Discussion: Should OP builds be nerfed?

Grim Dawn Gameplay Discussion
21

well MQ is not a great example, because even builds that own her on youtube tend to spike up and down in HP like they’re having a seizure. that’s a far cry from one-shotting rift bosses in Diablo 3. Also look at the loot comparison- MQ will drop NOTHING whatsoever in 19 of 20 runs (maybe a legendary or two, mostly blues, and small chance at ONE copy of her own legendary).

in a game like Diablo bosses drop tons of high end items your character can most likely use. This means in GD it’s not one boss kill, or one run at a high end roguelike dungeon that gets you loot you might be looking for- it’s DOZENS of such runs, and they each take about 10 times longer than a greater rift in Diablo.

so while there might be a few very minorly OP builds in GD, the grind itself is VASTLY OP compared to any other ARPG as well, and these must be balanced together. i enjoy fighting the same areas on different 85s to compare their relative power levels, and seeing where i need to fine tune and optimize. loot happens by accident because it is SO difficult to find high end items you need that if you plan on farming anything specific you will rage quit (in 30 some Anasteria kills ZERO legendary helmets for example).

So i’d have to say GD is the most balanced ARPG i have ever played, and it’s not even close. The genius of this game is player generated content- you can take the WACKIEST idea for a build and if you really get your GD-scholar on you can turn it into something incredibly powerful. as it stands right now i don’t think there’s a single build in the game that is so OP that it needs further nerfs- and there’s less incentive to play FOTM in this game to begin with since the builds can vary so wildly. i think we’re in a pretty good spot :smiley:

22

The sense of accomplishment comes in making your own build that can clear the game. The gear is just a means to that end.

IMO, ARPGs are about Builds, then Loot, then killing monsters, in that order. The Build is the important part, the part you want to succeed at to share and brag about. The Loot is just your options for the build, and the monster killing is how you measure your build and get new loot for more builds.

So that’s your reward, for time spent, IMO. A build that works, that you can share and discuss and maybe improve later as time goes on and things change.

23

No offence, but i am so happy people like you arent part of Crate! This is an Action-RPG - people play this genre because its fast paced, easy to get into and you can become OP with the right items.

Mindlessly plowing a HP sponge is MMO mechanic -> WoW or any other contemporary MMO should sooth your apetite for such gameplay, but you wont find it in ARPGs (especially Single player ones!).

24

see that’s what i’m talking about, you’re trying to reconcile GD to other ARPGs and it can’t be done. mainly because there is NO INCENTIVE to kill difficult mobs. they do not drop loot that makes it worth it- the drop rates on bosses is SO pathetically horrible that the ease of destroying them must reflect that. if we had something like Rift Bosses that could drop multiple unique legendaries (and actually did so!) then the argument that the game is too easy comes into play. I’ve got almost 2000 hours in game and i have -NEVER- seen a single boss drop its unique legendary. MQ, Sentinel, Anasteria, Aldritch, Sharzuul, literally not a single one. They have dropped their own unique BLUE items sure, but never the legendary version of anything. I’m not even going to bother farming Alakamos for his new scythe because that ain’t gonna happen either.

so without REAL reward the idea that every boss should be able to break your build is absurd. That’s just not how GD works- they made a different game. the toughest content you’ll face is YOURSELF optimizing your own build (or gladiator crucible, but only a few builds can even do it so i don’t bother).

25

If you want “fast” this is 100% not at all the APRG for you. It’s not even 1/8 as fast as POE or D3, both of which are significantly harmed by their speed focus.

So unfortunately, I must indeed say to you that I am glad you are not part of Crate. Especially with the odd differentiation you made of “single player”…As if those games somehow need to be treated differently.

26

We should be asking how we got here first: GD is VERY melee heavy because the game actively punishes casters and RPDS. Important mobs are universally immune to CC, and drop rates are staggeringly low. They also crit more than other ARPGs and do more damage and CC on players in general. In GD even a tank can be one or two shotted in the right circumstances (After an Anasteria stun- shutgun crits from MQ, Nova crits from Mog etc).

