GD:Cornucopia v0.3.2 - Epic Items, Components, and More!

Grim Dawn Modding - Projects
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@Doom: Hey, don’t worry about it man. The tone of that post gave me the idea that you’re walking on eggshells a bit, but it’s really no big deal.
The components in GD aren’t that powerful to begin with (compared to TQ’s Legendary versions and their completion bonuses at least), so this is insignificant in the scheme of things.
The players will just have to shuffle their resists and augments a bit to get the same results.

On an another note, I wrote an article about my DW Cadence character in the mod discussion forum, feel free to take a look.
Cadence is really quite good right now, and the “WPS + Cadence = bad” thing is no longer true.

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Not walking on egg shells. I just appreciate the input of others and know what it is like being a passionate gamer and feeling a bit frustrated when the game goes in a seemingly strange direction with no explanation. (Not a jab at Crate, they’ve been more transparent than anyone should expect in development, more about past testing experiences)

Good to hear about cadence. I feel like shred may be too weak in the late game though.

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Shred at first glance is a 5% dps increase IF you land all projectiles. And only on the cadence hit. But it also neuters the dot which means it is likely a slight dps debuff barring procs.

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on fighting form and it’s trans mute there is a tag not found may be on my end but I will recheck it today

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This will be fixed in the next hotfix.

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Stormtrap bug. The effect shows up but seems to have no way to be triggered? It just says ‘passive skill’ or something of that nature.

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Problem found. Will be fixed for the next hotfix.

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Guys, we could really use some testing help on cadence.

It’s currently in a place where I’m happy with it (well once the next hotfix with my changes drops). Happy does not mean finished or balanced, it means it is in a place where I feel that incrementally I see a clear path to it becoming balanced in all its forms.

I need people to build lvl 85 cadence builds specifically these 6:
Elemental 2hander melee
Elemental dual wield ranged
Elemental 2handed ranged
Physical(with any amount of pierce) 2hander melee
Physical(with any amount of pierce) dual wield ranged
Physical(with any amount of pierce) 2handed ranged

You may notice shields missing but that’s because 1: Shields are already OP survival tools in the game, and they’re fine/potentially too good as is. I rather make the above 6 more even with each other and then re-evaluate shield cadence builds.

Ideally I’d like melee cadence to clear heavy targets better but be slightly worse with large groups (since ranged gets projectile piercing on its multiple projectiles). I’d also like to dual wield and 2 handed to be relatively close in performance. I’m wondering if I need to tone down the flat physical damage on cadence and up its weapon damage for this… as well as potentially increasing the weapon damage on all 2handers a bit further.

Also a request from Ceno (and myself really but he brought it up just now to me): Please tell us all the times you’re one-shotted with as much detail as possible. What do you think killed you? What was your max hp, resists, armor and DA? Any other info you think is relevant. This will help us reduce this when we get to 0.4.0.

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Particularly what the skill that killed you looked like, if you can describe it. Granted there’s usually a lot of shit flying around at once, so don’t sweat it if you can’t figure it out, but try to describe the enemy that killed you in that case. Thanks. :slight_smile:

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When you say ‘one shotted’ do you mean a true ‘that skill did 11k damage holy shit!’ one shot, or ‘my life bar went from 11k to 0 faster than a human can react (ie ~0.5 secs)’ type one shot?

Cause I haven’t seen the former lately - other than one doom bolt to the face of a char who made it to act 4 ult with 8 chaos resistance…I consider that more my fault than anything though.

The later I have seen through capped resistances - I waded into melee range of mad queen on my summoner, 11k health full cap’d resistances. First hit takes me down to 9k, I pop Blood of Dreeg back to full, then she does a quicky melee swing and splat dead. Although I know what killed me, the hit crit me (1.7k DA) and she had her legendary claw, so I got proc’d to boot. Boom - insta death. Oh an 900ish armor w/ no extra absorption, if that matters.

Joke is on her though cause I play softcore - now it is my claw muwhahaha!

