For the love of Tanks!

Grim Dawn General Discussion
1

Hi all, new to the forums but have 1500+ hours in game and most of it playing Tanks!

This new expac is gonna bring in what looks like an amazing tank class and amazing synergies with Retaliation damage and shields in that class but I’m really hoping there will be something to help fix the existing tanks that are out there.

For example, my main tank is a Commando with Retaliation damage as his primary focus. At the moment he can face tank pretty much everything and doesn’t even have his full sets yet (missing Markovian shoulders still, just had the worst RNG there lol) but when it comes to actually clearing stuff, he struggles. Especially against spell casters, even with Targo’s Shield Wall skill up for the massive damage reflect, it’s just too slow.

Now before anyone comments “get damages” or what-not, I love building full tank, my primary style of play is being almost un-killable first and foremost, it’s what I enjoy. I could lose the ret damage stuff for damage dealing stuff but that’s already changing the build to something I didn’t want it to be. I want to be a full tank and have things kill themselves on me, I love thorns style builds in any game, but at the moment it just doesn’t work.

I’m hoping the devs are considering giving Soldiers a way to outwardly deal the ret. damage on attack without having to change to an Oathkeeper hybrid, so that my old characters can be made viable as the ret. builds they are (I’m still planning to make a Warlord ret. build the minute the expac is out though haha).

The biggest problem with the build is that it has no real way of dealing AoE damage or dealing with hoards of enemies at once. Having ret. damage be an AoE proc when hit could work or just something that can give ret. tanks a bit of range. Giving Cadence a transmuter that changes it’s damage to apply retaliation damage instead would be another way to help that. I don’t know if these would be viable, I’m just throwing out ideas.

The next most major issue it has is maintaining threat. Having Warcry change to directly taunting enemies instead of just generating extra threat was great, but it still seems to only generate threat, and not enough at that. Now for most generic content it’s fine, but when running him in a Crucible 150-170 party he doesn’t have a hope in the Void of holding threat at the moment over the damage that builds at that level can throw out. Even using the threat generation on Markovian’s Strategem, Markovian’s Helm and the Hammerfall Girdle procs. on top of Warcry I can’t keep threat off my DPS friends.

This may be largely due to the lack of outward DPS that I do currently due to fully spec-ing for ret. damage and it being passive damage reliant on getting hit, but that doesn’t really help a full tank that isn’t meant to be doing huge amounts of damage usually. Personally I’d love to be able to maintain threat without having to sacrifice my tankiness for damage to maintain that threat. I’m happy to do stuff all damage as long as I can survive and keep enemies attention on me. I love being able to protect my friends full DPS builds and at the moment I cannot do that.

Now don’t get me wrong, tanks are amazing in GD, I haven’t played another ARPG that does tanks as well as these guys have and it brings me back to the Dungeon Crawlers of old that I could play full tanks in, but they are not beyond being improved. My current build uses most of the ret. Devotions and survival skills, full Markovian’s and Strategem with Pummeler, Thornhide leggings, Golemborn Greaves, Hammerfall Girdle, Menhir’s Bastion Relic and Colossal Grasp and maxed out Warcry, but as he stands he can’t quite maintain threat and can’t really be run solo due to all of his damage being ret. damage. I’m pretty sure I haven’t missed something that makes ret. better so I’m very much hoping they are looking to fix this for Soldiers and would love anyone’s input on this!

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My current build here: www.grimtools.com/calc/1NXp3ggN

Some of the skills have changed like Menhir’s Will because I just don’t need it but most are the same. Criticism welcome but constructive please, don’t be a douche about it lol.

3

You can still build a solid tank and deal 40k DPS. Your build seems way less tanky than my Witch Blade or Tactician and deals way less damage. It’s even hard to understand if you’re getting retaliation as damage or just damage as damage. You could do far better with your commando, having more OA and more RR. Right now, you maybe have some damage (approx. 20k DPS, looking at this build), but it drops down to even 5k DPS, due to the lack of OA. Surviving is a tank’s job, but if you’re building a tank right this one you’ve built, you either need to go to multiplayer and have something that deals damage in your party, or just re-build it and get some damage for your solo run.