So it’s not so much that melee needs to be nerfed- it’s that the game has trained us that the reward is not worth the risk for squishier characters- though it can certainly still be fun. Rather than ask if shields are OP why aren’t we asking why shields are REQUIRED for Gladiator Crucible? And claiming that it shouldn’t be balanced because it’s a stretch goal is the lamest excuse i’ve ever heard lol- they weren’t REQUIRED to add it- but they did, and that means it must be balanced; if not against the main game then certainly against itself. RDPS/Caster/Melee should all be perfectly acceptable choices to clear all levels of crucible.

And then there’s the loot issue. I’ve never seen an MI legendary from ANYONE, and this is with almost 2000 hours played. Not a single one. I’m also still missing 7-8 recipes and the only way to get them is probably going to be another 2000 hours of farming. These things have to be taken into account- without the possibility of real loot anymore my incentive becomes competing against myself to optimize builds- and it’s fun. But if it becomes a race against the nerf bat every time, Grim Dawn is over.

those games also have reliable loot, which we do not. bosses in GD are individually very low value targets, and their difficulty must always take that into account.

27

[ol] A matter of opinion of course. You want something relaxing that you can play with a beer in one hand, I want something that at hardest difficulty punishes every mistake with instant death. We’re different types of gamers, we want different things.
[/ol]

[LIST=2]I do think your type is more common in games like these, and to be fair given the awful gameplay I’ve seen from most who stream this game, I think there’d be copious amounts of rage on these boards if they made ultimate have Drak Souls 1 type of mechanical player skill requirement.
[/LIST]

[LIST=3] I don’t see any logic in “takes long to get drops” -> “has to be easy”. Sorry, sense no makes.
[/LIST]

28

of course you do. ARPG bosses either drop loot or they don’t. GD is not about which bosses you kill, but about how many hundreds of times you kill them. that means without actively farming you will never see loot. which means your build must be viable for farming; it’s not quality of bosses it’s QUANTITY. this game has the lowest drop rates of any ARPG i’ve played (except D3 at release- but we all know what a clusterfail that was originally).

If you want bosses who are literally never worth killing to be absurdly difficult (and for some reason think Mog and Crucible aren’t already absurd enough?) then i have no clue what would keep you playing. Gamedev 101 is risk vs. reward. GD has both, and the balance is tenuous- but it’s there. if you want to add another truckload of nerfs you’re going to have to tweak drop rates at the very least.

Or we could just accept that this is a game where loot is insanely difficult to obtain, and there’s not much point to killing bosses. We farm to gradually improve characters literally over hundreds of hours- and we slowly reap the rewards as they get incrimentally easier to play against the more difficult content. Excepting Mog and Gladiator- which for a lot of us will always be too difficult. I’m a min-maxer but i’m just not on that level lol; some of the content is still way too hard for me, even on my best BIS toons. And i’m fine with that. GD is the most difficult ARPG i’ve ever played, and really feeling powerful on a character after hundreds of hours of work is a great reward (especially with loot so difficult to obtain). As long as that feeling doesn’t get nerfed it’s all good. And if it does, Grim Dawn has run its course. But with only 7% of us even reaching the end of Elite, i think the devs are smarter than that.

29

Slightly off topic, but i have a theory.

The heaviest of the latest nerfs (1.0.0.7 & 1.0.0.8) are aimed at melee builds. They arguably had the upper hand over other archetypes before, and now the tides are probably turned.

But here’s a thing.

An expansion is not too far away now with an increased level cap. That would probably mean there will be some higher level (thus somewhat stronger) items for most builds. Items aimed for casters can be made stronger with things like higher %damage, more skill bonuses, better procs, etc. and those bonuses seem to increase damage output additively.

But then probably will be higher level weapons with higher base damage, and based on the games mechanics, that would most likely increase weapon based dps in a multicaptive way, resulting in a greater buff to melee (and weapon based ranged builds too, but they’re lagging behind anyway) thus turning those tides once again or (hopefully) equalling ot the field.

If this is at least partially true, then the recent nerfs could be more justified then they seem.
Or i could be utterly wrong, who knows.

30

If you could finish any boss off by simply mouseovering it and holding down LMB but it had a 1/10000 chnce of getting you the loot you need, woud you do it? Ofc you wouldn’t, it’s a pointless game. Even if they gave you all the gear for a single kill, I wouldn’t do it.

