Anyone else finding the expansion brutally hard?

[Chthon]

My point is, I think it’s perfectly fine that not everyone will be able to do the hardest content, but people should be aware that it’s actually of the “endgame challenge” tier of content, and not “just another campaign area” even if it disguises itself as such.
That way those people can just decide not to do it, just like how most people won’t do Glad Crucible because it’s very challenging and too hard for them.

I am not sure I agree with main campaign content being locked out of builds due to difficulty spikes.

If by hardest content you mean nemesis, I kinda agree with that. But Nemesis are the Main Campaign’s farm spots and locking them out to top tier builds only isn’t a nice move, also as for making the content distinguishable I think the fact that the boss has a red name is pretty big red flag :rolleyes:

If you mean secret quest and super bosses. I am in favor of your views.

You don’t randomly drop dead. The only DoT which is still ticking for 500hp a tick for too long of a time is the aetherial ground effect from Fleshweavers…and there are only 3 of them. Other then that you will die when you first encounter AoM enemies. After a few times you should’ve learned which ones do the stuff that hurts. And then you deal with it.

The base game was too easy. People would just face tank everything. Those days are over. And I am very happy about that. The stuns, debuffs etc doesn’t make it so only a few builds can play the game and finish content. It just means people have to stop being lazy and fully rely on maxed out resistances/defences and actually use some minor player skill as well. Read attacks, move away, learn the opponents and don’t just blindly rush into packs any more. Whenever I see something big and blue, even if its stormtouched/electrified, i automatically run a few steps back. It might be that Arcane I hate to deal with in packs. Pre-emptive measures. And I love it because you actually have to stay somewhat focussed instead of getting lazy and complacent. If you die too something there is nothing unfair going on. It is still you. Unlike other games where ridiculous stuff happens and just one-shots you without any means of countering. That is cheesy and lame…grim dawn does not have that. unless it is the Fleshwaver DoT. Everything else is a learn to play issue…even the shotgun from Regurgitators and such can be dealt with easily enough.

All the extra defences aren’t a must either. Just max your regular resists, get 2200-2600 DA and 20-30% Phys Resist and you’re good to go. The % melee/range dodge is just an extra on top of that and not really a must. In specific situations you might want increased energy/life leech resistance, but that is about it. Even with 30-40% stun/petrify resist I get by just fine. Freezing with my Olexra’s Flash Freeze worked fine in AoM on wendigo’s and such so no idea why it wouldn’t for others. Also stunning/freezing with my rings of steel works fine since its my only defence on the Witch hunter. Played more then a dozen varying chars myself and never had issues so far.
.

2600 DA might still not be enough for a nemesis fight, Physical Resists aren’t exactly served to us on platter but a lot of builds do have access to damage absorb
I didn’t see any need for Life Leech/Energy Leech resistance but in the event we do need something like this, it’d be very hard to squeeze these in w/o sacrificing some major resistance, OA or DA

Also, as for attack patterns. You can pretty much tell w/o dying who does what. My point is whatever they’re doing is a little too much in some cases. I guess I am still coming from the faceroll mentality, but even so certain things are a little overboard for players new or old

I like hard content myself but it’s not hard to see players struggling with this

[Chthon]

You don’t randomly drop dead. The only DoT which is still ticking for 500hp a tick for too long of a time is the aetherial ground effect from Fleshweavers…and there are only 3 of them. Other then that you will die when you first encounter AoM enemies. After a few times you should’ve learned which ones do the stuff that hurts. And then you deal with it.

