So do you think it’s balanced? Because it’s stronger than any other skill with designated item sets in the game currently.
If its a roo powerful skill for current use, then shift the power on those item sets elsewhere. e.g. reap spirit and doom bolt on clairvoyant, adjust skill point bonuses, do I need to spell it out to you?
Homogenizing the building process will do us no good.
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What you said made little sense, sorry. First you stated that skill is not “overtuned it’s just different” because “power of the skill is primarily with the skill itself”. So basically you said “it’s ok for a skill to be that strong, because it’s strong by itself, not with the help of the items”. Which is actually what homogenizing the building process. Everyone can build around one overpowered skill.
Grim Dawn is not about finding one overpowered skill and adding stats to it. It’s about figuring out right item combination, devotion map, skill distribution, balancing offense and defense. AAR requires none of those things.
Interesting first two votes, presumably mine and yours was damage should be adjusted and then hit’em with blanks 
A fine example of why design doesn’t happen by committee. 
8 Likes
@nery I didn’t vote, because I’m not sure what’s the best way to nerf AAR.
Skills with 2-3 “nodes” should NOT be vastly superior to those with 0-1.
Why not?
Each skill node is literally the equivalent of a scaleable skill modifier
Some thoughts…
In general: nerf the conduit from 24% to 20% wpn dmg.
Aether: Halve flat dmg to AAR mods and lower the stats on the full set buff proc on Clair. Nerf Codex (flat mod and rr proc, maybe remove +1 to Necro). Its power comes from op gear and abundance of skill points to spend in overbuffed now arcanist mastery.
2. Lightning: make the amulet convert only 40/60% fire. Lightning AAR power comes from 100% conversion. Maybe also nerf the flat dmg mod on the green dagger.
3. Fire: conduit nerf would be enough
4. Chaos and cold: no nerfs needed.
The oupiedness of AAR comes from huge flat (and crit dmg now with op levels of arcanist oa). That flat comes from mods/conversion on gear. So, I’d see the gear nerfed rather than the skill itself as I like its identity as a high crit oa-catalyzed channeling powerhouse open to many different setups and dmg types.
But I think it’s the skill (mastery) that’s gonna get the bulk of nerf. Z sometimes seems to be reluctant to nerf top gear maybe because (I surmise) the player needs to feel the excitement of the power surge after getting the right gear. So to nerf the oupies, at times he nerfs masteries, and the weaker builds suffer.
No, lol. It’s an example that people love to put on an oupie char from time to time in a single player focused game.
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This isn’t fair to aether DB
Because then the number of useful skills will decrease by 2-3 times. Or developers would be forced to grant 3 modifiers to EVERY “main” skill.
That’s where itemization comes in.
Single node skills usually require >5 items dedicated to it in order for it to perform.
Even skills like storm totem and SBoE cannot single handedly carry a build.
I agree with this sentiment. There is a fair bit of gear with triple digit (100ish) OA and %bonuses. It’s pretty crazy right now. I think skills could be a little more independent.
Yet it is hard to track down all the possible items of influence.
but then is it fair that skills with 4 nodes and whole sets dedicated to them as well as RR from both masteries feel very underwhelming compared to AAR? Yes, you are going to say, buff those skills. But you can’t be buffing everything to the level of one oupie/overbuffed AAR. Power creep is already strong in GD.
yeah but
I think, AAR is so powerful because its absurd (at first glance) energy cost gets trivialized with certain items.
Take my current lightning AAR build as an example. No investments into energy regen via devotions & items (aside from “of Insight” mod, which grants massive damage boost regardless). It even uses non-caster helm and chest. Obviously, AAR was designed as a skill with insane energy consumption and therefore has superior DPS. But since it’s so easy to trivialize AAR’s energy cost (be it Clairvoyant set or massive amount of items with energy cost reduction), players invest everything into damage and tankiness. Using AAR feels no different from using cheap skill like RF, Cadence, etc.
As for “dedicated sets” - most of those are rather meant to make “trash” skill/element combinations somewhat viable.
And yes, i still think there shouldnt be a major difference between a skill with 1 mod and a skill with 3 mods. If a skill with 3 mods deals 2x more DPS simply because it HAS 3 mods, it is absolutely UNFAIR. A skill with 1-2 extra mods might get a few extra power comparable with 1-2 extra random secondary passive skills, and something like 50% more power wont be healthy.
3 Likes
Crazy? OA has diminishing returns so you never get a situation like PoE has, where characters can have 90% crit chance with 7x crit mutiplier.
Many builds still struggle to get even 3k OA… And even if AAR build gets 4k, it’s still wont skyrocket DPS too high. Dont forget - Arcanist doesnt have RR.
And yet AAR just destroys. I have managed to optimize Sorc far enough to squeeze out 5:44 Crucible time.. It’s a lucky run, yes, but you can’t deny that sorc is a bit too much given her stats/gear (I mean usually spam caster with that DA and armor might have a problem, but not this one)
another solution is to decrease the range on AAR
It will. This has been proven by @thejabrixone’s iskandra TSS. It depends on how much crit you’re stacking, and arcanists have crit 4 dayz
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You can’t homogenize something that has been completely homogenized. Every build is: pick skill, pick a set that supports the skill, everything else filler. always flat adcth, or wd granted adcth.
Skill distribution? That’s funny, with a heavy softcapping system skill distribution / breakpoints is a solved issue, more or less the same per mastery combination aside from outliers.
Why? cause every main skill needs the power of skill modifiers granted by sets. And sets generally focus on one damage type (they can do two if they don’t do conversion, letting you pick one that fits you).
On the other hand, having unsupported but strong skills lets you do other things. like focus more on support skills that you always softcapped before. And even there you need some support, as you generally need to hardcap your main damage skill, harder to do without dedicated boilerplate set solutions.
it’d make sense if each skill modifier node would be optional, not mandatory like today. Then you could have skills with 0, or 1 modifier be as strong as those with 2-3.
Why? Because at most you’d be maxing 1 modifier. That way an 1-modifier skill (like aar, or sigil) could be as strong as any other 2-3 modifier skills, because the optimal ways to max their effect have the same cost.
What about 0-modifier skills like storm totem and horn of gandalf then? You can make them strong with lots of skill modifiers. The cost of getting them up offsets their power by making it hard to impossible to power up other skills through gear if you focus on a 0-mod skill.
also dropping in skills like: bloody pox (3 nodes), word of pain (2 nodes), spam dee (3 nodes), judgment.