I like how the “logical” consensus being made is that the devs are idiots.
Or maybe our balance goals aren’t the same as that of the top 1% of players…
The DPS formula for channeled skills is based on the same formula as most other spells in the game, which presents an error as it quantifies animation length. This is how it should work for most abilities, but channeled skills function differently due to their use of a “time between attacks” variable, which effectively negates the standard animation length factor. So we’ll be addressing that in v1.0.6.0 so the correct DPS is displayed on the character sheet for channeled skills.
As for what we use for balancing purposes, I’d like to think anybody that knows the game’s mechanics this thoroughly would know better than to imply that the DPS display on the character sheet is the definitive way to compare Anything considering it does not account for OA/DA, resists, armor, deflection, etc. etc…
And maybe, just maybe, the people that made everything you’re so deeply analyzing might know this too?
As an example, during the beta period of Ashes of Malmouth, we went back and forth on the tuning of Drain Essence because it was basically stupidly easy to play on Normal/Vet, but fell off by Ultimate. The feedback was that it’s too weak, which was an accurate statement if you looked at it from the absolute end-game; but in the early game, where I’d like to reiterate the vast majority of players play and stop playing, it was basically broken in how effective it was.
Over time, we made adjustments to Drain Essence and skills like it, but mostly focused on buffing them in ways that mainly impacted the end-game (such as through ultimate ranks and end-game gear). I suppose this may continue to some degree until the hardcore-gamer minority is satisfied.
So what I gather is you are aware of the fact that pure caster abilities are weak at high level, and have left them that way due to how powerful they are at low levels. It does make sense, but there is a solution here. You need to make it so that high level gear can provide enough of a bump to the spells to keep up with weapon based skills, which scale on weapons.
Your system of providing skill/spell bonuses with AoM is the perfect medium to help these abilities. You could provide bigger boosts on these items for the spells which are scaling this way. Or just boost the damage as you did with Phantasmal Blades. Or maybe just add a significant weapon component to the damage of these spells.
I like to play in Ultimate and crucible, and I prefer spells over weapons. It’s a shame that you only have it balanced for the average player in normal-elite.
I did some math on AAR during teorycrafting. It was 100% converted Aether ray spellbinder with 200% cast speed, 2200% Aether dmg, 3200OA and 125%crit dmg on the Ray.
800 base dmg * 23 result in 18400 aether dmg per tick. ~24K dmg if we count crits. That’s should be ~ 160K DPS against 0 aether resist target. Sound solid on paper, but i didn’t see that dmg in the game, in fact i came to conclusion that AAR hits 4 times per second, resulting in average ~96k real dps. And dmg output dropped even further if i tested it against moving target.
Anyone tested the number of hits AAR does per second?
I think that is what Zantai was talking about being incorrectly calculated. He said something about the animation wasn’t being factored in.
I don’t think it always showed up incorrectly. I remember before AoM, before I took a break for a while. My AAR char was doing about 45K list DPS. When I returned in AoM, the same, untouched char had a list DPS of 100K. I figured it was a buff to the skill, but maybe it was just a change in the way the DPS was calculated.
The part that bothers me in all this is that they know the skill is weak at high levels, yet make it cost such an extreme amount of energy that no one can keep casting it without taking a lot of breaks to regen energy. If it is weak, why should it cost such an extreme amount of energy to use?
His response was about damage, and that it was weak at high levels because of low levels. Not that it costs 1000 energy per second. They know it is a weak skill, why have it cost such ridiculous energy?
Thank you for the answer.
I think not the “logical” things make devs are “idiots”,No offense.It is a lack of Feedback making things difficult.So actually this thread should be here.Devs won’t be misleading by panel，but player will.Player is where Feedback comes from.Balance cant be done without Feedback.If the miscalculation of DPS formula be fix in 1060，all players will see True ability of the Channeling Skills,I bet some Feedback will change.
Then,I will do a real Feedback rather than report BUG now.
1、The truth is Channeling Skills is brilliant Idear but ruined by Underperforming.
Most important thing is their costs is very high,among all the costs the massive energy cost and can’t move while casting are most pernicious.
Massive energy cost force Channeling Skills prefer end-game skills,you can try to base on a Channeling Skill in low-lvl，then you will know how it feel be interrupted by no energy in every 10s.Players can bear death or failure，but get interrupted will bother them.
Then being a end-game skills the Channeling Skills just losers.Their Damage on the Panel seem equal to those popular end-game skills` real damage （I tested all skills end-game performance），In consideration of their real damage far below the Panel，so I wonder the virtual-high Panel data may misleading players.If the panel is beautiful，but real experience are weak，how they Feedback precisely？How much damage should be buff？Just ”feel“ weak isnt enough.No wonder buff them in evey recent versions.
