Is there a way to formally request the posts discussing the WPS mechanics and Ascended affixes system into its own thread? Ascended Affixes are an entirely different system than that of the new potion mechanics, and blurring the two topics together has made this thread a big mess.
2 Likes
just ping @medea_fleecestealer or @eisprinzessin , if they will move any post with affix or wps mentions?
from post 46 to 90 should be separate thread
1 Like
You gotta hit the “Copy Quote” button if you want me to see and respond to this in a timely manner, dawg.
I don’t think SR times were a consideration in the first place. Much of the endgame FoA tuning went into how things would feel and compete in Ascendant mode. It was to be expected that having more customization options, and more options within existing customization features, would result in generally lower times across the board in all existing game modes. As I also said in the OP things thread,
1 Like
28 posts were split to a new topic: What should be the golden standard for Shattered Realm?
Done
I moved a few earlier ones, too, but thanks for the pointers
Fixed it (FYI @thepowerofmediocrity)
2 Likes
2 posts were merged into an existing topic: Weapon Pool Skills (WPS) and Total Damage Modified (TDM)
Wait a fucking minute, isn’t Phillom basically Magic Find??? Ok you don’t get more loot but the concept of “sacrifice your slot to get more things” is pretty much the same.
If they don’t want to make potion buff temporal, I would rather get 1 perma small buff for each of dmg/defense/loot than current system where you can get max of 4 WHATEVER buffs you want with portion “piano”. Come on man, even Path of Fucking Exile at least got rid of piano part!
Imo, stuff like Geliodis, Potentis and Expulsimum are well designed for health potion because they help in “oh shit” moments and they all are temporal. I can kinda see dmg buff attached to energy potion but it should never be allowed to be permanent. Let potions be potions!
This is by far the worst thing that came with FoA and needs to be rectified. I really hate piano.
Becomes a question of definitions. I don’t think there is much, if any, “piano” in Grim Dawn. It seems to me that anything up to ten buttons is fine - 4 on mouse, 6 on keyboard.
(Of course, in some games, eg WoW, one has way more, but that’s not really a fair comparison, as you typically spend much longer playing the same char in those games and get much more muscle memory built in.)
Well, let´s disagree 
1 Like
The general standard seems to be 5. This is what most MOBA’s provide as well as many action games (Including various ARPG)
However, “Piano” isn’t just number of skills, it’s also frequency. Like, often of those 5 skills available in many games, not all of them are used constantly. Some are passives, some are “Ultimates” that get used infrequently, some are situational skills.
Usually only 2-3 skills get used on a high frequency (Plus some sort of auto/basic attack)
This tracks with controller facilitation too. Where you have 4 face buttons plus a shoulder button for 5 total skill usage (Of course, my personal view is controllers have real estate to incorporate at least 6 face buttons, but no-one seems to be bothering to actually evolve their controllers in the last couple of decades)
In a game like WoW you may have way more buttons, but you use them all far less frequently.
Most standard combat rotations use far fewer, usually only being around 3-4 buttons (With them trying to simplify them over time… Classic WoW has slightly larger and more interesting rotations but over time they were gutted because and I quote “Players are too stupid”)
PvP can be more complex, especially for certain classes where you use macros to facilitate multi-skill usage (Though they have been working on dumbing this down by things like removing the ability for Warriors to utilise their Defensive Stance skills like Spell Reflect)
Of course the main question when it comes to “Piano” and number of skills is:
“What is this skill press adding to the gameplay?”
It’s all well and good shoving in tons of skills to press… But what is the reason for them?
Which covers things like the old BoD/PB/WoR debate. What gameplay does pressing these buttons once per 60 simply to apply their buffs actually provide?
Which translates directly to potions. What does pressing potion every 30s to maintain a buff provide to gameplay?
Does it provide engagement? Does it feel good to press those buttons? Does it create some transformative experience? Or does it just exist to exist?