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Generally looking for the high-health to 0 kind of one shot, in my opinion, as frequent small hits from multiple enemies is entirely avoidable on the player side of things by not biting off more than one can chew. Having said that, frequent hits by one or a couple enemies that very quickly result in a character’s death (i.e., the Bolvar ‘shotgun’) are also of interest.

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I haven’t run into any one-shots yet on Cornucopia that I considered unfair, and I brought around 4-5 characters to 85 on HC.
I think the most dangerous enemies are the ones that reduce your resists, especially bosses that spawn in packs like in BoC. The floating sorcerer types, that is.
Not sure if its because their ground AoE attacks stack for massive damage, but those are the main ones I see as a threat on HC.

The charging boars can be dangerous too when they spawn as bosses in a pack, but usually you can see them coming and separate them somewhat.

Oh, and the golems that sometimes spawn next to the lower Spined Cove entrance: their boulder throw attack is super telegraphed and the boulders move slow, but if you get hit by them, you’re toast. :stuck_out_tongue:
I kind of think they’re fine though, because they’re so slow so they really shouldn’t hit you, but it’s the kind of thing that might surprise you for the first time.

I think some of the terrain ground damage hits really hard too, particularly in Hargate’s Lab and at the Deadman’s Gulch quest area.
Personally I like the idea of forcing the player to position themselves better, but sometimes they tick for a lot of damage.
Not sure if it’s because they can crit or if there is a lot of variance in their damage range, but I’ve actually died once in a while because of it on SC, even through a pot.
I think it would be good if that damage was more predictable or if it was reduced by their respective resistance.

As for Cadence, I played with my 2H ranged Elemental build for a bit and I think it’s in a pretty good spot.
Its single target damage isn’t as good as it used to be, but its clear speed is better because 3 hit Cadence > 5 hit Cadence for that character’s attack speed.
Your suggestion for lower flat damage and higher % damage on the skill is a good one, but I don’t think it needs to be too drastic.
It would make the DW builds weaker too, which is probably a good idea since I consider them slightly too strong at the moment.

If you want to make 2H better, maybe it’s an idea to add some AS here and there on their Augments, since their main issue is low attack rate, which sucks in a game that is based around triggering chance based things as often as possible.
Particularly on the ones that don’t give HP, I usually find those unappealing for that reason. With some AS on them, you get to choose between 2 very important stats.

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Hotfix v0.3.2G

The primary intent of this hotfix is to act as a stable ground to move forward into v0.3.3. Unless there are major issues with the mod, this will likely be the final hotfix for v0.3.2.

Links in the first post are up-to-date.

Bugfixes:

  • Corrected base attack speed updates on a number of weapons which missed it during our initial pass.
  • Fixed a bug which kept Blitz from being unlocked at the proper tier.
  • Fixed a bug which kept Stormtrap’s skill from proccing.

Itemization:

  • Prismatic Diamond - Prismatic Rage now activates at 55% health.
  • Silvercore Bolts - Racial Damage refocused from the base item onto the granted skill. The item retains some Racial Damage as it did before, though at a reduced potency. The granted skill is now significantly stronger against Chthonics.
  • Components with Resistance Auras can now only be used on Weapons, Amulets, and Medals. This change is not retroactive.
  • Components with Attack Damage Converted to Health can now only be used on Weapons and Rings. This change is not retroactive.
  • Sanctified Bone is now a Chest-only Component and has had its Racial Damage reduced to 10%, from 12%. It now grants flat Chaos Damage as well. If it is comparatively too weak relative to its new neighbors, say so and it may see a buff for v0.3.3.
  • Roughly halved the crafting cost of Oleron’s Blood -> Severed Claw can now be crafted via an Aether Crystal and 2 Chipped Claws, resulting in a completed Severed Claw rather than a partial component.

Class and Skills:
Devotion:

  • Magi affinity rewards changed to 2 Chaos and 2 Eldritch.

