I did a couple of CR runs, one was ~5 mins and death at 170 and other one was also death but on 160. Nothing to write home about, Even from 2 runs one can see some glaring issues with the build:
very low % damage despite huge cunning dump.
quite bad overall damage output - you have Grenade for some small aoe, BT for AoE and BS for AoE too but problem is that BS do literally nothing and damage from BT is meh. Chillspikes pretty much fail to sustain both your life and energy leech due to very low wd.
bad defences. you can get some HP but phys res is low, set itself has poor resists and HP, also no useful stun or slow.
energy issues. build can pretty much run out of mana even in buffed Crucible, and even with Harp proc the energy regen is lower that filler skill requires.
not sure what could be done except buffing values here and there but any kind of love would be appreciated.
Energy regen on the crossbow would be welcome (some other 2h ranged weapons have it).
Replace %crit on 3 piece bonus with %pierce/cold/frostburn. Grenado really doesn’t need more crit damage and Horn already has a crit modifier built in the set.
Either slow res, stun res or phys res on shoulders (instead of DA?)
to clarify the build’s problems a bit more, I recorded SR75 run with it. Didn’t finish it cuz was frustrated and couldn’t kill Grava.
as you see, build has very poor solo damage output, mana issues that are just horrible and easily dies to a normal boss. this probably speaks for itself.
best run in CR was 5:19 with very good muts and spawns, others were either deaths or sth like 5:40.
in SR completed sr75 and quit.
Videos go below:
so, the problems are still here:
build has very little damage, both solo and aoe. Grenade feels like it needs extra 50k damage and extra 1,5 meter radius to start being a decent aoe-skill, Blade Spirits do nothing. Seriously. one can probably take them out and will not lose anything. this is clear in sr75 fights where they do very little damage to Benn’jahr.
energy management. it still sucks. Chillspikes consume a fuckton of energy and barely leech back (both energy and health) so you run out of mana just by spamming your main skill only. feel like build needs like 20 extra flat regen to be decent at it.
still squishy against crowds and solo.
what I suggest?
add extra energy regen to the weapon, increase existing values. decrease chillspikes manacost value to like 55 mana cuz you just can’t sustain with them. it’s hilarious.
improve mods to Grenade and BS. the former needs more aoe and flat, the latter … the latter just suck. even add like 3 extra of them and they’ll still do nothing probably.
please write what you think about it and what can be done.
Tried my setup tuned for dmg (barely survives buffed Crucible):
Breaking 5 mins with it is an achievement, that is if you don’t die.
Grenado is atrocious skill that only ever worked once, with one set that had its dmg like trippled and then it was still a secondary skill to Canister. Grenado needs its base area at least doubled to even consider using it.
The build has no %dmg: set’s % dmg is very low, no usual %dmg set bonus. 2H crossbow outright has %dmg lvlv of 1H weapon. Why?
The build needs extra: health, energy regen, phys res. And when it gets all of that in huge amounts it maybe become a lower end viable build.
In general the whole idea of this combination of set and weapon (and it’s obviously inteded) needs a lot of extra love because two of 3 skills of it contradict each other: Blade Trap freezes enemies in place while Blade Spirits wants them grouped up. Pretty much the same situation that Deathguard had with its BH and SS “antisynergy”.
Can’t agree more with banana. The latest buffs to the pierce part of the set were almost about nothing and it needs buffs in some serious amounts to become at least somewhat viable as an endgame build.
Now it has too many flaws, like
energy regen. Chillspikes consume so much and restore so little that you run out of mana in SR while fighting normal bosses, not dven resistant ones. This part alone makes the build uplayable.
BS are the weakest part of thus already bad concept. They’re slow, attack in close proximity and basically useless unless you mash Pet Attack button or rush into trapped mobs.
Grenado needs an umph. A big and serious umph, as being a 40-point skill it’s still way worse than nerfed canister that also needs less skillpoints. In this case in drastically needs radius and fat flat, maybe wd even.
curious, if you guys dont’ mind indulging me and my inexperience, why no canister?
too piano, to few points to make worth?
last i tried a rimetongue blade trap scaled like ass so i stripped a bunch of points out of it and i got more dmg elsewhere (tho it was ofc also a “me”/silly build)
all the vit dmg on Devouring blades is lost, it gives some 80% additive pierce% dmg
you get 0.5sec duration and 0.5m radius and 5% DA shred for the last 10pts to hardcap BT itself (last i checked the OA/crit scaling of those 5% DA shred it was super minimal),
and 118 flat pierce/sec
even without extra conversion from another item, you get 195 pierce *15+% tdm, and whatever frags hit target again, providing a higher dmg/sec although in a potential smaller area
is the .5sec extra duration necessary for max trap res enemies, or too clumsy/unreliable with canister, or just too piano/slight dmg tradeoff not worth filling between 2 others and chillspikes in the end?
It should be 60 energy to match the cost of Stormfire and Chain Lightning.
Originally CB had a cooldown of 8 seconds or so, which made the identity of Grenado as something you could throw significantly more frequently. Lore wise it made sense since CB should take longer to prepare. Now that CB has a cooldown of 4.5 seconds, the identity of Grenado is somewhat in question.
Perhaps it’s time to return back to that “slow canister, fast grenado” dynamic by reducing Grenado’s base cooldown to ~1.8 seconds and having sets such as Barrelsmith and Rimetongue further reduce that. We already can get Doom Bolt and Reap Spirit to about 1 second base cooldown or so. Why not Grenado?