The base game was too easy. People would just face tank everything. Those days are over. And I am very happy about that. The stuns, debuffs etc doesn’t make it so only a few builds can play the game and finish content. It just means people have to stop being lazy and fully rely on maxed out resistances/defences and actually use some minor player skill as well. Read attacks, move away, learn the opponents and don’t just blindly rush into packs any more. Whenever I see something big and blue, even if its stormtouched/electrified, i automatically run a few steps back. It might be that Arcane I hate to deal with in packs. Pre-emptive measures. And I love it because you actually have to stay somewhat focussed instead of getting lazy and complacent. If you die too something there is nothing unfair going on. It is still you. Unlike other games where ridiculous stuff happens and just one-shots you without any means of countering. That is cheesy and lame…grim dawn does not have that. unless it is the Fleshwaver DoT. Everything else is a learn to play issue…even the shotgun from Regurgitators and such can be dealt with easily enough.

All the extra defences aren’t a must either. Just max your regular resists, get 2200-2600 DA and 20-30% Phys Resist and you’re good to go. The % melee/range dodge is just an extra on top of that and not really a must. In specific situations you might want increased energy/life leech resistance, but that is about it. Even with 30-40% stun/petrify resist I get by just fine. Freezing with my Olexra’s Flash Freeze worked fine in AoM on wendigo’s and such so no idea why it wouldn’t for others. Also stunning/freezing with my rings of steel works fine since its my only defence on the Witch hunter. Played more then a dozen varying chars myself and never had issues so far.
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2600 DA might still not be enough for a nemesis fight, Physical Resists aren’t exactly served to us on platter but a lot of builds do have access to damage absorb
I didn’t see any need for Life Leech/Energy Leech resistance but in the event we do need something like this, it’d be very hard to squeeze these in w/o sacrificing some major resistance, OA or DA

Also, as for attack patterns. You can pretty much tell w/o dying who does what. My point is whatever they’re doing is a little too much in some cases. I guess I am still coming from the faceroll mentality, but even so certain things are a little overboard for players new or old

[Natt]

I agree with Gibly. AoM content must be harder than main game. It’s enemy base after all.
I only advocate for smother transition between main campaign and AoM on Normal/Veteran difficulty.

[Chthon]

I agree with Gibly. AoM content must be harder than main game. It’s enemy base after all.
I only advocate for smother transition between main campaign and AoM on Normal/Veteran difficulty.

Well yeah that’s true, and the lore behind Ugdenbog being a hellhole is good and it explains why the content is hard. But it’s as anyone said the difficulty spike is too high between acts
And besides the spike, there are some ridiculous things like the new nemesis and certain mobs with hax abilities. I don’t think it’d be too bad if they look a little into it. With the heightened DA requirements, it’s not too hard to think players are suffering. The top tier can still clean house but somethings need fixing

[Autentist]

I personally have several problems with this expansion:

1. Poison plants with gigantic AoE damage and DoT.
2. Super tanky wooden literal Hulks called Ugdenbog Golems. Even Aetherial Titans are not so bad.
3. Tight ass corridors everywhere.
4. The entire of Malnmouth is a huge clusterfuck with a shit ton of enemies, packing 5-8 heroes at once.
5. Life Leech and healing abilities of certain enemies.

[Bustar]

I breezed through Ugdenbog with 50 poison res. Now granted I haven’t killed the hero plant in Undergrowth and obviously cant take down the beast nemesis but everything else is perfectly doable. Managed to reach Malmouth without much trouble, even that Chtonian boss was very easy to kite around and kill.

We’ll see how I’ll do in Malmouth proper.

[allufewi]

Breezing through ultimate AoM content in 50 poison res and random green clothing. All hail our GD god! :hail:

[Chthon]

I breezed through Ugdenbog with 50 poison res. Now granted I haven’t killed the hero plant in Undergrowth and obviously cant take down the beast nemesis but everything else is perfectly doable. Managed to reach Malmouth without much trouble, even that Chtonian boss was very easy to kite around and kill.

We’ll see how I’ll do in Malmouth proper.

Breezing through ultimate AoM content in 50 poison res and random green clothing. All hail or GD god! :hail:

Don’t mean to question your skill but it’d help if you state the difficulty and build (no GT link needed) you were playing

Since Normal/Veteran feedback while necessary won’t help Ultimate players. And someone can find the content to be easy on lower levels and can inadvertently provide misinformation w/o experience on higher difficulty levels

[Bustar]

Vindicator with Storm Box + Wind Devil + Storm Totem. You can call me the king of kiting, all I need to do is use my 3 damage skills then run around, repeat.

