Feedback for a certain mob / game mechanic, balancing (Shade of Elnadrin)

Grim Dawn Ideas and Feedback
1

Hello,

I’ve just found this game like a few weeks ago and started my journey…
So this is from the perspective of an experienced arpg player, though new to GD.

This report / balance suggestion is about the specific mob: Shade of Elnadrin,
which is required to kill for some quest (secrets of the lost), but more specifically about a certain game mechanic that produces unexpected results here.

Putting some thought into my first character, and using the resources available (wiki, grimtools,…) I had a pretty nice time playing through the full (base) game on normal veteran difficulty.

My choices were shaman+occultist = conjurer, with a focus on pets as I am lazy and like to spend most of the time taking care of the loot and not lowly tasks like taking care of the mobs myself. :smiley:

The whole game proved to be very easy on normal veteran difficulty, with no specific mob or boss being a real challenge.
Therefore it was all the more surprising to see that mob (Shade of Elnadrin) appearing near unkillable at first.
Especially as I went through that area earlier without any issue, and it only was a problem when I came back later at a higher lvl of 62, whereas, due to the area (and probably veteran difficulty) the mob was like lvl 71 or so.

I checked his abilities on grimtools and figured out his attack has a very high heal factor,
while the mob also had like 350k hp or so it would heal 25%-50% with one hit, and hitting every 2-3 seconds.
And despite my char working really well, that was just a little too much of a dps requirement.
I had to dismiss all my physical pets and slowboat kite him around while preventing him from hitting anything, which worked, but was very counter intuitive and very not in line with the rest of the game experience up till this point and beyond.

Side note:
The (official?!) discord server proved to be filled with immature people that were only good at being toxic and not at the game.
Also the name of the creator(?) of that discord server that is shown in the invite, is at the very least questionable.

Anyways:
I assume the main problem with this mob is the “Reduction to Enemy’s Health” component in his attack, in combination with it having a high heal multiplier and my char having (with mutators) at lvl 62 about 23k hp which resulted in this absolutely ridiculous healing amount.
And the multiple projectiles part was of course not making it better either (while I was using pets).

I am not against a challenge, I welcome them.
In fact, the game could have been a lot more challenging for a first play through, especially on veteran difficulty, and without simple tricks of just increasing mob hp/dmg and raising their lvl to +10, but instead providing some interesting mechanics, but that’s a different story.

Being “punished” for having a strong character with high hp,
and being expected to check the database on grimtools to find out what is even happening is kinda unintuitive to say the least.

I suggest some balance reworking here, not with the mob itself but with the attribute combo of its attack ability.
A limit/cap on either the amount of hp gained or the % of hp restored with one action should be in order, but I’ll leave the details to you guys.

And thank you for a really nice game!
This was literally the only major issue I ran into while clearing the (base) game and going from zero to lvl 62, which is quite impressive considering todays quality standards for games. :slight_smile:

2

Apologies for that. I was in the shower when that discussion went down and reprimanded the users that behaved immaturely upon my return.

I cannot speak to what username Max has now, but he is neither the creator (that would be “LlamaClub”) nor its current owner. Still, I suppose there is some affiliation tied to him.

To repost an answer to your initial query as given on the Discord server (after you left, which I did not see at the time of my response):

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Having said that, to your suspicion of Reduction to Enemies’ Health’s involvement, I’d wager it’s not likely. Damage done via Health Reduction cannot be leeched from (though it could still result in high damage if you’re unprepared for it!)

3

Welcome to the forum. :slightly_smiling_face:

The discord is not an official Crate one; it’s a community run discord.

Other people are going to want to see what your build is before they reply to you so to upload your character to Grim Dawn Build Calculator click the ‘import’ icon in the upper-lefthand corner. If you have cloud saves enabled (enabled by default) your save file will be in \Program Files (x86)\Steam\userdata########\219990\remote\save\main_{character name}\player.gdc

Otherwise it will be in \My Documents\My Games\Grim Dawn\save\main_{character name}\player.gdc

Then click on the ‘share’ icon and copy the link shown to paste here.

And yes, I know you said on the discord it’s not a build problem, but people are still going to want to see it to make sure. Many players have breezed through the game only to hit a difficult foe that caused them problems. It is usually something within the build which is why it’s a good idea to link it for others to have a look at.

4

Thank you for the detailed answer,
it is sometimes hard to get exact answers up to the very last detail of some mechanic.
Nice to see that there is an actual counter to this, I might actually run that dungeon again just to verify it.
But it would of course be even better if such information would be available ingame.

If the health reduction is not leeched from, then I wonder how it could ramp up to such amounts.
Again, I’m just giving feedback here, so if you (I mean whoever of you is responsible for that part) think it’s worth having a look at it, then great, if you say that’s intended, then oh well… :smiley:

So that would be the question here: Is that working as intended or subject to further balancing?

Again: The build is pretty irrelevant outside of it having (I assume) rather high hp for that lvl and …pets (which provide additional targets for the mobs attack and therefore addition leech), though even without pets and 64% vita resists it was at least 25% or so healing per hit.

5

Well I’m not on the discord so allow me to be toxic here…

Jk but honestly you probably have a scraped together build that isn’t doing any proper damage. A Grimtools link will be helpful.to.further diagnose. The game is pretty well balanced and all of the Quest bosses are pretty much easy with a proper build. Which no one expects you to have as a beginner ofc.