When I say Grim Dawn should be made more difficult, I don’t mean nerf this nerf that. What I mean is that balancing should be done in such a way to give the highest performance to builds that are actually hard to execute. Sure, beating the hardest content should require good gear. But it also shouldn’t be doable unless you actually play really good.

Now this is my opinion, I understand if you don’t share it. We all have different backgrounds and look for different things in games. I come from competitive games where if you don’t react to stuff in 0.3-0.4 seconds you have yourself to blame and have to “git good scrub”. Naturally, my bucket list for a game will look rather different to that of someone who plays a lot of single player games and is perhaps one hell of a puzzle solver.

At the end of the day, there is no “right” answer to these question, only a discussion regarding preferences. That being said, I still can’t get around the logic of “drops are scarce -> game has to be faceroll”.

31

You’re not wrong. Melees scale significantly harder off of gear and skill points than casters. And any gear that you make good for a caster, doesn’t exclude a melee from using it. Melees also have more TOTAL scaling from attack speed than casters do Cast Speed. This is due to multiple factors, but in general melees fully make use of +flat damage mods, a higher effective AS cap (thanks to the fact many weapons start below 0% attack speed), and an easier access to AS than CS. Effectively, if not an Arcanist, you lose 30% CS up front thanks to no Reckless Power or Mental Alacrity. AS is spread between all the classes pretty much, although a few have more than others.

32

I wonder what would happen if the Cast Speed cap was raised back to 250% and Attack Speed was left at 200%. With more cast speed available.
Or, if spirit gave OA just like cunning. That could actually bring casters back imo.

33

TBH it should always have done that.

34

One can imagine how huge the gap between melee and casters would have grown into with all the additional points/items from the expansion – that is, if Crate hadn’t already started to preemptively rein in melee over the last couple of patches.

35

Having one build that can do everything great is more diverse than having two builds that can do only some things great???

Is this what they call an ‘‘alternative fact?’’

I guess I learned something new today…:rolleyes:

36

This whole line of communication is moot unless you get into a mutual understanding of semantics.

What’s OP to one person is not OP to another.

I think when OP is so OP that it makes any other similarly themed choice make you feel like an idiot for picking it, it’s too OP. Or that you would feel stupid for not using it. Like, two ice weapons, with different +skills, but you always use only one of them because it’s soooo much better than the other.

Additionally, if something is soooo OP that it’s a large contributor in trivializing even the game’s challenge content, it is too OP.

37

which is never what i said. in fact i don’t have a clue which builds you’re talking about- because even facetanking MQ i’m not looking at her health bar, i’m looking at all my cooldowns and popping abilities the nanosecond they come off CD. now maybe there’s some faceroll build that literally never needs anything but LMB to win? NEVER seen it. never played it. and i have never seen a video of it either- the vids i see people are popping hotkeys like crazy and you can see their CDs firing. so long story short i don’t think you’re accurately describing GD to begin with :rolleyes:

or if you are, BM and Soldier just got nerfed for the 3rd patch in a row, so i’d say we’re EXTREMELY balanced at this point lol. what remains imo is to buff RDPS/casters and make them more attractive. because if you’re not farming in GD, you ain’t looting up. period.

what about having a large assortment of builds that CANNOT finish the content? such as Mog/Crucible, there are plenty of builds that simply can’t do it. imo this points to BUFFS being needed, not nerfs. this is the point we’re at now. and saying only a tiny fraction of builds SHOULD be able to finish gladiator crucible is just a different way of arguing BUFFS are needed lol; either way the logical take is anti nerf. The game isn’t too easy- and vanilla campaign is meant to be easily accessible- clearly every amateur non min-maxing player is meant to be able to finish it. But vanilla campaign is just the beginning.

38

So let me guess no one thought that the proc on this http://gracefuldusk.appspot.com/items/8159-Demonslayer’s-Life-Ender
should have been nerfed. That it was perfectly OK to not be able to die and face tank everything including Ultimate Mog with top tier clear speed

I mean it did take me Hundreds of hours to get 2 of them to drop.

39

i’m not seeing anything special about that proc. and one proc with a THREE SECOND CD giving you the power to FT mog? i’d have to see it to believe it lol. never heard of it and never tried it. i imagine 0.0000001% of the player base was using this? sounds wildly OP :rolleyes:

40

Thats because it has been nerfed already. It had no cooldown and really high %weapon Damage when it was first released.