Global flat working twice for DW and once for 2H needs a radical solution

Grim Dawn Ideas and Feedback
1

This is one of the strangest problems in the game’s balance. It’s been danced around for years, it’s been patched with random big TDMs for 2H weapons, Savagery and Fire Strike transmutors, specific big %WD bonuses for WPS on 2H items, specific big WD% numbers in 2H granted WPS (Shadowflame Mantle, Sigil of the Infinites), inflated bullet count for ranged (3 bullets for Chilling Rounds, 2 bullets for Pyroclasm, 8 bullets for Storm Spread, 6 bullets for Jaxxon).

Every new patch - another new crutch. All because dual wielding weapons gives you double benefits from all global flat numbers to all skills that use both hands. So every 2H build needs a little smth to compensate for using only 1 hand. It’s similar to only one component for 2H weapons problem, but at much larger scale.

Maybe at the dawn of the Grim this idea worked: you get much larger 2H base, but benefit once from global flat, and it somewhat evens out.

But since then the game has evolved and powercrept dramatically. Now your weapon bases are no longer the overwhelming sources of flat. And since flat is the main source of scaling for all WD% based abilities, it’s just much more fun to use DW builds, the progression is much more satisfying.

With the new Berserker and its Onslaught DAR addition, with powercrept numbers, we yet again see a million of DW builds and like three competitive 2H builds that only work because of the “crutch” mods they have.

This problem, as old as the game itself, will keep popping up and requiring new batch of crutches. But will forever limit the gear you want to use for DW or 2H and leave gaps between progression enjoyment.

Is there a way we can find a radical solution for it in 2k26? The FS, Savagery transmutors and occasional Cadence TDM mods kinda hint the solution: every WD% based attack with 2H needs an inherent 15-20% TDM. After that you can start removing those crutches, and the global balance should become much easier.

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2

Would increasing the BASE damage of 2-H weapon fix that to a point ?

I get that flat added damage can overtake the total damage output of the weapon, but if 2-H weapons had more base damage, it would become a viable option for a source of more flat when you cannot stack that much otherwise.

Right now a basic white level 94 sword has 78-128 damage
The equivalent 2-H sword has 234-436 damage, which is between 3 and 4 times as much.

Would buffing that difference even further help ? Because it seems like it would have already been done by now if it could fix the issue.

3

It’s just another patch, not a long term solution. Flat applying once for 2H makes this entire layer of scaling underwhelming for 2H builds.

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To further illustrate what banana means let’s take an example and get the middle values of the flat damages you provided:

1h = 103. 2h = 335. Here 2h is 3.25x better than 1h.

Say you add 100 flat damage. Now 1h has 203 flat and 2h bas 435. It’s now only 2.14x better than 1h.

Now we consider dw instead and now you got 406 flat by using two 1h weapons and it’s now almost the same as 2h. The more flat you add the less advantage 2h gains over 1h and eventually dw will overtake 2h.

And that’s before taking into account the flat damage on the skills themselves.

And we haven’t even talked about attack speed yet.

So yeah buffing 2h base values is still a buff but it’s not a big of a buff as you’d expect. Banana’s suggested tdm buffs improves 2h by whatever that percentage is regardless of how much you add/remove to it elsewhere.

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5

Do not forget about just one component for 2H…

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Banana did address it. I forgot tho

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7

An inherent TDM bonus for 2H WD attacks could be a much cleaner solution. It would reduce the need for patch-specific crutches and make 2H builds more competitive with DW without constantly adding new modifiers.

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There are a couple of examples in this current patch that illustrate banana’s point well:

  • Exhibit A: Veilwalker I made recently. Absolute beast of a melee, hardest hitting 2h melee ever probably. 16 seconds Ravager and 25 seconds Callagadra. Metric tons of flat, insane weapon damage modifiers on both wps, it practically has everything.
  • Exhibit B: “just another Pierce Reaver”, not even Dranghoul Blade one. In fact, wearing white weapons this time, made by @x1x1x1x2. Same 16 seconds Ravager. Over 2 times less flat. Worse wps mods.
    Sure Reaver has more OA and crit but its OA/Crit advantage is not even close to what it lacks in flat and extra wd to wps modifiers. Not to mention Veilwaker has better procs, has dot, has increased max attack speed and even a super chonky Bone Harvest cast (because of the free 9 Onslaught stacks it has).

Worth mentioning that Avalanche - absolute goat of wps hits 4 times with dw and only 2 times with 2h. And on top of that transition between Necrotic Edge and Avalanche on 2h is sorta wonky because of the animations or who knows why.

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  1. Add Components, which are “exclusive” (limited) to 2H weapons only. The only question is, if everything should be multiplied twice, or e.g. 1,5x or 1,75x is enough.

  2. Any 2H bonus should be weighted / checked, if the values are optimal against any similar 2x 1h solution.

  3. Specific dmg conversions (not general ones, but all tied to skills or auras) - on anything, what you can wear only one instance - it should be 50% (find the other half elsewhere) or 100% (complete conversion). 2H items - it should always have 100% dmg conversion. Putrid Necklace is a great example to show weirdly designed conversion - ELE → ACID - 45% Why? Why not 50%?

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I find this post very appropriate to discuss a huge problem with ALL balance discussions in this forum. It started with an actual issue (flat on dual-wield) but highlights many other issues. Let’s start with the obvious:

  • Reaver is a combination of classes that both excel in cold/pierce AA attacks and dual-wielding, so it has an inherent advantage. Necro is multipurpose and the secondary class in this case.
  • Berserker and Onslaught is the factor that multiplies the underlying issues (common knowledge in this forum)
  • Reaver is single 100% WPS; Veilkeeper is roughly 50% + 50%. There is an ongoing discussion about whether single ~100% WPS is the real issue. Some very prominent forum users are adamant that 100% is not a problem. Others (including me) are not sure.
  • Now the real issue: Reaver is 2x targeted ascension rerolls plus multiple double rerolls on a common item to achieve a specific affix/prefix combo. This is NOT negligible to the final damage output of the build. The other has a simple +8% +8% bonus.