Of course you can chalk this up to the Inquisitor being kind of OP right now.

[Ixus]

Yep, the content is harder because of all the resist reduction, but i had not too much trouble beating at least the story bosses with my SB Cadence WB without any gear upgrades, but it certainly felt alot harder than the content before.

It certainly was not mindlessly blitz into any pack of mobs and facetank anything anymore though.

Mate, I have to say it: Everything/soldier physical cadence is hell OP. No other classes can acomplish so easy the DPS than that thing does. Soldier is tanky so he can handle most of the damage without have a good gear. Is OP.

[Bustar]

A little demonstration. This is mostly vendor trash gear with s single legendary. I am still able to kill normal mobs just fine even when playing sloppily and getting frozen repeatedly.

Normal mobs seem to be fine, bosses and nemesis however might be a bit overtuned.

[Jaknet]

It is because all of them are experienced players and could’ve overlooked something that otherwise would have been obvious to less experienced players.

Not all the testers are experienced players, some don’t play beyond Normal/Vet, and Crate don’t want all experienced players testing for that very reason.

This is only my personal view as I cannot speak for other testers, but regards the difficulty, the reason I don’t find it brutal is because compared to what it was originally, it’s quite reasonable. Before it was tuned down it was brutal and thus now in comparison it’s easier than it was… hope that makes sense

[Chthon]

Not all the testers are experienced players, some don’t play beyond Normal/Vet, and Crate don’t want all experienced players testing for that very reason.

This is only my personal view as I cannot speak for other testers, but regards the difficulty, the reason I don’t find it brutal is because compared to what it was originally, it’s quite reasonable. Before it was tuned down it was brutal and thus now in comparison it’s easier than it was… hope that makes sense

Yeah this is a very common thing I have noticed. :eek:
Dafuq kind of things do you face? Considering one you got one-shot by EkketZul and during the time of my joining this place I was told “old Log/Testing Log” was a real beast

Must have a mountain of patience to take this stuff on :rolleyes:

[Gibly]

@MortalKombat
At first I too felt the increase into Expac content being a bit steep. Especially for those on normal/vet. But during testing most issues were related to massive DoT’s that managed to make your HP plummet. Took a long time before Zantai changed that.

Most other issues people might experience is due to hard hitting physical stuff. Seeing Gloomwald/Ugdenbog drop belts everywhere with good to great stats + phys resist you shouldn’t have too hard of a time to get back on track.

However…Lore Wise…it makes sense Gloomwald/Ugdenbog is so harsh before it settles down a bit down with Malmouth. According to Lore those areas were a horror to traverse for convoys…even before the Grim Dawn. Lore points out that even Aetherial and Chtonic forces have a very hard time finding a way through Gloomwald/Ugdenbog.

As it stands now the ramp up into xpac content is still noticable, but you can overcome it easily enough. Unless you fucked up with your character build and need a respec… Which brings a true issue. You can’t respec on normal/veteran until you reach the Ugdenbog Coven to fix your errors in build. On elite/ultimate you can just go back to normal and respec there if need be.

Everything else is a learn to play issue. We all had that. I didn’t start playing HC and Ultimate from the start either. It took time to learn the mechanics and such.

@Chton
DA handouts is not needed. You can get sufficient DA as is. Really… defensive stats aren’t that harsh. Just get 2200+ DA and 40% stun resist with 20-30% phys resist and you should be fine if the rest of your build is good. People are a bit over dramatic with all the Chain Stunning and “Petrify being everywhere”.

Since you’re talking about NEmesis. Then 2600DA, for half of them, is indeed not enough. Life Leech and other ADCTH becomes important. Next to items with mutators and tons of conversion stuff it is one of the big things for AoM. My DW Aether Death Knight gets by well against kubacabra due to the life leeching and such… even when fighting him on Elite and being undergeared. That just showed how big of a deal this mechanic is at the moment.

