Grim Dawn Version 1.0.7.0

[adoomgod]

The problem with Elemental Cadence is obvious: it lacks gear support, and GD is such a game, where gear defines everything. So just leave Discord elemental as it was and add some dedicated equipment.

Elemental Discord means build diversity: you can build it around one of the three elements, make it duo- or tri-element. That depends on your gear and class choice. But frankly saying, gear choices are quite poor atm.

I’d say it’s slightly deeper than you’re thinking. The problem is that elemental damage is bad and thus it needs set support, not just gear support, to make work.

The reason is resist reduction. Having your damage type split into 3 makes it harder to get a lot of resist reduction for all of it. Focusing on one damage type makes it easier to acquire a lot of resist reduction. And you can’t just put equal amounts of elemental resist reduction into the game as singular fire/cold/lightning resist reduction or the elemental gear will start out-competing the fire/cold/lightning gear.

On the flipside if you just make a few really strong +%elemental damage pieces, it will STILL be better for a singular damage type because +%elemental damage boosts all 3 damage types equally, so you just pick one and ignore the other two. +100% elemental damage is +100% fire, cold and lightning. But +100 elemental damage is 33 fire, 33 cold, 33 lightning.

So Elemental Discord Cadence would probably require a set to support it, and even then depending on how the set is designed it might still end up being better for fire, ice or lighting cadence lol. Really. It’d have to be a restrictive set that uses up multiple key slots, like the weapon slot, the helm etc. And its elemental power boost would have to be loaded hard into its set bonuses as opposed to on the items themselves.

I was also resistant to the idea of the new Lightning Discord Cadence in the playtest, but I had to concede that attempting to make elemental cadence work… wasn’t working.

So none of this as cut and dry as it seems on a glance. Make Discord just add flat elemental to cadence? Physical builds will just convert it back via beronath sword. Make Discord 100% phys to elemental conversion? Singular elemental types will outshine elemental cadence every time, going against the very theme of the transmutor. And themes matter a lot to the devs, (with some good reason!)

That’s why my suggestion was to learn to live with this change and request an elemental cadence set.

edit

In regards of Cadence, I’m actually happy with this change, even though I’d love if that transmuter converted Physical for Pierce damage or other damage instead of Lightning.

In fact, I think flat elemental damage and (not the separate damage types) is a CANCER that needs to go, because it just makes it more annoying to build your character properly, since the damage is too spread apart, and it also makes your character lose a bit of their identity, like if you try to do a pure fire mage, but it ends up getting cold and lightning damage as well, due to the flat elemental damage.

See Belzak gets it. One really clunky thing you could add to the game is 100% of elemental damage converted to elemental damage. This would make it so it’s impossible to stack one elemental damage type, locking you in to true triple elemental damage. But the issue is this wouldn’t fix Discord.

[x1x1x1x2]

I understand that balancing the game is important, but I don’t understand the logic of changing the skill bonuses on the Octavius set from Word of Renewal–useful to any Inquisitor build I would think–to Rune of Kalastor. Can anyone explain what the point of that was? My level 100 character has now become a work in progress to find new gear or some sort of rebuild, instead of a solid farmer whose skills were enhanced by her gear.

I think this is a thematic change rather than a balance decision. We already know (from leaks and misadventures) that Octavius will support Aegis of Menhir for the future Oathkeeper class. Now the change to Kalastor is made so that you can use Octavius to build around all three classes that it supports instead of just two. If this change didn’t happen now then it’s still bound to happen on FG.

[DonnieDarko]

I think this is a thematic change rather than a balance decision. We already know (from leaks and misadventures) that Octavius will support Aegis of Menhir for the future Oathkeeper class. Now the change to Kalastor is made so that you can use Octavius to build around all three classes that it supports instead of just two. If this change didn’t happen now then it’s still bound to happen on FG.

Has anybody tried Octavius since patch? Mine was built around FW, so got hit significantly. I did one run with some points reallocated to 22/12 Kalastor, didn’t quite like it. This change + seemingly overal Crucible becoming more dangerous made my tactician suffer a lot.

