Enemies Armor Reduction Discussion

Grim Dawn Public Test Discussion
1

In the latest patch (Feb 25), enemies’ armor was visibly reduced. So I decided to pick up some of the long forgotten physical builds and see how the change affect them. Here are my tests and results:

Build No.1 - Physical DW EoR Warlord

SR30-31 - 5:36 (2 short rooms) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SElU5fV_X9U

Damage is somehow still bad vs bosses.

Build No.2 - Physical Havoc Cadence Tactician

SR30-31 - 6:16 (1 short room) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kf3xMFNzQOQ

Damage is still terrible.

Thoughts:

I took a deep look into these two builds and I found their common point - their DPS was a large collection of tens of small hit. Physical DW EoR has low % weapon damage and very high attack frequency. Physical Havoc Cadence has too fragmented flat damage. Thus enemy’s armor has more influence on these builds than on big DPH ones (physical Avenger for example). You may think these low-DPH-high-frequency builds benefits more from enemies armor reduction, but the truth is, they don’t. Let me analyse it:

Let’s take a look at this Warlord. It has in total 124 physical RR and generally 3200% physical damage (count cunning in). There are plenty of 50ish flat physical damage. EoR is 47% weapon damage. Two medium physical defense bosses - Benn’Jahr and Kubacabra, whose %physical res is 22% and armor is 2274(in v1.2.1.6) is chosen as the target.

Damage before reduced by armor = 50 x 3200% x 47% x (1+124%-22%) = 1519

Enemies armor after Maul is 2274 x 65% = 1478 in v1.2.1.6, and 2274 x (1-17%) x 65% =1227 in 1.3(Feb 25).

If you attack Benn’Jahr, damage is 1519 - 1478 x 0.7 = 484 in v.1.2.1.6, and 1519 - 1227 x 0.7 = 660 in 1.3(Feb 25). That’s seems a very good improvement.

But if you attack Kubacabra, who has a constant 33% damage reduction, damage bofore armor will be 1519 x 0.67 = 1018. It is already lower than enemy’s armor both in v1.2.1.6 and 1.3(Feb 25). This means no improvement at all.

The environment is, there are hundreds of enemies in SR who has damage reduction and 33% is even on the smaller side. And Benn’Jahr and Kubacabra is not even an heavy armored boss.

So you can see in the video how struggling the Havoc Cadence Tactician was when there were Kubacabra and Iron Maiden at the same time.

OK, the season has been analyzed. Then let’s see what is the goal and what is the solution.

The goal of reducing enemies’ armor is helping weak physical damage (in v1.2.1.6) back in line. In more detail, help those a liitle bad ones a little better, and those super bad ones much better. Spellscourge for example, is an “a liitle bad one”, and Havoc Tactician for example, is a “super bad one”. Now the Enemies Armor Reduction did help Spellscourge and DW Warborn Warlord. It succeed an half. But It didn’t really helped the “super bad one”. And obviously, the “super bad ones” are those who has very fragmented flat damage or low-DPH-high-frequency builds.

Here is my suggestion:

Cancel the Enemies Armor Reduction. Instead, Reducing Enemies Armor Absorption to 55%-60%. By doing this, when your damage is higher than enemies’ armor, it has exactly the same effect as an 17% Armor Reduction. When your damage is lower than enemies’ armor in some cases, like most “super bad ones” do, you can really benefit from the change.

9 Likes
2

phy tactican lacks phy -rr, seems like, it has high weapon demege, but cut into many small pieces, then armur absorption debuffs dps a lot. It is an issue.
And I agree your choice, I havent found any powerful dw ranged build in recent version, while warborn set works well for wd melee cadence.
What about phy ranged warlord, it has more dot dmg not influenced by armur.

3

I have this old spec:

Played it just now, feels pretty awful in SR.

You need to gather 3500%+ damage on Phys builds to really cook.

2 Likes
4

Plus decent RR, and no monsters with high damage reduction.

5

Yes, I have already complained about “Physical damage debuff” existing seperately from total damage reduction and I think Zantai said he might remove it.

Not always. In our tests if you have enough flat/%damage you can overcome -rr% deficiency. Like on Spellscourge or Warborn Blademaster.

1 Like
6

True when the flat is as integrated as Temper, not as fragmentized as Havoc Tactician.

1 Like
7

I wonder when did Z say he might remove the “total damage reduction” on monsters.
And I think, if Z wants to keep some monsters’ ability to reduce characters’ damage, a triggered arua that gives % damage absorption is more fair than total damage reduction, because % damage absorption has the same influence on all types of damage while an unremarkable 33% damage reduction could reduce physical damage by more than a half.

8

He didn’t say that but at least Phys won’t have to deal with another exclusive type of dr.

Not a bad idea given how damage reduction ruins sustain on a lot of builds. And on phys negative effects kind of dr double and tripple dip with all the armor mechanics jazz.

2 Likes
9

I’ll have tests and feedbacks on armor changes this weekend.

2 Likes
10

Ow. Because doing so would be a royal pain in the arse to balance around.

But yeah, the equation for physical damage vs armour needs to sum up all physical damage first then measure it against armour. Because at the moment all physical damage based build loose tons of damage due to this issue.

Alas, I have no idea if it can be solved, I assume though it’s possible to do due to the fact it’s all code in the end.