The more you survive, the better, the less damage you deal, the worse. Some enemies build damage over-time, like Kuba, Grava, even small bosses like the aether motherfucker that has the shard you have to destroy, where Fabius also spawns, after killing that particular boss you can go to Twin Falls. You might reduce the damage by ~90%, but the 10 damage (after reduction) reapplied multiple times, over and over again, can build up up to 1k damage in some cases. I had a situation where my most tanky tank could not handle a guy with a spammable skill, even though my HP bar wasn’t moving in the beginning, then I was losing like 2k per second.

Building a tank in GD, single player, is not as easy. You might be successful on building defense, but if you can’t kill anything - it’s useless and such build should be either put into trash or re-built. While building a tank, you should have a priority, but not set it as main thing. For example, if you build an Infiltrator, you focus on damage, it’s your main goal, you don’t think about getting RR because you know you need it and you’ll pick it anyway. This is also how building a tank works, you don’t focus on RR or damage, but you do focus on defenses, but, of course, you know you need damage and RR in order to make your tank effective and successful.

4

Overcapping War Cry is kinda pointless, you get +1% dmg red and 0.6 meter radius.

And so is Squat tactics, you get +1% more attack speed.

Get more Fightning spirit instead?

5

tank retal is one of my fav builds and FG wil allow you do build hybrids. Keep in mind that there is a new mechanic comeing that adds %retal to some skills. FRom devotions to skills that you actively use. This will change the way you play/plan a retal build:)

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@USER_NAME_01 - The main point of my post is stating that someone building fully for ret damage and pure tank can’t also build for damage, with all buffs active I’m hitting 200k ret procs, but only if things are actively hitting me and all buffs are active at the same time. That build can tank literally everything bar Avatar of Mogdrogen, without having any worries. But solo it cannot deal enough damage to certain enemies to actually make it viable. But again if I rebuild it for damage it is moving away from being the tank I want it to be. It would be nice if they would make some changes to help the full tank players in the game in this way, but I may have to wait until the expac to find out what they have planned then. I don’t think it’s too much to ask to have a retal full tank that can actually manage solo is it? I’m not expecting it to be as good as DPS builds, but could they at least give us a way to manage it reasonably?

When playing in a party my tankiness is fine but I cannot hold threat from my companions who are actively dealing tonnes of damage, due to threat generation not being high enough of said skills mentioned to compete against proper DPS builds. It very much seems that the best way to hold threat is to do damage yourself and that doesn’t really have synergy with what a full tank is trying to achieve. You are right that solo this build cannot do it as it is, but he is good enough for party play. And no enemy has been able to kill me ever, solo or in party play, (minus Mog) but it takes me actively a good few minutes to kill things, but someone like Valaxteria takes almost 30 minutes (decided to try once, never again) to kill because she cannot proc retaliation damage and does not cast very high damage spells, or cast spells very often, so even the 150% reflect from Shield Wall proc doesn’t do much to her.

At the moment I am considering binning the build or forgetting about ret damage entirely as what I’m trying to do is just not working in the current state of the game. Ret doesn’t affect spell casters and without more threat generation it can’t really protect my friends in multiplayer. It’s un-killable, but useless other than that. There really should be something that can keep more threat on a tank because if I don’t have threat then things aren’t hitting me, meaning ret damage is useless in multiplayer. Warcry should be a guaranteed taunt, regardless. And until there is a way to deal said ret damage to things as well, like spell casters because they don’t proc it themselves, then ret cannot work as well as any other build in my eyes. I’m aware this all could change drastically come the expac though but thought I’d at least post to draw attention to some of the problems I think exist for ret damage or full tanks.