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I guess it would have been easy enough if I had turned off veteran difficulty.

The dps was enough so far for everything else,
I went to crucible 100 at lvl 58 and it was easy, never fell short on time either.
I’d expect effective dps to be around 50k with everything active, but the problem is that this means all the (melee) pets are active, too, which provides just too many targets for the mobs healing.
It had iirc about 350k or so hp so it would take me 7s at full dps to bring it down which is probably not too bad, but with the pets around it will just instantly heal to full every 2-3s making this approach simply impossible

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Here’s the link to the build: Conjurer, Level 63 (GD 1.2.1.3) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator

It is extremely tanky, my first char, but I tried to put some thought into it,
and it was so far very, very easy with it.

8

After having a bit of bad luck farming the materials, I was able to make the torment relic and test it,
and yes, that helped, the healing was not noticeable providing there was no other target to heal from than my char. :smiley:

On a further note to make it more clear:
The mob had lvl 71 with my char being 63 on normal veteran difficulty,
and it had 523k hp which is quite a lot compared to other “minor” hero mobs.
So I take no shame in admitting that I could not burst down those 523k hp while ignoring the heal.

Funny coincidence: maybe because I put some more points into the ravens lightning strike ability, it seemed he was almost permanently stunned while the raven was up.
I had to summon my other pets to let him heal up again (and then dismiss the pets again) to properly test if the torment relic worked.

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9

Glad you were able to defeat him!

Yes, Elnadrin, and the other targets of the Outcast questline, are internally scaled like full Bosses despite being marked as heroes. Been that way since Early Access, for whatever reason.

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10

Well, with none of your pets base skills, except Wind Devils, maxed I’m not surprised they couldn’t deal with him very well. Also many of your items don’t have any Bonus to Pets on them.

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All your pets are at 1 point. Of course you’re not doing any damage. I like the concept of your build, going for massive regen, stacking Taskmaster items… But to do damage you need to put some skill points into damage.

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12

i didn’t see it mentioned but as i’m reading it the core of the issue seems to be related to heal factor?

are you sure there were no healers around to actually provide him outside heals and that was the reason that he was almost unkillable?

I’m raising it not so much because of what mechanic interaction Ceno mentioned, but because it’s actually very common in Steps of Torment, and sneak heals have frequently been missed but also then turned out to indeed be the source of frustration

And even as an experienced player i’ve been bamboozled by it once or twice since making my very first complain post about “killing every boss in the game but this guy is immortal”, - thought i cleared thorough, but missed a single lone healer that hid in a corner or behind a wall, “ruining” my moment, forcing me to twice or thrice kill the boss (returning to try kill the healer in between)

and it would also fit because from my experience, despite having lifesteal(many enemies do), Shade of Enadrin was never a “dps check” as such unlike actual healer bosses or enemies with trash healers around

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13

Always destroy all skeletal priests with extreme prejudice before you do anything else… The heal so much, if you don’t do massive damage they can be a real pain.

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14

then you do
but you triggered a ground spawner passing by so a healer has crawled out the floor after you moved on, now standing ready in the area you just cleared :joy:

15

Skeleton Healers could be worse, they could be the Groble Healers and have 20000% casting speed healing.

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that’s because I just started that game and it’s my first char,
literally ssf and I’d say my gear is quite good considering that.

Plus the dps isn’t bad, you’re just looking at the pet skills but you overlook how other skills (mogdrogans pack, blood of dreeg) add fixed dmg that I further boost with other buffs.
As I said, with all buffs up and the primal spirit pet out, I’d estimate my single target dps around 50k, which is probably not bad considering my lvl and all circumstances.

17

but they are easy to spot and die instantly, never been an issue so far

18

Again:

I am ABSOLUTELY SURE there were NO healers nearby, I cleared the entire lvl with utmost thoroughness, also it was clear to see how the heals were connected to his attacks / the projectiles.
And it was without any doubt that it scaled with my pets:
Me alone facetanking him was only making him heal like 10% per hit, which is not too much but unfortunately, I’ve made it a pet class and most of my dmg comes from the pets, not even from the wind devils (see my other post why), so I was pretty limited in that situation.
As soon as I summoned my pets, they’d be hit by his attacks projectiles and his healing jumped from 10% to up to 50% per hit, bloody impossible to out-dps on a lvl 62 ssf pet class.
Then again as final test, using the torment relic (and having another 30% leech resist from devotion) his healing while just fighting my char without pets dropped to basically zero.
It is how I explained, no doubt about it.

Again: There is no doubt it was his attack healing, my pets lack of vita resists and his absurdly high healing multiplier for that attack plus the attack using multiple projectiles was what resulted in this.

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On a side note, against the boss of that lvl I’ve seen it a few times (yes I did that lvl several times for obvious reasons) that a skelli priest was spawned just outside the boss room but that, again, is pretty easy to spot and though annoying was dealt with quickly.

20

as I just explained in another post of mine, most pet skills may be low but they are getting both physical and acid dmg (plus a lot of retaliation dmg but I’m not counting on that), also note the added flat dmg to buffs on the shield, and then a lot of further buffs to boost that even higher (components for +% acid dmg aura and +% physical dmg aura)

The general dps is not bad, even though you would think it is without understanding how it works.