Now to the real issue: We are talking about a marathon of playing time to reach this niche build. I doubt most players will put the resources into such a build. And if you do, con-fucking-grats, You have a 24s ravager toon; I have a 50s ravager toon but also have my 10s of hours saved.

Now the final issue. With FoA, GD stashing has created a large gap fantasy and non-fantasy toon discussions. I would even argue that this may create issues for players visiting this forum, being either disappointed by their results or ending GDstashing their way into glory. All fine by me, their are just playing a different game. But at the end of the day, the whole self-righteousness when discussing balance leads me to believe that part of the community is “rubbed” the wrong way.

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lol /10chars

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Yes, ascended affixes need to cost less and they should be trimmed down and made easier to get.

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I do not think that should be the conclusion at all.

The current system is fun if I play the game normally. It gives me something to reach for, something to keep me interested in playing my characters longer. I will never reach perfect ascended affixes, but who cares? The possibility of getting good ones makes exploring feel very rewarding.

The people GDStashing…

Yeah, this. Just let them play a different game.

But I’d hate for the balance to be changed and a fun element of the current game to be heavily toned down to fix balancing of impractical theory builds or GDstashed ones. If ascended affixes became just another step in levelling that adds minor bonuses, it would kind of ruin the point of the system for me.

(None of which relates to the original point of two-handed weapons being less easy to make good builds for, I agree with that one.)

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14

I don’t think that Reaver requires a “marathon” to be made. I think white weapons should be super easy to get. You find one with one affix you need, try to roll the correct ascend five times, if it doesn’t happen, discard and get a new one, once you get a desired ascend, roll a second affix that is rare. It needs six wps ascends (apart from weapon ones), it has four legendaries, doesn’t seem unrealistic to me.

The problem is power disparity between some wps. I think rolling 100% one wps is fine, as long as it’s a proper time/resource sink.

I don’t even know what’s that about. My gd-stashed builds that I post on forums are often more realistic than self-found builds that some post here. At the same time if someone goes for some gimmicky Ravager kill record with a super fantasy build, why not.

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I don’t think that Reaver requires a “marathon” to be made… It needs six wps ascends

Nah, don’t dismiss the six ascension costs and the added penalized reroll cost for affix/prefix. Things can get really ugly, even for ashes stock. And ofcourse if you start, you are not going to stop at 90%; you will go full 100%. I doubt there is a single player eager for such a resource dump for a “common” weapon lol.

The problem is power disparity between some wps. I think rolling 100% one wps is fine, as long as it’s a proper time/resource sink.

Yes, this, also point economy and finally equipment restriction for possible conversions of a 2nd WPS. Since i don’t think that Crate can restrict 100% to specific skills, i think only sollution is capping at ~70-80%.

I don’t even know what’s that about. At the same time if someone goes for some gimmicky Ravager kill record with a super fantasy build, why not.

I am all for ravager gimmicks :D. Please don’t take it the wrong way. As I said, we play the game differently. You play it like a puzzle, others like the grind challenge. The issue with the 2nd group is that they don’t like 1st group (some times referred as “the elite” or “council” lol) getting ahead of the curve, especially in balance discussions. But in the end, since Crate is OK with both groups, so it is what it is…

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My reports tell that those common weapons are easier to get that some rares. But I need more data from my fellow legit grinders to be sure.

This fabricated “conflict” is getting tiresome. I don’t remember if we (top20 builders) seriously referred to ourselves as elite or “council”, I think some people call us that and then also get mad at us for being “elitist”.

But to stay on topic people who test and play more builds and have more experience do have better understanding of balance compared to some legit grinders who play 2-3 homebrew builds. No reason to be mad at that, that’s just how it works.

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I think the abrasion stems not from such people having more experience, but rather their focus being more towards “Optimal test scenario” performance.

For example, nerfs to skills or items that impact the casual player’s homebrew build because the min-maxers found it to kill Ravager 0.1 seconds faster than they deem acceptable.

Something that I personally experienced was the nerf to Will of Fate to remove its 100% passthrough because Fire Strike/Primal Strike builds were doing too well in Crucible with 100% pass through weapons (PS was more using Vortex of Souls, which also got hit at the same time)

So a weapon I used to help certain builds with leveling and create some meme builds with ended up being gutted because of some stupid Crucible times.

In regards to the thread itself:

Is it at all possible to just make 2h weapons get double benefit from flat damage?

Then there’s equal parity between 2h and DW flat scaling (Leaving just the AS, component and WPS disparities to deal with)

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I meant bloated ascended affix pool. Resistances should not be there at all.

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The issue here is that there’s a lot of WD% sources in the game, aside from DARs, and most of them hit with one hand, so for a generic build, especially for a leveling build, with some procs and some gear granted cd skills 2H will instantly become superior.

2H and DW balance seems to be alright during the leveling right now, it’s when you are hitting 94-100 lvl version of your build the difference in scaling becomes more and more apparent, and you gradually lose fun scaling your 2H build.

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Wouldn’t the same thing occur if you just slapped on TDM to all 2H WD% attacks like is suggested in the initial post?

If leveling balance is “Alright” and then you shove 15-20% TDM onto 2h, then it also instantly becomes superior (Especially lower levels where flat damage is scarce and in incredibly small values).

With 2h getting double flat like DW does, they gain equal scaling and you can try and lower 2h’s base to compensate in order to provide a similar power curve.