Channeling Skills do have high costs，so what`s the Reason player choose them?High Reward of course！Which kind of the Reward we want？Damage and special effects of course！I never complain the damage of Bloody Pox,it is design for debuffs not killing.But Channeling Skills is for the damage,I found devs ADD a lot of debuffs to them,it is a good idea.But not means them design for debuffs.because you want to keep the debuffs from Channeling Skills to Enemys，you have to keep Channeling，means you hard to deal damage in other way.Those debuffs work very well,they save cast time from other debuff skills to keep Channeling ,let the Channeling Skills do their real job：Killing.
So Channeling Skill should be killer not loser，their damage need buff badly.This is not for 1% top players,this for the devs and players who love Channeling Skills.A brilliant design should do brilliant work rather than being a make-weight.And the top players just ignore losers.I knew this miscalculation in 1004，but I just ignore the AAR.Now devs made more Channeling Skills,all of them are still Underperforming.If the skills work well why buff them in recent versions？So how about deal this once and for all:after fix the miscalculation of DPS formula in 1060,try to buff their real damage equal to the panel in 1050.
2、Cost and Income
Balance not just about data balancing ，the rich and varied playing method also important.We can accept the high costs of Channeling Skills，that`s their unique feature，But only when their performance is Rewarding.I have said enough for damage,let us talk about special effects.Visual effects of Channeling Skills is brillian,but only work to the Dummy.In real Battle always became a Close-fight，because cant move during the Channeling and they cant kill A powerful monster before it get close with weak damage.So like AAR and Drain Essence you can see nothing but a stupid straightening arm in most of the time.And sound effects also too weak that only can hear the monster.Who wants to use AAR with out Visual effect？
The Close-fight style bring additional cost：high survival pressure.Devs add blood-sucking to Channeling Skill is a good start.But their real problem is sudden death.They cant have proper Viability to face-tank BOSS and massive energy(mage style) at the same time.Who wants to use Channeling Skill only deal with Minions？eg.4 Black Flames provide 28 PR，even Reaper of Lost s pet reduce -28 PR，not to mention the Reaper it self.（My lvl 100 character with 66 PR get 20K Physical damage from Reaper in Normal difficulty）I am tired of BOSSs threat always about reduce resistance.
3、Lightning Tether
Lightning Tether is a genius idea.It dot not need massive energy and you can run during Channeling，like a dream come truth. Problem is damage is too low.I can understand low Costs with less Reward.But its too low to Input skill points.Why 3 Tethers cant tied to The same unit？Then its useless for most BOSS.And 5S is too short！DO You know how hard and BAD its feels to tied 3 Different unit in 5s during runing?In fact it only work in Close-fight，and just for assistant.If I need assistant in Close-fight any skill of INQUISITOR can do better than Lightning Tether.I afraid of this game only have one way：face-tank.
I know its hard to keep Balance between Close-fight and H&R.What make H&R work well is going to make Close-fight go OP.IF Just give massive damage to Lightning Tether,Close-fight style will still be the bigest winner.
So why not change the Storm BOX to a summoned creature just like Wind Devil,with more move speed and last more than 5s of course.A Lightning Tether always tied to a Storm BOX with sommoned limit.It will solve the problems like：how to deal full damage with a single BOSS,how to click precisely on 3 Different unit In 5s during runing, how to keep the distance between player and missive monsters,AOE is Underperforming by the main target been killed too early.With out those problems the Player is free to run,even with low damage the Lightning Tether can do brilliant assistant to H&R style in this way,and Close-fight style have the same single damage but smaller AOE Range.
Oh, dear Z, please don’t be offended and misguided by eszvgy’s poor way of expression. I don’t think he is coming after devs and to make a fool out of yo. With very struggled expression of English, he is trying very hard to speak some facts with downsides of channeling skills, which you guys are now apparently aware of and which he is wishing for some positive changes as a keen player as he is.
If what he says is not true, you can merely look at this as some discucsion and warmup of the forum. But if he acutally is onto something, it’s not a bad thing you can hear actual feedback. Over the years till recent, there’s very few people who can or wants to develop an AAR build or builds of any type of channelling skills in my community. It doesn’t speak for all GD groups, but it is an awefully big sample group, ain’t it?
Some factors why they are not popular:
1 requires continous casting
which makes other skill-casting very interruptive to them. not enjoyable experience.
2 efficiency issue
as game difficulty goes harder to ultimate mode, performance of these skills will be narrowed. Others skill will be having this issue too, but these are very prominent in the challenges. and it’s quite noticable DPS data is overly fluctuated. How is that? I hope devs can fix it.
3 special skill presence, special surviability.
it’s hard to argue over the fact to realize maxed output these channelling type of skills will demand a character to have advantageous facetank ability, which is a key chanllenge to forge a build in this game.
