[Feedback] Stormrend and 1H lightning melee issues

Grim Dawn Ideas and Feedback
1

Stormrend allows to use Thunderous Strike while dual-wielding, and both hands hit on every strike.

Making a DW build around this weapon, you run into two major issues:

  • weak stats on the weapon itself
  • peculiar support of lightning melee in general

The weapon itself, aside from common +%dmg, only has 4% cdr and +1 to two masteries both of which aren’t the best support for lightning DW: NB doesn’t have lightning RR and its WPS potential is wasted, Inquisitor’s only perk is Censure which blocks Shaman exclusive, and it doesn’t have attack speed.

Usually having low bonuses on one mandatory weapon is not fatal for DW. But here the second issue comes into play: it’s very hard to accumulate enough lightning flat for 1H. Not just with Shaman or any particular class, in the whole game.

On top of that, all the lightning flat and many +%dmg bonuses look like 1-XX and X% chance to deal Y% dmg which makes the dmg output very unstable. Your hits often make a series of low RNG rolls, which means you have periods of very low leech rate, and no amount of safe abilities can save you.

For reference, this is the only stable and competitive lightning DW char i was able to make:
https://www.grimtools.com/calc/JVlGYBj2
And i tried A LOT of items and class combos. It took 21% leech rate, very odd skillset and 4 MI items (with one mandatory rare suffix) to bump flat output to the point where you can tackle the hardest content without high risk of dying. None of the combinations with the main lightning mastery, Shaman, worked for me.

Back to Stormrend. The easiest way to show that this weapon probably isn’t working for DW as intended is these two builds:
https://www.grimtools.com/calc/d2joKAqV

This one is a product of long optimization. Tried Vindicator, Elementalist, Warder. Conjurer is better due to healing ability and strong res boosts. Still it’s very unstable, hardly survives in Crucible. I also tried this version: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/0V0LP6RV with strong MIs to cap AS and increased defences at a cost of % dmg. Somehow it dies even more often.

And here is a wacky cold build, on the base of my other build.
https://www.grimtools.com/calc/lV7lXawZ

It’s unoptimized (the set is meant for AA build), it doesn’t have capped PS and Torrent conversion. Health is low, phys res is low, AS is low and tooltip dps is good deal lower than its lightning counterpart. Yet it’s faster and survives better.

So unoptimized cold build which uses a lightning dedicated weapon is better than lightning build made around this weapon. Both are tuned to have competitive dmg output. The cold one has more wiggle room to boost defences.

Both builds show that DW PS spam allows for high dmg output. The strikes feel strong. But it’s melee, it needs sustainability. Even 20% leech is not nearly enough to make a sturdy lightning build.

In my opinion, Stormrend in vacuum is almost good for its unique perk (the Stun Jacks mod is useless though, there are much stronger weapons for it). Maybe 10-14% additional AS will do. But 1H lightning melee in general needs uplifting. I suggest the following:

  • split flat and dots between Brute Force and Stormcaller’s Pact to have no impact on 2H build but boost 1H with smth to leech off
  • boost flat on Flame Touched and maybe on Steel Resolve with the same lightning value as fire/phys
  • add a Shaman amulet with good flat bonus. Currently there is zero leg. lightning amulets with +1 to Shaman skills
  • Review some of flat bonuses on gear to make the values more stable. I understand it’s thematic for lightning dmg to be unstable but for melee it just makes lightning 1H unplayable

Share your opinions on the matter. Do you have strong and sturdy 1H lightning melee builds? Or do you think there must be other changes?

8 Likes
2

I agree with this. I want to add that with Thunderous Strike nerf last patch Ultos builds became much less stable in terms of adtch. My guess is that that value - %total damage modified - somehow affects adtch as well.

Another note, Arcane Mines take time to detonate. Meaning unlike with other types of RR where you can just jump into the frey and activate RR almost instantenously and have high damage and high adtch (and in the case of Cold, lowered monster’s OA) right from the get-go, with Lightning build you have to wait an extra second before RR kicks in (that is even if a mob steps on it).

While it’s bearable when playing a caster, with a melee buld you have to facetank a non-debuffed mob anyway meaning your Ghoul or Prismatic or Blast Shield can go off earlier and you won’t have enough left to finish the fight alive.

By the way, that is also a reason why melee Aether is so sub-par (especially after that Corruption nerf).

2 Likes
3

I also suggest buffing Stormrend. The weapon is weak itself and lacks stats; also CD PS is quite memish. I suggest adding 14-18% of attack speed, totally removing the -CD to PS and adding, say, 4% phys res so 2 Stormrends could compete with Ultos’ Stormseeker.

