At the end of the day it’s a tier 1 devotion so it still should provide value to level 10 characters who don’t have block chance outside the shield itself. Adding longer cooldown/duration would help. Maybe trample should be the one that scales better later on. Kinda how it is with tsunami and blizzard.
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you expect what? us to retain hundreds of lines of changelog over weeks? we are but mere mortals.
Was about to propose similar! One big mighty hammer flying around you! Maybe 1 sec duration, 1 sec cooldown with noticeable damage/power!
Walking around with hammers flying around you would be awesome!
I strongly believe Assassins’ Blade (for offense) and/or Turtle (for defense) will provide considerably more value to lvl 10 characters, especially when it is new character from scratch without any pre-stashed items.
I’d rather have a consistent number of hammer around me with mediocre damage instead of what we have now.
It’s not always about “being good” or “meta”, sometime I like a concept and I’d like to express it at it max if possible.
If for example I want a “hammerdin” or some “aura” character, I don’t care to it to be tier one, but I’d like for it to have some consistency. More consistency and less damage/defence is imo the first step toward having a skill feels good.
And btw, I think that hammer can be good on characters that lack AoE and want something to help clear mobs around them, so even if the damage is useless against boss, hammer can still have it’s purpouse.
(I’m not a pro-builder, so take my words with a grain of salt 
)
This still does not address this problem:
Hammers are activated through a means that does not require player input. Crate has shown, time and again for however many years now, that they do not want to support passive/“auradin” gameplay.
laughs in 4 blade spirits and perma devils with Aetherfire, Flame Torrent, Whirlpools, Storm, and Korvaak
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Ah sorry, I interpreted your original message as a possible explanation on why the passive playstyle is kind of weak, not as an information regarding Crate past actions.
But still, imo Grim Dawn has plenty of “passive” elements: the “on hit”, “on block” skills already cited in this thread, Retaliation builds, pets (don’t kill me) and plenty of pure passive aura or pseudo-pet skills.
Also, passive dosn’t automatically means less interactive: if I’m using mostly passive abilities I’m probably focused more on positioning and piloting, instead of unga-bunga the unlucky mob that is the first thing that happens to be under my mouse…
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I think that the additional requirement (block investment) is enough to make up for the fact that you don’t need to press a button to access this devotion proc. It is always possible to change its chance on block, rewarding higher investment; but given the scope of builds that utilize this devotion now, and the damage ceiling of the proc as-is, I think it is probably okay to tinker with the feel of the devotion proc despite its “passive” nature.
Retaliation (the primary user of targo atm–even though most retal builds dont need the extra aoe, and there are significantly stronger devo paths for each retal damage type that avoid this devotion) already is the flagship of passive playstyles in grim dawn. Making targo more consistent in the way I’ve suggested increases the likelihood that it is used by non-retaliation builds who are not blessed with block chance being embedded in the archetype.
Increasing the scope of builds which use the devotion and making it a bit more fun to use by increasing consistency seems like a good direction.
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