@allufewi
I’m probably among the worst players actually. And during testing I did take into consideration that people had weaker builds. I even deleted everything I had every build/farmed and started with a clean slate. For normal/veteran I used milestones as beating Logh with only 2k dps output instead of the 5-6k I usually have. And with those characters I also entered XPack. It did gave issues, but those issues have been adressed and fixed.

On top of that I don’t set foot into crucible. It is cancer. Only do crucible for the achievements and ignore it otherwise. Fuck that boring bullshit

In the group we have some more casual players testing as well. And they coped just fine as well.

Normal/Veteran can be beat with quite weak builds/gear. Only thing I wanted was to keep every opponent of lvl100-106+ to stay stronger then strong. As well as Ekket’zul. but he was just piss easy since day one. I could go into my devotion screen and still beat him with default attacks

You can do elite in whites actually. It isn’t recommended. Boring as hell and such a slow tedious slogfest.

@Greendef
The arcane opponents, that use nullify, were indeed a pain in the ass. They didn’t even have a cool down and just kept you down. Together with Opressers and such that have an aura that reduced your HP and some hard hitting opponents… Stuff that caught up with you when trying to run away and then kill you… Yeah that was bullshit indeed. As they are now its not an issue. They keep you on your toes and get the adrenaline pumping whenever you see a blue opponent. Even if those aren’t Arcane. It takes a bit more patient/tactical approach to change up the pace of just rushing in blindly and killing stuff. I hate them still, but also love them at the same time.

[Gibly]

Must have a mountain of patience to take this stuff on :rolleyes:

One of the fun things is that we get to play very unbalanced stuff. So when something is OP it can actually be fun fighting it and be among the best experiences. Untill it gets nerfed for general public.

On the other hand you can also run into really ridiculous situations. Like Rashalga’s life leech being so high that you take her down to 20% health and she just insta-heals to full for example. :rolleyes:

Or getting perma-nullified by Arcane opponents while getting hit by Wendigo Ancient trucks. While also getting trapped by Canabalists that can heal their friends and summon wraiths on you. While other cannibals shoot you with major DoT’s :S

Or entering Gloomwald. Getting hit by 3 poison balls from plants while they’re not even onscreen and pretty much insta kill you even though you have 94% poison resist… on veteran…

[Chthon]

@Chton
DA handouts is not needed. You can get sufficient DA as is. Really… defensive stats aren’t that harsh. Just get 2200+ DA and 40% stun resist with 20-30% phys resist and you should be fine if the rest of your build is good. People are a bit over dramatic with all the Chain Stunning and “Petrify being everywhere”.

Since you’re talking about NEmesis. Then 2600DA, for half of them, is indeed not enough. Life Leech and other ADCTH becomes important. Next to items with mutators and tons of conversion stuff it is one of the big things for AoM. My DW Aether Death Knight gets by well against kubacabra due to the life leeching and such… even when fighting him on Elite and being undergeared. That just showed how big of a deal this mechanic is at the moment.

DA handout might be needed for nemesis and like I said Physical Res isn’t an abundant stat (nor do I think it should be consider 80% of game is physical damage :D)

I concur on the stun part, as I’ve been saying in my previous posts while certain mobs are indeed bothersome. Chain-Stunning is an issue for those who completely disregard Stun Resistance all-together

Can that DK achieve the same feat against Kuba in Ultimate? Not denying it won’t but it would be significantly harder than Elite

I’m all up for new content and I think after a month or two when trading flows are stable and many have explored the content a little more and gotten the Mythics the bitching and moaning about certain things would indeed go down
But there would still remain some things namely the nemesis, HP reduction mobs and shotgun plants (pardon me if I overlooked any other)
While top tier builds won’t die to these but it’s very easy to see why any other build might. They’re indeed strong
I am not advocating that they be nerfed to the ground, I for one relish the challenge as do many others in this thread and forum. I simply request that they look into these concerns raised by the playerbase once (except stun :rolleyes:)

One of the fun things is that we get to play very unbalanced stuff. So when something is OP it can actually be fun fighting it and be among the best experiences. Untill it gets nerfed for general public.

