[Feedback] Pistol based pierce, Oathbearer, RF?

[eardianm]

Revisited my first steady SR farmer today after @Monceaux was trying to work a piercing gunner paladin in discord. Reviewed my previous build gaffs and my lack of grabbing every flat source I could, and ended up with this:

https://www.grimtools.com/calc/1NXDE9ON

GT Damage w/ all procs

Pros: Can facetank at least through SR65-66 full room without a care in the world. Don’t have SR75 unlocked on that character but guessing it won’t be quite as carefree there

Cons: Everything else? Damage is awful despite full elemental conversion and physical to pierce, you’re likely to fall asleep before the boss room dies

You can work greens or slight tweak to get RF up to 24/16 for the final charge, but it’s not a difference maker. You can dual wield Oathbearer but you take an attack speed hit that can’t really be made up, making the damage difference a wash in my experience. The other piercing % pistols don’t provide anything useful (Bloodborer) or are also extremely slow (Myth Slugger)

Possible to squeeze out some a bit more flat by going mixed gear. Valdun set looks like the play, but all the extra flat pierce only applies to 2 handers. Belo is all melee and NB based so relevant skill bonuses disappear.

So, couple issues I think I see, and relate to what I mentioned in class balancing thread

• RF just feels very bleh for ranged unless you’re trying to cram in all the retal you can. Maybe that’s the point of the skill, in which case changing Oathbearer to Savagery instead of RF so you can at least take advantage of extra damage in the 3rd node may be slightly better. Otherwise feels like the damage bonus to RF would need to be higher (or passthrough, or some other AoE effect). Ultimately both Savagery and RF feel miles behind firestrike or primal strike for ranged and don’t have easy options to boost their damage significantly. They don’t even feel better for single target, which could be an interesting angle.

• Pistol pierce gear is lacking, and any time I’ve tried to build non-SR I usually find larger resist or skill bonus holes that make the trade off from SR not worth it. I’m fine with SR as a set, but this further compounds the damage problem. Belo for melee and Valdun for 2 handed range both toss a boatload of flat at the character to bridge the damage gap, but there are no options for the pistol life.

• Oathbearer is lacking. I don’t expect every pistol to beast mode ala Gargabol, but with no other changes it could use a significant damage bump. Caveat to this being I still need to try Tactician focus, but even there that could be handled by RF specific mod changes.

Thanks for indulging my love of Grim Dawn pew pew

[romanN1]

Tried that pistol too even in dual wield with several setups too. Its just bad at it… It feels like a blunt item, same case with phasebreaker.

[Monceaux]

I add my own feedback on the subject, focused on the Wrathguard case :

Wrathguard isn’t the best option for what it is designed for : an auto-attacking Gun&Shield purifier.

Evidences :

• Build used
• Wrathguard
• Mythical Watcher of Erulan

Compared to a Watcher of Erulan, Wrathguard does have more offensive stats : 40 flat pierce, 80 OA, +1 demolitionist. Erulan, as a tanky and general-purpose shield, has a massive amount of physical resistance, some cast speed (which very slightly speeds up our skills rotation) and roughly the same amount of %damage and attack speed.

But results are more important, here are some Lokarr kills with irrelevant mutators and the same setup using the 2 shields, with capped stun res to reduce the stun RNG :

• Wrathguard
  • 24s run
  • 26s run
• Watcher of Erulan
  • 24s run
  • 26s run

I made a few more runs, both setups give the same result of 24 to 26 seconds to kill Lokarr (average around 25.5s for both), which is the issue : Wrathguard should be more offensive, but as it is right now it’s outperformed by Erulan, whom also brings extra safety (18% phys res! and some hp) for a similar dps.

Same result with a paladin setup : 28s average killtime with both shields, but this makes sense with the Smite mod on Erulan.

Wrathguard could use some more offensive mods or stats to make it appealing and not just a budget option until its better self drops.