“Hey man, just started playing. Tell me which playstyles work.”
“Well, any acually”.
“No I mean like, which are acually feasible.”
“Well, mostly any.”
“Come on man, if i want to go for endgame content what works”
“If a build is mindfully crafted really almost any concept works.”
I’ve been reading a lot of threads that certain builds are #deadbuild recently. I’d like to take a moment to flip the coin and take a moment to appreciate how Crate enabled an insane diversity of acually feasible builds.
The discussion above is an acual discussion which I had with a friend recently. It made me realize that when a build is carefully crafted (focussed damage and playstyle, cap resistances, look out for DA/OA, etc.) almost any type of damage paired with any type of playstyle is at least feasible in some way. At least for MC pretty much any coherent build can succeed. And even looking at super endgame builds crafted by veterans there are casters, melee S&B, DW, 2H, gunslingers, pets, hybrids across most damage types all clearing the hardest content in reasonable times while at the same time not being completely broken (like Haruspex broken). Just take a look at the build compendium.
I think there are two main factors that enabled this diversity:
Mastery/Skill design: Crate did a crate job designing skills in a way that they are suggesting certain playstyles while at the same time not restricting it to be utilized in that way. One example for that is RE. The most obvious choice is utilizing it as a vitality caster’s damage tool but other builds use it as a damage reduction tool or devotion proccer aswell.
The mastery design design itself enables a multitude of use cases for each mastery and their skills. Just looking at necromancer for example: It can be a physical/aether/vitality melee support class. It can act as a pet class, It can be a vitality/aether caster class and so much more.
Conversions/Transmuters/Modifiers: You don’t like split damage? You don’t like the damage type a skill does at all? Well, Crate enables you to change damage types of pretty much anything. This enables even more builds and allows your imagination to run free.
That being said I’d like to address some issues regarding this topic:
Conversion mechanics are really unappearant. Especially for newer players, conversion mechanics are confusing. I’ve seen many builds where conversions are all over the place as players don’t know the order of conversions and how different conversions affect each other.
Conversions/Modifiers make builds item dependend. While it makes item gathering a lot more exiting this restrics certain playstyles to only be played endgame. Some playstyles can’t be played while levelling as you simple can’t equip the necessary items yet. As a casual player, if I imaigine a cool build i don’t want to wait till level 94 and till gathering ALL necessary items to be able to play it.
Balance is really good but not perfect. Some playstyles like for example melee vitality do lack power compared to others.
Some playstyles lack identity. Gunslinger’s playstyle often feels pretty similar to melee playstyle. It would be cool and more immersive to further distinguish their playstlye (Pet, Caster and Melee for example offer cool distinct playstyles)
Edit:
Another issue: Devotion diversity. I think Devotions are a cool addition to the buildmaking world, in a sense that they are acually really impactful and shape a build even further. That said, most playstyles are restricted to a small set of feasible devotion routes. And there are some devotions almost every build of a playstyle has to take (Revenant, Ghoul, Bat, etc.) pretty much 100% while other devotions are rarely used at all (Leviathan, etc.). I think a lot of improvements in terms of enabling more diversity could be made here.
That’s the natural outcome when one combines masteries, that excell at different damage types. When you combine, for example, Nightblade (main damage - pierce/cold/acid) and demolisher (main damage - fire, lightning, chaos), naturally, some of your damage would be of inappropriate type. Furthermore, most skills also deal combined damage. Take AAR, for example. It deals fire, aether and lightning damage. While a golden rule is that build should focus on a single damage type.
That’s what we need conversion for. I’d say, for most builds, conversion is a NATURAL mechanics, and should be described as such to never players. It’s rather rare to see build not using any damage conversion. It’s a neccessity to ensure build diversion, after all.
It’s natural, that with so mant options available, some would be inferior to others. Of course, those inferior ones should be addressed, but it’s hard to make every skill and playstyle equally strong (although that should be the goal).
That’s true. First and foremost, resistance reduction devotions are must-have to EVERY build. If your build deals Lightning or Aether damage and doesnt have Widow, it’s nothing but a fail. Same for others: Fire/Chaos - Solael’s Witchblade, physical/pierce - Assassin’s Blade, Cold/Acid - Murmur, Vitality - Rattosh, Bleed - Huntress. They are absolutely no-brainers. And that fact alone hurts devotion diversity a LOT. Devotions with OA bonuses and/or ADCTH are also very popular, cause in order to have 3k+ OA most builds are forced to take every OA source they can. And in order to get decent ADCTH, most weapon-based builds are forced to grab all ADCTH devotions they can.
I disagree with SD’s statement that balance gets better every patch. In my opinion, it gets worse every patch.
I started playing around 1.0.5.0 and got hooked up around 1.0.6.0. It is true that back then there were a few ridiculously op builds (there still are, btw, not much has really changed…). But people also had fun making wacky builds, and many different concepts worked in endgame (example). Terribly slow - but worked. Right now, they don’t. Many builds don’t work anymore, and endgame is reserved to a handful of toptier builds.
