One would think adding resistance reduction to Necromancer would give way to countless of new acid builds. Unfortunately, that didn’t really happen. Reason being - acid builds, outside of certain synergetic (and strong) sets are on a weaker side, always struggling with some variations of problems they can’t solve. I’m going to list what I believe to be systemic issues. I do not advocate for a blanket buff (-res on mobs), as I think I more surgical approach is needed.
Augments
Self-explanatory, acid augs miss 1 stat on them, flat or hp would go a long way. Or even some resistance, because…
Resistances Sentinel, Level 100 (GD 1.2.1.6) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator - just an example of acid occultist.
Even with x3 arcanum dust the build can’t reach required ele overcap. All while rocking that thematic 105% acid overcap. And it’s not like the issue is unique to this set, its always the same story.
Devotions
A picture’s worth a thousands words. Tainted Eruption is just outdated, 312 dot per 5 seconds with 3 second cd, that’s it. I think you can keep it’s unique identity of purely damaging proc (as most t3 procs have some utility nowadays) by just buffing the damage & adding crit damage.
Something can also be said about affliction, but it has finally found its niche as a acid retal devotion, so its fine I guess. Surpringly, it sees more uses on vitality due to pathing, but that doesn’t really help non-retal acid.
Masteries
90 dot per 5 on hardcap, on the most point-hungry mastery. That’s not it. Even elemental awakening gets 88 dot per 3 on 17 and thats with 35% ele res. Buffing MR is also safe, because no cold build has skillpoints to go further than 1 point.
About the augment, I find that’s really strange about we dont have flat acid/poison augment for ring/amulet long time ago, when other damage types got a lot of strong augments (like 12 flat + 75 OA/ 45 DOT + 75 DA…). But when FoA is announced, i think we can get new faction, and along that new augments, maybe dev want to save those strong acid augments for new faction as well - of course we dont know yet.
Yeah, Acid is punished because its augments also boost pets?.. Doesn’t make sense.
And HP. No wonder that top20 Deathguard became top20 after thought of going Korvaak in devotions.
Yeah, Acid builds too usually don’t have points on Merciless Repertoire. And it’s not worth points. Those dots are pretty inconsequential. I would say the whole Poison dot feels like the weakest dot in the game. One of the reasons: a lot of it is spread thin over those five second periods. Most endgame Poison builds can get 300-400% duration easily. +400% duration to a 5 second dot makes it last 25 seconds. No fights take that long and once they do let you reapply your dot every few seconds. Pretty outdated duration design imo.
I think Venomlance has a use, otherwise agree. So many items with unique mods that noone ever uses. Murmur’s kiss needs wd on proc and some retal on it.
Augments - Acid augs are probably the weakest in the game: lack of good flat damage options that other damage types get (even with conversion ala cold and skyshard or fire and irrah) and no real compensation via other stats (rotgut is barely better than arcanum).
Devotions - (non-retal) Acid has a pretty strict path; only real choices are single or double t3 (no %wd scaling or %wd scaling). It doesn’t have many t2 flex options because normally both murmur and manticore are necessary–which means you dont get very much compensation for going single t3 (vs. what you might get for elemental damage, for example). Tainted eruption is a decent place to start looking for buffs (higher dps is reasonable).
Gear - Acid is weak in both the glove and belt slot. Lack of good +1 mastery belt options for several key acid masteries hurts when we are now a long way from certain expensive acid builds doing insane single target damage immediately after AoM’s release (the rest of the game has more than caught up, and well-rounded builds are more important than ever). In a skill-modifier stacking meta, acid generally lacks strong glove mods to acid skills and builds are frequently relegated into having to rely on crafted gloves.
you mostly need only 1x atephs will, because then you have enough pet bleeding resist, so for the other 2 slots I mostly use rotgut venom on acid hybrid pet builds.
the mogdrogen blessing is too weak for endgame imo, I mostly need DA badly (and for hybrids also the energy). but this is also my buildmaking-style where I prefer to put OA on most item rolls, knowing that i can always get DA easily on augments and armor augments (OA doesn’t exist on armor augments)
So i would prefer to keep rotgut venom, but would care less if irrah venomtongue became completely player focused.
Amnesty is pretty goods actually. Aside from the gloves badly needing cast+attack speed added.
As for why acid augments have no flat acid - once upon a time any acid focused build took Occultist and Blood of Dreeg for that and even afterwards Acid Melee was once rather stronk. So I suspect that to avoid making it more over powered they left off the flat acid damage. Which is now actually useful to have, because of power creep and balance changes resulting from that.
We could also do with a ring with Acid RR, because hello Kaisan et al and their annoyingly high acid resistances…
I’d be in favour of getting rid of as many RR rings as possible. Existence of RR rings only serves to limit itemisation options. FoA is sure to add a crapton of new jewelry and Ch’thon only knows how much of it will end up unused in favour of RR rings on every build. I’d rather see e.g. Fire damage be made better across the board and see Combustion Band redesigned.
Every damage type has annoying enemies with high resists. Acid doesn’t even have it all that bad compared to the shitshow Fire has to deal with. The Acid builds that suffer the most in my experience are retal, cause Slathsarr, Zantarin and Aleks never ever attack in melee.
The reason RR rings are used so much is because otherwise, rings simply have nothing to offer. If RR was removed from rings, people will just flock to MI rings since they get customizable stats and resistance profiles to fill in any gaps left behind from equipment sets or weapons with massive skill modifiers that make up the majority of your offense.
If you want non-RR rings to flourish, either make it so that granting skill bonuses going from +8 to +10 provides a bigger damage increase (ex. rings that give bonuses to Soul Harvest are very good) or have them give OA / resistance profiles that you simply can’t find anywhere else.
thought of going Korvaak in devotions.