@malawiglenn - When playing a full tank and party support that extra damage red. on Warcry can count in clutch situations, and the extra range means I can taunt almost the entire crucible arena in one cast from the centre, and the extra att. speed of Squad Tactics actively matters for the people I play with. I max fighting spirit on most other builds but as a ret. build OA/crit/crit damage actively doesn’t affect retaliation damage at all (last I checked) and so it felt pointless. But now considering ret. damage just really can’t compare to other damage types and I can’t keep threat on me to proc said ret damage I feel switching away from ret damage and going for more OA/outward damage sources is my only option, but that isn’t what I wanted this build to be, which sucks :frowning: EDIT: I see what you mean now sorry, the overcap gives a total of 1% and .6 range, not 1% and .6 per level over, my mistake on that!

@Superfluff - I’ve been watching the streams and seen the devotions you mention but it doesn’t look like it’ll be huge amounts with those small percentages, but seeing it in action will likely change my opinion, and there’s been nothing mentioned about soldiers getting skills to deal ret. damage that I could find, so I fear my Commando linked earlier will never be able to do a ret. build and it will only be achieved by going Oathbreaker :undecided:
EDIT: Also super jealous of the Praetorians, I wasn’t aware of the opening’s til after they were filled/closed already and it’d be my absolute dream to be one haha.

I’m going to be playing a ret. full tank Oathkeeper/Soldier (Warlord) for sure when I get into the expac, but I’d like to know if a build like my current one will become viable or ever have something done to help it out, more threat generation would be nice (no idea why it would ever be ok that a full tank can’t hold threat…) but also some way to deal with spell casters that doesn’t revolve around them hitting you (as they don’t hit you that often) and just generally being able to solo clear in a reasonable time rather than as long as it takes currently. Diablo 3 just recently buffed their thorns build up into the top tiers and I’d love to see something like that happen here! I wanna see ret. full tank builds that can clear Crucible 150-170, in a reasonable enough time to maintain multipliers at least. So far I cannot find any in the build compendiums.

I’m also thinking of experimenting with the Stoneguard set again and just running 4 set of Markovian as that seemed to do more ret. damage and I was slightly tankier with it, but we’ll see what happens. Thank you for all your inputs! They are helpful even if some were slightly condescending in tone haha.

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You don’t necessarily have to sacrifice defense for damage nor be a pure retaliation build. This build I made few months ago deals 40k DPS with its own hits + 20 - 60k DPS if I receive enough hits. This is NOT a retaliation build, nor a damage build. It’s a tank that doesn’t die at all. The only possible threat might be Mogdrogen, although I’ve not tested how it does vs. him. My build, believe it or not, does more damage (I have way more RR than you) than your and is way tankier. I’m not saying your build is bad, it’s not, but it could use some adjustments.

If we’re talking about retaliation tanks, and you think I have no experience or anything, I’ve made one some time ago. 200k damage per hit received, 50% elemental RR, 400k damage when fully buffed. Ravager died in less than 5 mins (I’m now kinda curious if it was under 5 mins or actually way less). Again, my build is way better than yours, even though the resists are kinda bad. Constant ~1900 heal from Wendigo Totem (+500 HP regen) saves me from having shitty resists and I never had any issues with it. Even Ravager never made me lose less than 10% HP.

I do have experience with tanks, and even though I don’t really like your build I can admit it’s good in a way, but would be definitely better with some adjustments, for example RR, more retaliation damage. Also, don’t take my comments as hate.

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Nice GD-stashing :wink:

why no Deadly Aim?!

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What does that have to do with GDStashing?

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…

It will;)

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“I make better builds than you” and then uses GD stash is kinda funny. If one has access to those insane MI’s then it is of course not that hard to make something that is both tanky and deals sufficient damage. You build is kinda “impossible” in terms of rarity of items

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I never said I make better builds than him. And the retaliation build is self-farmed, the tactician has only rings stashed because I was bored of farming Gargabol. Also, Kuba’s legs were “of the fox” or some shitty thing till like two days ago.