4 animation effect lost
there’re two ways to lose these animation attraction, AAR is lost to the aggresive short distance between a monster and the caster; and ED is lost in the rains of other colorful and distinguishable skills.
With what’s been said, I guess we really like this game and really hope all skills can shine. We will be supportive as always and looking for the best.
Edit 1: it doesn’t mean no build can be developped for these skills, but with all mentioned, they are just hard to win over hearts of common gamers. All these skills have same feature, first glance of attraction, then reduced passion with dorminance difficulty.
Interesting idea. It’s a terrible experience that I have to move pointer from one side of the screem to another frequently and click the righ target accurately during running.Pet mod may release players‘ hand. Auto-selecting targets even blinking to them can be realize if Strom Box become pet but I doubt it can move following the enemies tightly.Maybe that’s the reason why it was desighed as a debuff skil. Compromise way is changing it to a trap style pet just like Thermite Mine and cast debuff with a long duration on the enemy who walk into its radius first.However, Lightning Tether which link to character is more cool than link to traps of course.
Not referring to anything in particular eszvgy said, just an amusing echo chamber within this thread.
Awfully big sample group is an awfully big overstatement. As I said in my earlier post, most players don’t play at the level you guys do, and at their level, these skills had been borderline broken.
I know you guys do, and I appreciate the level of dedication you put into understanding the game’s mechanics and mastering them, but you often forget that the vast (Vast) majority of players are casuals. It’s the same reason Flash Freeze and Blade Trap hadn’t changed since their inception. As I said though, we can continue to tweak the numbers to support the end-game, just not while also breaking them further for the more relevant game difficulty.
And yet builds exist, and there are people that enjoy them. Those people probably aren’t aiming for a Gladiator 170 no buffs clear.
Again, I understand that these aren’t going to top anybody’s list for best Gladiator clear times, but I have to reiterate that what you prioritize and what we do is not always going to be the same. You guys spend far more time focusing on individual builds or skills, while we’re also developing another expansion and finding time in there somewhere to make tweaks to existing end-game balance, which I might add often happens on my own free time since end-game viability is mainly relevant to a small fraction of our players.
Yeah, yet builds exist. It proves that there are people love them rather than feel satisfied to them. Onyl appropriate performance which match their costs can support ‘be interested in them’ turning to ‘enjoy them’.
Gladiator 170 clear is not our standard to scale a skill qualified or not. Actully, to the 1% top players you called, it’s easy to use any damage-desighed skill even group of debuff-desighed skills to reach 170 claer by fair means or foul which may fall the build-target skill into a foil.
Fair, AKA balance, between input and output, cost and actual strength, is what we do mind.
We understand that new expansion is a heavy job to your guys, and you have to consider that the vast majority of players are casuals.But we loyal fans consider Grim Dawn as a great masterpiece rather than a sell-well merchandise.That’s why we are willing to spand our own free time on feedback.
Since we are at this open disscussion already I’d like to spend some time to go over how I pictured about AAR skill design.
Yes I am aware some of our discussion / sugguestion could turn out to be time-consuming and a hinder to project management. If we are classified as hard-core players, then hard-core players’ opioion should matter a lot to this type of hard-core hack&slash ARPG. We feed back so that you can save more time in testing and reallocate that to developping. We feel obligated to report in, but it’s your decision whether to adopt our suggestion. (Both ways are ok) we just want to do our part right so you have some more sophisticated feedback, which not only is beneficiary to our own game experience, but also benefits all.
Back on the AAR topic.
If possible I wish devs could take a look at this .
I’ve described AAR’s negativity at #27
I guess if you want to turn AAR a more useful and popular skill you should at least consider its visibility
1 (on attack) chance to penetrate through enemies so you can always visually confirm it’s there.
2 (on attack) chance to duplicate the beam so to increase momentary single-target damage;
2-1 duplication can be multiplied in the form of wave.
2-2 duplication can be multiplied in the beam splitter.
3 (on hit) chance to chain-jump through enimies
1&3 deals with visual effect issue; 1&3 brings AOE chances.
2 compenstates when you are forced to cancel skillcast.
that the “more relevant game difficulty” is intended by the devs to be normal/elite is a statement i really can’t agree to.
I get that there are a lot of casual players, but it’s only in endgame that a skill can be measured. Who cares how AAR performs at level 40, c’mon…
And to have a loyal (and apparently annoying) core of long time players should be considered with more merit, even if the price they paid for the game is exactly the same as that of players that ever made it past level 50. :undecided:
Actually AAR or other Channeling Skills cant work well in low level,you just dont have enough energy.This is not about what kind of Player is more valuable.This is about how to make GD better. Even the players that ever made it past level 50,they dont think that in fist place,they actually more care about endgame performs than Hardcore Gamers,that`s gamer nature.In my opinion most new player choose the most powerful builds，but Hardcore Gamers like Various attempts.