Also there’s a problem that masteries except Shaman don’t support lightning much (and 1h lightning especially). While theoricrafting my dw PS, I ended up with elementalist as it’s the only option that has both AS and 2 RR.

1 Like
4

Forgot about that, good catch. Arcane bomb is the most annoying part of lightning melee. I wish it was acting like Rumor and Eldritch Fire even if it meant lower -% res value.

1 Like
5

Still trying to get my hands on one of these, but these changes sound reasonable.

6

I would buff Ulots set for CC res and changed phys res on Ultos axe and gave at least half of it to 4 piece set bonus. Stormrend is clearly meant for cooldown PS and practically everyone wants it to be for non cooldown PS. I don’t mind either way. I would also give back lightning RR on Aether Corruption. But on the other hand changing everything so that it can cater to very small group of Crucible runners is just bad in general. Does every type of build have to be able to do sub 6 min crucible and SR75+? I for sure can enjoy builds that don’t do it.

7

That’s not a question for me to answer but for the devs, as a part of the definition of balance. In here the “type” is 1H melee. It’s a very broad type and it’s not competitive in the endgame.

8

I like both mods for PS and Stun Jacks and don’t want them removed. I would not mind some AS for non cooldown builds, but I don’t find it necessary. Cooldown Stun Jacks can melt things really fast with electrocution. You make broad statments like it is useless because it doesn’t do what you want or because you have not tried hard enough. I have not yet seen any build with cooldown Stun Jacks using Stormrend. So I am not sure your claim is based on anything. On the other hand I remember @Superfluff in this thread saying that it melted dummy in tests really fast. But I agree that lightning melee needs buffs in general.

9

As you see, my statement is supported. For cd Jacks you take Spark of Ultos, it’s superior. I did make a Jacks build with it, as well as tested a build of another person.

Your statement, however, is quite arbitrary. What makes you think you know if i’ve tried anything or even that you know my reasoning?

10

I took it because it is months old build. And I take things because I want to use them. Not necessarily because they are the best thing to use. Well the statement in that thread from Superfluff says otherwise.

11

I didn’t mean “you” as you in particular because i didn’t see your build before. I meant “you” as a person who wants to make a strong build with cd Stun Jacks.
Your statement was arbitrary by definition: you can’t know another person’s reasoning.

Anyway, this topic is not about Stun Jacks mod but about 1H lightning melee and Stormrend as a part of it.

12

Looking at values for Thunderous Strike before and after the change, 26/16 Primal Strike went from effectively 192.7% weapon damage to 174.2% weapon damage (((320 - 85) x .82) to ((320 - 60) x .67)).

Overall an approximate loss of 9.6% of the old’s total weapon damage.

On topic, I still don’t get why people keep trying to make Stormrend and Thunderous Strikes work together when the weapon is clearly not designed for it.

+1 to Nightblade is sort of odd, it really just has Stormserpent and the Shadow Strike Conduit going for it to enable some kind of Electrocute Trickster with Primal Strike/Shadow Strike rotations. It won’t set any records but it’s a novel idea nonetheless.

I do think the +1 Inquisitor is kinda out of place though, personally would rather see that as ether a +1 Demo or +1 Shaman. Not to say that Inquisitor can’t do Electrocute but it needs a lot more on a weapon than just sticking +1 to the mastery on it as shown by Raka’Jax.

4 Likes
13

I tried (on paper) to make a build around Stormrend and ended with a Druid and Trickster, which seem okay…till I looked at the abyssmal low Attack Speed on both of them. Both would use Savagery as AA and Primal Strike without Thunderous Strike, but I don´t think they would really work though Trickster has strong Health (18k).

14

…

actually DW spark+ render on DW PS + SJ elementalist is devastating SJ. So not so supported

15

It saves zantai from having to nerf items by making them underpowered to begin with. I tried to make stormrend work but everything i came up with just looked kind of weak.

16

What does this even mean? endgame competitiveness in an offline singleplayer focused game is quite arbitrary.

17

This arbitrary competition is the reason why many of the old timers are still here though. But that’s not what the author meant to begin with anyway. Build options are “competing” against each other for the given player to use them. Stormrend wins some points with “IT’S PS ONEHANDED, WEEEE”, but apparently performance-wise it’s significantly behind the alternatives, so it loses.

7 Likes
18

But in the ens There Will be only One dual wield meele build that is best anyways and One build that Will be worst

19

Sure, but a situation when there’s a handful of good performing dual wield melee builds is better than when there’s a top performer and nothing comes close. It’s just a question of how big the pool of these reasonably strong dual wield melee builds should be, and the gap between the best one and the worst one in that group.

6 Likes
20

Anyone can make as build as bad possible. How is the worst build gonna be defined and by whom? Has the dw PS builds been tested pushed enough as it is or can we already make some improvents With existing items?