1 month new to GD. Still learning. Playing HC SSF only. Having a hell of a lot of fun! I’ve been listening to a loooot of GD VODs. Mostly by Malagant and Rektbyprotoss. Also been reading around and doing a lot of research as I love theorycrafting.
One thing that has stuck with me is the notion that seemingly… every class that doesn’t have soldier in it is squishy. This class is squishy, that class is squishy, anything coupled with Nightblade is squishy etc.
For youtube streamers and comments I’ve read on Reddit and on forums I still struggle to find out the objective truth to what is considered squishy. Mainly because I’m not entirely sure what they are comparing it against. I’ve completed the main campaign on ultimate (but not AoM and FG on ultimate) as both a witch hunter and a pet cabalist now, and both of those felt tanky at least. But maybe the squish part is with deep endgame content here? Like Crucible or SR (which I haven’t tried yet).
I was just hoping you guys could elaborate a bit on this and explain what exactly makes a certain class squishy, and compared against what standard? Because the only impression I’ve gotten so far is “Anything NB is squishy and mostly everything actually - which isn’t coupled with soldier - is also kinda squishy”. So yeah. If someone could please go into detail on this.
Masteries actually don’t matter that much; yes soldier provides good stats for example but that’s all, there are other variable decides if it’s squishy or not. What makes a character squishy is;
Low Health
Unable to reach high damage reduction
Low Armor
Low physical resistance
Low damage(if you can’t kill them fast enough, no amount of defense can save you but sometimes no amount of damage can save you from being oneshotted.)(and sometimes not having good AoE)
Not having damage absorption
Low DA(or not having OA shred)
Not having circuit breakers.
PS: Having + to some or all maximum resistance combined with good overcaps provides huge defense; consider like this; you receive damage from that %20; when you have +4 all maximum resistances; that value drops to %16 and that is equal to having softcapped Maiven’s Sphere of Protection absorption.
So it’s all depends on building and damage type but some classes are squishier than others generally. Saboteur, Witch Hunter, Pyromancer, Defiler, Spellbreaker etc. Some people play better with those builds ofc but generally these have low health and armor; don’t have great damage reduction options except defiler but that one has no phys resist from skills.
edit: I forgot to mention resistances lol, in GD resistances are must to cap, very important to hardcap; only difference probably is that having +X maximum resistances or not whiel building @RektbyProtoss’s post reminded me.
First of all glad to hear you’re having a blast and thank you for watching!
As @fordprefect has said, a mastery alone doesn’t necessarily determine if a char ends up being squishy or tanky. Sure some masteries like e.g. occultist provide free physical resistance, etc., but in the end it just matters how high your values in the various defensive layers as well as the values in your healing capabilities are gonna end up being. You can increase the values of those defensive layers via masteries, devotions and gear.
GD’s defensive layers:
health
you “only” need enough to not get oneshot as long as you have enough healing
resistances
absorbing a %tage of incoming damage with the “+x%max res” stat putting your res to over 80%
resistance overcap
to protect vs RR
% absorption
absorbing a %tage of incoming damage, multiplicative with resistances
flat absorption
absorbing a flat amount of incoming damage
armor
absorbing a flat amount of incoming physical damage
armor absorption
determing the effectiveness of armor (70% default value, 100% max)
x% reduced target’s damage
reducing enemy damage before it even hits you, multiplicative with resistances and %absorption
defensive ability (DA)
making you immune to crits at high enough DA values and able to dodge some attacks up to a limit of 40%“dodge chance” (technically it’s not dodge), also reducing incoming damage by a bit
dodge/deflect
a %chance to dodge a melee attack or deflect a ranged attack, doesn’t work against dots or ground effects
circuit breakers
various procs that proc whenever you reach an HP %tage below a certain threshhold upon which they grant you a form of healing or a buff to one of the above defensive layers
ways of healing in grim dawn:
health regen
good on few builds, like e.g. avenger warder
attack damage converted to health
this is basically “lifesteal”, works only on hit damage, not on dots. This is the most common way of healing in GD and the more dmg you deal, the more you heal (sth sth best defense is good offense)
active healing abilities
like e.g. blood of dreeg or word of renewal
Also some classes rely more on more skill to be played in a “tanky” or “reckless” way, like e.g. Spellbinder compared to Warlord.
Soldier is commonly named as a “tanky” mastery since it’s just really easy to play and has a built in circuit breaker (menhir’s will).
I run pet classes myself. More then one time I found that my pets could survive better without me. Lol im the squishy, glass cannon however you want to put it.