Such a question was asked about various skills in WoW. What does pressing the buff button once per hour provide? Nothing. So the button was removed and the buff made a passive aura.
The most notable example would be Shaman’s totems. Originally, most of these were just passive buffs and you’d have to keep pressing buttons to summon totems throughout an encounter (Including when moving around because they had limited range). This provided little in terms of gameplay so they were instead changed to be infrequently used CD skills.
Thus you now press the buttons less often, but the button press has more gameplay impact as instead of being a passive 100% uptime buff, it’s a directly useful CD skill that does a notable effect like a big party wide heal, a strong DPS boost for use in burst windows or a temporary summon.
Thank you for bringing that over here so I can provide a reply to that sort of question, my answer to which is:
Anyone who is visibly agitated over having to press a heal button once every 45 seconds or so in a combat loop where you are presumably taking damage (at least agitated enough to complain about it in a public forum) is one step removed from outright demanding that Crate set up an IV medical device to constantly inject dopamine into the veins.
The constant rush of “feels bad” → “feels good” → “feels bad” → “feels good” sounds exhausting just writing about it. We’re talking about emotional mood swings on a microsecond level. It forces an expectation where skills that should be situational (which presumably Crate intended with the potions) become a “this needs to be up 100% of the time” effect, even when Crate never designed that in mind.
Then when people place expectations on themselves that neither Crate nor anyone else would reasonably place upon somebody, they give themselves justification to attack the developers personally, as we’ve already seen with what happened in that “pet build review” thread when several builds received nerfs soon after FoA released.
1 Like
I used to play WoW in the Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King era, so a long time ago. Mostly druid. I certainly had a lot of keybinds. But I understand WoW has changed hugely in the interim.
In Grim Dawn I actually use 12 keybinds (if needed) but that includes 3 movement skills, 2 potions, evade and cluster, so perhaps you would see it as 5 “real” binds? I’m not sure if we all count these things in the same way.
Regarding the 60 second buffs, I think they are OK precisely because they have a heal attached, so they are in one’s mind and don’t get forgotten. What I don’t really like are long term buffs like the 30 and 60 minute ones in WoW or 10 minute buffs in Diablo 3. Those are just an invitation to the player to fuck up by forgetting. (Actually, the iron bit buff in GD is like this - not that it’s important.)
Also, I agree with what @thepowerofmediocrity is saying. Pressing buttons doesn’t make me feel good, but I don’t expect it to. Why would it? They’re just a way of controlling the character.
One of the main things in regards to this sentiment, is that the obfuscation of the “Heal” part of the heal button.
Health potion (Or the heal skills) by default, want to be used to heal yourself.
When you’re spamming them for buffs, this replaces their usage. Now the healing is incidental and what they actually become are “Buff Potions” and “Buff Skills”
They stop being “Situationally used restorative effect” and become “Constantly used buff effect”
To which one has to ask: “Why?”
There exists methods to provide access to 100% uptime effects. Auras, Oils, Elixirs etc.
These do not impact the usage of skills that are designed for situational uses, like potions and heal skills.
Yet they feel the need to slap on these 100% uptime buff effects onto these skills which morphs their usage. Why?
If there was any intent on potion effects being situational and not having 100% uptime, then they wouldn’t have durations that quite easily enable 100% uptime.
Like, they literally did it for some like the 4s duration the CC resistance modifier has.
But no, they threw on 30+ second durations that enable 100% uptime (Even without needing to use the reduced cooldown potion enhancement).
4 Likes
Yes, that is bad…
Exactly… Why?
If you are asking “why do skills like BoD and WoR have such large uptimes,” it is to reduce the annoyance factor of having to press the button, as you had mentioned previously. The aim is to reduce the inconvenience of having to push the button from being 5% of your playtime to 0.1% (these numbers are just used to provide a distinction). It makes sense for a buffing skill to have 120 seconds uptime if you’re expected to be in combat for say 100 of those seconds. There’s more than enough room for the heal button to serve its purpose.
