills, we find either unsustainable energy costs, cooldowns, or low or zero weapon damage factors- nothing we can use which will be spammable and also leverage LA’s bonuses.

To me right now, it’s looking like a Blademaster with ABB on RMB and Cadence on LMB, is probably the best option for using ABB’s new dual pistol capabilities. Stack all the cold conversion you can find: Elite Death’s Revolver, Empowered Marauder’s Justice, or a Frostborn/Glacial/Rimefrost rare; Ellena’s Necklace or Night’s Embrace; and Deathchill bolts will get you to 35% conversion, on top of the transmuter’s 50%/3. Cadence’s weakness is lack of AOE while ABB’s is lack of single target, so using both together actually solves some problems neatly.

19

I’ve been fiddling around with a (currently unoptimised, so there might be better options than everything I list here) Spellbreaker Chillborer/Tome of Names setup using ABB, and it seems to be working pretty well so far. Both classes have more than enough cold damage to get damage numbers pretty high (not including devotions which boost it even further), and the debuffs from Tome of Names, Blessed Steel and the Rhowan’s Crown devotion ability (attached to Blade Spirit) mean cold-resistant enemies aren’t too much of an issue either. Stacking OA results in plenty of crits around the 20-40k mark (might be more or less than this, I wasn’t paying much attention :stuck_out_tongue: ), and the CC is ridiculous. I’ve not tried a dual cold pistols build yet, but I’m not sure I’d like to lose the cooldown reduction from the Tome, considering that most of the damage comes from cooldown abilities.

Still though, as stated above, it’s a bit of a shame that there aren’t any great legendary cold pistols. At least high level epics seem to do the trick for now.

20

Yet another problem with pistol-based ABB is that you automatically screw yourself out of everyone’s favorite movement skill. No shadow strike - at all? Even as a “Get back to the other side of this pack I’m shooting at so I have some room?” Thing’s one of the biggest gimme’s in the mastery, c’mon now. The idea of ABB being ranged at need? Ok fine, good idea gives NB’s a few more options -all for it. Tying it to a gun? Sigh, no - you just wrecked half the damn class abilities. Just make it a spell-like already and cast it where you want to regardless of weapon loadouts.
While you’re at it, might want to take a long look at the energy cost/CD on that - it’s really not helping in any role that currently makes sense for people. At best you tend to see it as a verrrrry secondary filler. Making it an auto-attack replacer would interact oddly with the top of the nightblade mastery at best, so not so much there, but a solid cast-anywhere backup that wasn’t so weapon dependent would certainly be fine with me. Hell, nightfall-type builds would finally have a non-melee only ability to use in between shadow strikes that made some sense with the damage types - gasp and stuff.