[Victor_Brand]

I disagree. With old discord you’re stuck with dual or tri-element, never a single one. It’s easy to get 70+ conversion to a single element with 2h or 50+ with dw. Old discord is 33% to a single element which overrides all other conversions since it’s a transmuter. Also elemental cadence was already done by veretragna and that didn’t include discord (iirc he said it’s better without discord, idk why).

I’ve already posted my old build a couple of pages ago. https://www.grimtools.com/calc/O2GQzanZ

It uses an elemental weapon, so Discord is necessary to convert those small flat physical boni from here and there on cadence strike to power it up (such a small phys damage will be mitigated by armor anyway). I was also happy with flat elemental dmg bonus on Discord.

Ofc, that was not a top build, but it managed to take Glad 150. Now it’s no sense to use discord, and without it cadence dmg with this build will be lower.

I understand, the logic of discord was to take a strong physical weapon and make it a strong elemental weapon via 3 skill points. Alas, it’s a broken logic, and this will never work properly or “as intended”, because it’s against GD’s architecture. In GD, your builds are 100% gear-dependent. For elemental cadence, we need a dedicated elemental weapon or other items with elemental boni to cadence (smth like myth. voidsteel gauntlets or myth. blood sigil of ch’ton regarding FS).

[adoomgod]

Has anybody tried Octavius since patch? Mine was built around FW, so got hit significantly. I did one run with some points reallocated to 22/12 Kalastor, didn’t quite like it. This change + seemingly overal Crucible becoming more dangerous made my tactician suffer a lot.

Octavius was pretty ridiculous though in terms of tankiness + DPS. And wait till you see how it does in FG. It might need more tweaking though since the Kalastor part is pretty new. But for its damage output I think a tankiness loss is pretty fair.

[Fallengreat]

Reap spirit got a summon limit change, i don’t know if that’s intended or not. it would be nice to get that in changelog
thanks for the update anyway

[Zantai]

We will revert the changed to Discord with the upcoming hotfix.

Thank you for your feedback.

[thejabrixone]

We will revert the changed to Discord with the upcoming hotfix.

Thank you for your feedback.

Thank you for hearing our pleas, Zantai

While you’re at it, actually you can also make nex&Ortus supporting discord cadence.

Sent from my Redmi Note 3 using Tapatalk

[rombyte]

Zantai, can we also expect revert for “Word of Renewal” modifier on “Octavius Visor”? Because it’s kind of frustrating that entire Octavius set now focusing on one skill, much less vatiation for other builds.

[Paavo]

I disagree. With old discord you’re stuck with dual or tri-element, never a single one. It’s easy to get 70+ conversion to a single element with 2h or 50+ with dw. Old discord is 33% to a single element which overrides all other conversions since it’s a transmuter. Also elemental cadence was already done by veretragna and that didn’t include discord (iirc he said it’s better without discord, idk why).

Why even mess with discord then? If you can already do single element cadence without using discord why bother changing discord to a single element?

I’d say it’s slightly deeper than you’re thinking. The problem is that elemental damage is bad and thus it needs set support, not just gear support, to make work.

The reason is resist reduction. Having your damage type split into 3 makes it harder to get a lot of resist reduction for all of it. Focusing on one damage type makes it easier to acquire a lot of resist reduction. And you can’t just put equal amounts of elemental resist reduction into the game as singular fire/cold/lightning resist reduction or the elemental gear will start out-competing the fire/cold/lightning gear.

IMO the whole concept of resist reduction is dumb and its dual implementation in Grim Dawn even more so. I’m certain I lose brain cells every time “over-capping” is mentioned.

When did killing enemies resistant to your primary damage type at a slightly slower rate become a problem that needed to be fixed? Damn near every skill in this game has more than one damage type anyway.

Edit: whoops, I see that discord is being reverted. /Clap
Also, that second part probably belongs in rants but whatever.

[somnium]

Sorry for the rant but I’m a bit fed up with the current balance that gives a blank check to soldier immorality while continually removing the option for other builds.

For example its nice that AAR is boosted but with the changes to MoT and MoE these are pointless as there is no way you are going to survive with caster armor and with the tiny bit of life steal to AAR.
To use AAR on the Ultimate difficulty you need someway to facetank to survive, never mind trying to finish level 170 gladiator crucible.