I do like farming, you know. :slight_smile:

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I guess you did 20k Gollus runs lol

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I actually used GDTH to teleport, because fuck running for that guy. Now it doesn’t work for a few months, so I kinda were too lazy to farm like before. :smiley:
But actually, the first Gollus ring dropped either after first or second time (ye I almost got heart attack, lol). The other ring dropped like two days after I stopped counting, and I stopped counting after 127 or something, don’t remember now. I believe it was around 1k, because shit was rather impossible to get. Now I mostly GDstash his rings because fuck this guy.

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Few things we know are that Retaliation added to damage is going to be added to other non-Oathkeeper skills where it makes sense. Thus far, we know Counter Strike, Shattering Blast and Targo’s Hammer are getting it for instance. Possibly others through skill modifiers. Your Commando will have options for dealing with casters.

Coinciding with this, Reflect is being taken away from players as well (so likely we’ll get something to replace it in all of the places where it used to be found).

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I kinda forgot reflect is a thing. I mean, the only thing I remember that reflects damage is a reflective monster when I play my bleeding character. :stuck_out_tongue:

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@USER_NAME_01 - Saying “my build is way better than yours” is super insulting and super condescending, treating me like I don’t have a character that can do 150-170 just fine, and like I don’t know that this build is struggling, I’m well aware of that. Again I am well versed in the game after 1500 hours and have plenty of builds that work the way I want them to, this guy is just a problem for me because I want him to work a certain way and he can’t at the moment. Also your first build linked has 4k less health and 600 health regen. compared to my 2k health regen. so it doesn’t seem all that tankier from what I can see, but it does further my idea of wanting to try the Stoneguard set out again!

Your best point you’ve made so far is RR, which I think the best option I have for it is Assassin’s Blade devotion, because it gives a large reduction of Pierce and Physical resistance, but being almost entirely pierce/physical retal means there isn’t too much that can shred in Soldier/Demo classes bar Break Morale that I already have. I think Assassin’s Blade will work well but will have to get back to you guys after testing.

@malawiglenn - go easy, some people don’t have as much time to farm as some of us lol and some are lazier, I don’t hold that against them, but I do hold it against them if they talk down to people lol.

@ Superfluff - I’m super jealous that you know and I want to know so much more haha but thanks for giving me hope!! :smiley:

@Evil_Baka - Same as for Superfluff, thank you for the info and giving of hope!! :smiley: Sad reflect is going but hope that they are doing that because it’s just not needed any more after the expac, currently Shield Wall from Targo the Builder devotion was my primary source of it so hope something else gets added there haha.

Again thanks for the input guys, super helpful and giving me insights and things to think about :slight_smile: I seem to have missed a decent chunk of some of the spoilers though because a lot of this is news to me haha.

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Well, to be honest, I didn’t think about it when I was writing that, so sorry for that. I kinda followed my mind with trying to help, rather than trying to help and not sound like a dick. :rolleyes:

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I mean I do not mind that either, it is the bragging and shit that bothers me

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@USER_NAME_01 - Thanks for realising and apologising, very appreciative of someone who can own their mistakes like that :slight_smile:

@malawiglenn - that’s fair, at least call out their behaviour directly in the future rather than nit-picking their build/items or their chosen playstyle, gets to the point much quicker!

So after much deliberation I worked out something that looks quite a bit better: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/4ZDJDLQ2, and also realised I hadn’t turned off my buffs when balancing resistances on GrimTools and had like no lightning res without Blast Shield, so I fixed that and switched to Stoneguard and I like the look of it a lot more. The retal is actively higher with SG and very high physical retal which should hit harder when coupled with Assassin’s Blade proc. and the Stoneguard set gives better resistances than I had. The only noticeable drop was about 2k health and about 100 health regen. which should be fine, but will have to test out in game and let people know :slight_smile: thanks again for the help!