To that end, the current proposed changes in 1.1.9.7 would actually be in the opposite direction. Instead of trying to be stronger and fatter like its big brother CB, Grenado should embrace its previously nimble identity.
Now of course I realise that a more frequent Grenado would mean less frequent usage of WD spam skills. So indeed, WD being standard on Grenado could be one solution to that.
Another approach, specific to the Rimetongue set, might be to add substantial amounts of health regen % to Flame Touched. Probably 60% or so. That would make it more viable for cold builds that take Behemoth.
Speaking of antisynergies, you want to be close for Veil of Shadow to take effect; yet the point of BT is to stay at a distance…
The problem is not the dmg numbers per se. It’s the whole gameplay. I always try to look into the set design and try make feedback accordingly. Deathguard has some big antisynergy in BH and SS intreaction but it worked out in the end. But this pierce Sabo part of Rimetongue makes me just scratch my head.
You have Blade Trap that freezes enemies in places, scattered.
You have Grenado that needs them grouped up. But it also scatters them with knockdown, and they get frozen by the BT, scattered.
You have 2H crossbow designed to go with the set that has Blade Spirit mods. Blade spirits also need enemies grouped up.
To round that up, you have enemies frozen behind obstacles that eat all the Chillspike projectiles and the grenado, too.
Everything is so unbelievably clunky, unsatisfying, infuriating. I had to pick up Bat and bind the best procer to it to even have a chance at survival.
And for all that you get a build that in the most dmg oriented version finishes 1 out of 5 buffed Crucible runs with 4:45 on the clock.
Honestly i don’t know what feedback to even give here. Everything about it feels anti-GD. We have meme conduits. But i don’t think we should have half-meme legendary sets.
The biggest takeaway for me, playing this, is Grenado. Skill’s dmg seems fine or almost fine now (aoe is only satisfying on buffed Rimetongue. 5.5-6m needs to be for all dmg types). The problem is dmg application. Travel speed needs to be at least doubled. A projectile skill cannot have velocity lower than speed of some enemies. And the animation speed of Grenado is also lacking. Too often it gets overwritten by Chillspikes.
Here’s my 2cents about this build. Been playing it the last couple of hours and this was close to my best run with it. Out of 30ish runs, 70% of them were failed ones due to the build not being able to sustain. Energy regen levels are still not enough to keep chillspikes in the game (for SR) also chillspikes really have a bad time sustaining HP pool (think they really need adtch like acid purge). Other than that, i strongly believe Blade Trap needs its cooldown reduced by 0.5 seconds and pierce damage increased, Grenado also needs a bit more cdr (-0.3 more on the set and -0.5 on Gildor would be ideal) because its extremely clunky (sometimes you really need it off CD and other times when you don’t you get 3x resets). And as @banana_peel specified, travel speed for projectiles really needs to be increased too. Last but not least, i stand by the suggestion of adding +2 demo skills to gildor crossbow too, as points are pretty tight, resistances are tight too and the build can really use some extra points in phantasmal armor for the extra energy leech and resistances. Cheers!
I think a lot of the pain using Grenado could be alleviated by drastically reducing its cooldown. The best experience I’ve hard with Grenado has been using Mythical Adversary, and yes the lifesteal is a huge part of the build but so is the cooldown reduction. By having less downtime between casts you inherently rely less on the reset RNG; when it happens, it comes as a nice damage bonus rather than the “holy crap where have you been I’ve been desperately needing you the past 2 minutes” kind of deal that happens with some other grenado builds.
Rimetongue in particular I think needs more cooldown reduction because on Saboteur you have two skills that need to be used in conjunction (Blade Trap and Grenado) but have differing cooldowns. By having both skills’ cooldown at 1.5s or less you can keep a consistent rotation during fights: Blade Trap then Thermite Mines then Grenado and repeat. Also by reducing cooldowns you would hopefully remove the reliance on Chillspikes, which IMO contributes to the clunkiness on a set that relies on too many active skills already.
Finally, non-elemental Grenado builds need some serious buffs to make them more viable. Compare the kind of modifiers you can get for fire Grenado to the ones for vitality/aether/chaos and you get the idea.
Vitality Grenado suffers from single-mastery vitality RR, how adding lifesteal modifiers + an RR mod for Bloody Pox and Guardians AND adding bonuses to Shattering Blast?
Chaos and Aether Grenado have literally nothing going for them, how about adding cool modifiers like vastly increased target area or vastly increased cooldown with a huge total damage modifier?
As for Gildor’s Pulverizer, please switch the bonuses for Shattering Blast to High Impact. It’s a pierce item, it doesn’t use dot damage… and there aren’t High Impact bonuses available for pierce gear.
For pierce builds: perhaps binding Living Shadow to BT might help for sustain? Just a thought.
For cold builds: another strategy for sustain might be to focus on fire to cold and lightning to cold conversions and get some good investment in Ulzuin’s Wrath. So something like this (not a complete build): Saboteur, Level 100 (GD 1.1.9.6) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator. Also using Chain Lighting instead of Chillspikes helps with energy leech. Again just a thought.
Tried, doesn’t work, instead we lose important stats from the other devos. Also i wanna point out this aspect too Saboteur, Level 100 (GD 1.1.9.6) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator
… Every single time you end up with mediocre % damage, bad hp, oa and da, while struggling to fill in resistance gaps.