Soldier:

  • Fighting Form - Rescaled additional melee targets to again favor Ultimate investment.
  • Shred - Damage penalty reduced to -58%.
  • Discord - Elemental Conversion heightened at all ranks.

Demolitionist:

  • Ulzuin’s Wrath gained 33% Damage and applies a movespeed slow to its affected targets.
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Had a quick look with my 2h battlemage.

Still no good weapons, really.

Aether greens are blah, wrathmourne’s proc is still ‘on receive crit’ (why?) temporal arcblade is still naff.

Much better than vanilla - Corn’s Reckless Power boosts go a long way - where its a atrocious and you can get up to 14k(!) dps with constructed bis gear, but its a ways off still.

It was that way back in 0.2 with just the Arcanist changes, its somewhat better now.

Well, that and the other issue being none of the attack replacers are very attractive when you’re trying to pump out as much aether as possible.

You don’t really have the points for a good Cadence investment, even with the extra 3 from Path, and likewise with Blade Arc its not noticeably better DPS than Beronath, and Beronath is noticeably sub-par when you have jack for %AttackSpeed on your 2h weapon.

That and you get no CDR or %AttackSpeed going Aether on Arcanist, so you’re shafted either way, as an attack procs make a big part of your output, and even with the base attack speed changes it feels slow.

So, like in vanilla, your best way to trigger your procs is CT and you spend your time wondering why you didn’t just go full CT.

Also, in vanilla I already needed IEE 14/12, with the 54% energy leech from Fabric of Reality 14/12, AND 2 Arcane Sparks to keep energy use manageable; in Corn the energy leech on FoR is gone, I’m chugging pots like they’re soda, and its no fun.

I don’t have a DW melee aether to base myself off of, but:

  • At a glance mindwarp is still terrible - the proc is terribad for DW because its 100% chance and triggers both weapons at once, and the proc’s conversion is useless even in vanilla where you reach 100% conversion anyway.
  • The proc you added to EIE helps, but even with the base attack speed changes, having no %attack speed on your weapons on DW means its dead in the water off the starting line.

Keeping in mind DW Aether in vanilla is in an even worse place than 2H - Fire/Aether and NB don’t syn well, EIE has no pierce; even with Manifestation its no garden of roses.

Not sure what to tell you - its certainly a lot more viable, but there’s a ways to go. Instead of 5% there we’re 50% there, which is a massive change in a relative sense but going nowhere in an absolute sense.

Given that we’re getting an Aether dungeon - with presumably associated Aether gear - I’m not sure its worth doing more work on this, much as I’d like my BM to be viable, because its effing hard to see numbers when there’s basically no gear for the build, and you’d have to do some unspeakable things to existing gear to make it fit.

As it is, even with Manifestation available, the 2H build is better off with Fire gear where possible and not using manifestation, because available competing Aether gear - with like 3 notable exceptions - is so obviously caster.

Outcast’s Wrath Chest/Shoulders + Manifestation is worse than Ulzuin’s C/S and no Mani, for example.

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^Well we are getting 28 new legendaries, so we’ll see.

But I’m not sure if you realized that we personally haven’t touched legendaries yet. We’re doing that next, in 3.3… so hopefully that’ll do something but otherwise I agree with you. glad we’re 50% of the way there I suppose.

Thing is that Arcanist was designed to be a caster, and as a result I think a weapon based aether build just isn’t a very real thing yet. A couple tweaks I’ve had in mind for cadence might help a bit though.

MI and faction gear will be looked at too, but given that they are easily buyable they shouldn’t be that strong any-way… I concur that that kind of build may not be a thing until we add more items to it, or another class.

Some builds just aren’t ready to exist enjoyably yet shrug. Thanks for the feedback though, it was nice food for thought.

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Oh, there’s a couple of places that would help in leges (and epics) I’m just not convinced it’s worth doing more than a sanity pass on them until there’s more gear.