If you are asking “why do we have heals that also serve as buffs if we also have potions,” the answer is “to promote playstyles and skills that aren’t 100% reliant on leeching effects.” It’s sad when something like Stun Jacks - something that shouldn’t have anything to do with leech - was given leech because enough people demanded it, though that may have been more about buffing the Demolitionist mastery as a whole than anything related to “should this skill have leech or should it have something else to make it interesting.” Not every build needs to be a “damage button is also the sustain button” build.
Mind you, I do have a personal stake in builds like this because I’m a pet player first and foremost. We need healing skills because the potion button isn’t enough to account for the incoming damage we’re expected to take.
1 Like
I’m asking “Why do we have restorative buttons with 100% uptime effects attached to them?”
There are mechanics for 100% uptime effects. As I’ve mentioned. Auras, Oils, Elixirs. These all provide 100% uptime effects.
Why are these things not being utilised in the case of things like these potion modifiers and the “Heal Skill” buffs?
Thus allowing heal abilities… Be heal abilities. Having potions and heal skills as a valid form of sustain is something that appeals to me (As I find the common ARPG trope of “Sit there while you passively regen/leech 10000% your max health per second” kind of lame)
But that’s often overshadowed by “Spam the skill for buffs”. Heal skills are less egregious due to their longer duration. But both potions and heal skills have at least a portion of their usage dedicated to buff maintenance, for no apparent reason.
Meanwhile, this incorporation of 100% uptime buffs reduces the space for you know, actual heal ability related options.
Like short term effects that coincide with using a potion like the extra healing from the Chromtis over time effects, the short term CC resistance from Geliodis or the temporary mitigation from Expulsimum.
Things that provide impact to the times when you’d use a potion. Like “Oh crap I’m low health, I’ll use a potion and get some healing and DR for a few seconds” or “I’m CC’d and I’ll use a potion to help mitigate it” or “I’m in a bad position and taking a lot of damage, I’ll chug a healing potion and get some extra mobility to get out of the bad stuff”
We get none of those things from heal skills, which only provide their upfront heal and then 100% uptime buffs. While potions have all the other modifiers that compete with these things and provide 100% uptime buffs.
The question is, why? What made someone think this was good design? Eschewing existing mechanics for 100% uptime buffs to shove them onto restorative abilities.
Like the only possible justification I can think of is maybe creating a situation where you just used the skill to rebuff and it’s on cooldown when you need to heal… But, that’s just a terrible experience to aim for in the first place.
4 Likes
ez, “Because presumably you’re healing yourself more frequent than the duration of the buff” - causing an automatic uptime…/non piano use-feel from actual skill utilization
same reason why the 30secs buffs on pot modifier is not piano unless you use DR with 7sec because intently changing it in to an active skill use. - you’re “meant” to connect it with something you’re already using more frequently than the innate buff duration.
Intent/purpose vs collateral outcome
Now, does it so happen to be we have so much sustain available that one doesn’t need the heal as frequent, sure. But then we can ofc just nuke all that sustain shenanigans and make the heals more meaningful again so you don’t feel the detriment of only pressing it for a buff 
1 Like
The design standards were sufficient in 2006, when Titan Quest (the engine of which Grim Dawn is based off) was released. Yes, standards are different in 2026 than they were in 2006, but you can’t place 2026 standards on a 2006 engine without some serious overhaul.
Of course, that is tangential to the original argument, that being that pharma - whether it’s oils / tinctures, or in this case, potions, should not be directly responsible for a multiplicative damage increase, which the TDM potions do. The things that directly relate to damage increase should be on gear and mastery skills / auras, with the oils / tinctures / potions being more specifically tailored to more situational effects. Damage is something that every player will want, and placing damage on potions leads to situations where players have to play inventory management just to get the effects they want.
2 Likes