Currently casters and ranged builds that need to stand still to do significant damage need to be able to fancetank due the heavy nerfs to cc skills on ultimate and the large amount of physical damage some monsters deal. With the continuing nerfs to MoT, MoE and Seal and aura of censure this is becoming increasingly difficult.

If you don’t want caster to have (near)invincibility via CDR MoT + MoE + Hourglass (A significant invested I may add). Or have Inquisitors seal + Censure and make it possible to facetank with lighter armor sets there needs to be other ways for such builds to facetank.
For example make a spellbinder set that is designed around AAR that adds a large amount of DR% as long as you channel AAR. Add more defensive buffs to the ulzuin set and other sets builds around ranged skills that require you to stand still to do good damage.

Then there are spell breakers and other more squishy melee builds, is there even a point in playing such classes anymore?
The game balance should not just revolve around kitting casters and tanky melee builds(mostly soldier builds).
/rant

[Victor_Brand]

Thank you, Zantai.

Personally, I’ve spent hundreds of hours trying to make my S&B fire cadence commando work, but it’s just a decent, not a top build. And what I do think about Discord and Elemental Cadence in general.

We need a dedicated set for elemental cadence with elemental RRs (around 25%, something like on Radaggan set). Perhaps, without weapon, intended to use it with vast variety of elemental weapons in the game. When you are building an elemental Soldier, the real PITA are elemental resistant foes, that’s why Discord Battlemage is almost unviable atm. Provided with such gear, we would be able to make a lot of builds: fire cadence commando, cold cadence blademaster, elemental cadence battlemage and tactician.

As for lightning, IMHO, it’s hard to outpower savagery with cadence.

[Strannik]

Zantai,

Could you please tell us when do you plan to fix flat damage type for Runed Dagger of Dreeg - replace vitality flat damage by acid flat damage?
Taking into account the set design and existence of this amulet it does not have sence to keep vitality flat damage as is.

P.S: Thanks for great work with patch!

Best regards,
Strannik

[Awsumpossum]

Changes to Discord are positive. At least we can have DW lightning cadence builds with full phys->lightning conversion rather than 50% in case of Tacticians.
I have one, will test how it performs now.

Ditto. I like the change.

[DonnieDarko]

Octavius was pretty ridiculous though in terms of tankiness + DPS. And wait till you see how it does in FG. It might need more tweaking though since the Kalastor part is pretty new. But for its damage output I think a tankiness loss is pretty fair.

Can you share some GT for a good FW Octavius? Can’t post GT as i’m writing from phone at work, but mine has full octavius, pummeler and fw burn conduit and damage is poor. 150k ticks is not good enough, rr is hard to apply to crowds, consistent mana issues, no proper adcth…

[MatMB]

the good point in playing unusual builds is that you generally get more buffs than nerfs. i always wondered why we had so much pierce reta and close to no phys reta, happy to see it change.

all in all it’s a nice holiday gift before the serious things start early 2019. can’t wait !

[veretragna]

We will revert the changed to Discord with the upcoming hotfix.

Thank you for your feedback.

Why? Oh no.
Could you please leave this conversion on some of the items? M. Crystallum should be great idea. Or M. Stormheart.

[Natt]

Another year, another MVP trophy for Zantai.
Thank you for listening the community.

[Zantai]

Why? Oh no.
Could you please leave this conversion on some of the items? M. Crystallum should be great idea. Or M. Stormheart.

Yes, we are adding Lightning conversion for Cadence to Stormheart and Stormreaver and buffing their mods to compensate for the loss of Discord’s flat damage.

[tsuelue]

Another year, another MVP trophy for Zantai.
Thank you for listening the community.

Indeed. Yay for Zantai and his merry men, or women. Whatver.

Glad to be part of community that is capable of a calm civil discourse.

Yes, we are adding Lightning conversion for Cadence to Stormheart and Stormreaver and buffing their mods to compensate for the loss of Discord’s flat damage.

Wow, okay, that is nice. Damn, I am getting yet another a build idea. Oh well …