What i do isnt about arguing with devs,I just want to help.I know they have too much work to do with limited time，its hard to keep balance.So I keep diging the Sources of unbalance and feedback,so the devsChallenge will be easyer to save more time for new things.At least that's what I think.And I not just feedback for Hardcore Gamers，I use Hardcore Gamers experience for all kinds of players.
Before going further about HC game/gamers, let’s take a look at what HC game actually means and whether GD would like to fit in:
hardcore game
Any game in which successful completion or demonstration of skill requires a significant investment of both time and effort on the part of the player.
(Source: urbandictionary, recommended by Google :P)
Then we start to see what a hardcore gamer means:
Hardcore gamer: Ernest Adams and Scott Kim have proposed classification metrics to distinguish “hardcore gamers” from casual gamers, emphasizing action, competition, complexity, gaming communities, and staying abreast of developments in hardware and software.
(Source: Wiki Pedia, yep the one you and I can contribute to)
Frankly, GD would be one of the h&s ARPGs that fit almost all principles of HC game: one needs to invest significantly on time and effort to pass Ultimate or Gladiator 170 or the goal oneself sets. Furthermore, most active GDers will fit the metrics defined above, especially when you and I use the forum provided here to communicate, show off own BDs, report feedbacks and bugs in the hope that this game could be in a better SHAPE with our contributions, the last would be the source for devs here to made developments/adjustments.
From my understanding, HC gamers are no different from causal gamers in the definition of normal human being, HC gamers only invest more time and efforts to find out what story the devs really want to tell through the game, including testing all skills provided to form the BDs to demonstrate the unique ideas and pathways, this may include testing channeling skills and report the inefficiency to the community and devs because we all want GD becomes a better game.
Again, like the op mentioned, we are not here to argue, nor to insult the devs as “consensus being made is that the devs are idiots”, further a BIG NO to boast ourselves as “the top 1% of players”. We ARE here to communicate, to report bugs/provide feedbacks on the gaming experience, to contribute to make this game better.
AAR is usable at low levels with ectoplasms and proper gearing. Difficult to play, but so is any caster glass cannon character. Specially against charger monsters.
The dps not showing well is not a problem only with AAR. I would like to see a better representation of the damage my character does sometimes. It’s a bit complicated to keep up with what I have of procs too, a way to list them would be cool, if possible (adding another page on the character screen, maybe?)
I’m glad the developer’s know that and will implement something about it. I can wait, this game has so much to offer still.
On another note (sorry, I needed to rant):
I’m really annoyed that people who think they are the top players should dictate anything with this disregard shown for the creators of this beautiful piece of work. Specially since I’ve seen much more feedback from the developers of Grim Dawn than from any other company out there.
I am really glad I’ve bought this game, I will buy the new expansion and I won’t even dare to remember I’ve saw a circlejerk like the one I saw in this post - the community in general is great.
You guys, your feedbacks are appreciated for sure, but as in “real life” (wich, btw, is this, we are only using computers), you should mind some manners when voicing your opinion.
Thanks for the advise，Next time I will mind the manner.
Actually I saved my best compliment in Review area of Steam or other website.Last time I try to report a serious bug，Devs try to denied it,then I keep diging and posting emphatically，finally Devs recognized the Issue.So this time I may voicing my opinion too strong，I apologize the Impolite to all people who been annoyed by this thread now.
BTW Im not the one who claim myself is some kind of top players,Player just players in my eyes,I just follow Zantai`s words.My English not good,so I need to copy words and consult a dictionary,some times the words are inappropriate，sorry for that too.
I really, really dislike the strict endgame perspective that dominates this forum. Take the ‘‘Reasonably powerful builds’’ thread. Those are builds that clear Gladiator Crucible; they are not reasonably powerful, they are extremely powerful. Tell me, how should a casual gamer who has a job and a family complete such builds? You could maybe have one such build after 250 hours of gameplay. For a lot of people, that’s an entire year (or more) of playing only Grim Dawn.
For example, I would like to see more suboptimal builds on these pages. Fuck it, I don’t have any Stonehide stoneplate greaves of kings. I have some legendaries, some greens and even some yellows on my 60+ lvl char. I’m not revered with any faction, I’m only Nemesis with Beasts. I’d like to see some realistic builds like that.
For those of you saying that evaluating skills makes sense only from an endgame perspective, I think you’re forgetting that Crate is a company which has to earn money. They have to cater to the vast majority of players who are casuals, some even more than me.
And from what Zantai said, it’s obvious they’re trying to rectify the issue, what with changes in scaling of the skills at later levels, or endgame equipment bonuses.
(Both ways are ok) we just want to do our part right so you have some more sophisticated feedback, which not only is beneficiary to our own game experience, but also benefits all.