If the purpose of balance is to protect diversity then it is getting not better. At least not from some points of view.
Build diversity might be there, but playstyle diversity is sure not. Dextrous rouge with hit and run and avoidance? mobile caster? Nope, gotta facetank and adcth.
Well TSS Druid is hit&run but even there people using Stormfire for sustain.
Also Disengage rarely do something good. Usually is blink from displacement.
About styles, there would always be something which is considered meta, some style will be better than others. And last patches we’ve got few bonafide top tier ranged builds. But even there is more or less matter of gear and also you need to play Purifier. For 2h builds, usually you have hybrid or casters, again for pure melee you have limited number of great combos, usually 2h are glassy and susceptible to CC effects. S&B outside of retal can be difficult to play, because of the lack of offense. So definitely there’s build diversity but also lot that can be improved.
To me the biggest question is how adequate different play styles are performing in correlation to game difficulty? I think currently for both SR and Crucible some play styles and archetypes offer better experience and also lot of full sets/legendary builds can’t become tanky enough to tackle end game content, despite all the needed stats are there…
I think protecting diversity is one of many possibly conflicting goals regarding balancing. Others are preventing gamebreaking stuff, keeping the game challenging and there are many more. Balancing changes are made for a mutlitude of reasons. (Some of which only Z understands sometimes i guess ) I acually think that not everything being equally viable is an important part of Crates design philiosphy aswell, because what is the point in having Legendaries if Epics are just as viable.
That said, I do think that diversity is a very important factor of balancing when it comes to providing a long lasting enjoyable gaming experience.
What i was trying to say with this thread is that
a) Crate opened the design space for builds massively through all the mechanics, items, modifiers, components, etc.
b) Despite the billions of theoretically possible builds Crate is able to maintain balance on a reasonable level that rewards clever and punishes mindless buildmaking while it is still maintaining challenge.
c) I agree that not everything regarding diversity (or balance) in general is perfect, but I think it is also important to give positive feedback as people generally tend to focus on the bad things. And when I compare Grim Dawn to other (A)RPGs it is in a VERY good state of diversity (and balance). Especially when you focus the main playerbase which is not interested in Crucible and high Shards.
In my opinion the veteran buildmaking community plays a very important role when it comes to balance and diversity. Many of you guys actively try to destroy balance (I mean that really positive, it is important for a game to have players that push the boundaries of the game. And the creativity and proficiency of you guys is really impressive.) That is what keeps the buildmaking community moving and frequently shows new ways of what is possible to achieve and where balance has to be changed (both nerfs and buffs!!).
One big point in that regard, which I 100% agree is that Zentai should take the cleverness of a build more into consideration before nerfing something just because it overperforms. One example is Ptiro’s Spellbindinder. The build was exquisitely crafted and only works as well because of many many factors that were taken into consideration while buildcrafting (There are many more examples I don’t want to start a discussion in that regard). If a builder takes his time to optimize a build this well Crate (at least imo) should reward that dedication in a sense that they allow the build to perform better. Octavius Warlord on the other hand was complely fine to nerf as it only pushed the most obvious playstyle to an OP level.
If anything, mobile caster is the most viable playstyle in the game because you can run around and still do damage. Meaning you can dodge attacks and do most of your damage while doing that. They also don’t care for fumble and impaired aim which cripple a lot of auto attack builds.
Heck, the most powerful build in recent memory is a mobile caster and it’s Pyran Shieldbreaker. And i doubt it got nerfed to the point of not being usable.
I think there’s a disconnect on a specific community’s concept of viable and crate’s intended balance point if viable. If we don’t have some concrete definitions to work we get people joining MQ’s chorus (REEEEEE) and baseless #deadbuilds claims get tossed around because GEE WHIZ we don’t have a defined baseline.
Build diversity and variety in skill usage have gone up dramatically since the early AoM days.
The only area that build diversity has possibly been reduced in is the speedclear meta in the Crucible. When the standard of a “good” clear time has gone down from 10-12 minutes to half that, no shit less builds will be able to meet that standard. That is entirely on the mentality of a few players though, not the game, and implying build diversity is down is just plain disingenuous.
Yeah, I have my own “Meta” (so to speak) and I am glad if anybody takes the time to show me, how viable my builds are in other players´ view. If a build can do SR 65 reliably, it´s good. If it can do SR 75 with a high percentage, it´s very good. If it then can do Crucible, too (in about 8 min), thumbs up.
I don´t really know, how many Bleeding Builds I posted and tested in the last weeks. They all meet my standards. Only thing which is a little bit sad: Same Set, mostly same devotions, same equipment…same playstyle.
@Rhylthar: IMO, a build is viable if it is able to do 3x buffed/bannered 170 clears in the hands of an average pilot. So that’s about 7min 30s. (i’m not disagreeing with you, btw. Just voicing out my opinion)
) I acually think that not everything being equally viable is an important part of Crates design philiosphy aswell, because what is the point in having Legendaries if Epics are just as viable.