On the other hand you can also run into really ridiculous situations. Like Rashalga’s life leech being so high that you take her down to 20% health and she just insta-heals to full for example. :rolleyes:

Or getting perma-nullified by Arcane opponents while getting hit by Wendigo Ancient trucks. While also getting trapped by Canabalists that can heal their friends and summon wraiths on you. While other cannibals shoot you with major DoT’s :S

Or entering Gloomwald. Getting hit by 3 poison balls from plants while they’re not even onscreen and pretty much insta kill you even though you have 94% poison resist… on veteran…

Anything fun to share about Mogdrogen or Ravager?

[Ukiyo]

Fighting mobs 7/8 levels above you is a pain in the a…and not very enjoyable during the levelling time. Improving crowd control skill effectiveness could be a good idea, and / or increasing the armor of different pieces.

[Gibly]

Armor doesn’t have to be improved. It is pretty much the only reason to get mythicals most of the time instead of sticking with their lvl75 versions that you already have access too.

@chton
story about Ravager goes like this. everyone on discord was saying it was a pain in the ass. Dikkie said he lost some characters too him. I was still checking quest triggers and eventually caught up and went for the red ravager. As you know you can get a different one depending on who you sacrifice. So there are 3 in total each with a different loot drop.

anyhow I wanted to see what everyone was talking about.
hit…hit…hit
well this isn’t too bad I can keep up with th… WTF!! WAS THAT!!

[allufewi]

@allufewi
I’m probably among the worst players actually. And during testing I did take into consideration that people had weaker builds. I even deleted everything I had every build/farmed and started with a clean slate. For normal/veteran I used milestones as beating Logh with only 2k dps output instead of the 5-6k I usually have. And with those characters I also entered XPack. It did gave issues, but those issues have been adressed and fixed.

On top of that I don’t set foot into crucible. It is cancer. Only do crucible for the achievements and ignore it otherwise. Fuck that boring bullshit

In the group we have some more casual players testing as well. And they coped just fine as well.

Being able to beat it is one thing. If you keep on trying and dying until you finally make it, at least 50% of all builds, shitty or not, will eventually do it. Beating it “easily” or with some comfort is another story. That imho includes not dying (not often at least) or keeping some flow up.

Dug out my tanky as fck WB that made it through all of Ultimate without dying a single time and even that guy has to stay on his toes to not die to some AoM stuff in bloody elite.

As a semi-HC player that loses interest in a char that dies once (im strange I know) I dont see any of my less tanky chars to beat (without dying that is) AoM ultimate in the foreseeable future, if ever.

[the_dead_pig]

Not all the testers are experienced players, some don’t play beyond Normal/Vet, and Crate don’t want all experienced players testing for that very reason.

This is only my personal view as I cannot speak for other testers, but regards the difficulty, the reason I don’t find it brutal is because compared to what it was originally, it’s quite reasonable. Before it was tuned down it was brutal and thus now in comparison it’s easier than it was… hope that makes sense

Its balanced well, bosses are hard, mainly a dps and gear check.
aom adds a new shift as you need to play slightly different but mechanics are the same, dont get stunned, dont stay and fight when 10 mobs rush you (no you cant hold them down unless geared for it) max resists etc…

I find Crate need to buff vanilla pre content a bit again, with aom as it is, the vanilla is a bit to easy now. (except bosses)

When things are hard (challenge) then you improve from that you do or else its the D3 experience, one shot bosses rinse repeat.

GD holds a better more fun for me vs POE and mainly due to its challenge is balanced better.

Ashes overall feels like a really awesome supreme expansion and a bit like a new game while retaining the same mechanics. Goob job Crate