1 Like
11

That would require a massive rebalance of…everything. It’s not just enemies benefitting from this. The player does too. Enemies have all sorts of additional phys damage sources on them. All enemy stats would need to be addressed. All player phys damage sources would have to be reworked also, because phys damage is naturally higher to account for armor eating up all the little bits we get. And while it would be a big boon for characters that convert other damage sources into phys (since the other flat damage sources tend to be a lot lower than physical and get more affected by armor when converted to phys as a result), it would also have massive impact on all builds that convert phys to other damage types. All phys damage sources getting nerfed to account for the armor change would mean converting those phys sources to other damage types that ignore armor would be much less lucrative. All phys-to-X builds would take a massive hit. Alternatively, all enemy armor would have to increase massively to keep phys damage in check without nerfing conversions.

That is A LOT of work, and for what benefit? If phys damage is underperforming and the goal is to buff it, it’s way more labour-efficient to simply nerf enemy armor/absorb in one sweep. In an ideal world phys damage would be summed up before being affected by armor, absolutely. It should have been like this from the very start and phys should have been balanced around that. But it wasn’t. Making the change after the fact and getting it right would take an age.

2 Likes
12

A bit of an update: prime Physical builds - all feel great currently.

1 Like
13

Agreed. This is also why we are here testing and giving feedbacks.

Yes for sure. Some of them may need individual small nerfs for compensation imo. Need more time (and more guys) to test them.

14

Personally I think we are good on that :sweat_smile:

15

What are these, if i may ask? Avenger Warder/Archon? Custom Blitz Warlord? Devastation Battlemage? Warborn Blademaster/Warlord? Blade Ark Death Knight?

16

Haven’t tried Blitz or Deva this test patch, but yes to all others. Also I heard Octavius Warlord is really good (but not the way Crate intended it to be played).

2 Likes
17

I tried a few of my physical build, and what I got out of it was big hitter probably won’t see too big a difference ? Maybe ?

But I you’re playing something like a DW phys warlord, or in my case a build around The Anvil proc, a build wih low damage but high/numerous attack, then yeah numbers deffinitly feel way higher. On my Hammerdin-at-home, them hammer are dealing quite a bit more damage now.

19

Here I am!

First let’s review the most important changes in the latest patch.

This is a global buff to all physical build. Thus different types of builds are tested. It is very gratifying that some poor physical skills that were not able to play before, feel much much better now. Here are some examples.

The fisrt thing is the Havoc Cadence Tactician listed at the beginning of this topic. Now it’s not hard to it to do a sub 5 SR30-31 run. Sub 4:15 is still hard though. It’s pretty much there. Here I’m gonna show you a 4:45 run as a reference.

The second thing is the DW EoR Warlord listed above. It’s condition now is very similar to the Havoc Tactician. Also a 4:45 run will be shown here.

Besides, I also tested something that was abandoned for a long time. Physical FoI Paladin (Paladin, Level 100 (GD 1.2.1.6) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator) was also playable now. I remember it was fine before the armor-bypassing fix but after that it went into a trash bin. Now it’s SR30-31 time is 4:15-5:15. This is not very fast but can meet the expectation of many players here despite of top speedrunners.

Something that is not offically supported, physical (not-retal) DE, is also playable. I built a DK (Death Knight, Level 100 (GD 1.2.1.6) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator) and used it for tens of SR runs. The fastest run is 3:55, and in most cases it’s 4:30ish. Single target damage can’t be called high but AoE feels good.

Based on these performances, I should say the armor and armor absorption changes are very successful. It helped many very poor physical builds playable, and they’re definately more than the 4 I listed. Good job.

However, some top physical builds, who were just fine before the armor absorption change, now have the risk of being OP. In my mind there will be Avenger, Spellscourge, Warborn, Octavius and maybe something that I missed. I didn’t have enough time to test them all but I do have tested Spellscourge Battlemage (Battlemage, Level 100 (GD 1.2.1.6) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator). Here is the result.

SR30-31 - 3:30 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBsTrj0By1Q

5x SR30-31 - 19:51 (3:58 average) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpmYK4py0oU

SR time is about average 4:00. Damage is very very good. Tankiness is also insane. And the setup is very cheap. Only 2 MIs are needed. The double-rare MI weapon is a “Store goods”. Imo it will be a “top 20” or even “top 10” build. I think it can have a small nerf to balance. Blade Arc mods or Deva mods maybe.

As for

I don’t have enough time, but I believe @Mad_lee and his fellows have tested them.

By the way, since armor changes also affected physical retal builds, I would like to discuss them here a little. I have tested non-set WL (Warlord, Level 100 (GD 1.2.1.6) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator) and Stoneguard WL (Warlord, Level 100 (GD 1.2.1.6) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator) to see the difference. There are some results.

Non-set:

SR30-31 - 4:45 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-vBPCc-Avs

5x SR30-31 - 21:55 (4:23 average) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0zMHLbBQ-E

Ravager - 1:30 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2C9e9EzvV04

Stoneguard:

SR30-31 - 3:17 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8G_mb8j1eo8

5x SR30-31 - 20:54 (4:11 average) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9hO2dap0MY

Ravager - 1:03 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8u1v6fg9LNY

Their damage is still mid-tier level, but thanks to 3 mobility skills their SR time is not ugly. Non-set one is healthy. Though a very poor Ravager killer (though imo retal builds should at least be mid-tier ravager killers), non-set one is not a slow SR runner now. Average will be 4:30ish. Stoneguard+Final stop combination has better damage than non-set one. It can sometimes achieve super fast SR run depending on how easy it can gather enemies together. Overall both of them are OK. Nothing need to be done to them, at least to the non-set one. Stoneguard can have its proc buff cancelled, if there has to be a nerf.

4 Likes