I use this skill in my current build and I am starting to question it. On the one hand it does take care of trash mob and the reduced OA does help but it kills slowly and against bosses only the reduced OA help.
Also I do not quite catch how fast this ability is spreading among huge crowds.
But what are your opinions?
It’s underwhelming because its main source of damage is life reduction, which just does not work on bosses. I mean it does but at a vastly reduced rate, so that it might as well not work at all. There is flat damage on the skill and modifiers but compared to just about any other skill its dps is tiny. The OA debuff is indeed huge and is what makes the skill worth investing in (the transmuter has niche uses as well, mostly retaliation).
I have built a character purely around this skill, and it does work. It clears trash just fine with endgame gear and the various OA debuffs it stacks render most things harmless. It just takes forever to kill anything bigger than a trash mob.
Life reduction used to be ridiculously overpowered in Titan Quest (like kill endgame bosses in two or three hits, that ridiculous) and since the mechanic was carried over to Grim Dawn but the designers recognized its problems we now have the current situation where it’s widely and heavily resisted. In my opinion they could have done away with the whole idea completely, it adds very little to the game that just good old normal damage can’t do. Trash dies instantly anyway and bosses actually die faster without it.
Bloody pox is meant to be weak on single target. It’s a godsend for proccing some devotions and is nice for leveling.
Another thing, it suffers from having life reduction, vitality, bleeding and poison damage on it. This is generally a bad idea, you can’t get the most potential out of it without some serious conversion. You can’t convert bleeding and life reduction of course, making things worse.
Yup, BP is an amazing leveling skill, and requires only 36 points to almost work.
Also, with just another 36 or 40 points investment in a real skill (line), the player unlocks the ability to kill bosses as well!
Now, seriously - I also think it’s about time to get rid of the life reduction, and have all the flat damage of the skill greatly increased.
BP will be much more versatile and reliable this way.
I’m torturing myself with a BP build at the moment. Not because it’s fun to play or there’s any potential, but because I get bored at times and go full retarded.
Skill can somehow work only if transmuted (which means you need to build accordingly hence limiting your choices), damage sucks with any mob higher than a yellow, bosses in particular take forever.
It’s also overly hard to support efficiently all the damage types - both by gear and devotions. In fact, it’s an impossible task to support even 2 of the damage types the way you’d like.
In my heart, BP is right next to ABB. Countless reworks and “improvements” over the years, yet the same shit. These skills are like cursed.
Well, it has it’s uses, but single target damage dealing is not one of them.
It’s mainly a debuff, devotion proccer and trash clearer, and great at all of these.
I don’t get how people want even more from a single skill.
Wasting is very strong debuff and Black Death can actually deal some damage on poison (or Blood Orb vitality) builds.
The only outlier is the main skill for reasons well explaind in some posts above, it’s practically a one point vessel for the other two.
I’m all for the idea of changing the %life reduction to something actually useful (more flat bleed or a debuff maybe).
Oh, and an overhead icon for it would be very welcome too since it’s visuals are kinda subtle, especially with particle effects set to low (as i play for a i like to see through the clusterfck :)).
By the way overhead icons, if some dev reads this please adjust/change a bit the one for Aether Corruption (Seal of Corruption), it’s too similar to Arcane Mark’s (Arcane Bomb). It bugs the hell ot of me for some reason :).
Some people have this odd fixation that every skill must be good at single target or it sucks. Not every skill is supposed to be stellar at single target, some of them are supposed to be used in tandem with other synergetic skills or just be good at like you said, trash clearing.
Case in point, Bloody Pox with Ravenous Earth is hilarious.
Pox is not the only skill with that problem. Theres countless others, where you have to invest massively just to get them to a “barely-working condition” in ultimate-regions. As main damage-dealers that is, because some work fine as supportive or secondary skills. But building a character around them? Mehhhh.
Flash-Freeze, Blade-Burst, Canister Bomb, Grenado, Doombolt, Word of Pain, Stormbox, maybe Panettis… Just to name a few that come to my mind.
Mostly agreed except Grenado and Doombolt are quasi god-tier when built properly.
And PRM is workable but you’ll need Devastation (most likely with TD and Outcast Secret) too for bosses obviously.
What grenado-build did you use? Grenado got nothing but buffs for years, but it still felt lacking when I tried it last time (lightning-grenado-purifier). Too many damage-types (phys,pierce,fire) so you have to fiddle with conversion and specialized gear. There are lots of points needed to reach high per-hit damage and in the end DPM is still on the lower end of things. Certainly not a shit-tier skill anymore, but god tier? Maybe with a full rimetongue set? Options for viable ultimate-builds certainly arent too plentiful with that skill. :undecided:
I really enjoy my BP build. It does a decent amount of vit damage and the confuse can be seen working away to your advantage. The de-buff power goes without saying. I don’t think that it is weak or underwhelming, but I guess it depends on what you were hoping for? My BP Warlock can more than handle the campaign content and can roll in Crucible with ease too.
Single target isn’t great at all, but I don’t think it was ever meant to be. I carry a big stick for that.
Well, by god-tier i definetly meant Rimetongue since anything is god-tier that has anything to do with that set imho, but other options should work as well.
Lightning Grenado is great too, i remember JoV using it in a build or two back then to great success.
I know it was a while ago (when tempest-mines was still a thing 
) but Grenado only received buff since then as you pointed out.
And physical Grenado with Beronath, Reforged should work great too with Mortar Traps and Kalastor, especially for cruci.
I think the unpopularity of Grenado is much more related to it’s unwieldy nature than it’s damage potential, which has no problems (anymore) imho.
It’s like you can’t exactly call Thermite Mines the greates resist reducing skill of all time despite it’s sheer stats would make it a more than worthy candidate.
just my 2 cents as usual
PS: The context in which you originally brought up the skill is seemed to me that you’re implying it’s similar to Pox as it’s a heavy point investment skill that can’t work as a “main” (partly meaning “single target” or “boss killing” for me) damage dealer on ult and thats why i picked on Grenado and DB from your list.
I might misanderstood what you meant though.
I am having a lot of fun with my Cabilist that uses BP and RE. I just have DEE for consistent damage against bosses but other than that the combo of BP and RE feels more than strong enough to take on most enemies in the game from both of their amazing debuffs. Yes, BP may take forever to kill things on it’s own, but it is nice supplemental damage to whatever other skill you use for damage and imo is worth the investment.