B27 Hotfix 1

Grim Dawn Patch Notes
61

With all the player-side nerfs and buffs (seems appropriate, though ceno is right, devouring is op)

The buff to enemies on veteran seems risky. We have 2 more difficulty ahead. I like that the basic enemies do more dmg but the spell dmg / non-physical damage seems a bit much for normal difficulty. Then again maybe I just need to not build full dps. Plus some of the lifesteal buff helps mitigate.

If anyone actually reads this it would probably be a good idea to tell devs if there is a certain area/enemy type you feel bursts your hp down unfairly.

62

Difficulty is balanced around what is relevant at the time and a common complaint with B27’s initial release was veteran was too easy. This is far from the last balance pass that Grim Dawn will be seeing.

63

here is a Vid with my thoughts on the P&M in this thread about Stormcaller’s Pact: http://youtu.be/ifbuA6msHN8

TL;DW: I actually think that some of the complaints are justified.

64

I saw your video, but I have a question.
Does the +Crit damage is consider into the DPS calculation? Same goes for the + 33% of X lightning damage.
The point to my question is, what is the net result of the damage on the monster (brute force vs stormcaller pack in your case)?

65

Crit damage is not included in DPS calculations.
The % lightning is included, but it’s value is divided by 3, so it is basically treating it as an extra 100% damage all the time.

It’s a bit silly to compare Brute Force and Stormcaller’s Pact by DPS values because that essentially ignores one of the most powerful stats on Stormcaller’s pact. I wouldn’t be against buffing stormcaller’s a bit. I personally feel that the conversion should be increased to 25%.

66

Well my Primal Strike Druid (full spirit) is still clearing maps two times faster than any of my other chars… Got only 5000 dps and still, I need only 2-3 seconds to clear a screen. Didn’t really feel the Stormcaller’s pact nerf. I think the flat dmg was too OP anyway, particularly for DW builds.

67

Squall: now deals Electrocute damage instead of Lightning damage

Why do devs still call it Squall? It’s Wind Devil right?

That got me confused with Squall relic much.

P.S. Thanks for SWF buff. :slight_smile:

68

Sad to see the Stormcaller’s Pact nerf, don’t care about the conversion. But without the flat damage it feels not worth it, considering it is the only reason for a lightning build to go 50 points into Shaman. Kinda sad for a lightning based mastery.

69

Are you saying the crit damage or conversion is the most powerful stat?

70

I was referring to the crit damage.

71

I like crit damage but even in a cunning build (which wouldn’t take this skill) it’s tough to get more than 20-25% crit and much less against bosses. I think the conversion and chance of lightning is more important for the builds taking the skill. I don’t know, never been that much a fan of taking added crit damage over something else since trash crits are almost always overkills and bosses have such high DA for spirit builds that unless you have really good OA gear, you’re struggling to hit 100% hit rate much less critting.

72

Doesn’t mean it somehow has no implication on the stat budget. Whether players want to admit it or not, 50% crit damage for 12 points is very powerful and isn’t reflected in the DPS tooltip. Whether Stormcaller’s Pact is meeting player’s expectations or not is debatable, but my point was that comparing it to Brute Force is counterintuitive.

73

IMO, Stormcaller’s needs a constant % Lightning increased damage buff now too in order to be more tempting for lightning oriented builds… The flat damage was indeed TOO good for the skill, I mean, just look at this comment section… everybody was using it instead of Primal Bond, who didn’t have a flat damage bonus to begin with, making Stormcaller an obvious choice, but now they’re on par with each other, as neither offers a flat damage bonus.

And no, buffing up Primal instead would only make things worse, as the flat damage from Stormcaller was rather OP for the skill. We are feeling the drastic changes now because we were used to it, but I do hope that Medierra do something else to increase it’s efficiency for lightning builds.

74

@Nine/Marcus

I think that Stormcallers Pact is still a good skill in itself.
for 12 Points you gain 2 damage types a constant +135%(!) and one an average of ~+100%. You also still gain conversion and crit damage which is a very powerful stat.
The Problem with all this though is, that most of these stats will be percieved as weak (or at least weaker as they actually are).

  • The DoT damagetypes often times are overlooked by most players
  • Crit damage does not show in the dps calculation and it’s hard to accurately assess it’s actual value to most players, since it heavily depends on other relatively hard to understand stats as well. (OA)
  • Chance effects for added damage very likely won’t be looked at or undervalued by newer players as well, since it’s effect/value is a bit more obscured compared to direct/constant damage increases and require a bit of thinking.