They all said the good stuff already. Resistances in this game matter alot. Cant say enough on that subject.
Ill choose armor mainly for resists over dam as im counting on my pets for that damage. Ill also choose armor for the + to a mastery or pet dam. To get more out of my pets.
Again it all matters on how you play & whats important to you.
Quick squishy test for me is against Ultimate Ramzul, tested by standing still for a second until his star fall down then kill him.
For DPS test, just go for Ultimate Korvaak and kill him before he cast it specific spell in each phase, so no purple thing drop from the sky and the fire wave on 1st phase, no totem and mob spawn on 2nd phase, and no skill that make him unselectable while raining down meteor on the final phase.
It is a balance between mitigation of damage on the one hand and capacity to sustain health + kill speed. Health is not particularly relevant because as well as being a weak mitigation method it increases your sustain requirements; it is only truly required to stop one shots. Understanding enemy debuffs is also essential to survival; there can be extremely deadly combinations in endgame content. Otherwise the most important damage mitigation sources come from stacking % defences such as damage absorption, damage reduction, resistances (particularly physical) and fumble. Armor and shield block are not powerful without substantial investment; they become relatively weak at endgame because their reductions occur first rather than after % reductions.
For the other side of balance. ADCtH is the primary way most builds sustain health, and the bat constellation is one of the more common methods (particularly for casters). Since it relies on your damage, you either increase your damage or stack more ADCtH or more sources of it. Lastly, greater kill speed = less damage received from multiple mobs/bosses.
Out of curiosity. On shields, aren’t shields in GD, strangely enough highly synergetic to dodge? Because if you face say, 3 hero mobs. Then the shield’s weakness is cooldown recovery. Meaning that then dodging an attack, allows recovery to kick in?
Also from what you wrote. Does that mean a character with, say, 10k life and 84% all resist - is tankier than a character with 13k life and 80% all resist? Because on the topic of health sustain. This would mean that life regen is actually more powerful the less life you have and the more mitigation you have no?
Yes, anything which reduces the frequency of hits helps would help increase the proportion of blocked hits. Though the shield block mechanic is a weak form of defence. Best to just get a “Durable” affix on a shield.
Versus magic damage, the 10k health toon would not be very different to the 13k one. +% max res will have no practical impact of physical res because it is too hard to stack it beyond 80%. Remember you need +4% more res overall to counter resistance reduction debuff though, so there is a price to factor in for +% max res.
Generally I’d say a squishy class (or rather, a build, a class isn’t inherently squishy) is a class that either gets bursted down easily, be it through lack of damage mitigation or low health, or a class that struggles to recover health once lost.
The issue with the first type of squishiness is that it’s hard to judge until you actually play it in difficult content. You can be running around on Ultimate murdering absolutely everything without your health even moving an inch, to the point where you may wonder if enemies are even hitting you, and then you run into a tough encounter and go splat.
Say a Belgothian Blademaster does have a decent number of defensive layers thanks to high dodge, high defensive ability, full armor absorption, % damage reduction, high crowd control resistance, and the ability to burst out a ton of damage to recover health, but it only takes a few unlucky hits in a row and you can be dead, because a lot of your defensive mechanics are all or nothing (DA, dodge – either you don’t get hit, or you take full damage). Alternatively, you can be very weak to a certain mechanic…an enemy boss simply spawns with a nice collection of retaliation gear and you kill yourself on them within the blink of an eye because you attack insanely fast and with multiple damage sources at once, each of which will apply full retaliation damage to you instantly.
An example of the latter type of squishiness (lack of recovery) would be something like a grenadier build. I’m currently playing a full grenadier/ulzuin’s chosen purifier (Stun Jacks, Grenado, Canister Bomb) and you can’t lifesteal directly off of any of those attacks. You take damage, it’s going to stick. Where other builds can have their health jump up and down like crazy in intense encounters, here you have to kite and pick your moments to shit out damage cause if you’re reckless, you’re splattered on the walls.
Once you get over the hurdle of being one shot by dangerous enemies (doesn’t happen as much early game, there you struggle more with sustain) you can still end up being squishy if you can’t recover the health you lose.
Any class can be squishy if not protected enough through all resistances listed on the 1st character page, then through physical and magic resistance. That said, arcanist, occultist, inquisitor, nightblade, tend to have the lowest health. But they make up for it by severely weakening enemies, or devastating them with spells or pyrotechnics, piercing or bleeding damage and speed.