I mean, the proc on wrathmourne is plain atrocious - the skill is good but the trigger condition kills it - arcblade and immaterial will get nowhere without attack speed, that’s some fairly easy changes.

Empowered Soul’s Touch will become a glove option if they get resistances in 1.0.0.6 - right now they’d be fine except for that, so you can probably leave those alone and see what crate does.

But the only non-caster chest is the outcast, there’s the MI shoulders but they’re nothing to write home about, no amulet except iskendra (which doesn’t fit) there’s a medal that would be perfect but for some reason it boosts CT ( a %wd skill ) AND the granted proc requires a tome - anti-synergy hooh! … Its very much a mess.

It’s just grab some low-hanging fruit and wait to see if we get gear.

That would make melee aether build at least kind of useable if not optimal.

Making them good though, that would require systemic changes, which is a mountain of work and not really worth anybody’s while right now.

I would suggest making mindwarp useful as a minimum, since a sword/board cadence battlemage already kind of works and an aether version would also work if that weapon didn’t suck so bad.

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I haven’t played stand-alone Cornucopia in a while, but… I’m sure the new Sanctified Bone is a strong as a chest component compared to the competition - at least while undead/cthonian areas are relatively popular places to go. (I’m still concerned about how I’ll balance resists in the end-game with no SB on helm, but I haven’t played a version of Cornucopia with that implemented yet).

Via Grimarillion… Fighting Form feels utterly thankless, as it does in the vanilla version of the game, going from 1-12 to pick up the third target. It’s either one point or twelve, no value between is meaningful. And 12 feels like just too many for that effect. I’m sure thankless point sinks like that are part of the reason Cadence fell out of favour in the first place.

Upcoming legendary changes. One of the reasons that DAIL is appealing to me is the affixed items (epics, legendaries). It is not because they’re powerful (and sometimes they’re ridiculously powerful in that mod), it is because there’s a reason to keep hunting items. Collecting the right legendaries empowers a build, collecting legendaries with useful affixes perfects the build. And even when a character is really strong there’s a good chance there are still better rolled legendaries out there worth hunting.

For me, at least: it would be more interesting to have weak legendaries with minor affixes than retuned/stronger overall legendaries. I can only find a retuned/strong legendary once. I can find an affixed legendary dozens and dozens of times (even if the power level isn’t quite so bonkers as it can be in DAIL, or the mod that system comes from).

A less extravagant idea would be legendaries having variable numbers with quite a large range, so I care about looking at the stats on my next Deathmarked item in case it’s a great one. Perhaps this is too many years of Diablo 1/2/3 talking.

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Or we’ll just make MI’s competitive and (read: slightly stronger) than their legendary counter-parts when you get good rolls on their prefix and suffix :]. Also we’ll make them slightly rarer in some cases. Fighting form should no longer be thankless for 2handed melee now, at least. Will keep looking at it but sometimes we can’t really make everything universally appealing without tons of redundancy and the loss of flavor, or so I believe. Bad legendaries are being improved in the next big release so rounding out resists might not be as hard in some cases.

I agree on your point though. I’ve had my eye on Fighting Form for a while, and I am incrementally tackling cadence. It’s getting there.

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For what it’s worth just some kind of gentle progression. Maybe an extra target every 3 ranks (but starting at 0) or every 4 (starting at 1). Unless I’m missing something where Cadence hitting an extra target at rank 12 is serious power creep, but I don’t think so!

I saw the celestial-type effect for 2H Cadence, that looks really nice but sadly didn’t fit my build.

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  • time passes. sounds of frustration are heard. then “Eureka!” *

wc2r3oFh.jpg1024×747

Mind you, that’s still a good 15k DPS off what you can get with cadence in the base game, but at least you can do Ult with it now.

So, 75% of the way there?

The numbers look good but its a seriously 1-dimensional build.

Still, my opinion remains the same - with no gear supporting the build its hard to see how much is masteries and how much is gear, so I’d just grab some low-hanging fruit on the legendary pass and leave it at that.