Flat Damage or constant +%damage is much easier to understand and correctly asses their value at first glance - even for newer players.

On first glance a newer player might see a very bad skill in Stormcallers:

  • Unreliable chance effects
  • two unused damagetypes
  • Something I either don’t care about or don’t really understand.
  • And conversion as the only seemingly good/redeeming factor

Stormcallers is still good, especially considering it’s value per skillpoint, but it’s hard for a good chunk of players to correctly asses that value.

TL;DR:
While Stormcallers Pact is still good it feels not very powerful.

75

I think this logic is flawed. It assumes people were choosing Stormcaller’s over Primal Bond because of its power. While this may be true, I think a more compelling case can be made that people were choosing it thematically. Shaman is a “lightning mastery”. As such, most people were building around lightning. Primal Bond doesn’t fit that functionality.

76

I can’t agree with this more! And why spring a total health pot change on us now at this point and time?!!

77

Because in b26 they were too powerful at 50% instant and 50% overtime. This was then changed in b27 to 30% instant and 70% overtime in an attempt to nerf them, but this created 2 problems. First, it wasn’t actually a nerf as it just made them stronger with the more health you were stacking. Second, this caused the overtime duration to last longer than the actual cooldown of the health potion, allowing players to chain them together for effectively infinite rapid health regen. This change combined with over-nerfed enemy damage made the game too easy.

So instead of just massively increasing enemy damage to compensate for this, enemy damage was gradually boosted and health potions were gradually reduced. The net result is health potions are still powerful, but wont just allow you to facetank everything and enemies are threatening, but wont just run over you with massive damage spikes. That’s the intention anyway.

78

I still think that health potions are OP. They should have a 30s cooldown!

79

Since the hotfix has been applied, i didn’t loot any epic items.
I don’t know how many bosses i killed, but i only loot yellow or green items.

Have you change the drop rate ?

Edit : I play in Veteran Mode

80

Seems like I am not the only one who was surprised about some of the nerfs.

Regarding Storm Caller’s Pact:

I had not yet decided if I wanted to invest those points with my two-handed lightning-based melee Shaman, as it was already a very heavy point investment.
And yes, I too go for the flair and concept of the class - if I am building around lightning damage I want lightning-based skills.
So given that I have no interest in putting points in one of the “40 points tier” skills, the only reason for me to skill the character from 32 points to 50 points would be that Stormcaller’s Pact. That though would cost me 30 points to get there and max it out and that’s a lot of skill points already.

I can’t really judge the effectiveness of Stormcaller’s as I haven’t tried it out yet, but I can say as much as that it lost a lot of appeal to me and does not incentivise me to build the Shaman up to 50 points anymore now.

And yeah, this has to do with all those “soft stats” in the skill. I don’t think that I fail to see their value, it’s just that they are relatively weak in principle, thus I called them “soft stats”.
Damage over time is always a suboptimal choice for melee builds if it does not by chance match your personal playstile, just because it’s generally preferable to burst enemies down with instant damage, thus not giving them a chance to still attack you.
Crit damage, as some already said, is unreliable and mostly absent when you most need it - that is when fighting against especially tough enemies.
It also synergizes pretty badly with two-handed weapons, as you attack far less often than a one-handed weapon wielder.
On top of that this skill introduces Frostburn damage to the Shaman class, something that is not supported by any of it’s other skills and most likely won’t fit in the character build of someone who took this skill because it enhances lightning-augmented basic attacks.
The percent chance to do +% lightning damage is ok, but it would be much more appealing if the skill just had a direct %lightning damage bonus.

Regarding Military Conditioning:

This skill was pretty lame before you buffed it, with the buff though it instantly became a must-have. Now it’s lame again.
I get the feeling that there must be an in-between.

I guess that it is a little hard to buff this skill as, being just 5 points into the Soldier tree, it is so easily accessible. Giving it a buff that was almost universally useful for all base attack based builds, and being useful so tremendously, it probably was just too interesting for so many character class combos - just put 17 points into the Soldier class and you are a beast.

On the other hand there are a lot of skills that make the character tanky in some way, and most of them are much more appealing to me than Military Conditioning. It just doesn’t stand out as the skill that defines you as the tough guy that is used to standing in the frontline.
So I guess there is still some refactoring to do for Military Conditioning and probably for other passive skills in the Soldier skill tree as well.