But thematically, adding Arcanist support make sense for a Druid. Problem is if Arcanist (or other class support is added) then medal or belt that enables DW are mandatory for such build, unless the set itself got the DW enabler skill (or add cold damage for Direwolf medal for even more fitting theme).
I used to be one of gd’s big boys. It’s been a while. I meant a simple series where I go through from start to finish, as a veteran returning to the game after a long absence.
No rush, no efficiency. Exploration, commentary, see what I notice that’s different. Etc. I would want to find a build to try out after all the changes, one that looks interesting to me. Not keen on returning with a meme build though.
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And now he’s all grown up!
Sounds interesting. I might watch it even if you end up playing a PS or FW 
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Charges into a boulder.
“There used to be a passage here.” (with Deckard Cain’s voice) -
“Back in my days we had to cap resistances on Normal.”
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“Kids have it easier nowadays with all those fancy skill modifiers.”
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“Don’t even get me started on Monster Totems and Merits.”
I believe you as one of the builds I really like was named after you [1.1.4.2] The Doom God - The 0.6s CD Vitality Doom Bolter (Cr+, Naked farmer, SR 80)
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Just noticed that this was misspelled when I couldn’t find it with Ctrl-F:
Poor ol’ Gale. First his medal gets mangled, then his name.
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AAR: RIP forever
Why the RIP? AAR itemization especially fire get buff in this patch and no nerf to the base skill as well to disintegration.
" no nerf to the base skill " Yes. It WAS RIP and still is, and will be forevar.
Ohhh man, my Regen warder lost like 30% regen @ peak potential… 
Hate to see it when a personal favorite gets nerfed. I guess that also means no Ulti Ravager facetank?
My Wildblood dude got a 2nd life with Uroburouk’s Reaping buffed last patch, now he eats a nerf, hate to see it 
At least the most powerful build in the game got buffed again haha
Also … are you guys seriously STILL nerfing Maelstrom? What was it, 10 consecutive patches of nerfs? Come on, wind devils suck for a couple patches, nowhere near overpowered, I really don’t get it lol - those things can’t even touch the likes of even Elite Ravager, they do literally 0 damage to bosses, good against trash only lol
Other than that - great patch, fantastic support for ages, can’t wait for Grim Dawn 2.
My regen-based retal elementalist can facetank Ravager fine in 1.1.9.3. Unless you built its defenses poorly, I’d wager your warder will still also be fine. High armor + phys res/absorb always does well against Ravager, whether based on regen or lifesteal.
Ah yes, you are that dude with the “facetank Ravager” benchmark that was complaining about the Wildblood nerfs a year ago and also had a hidden op build.
Maelstrom does damage, the nerfs made sense after the Wind Devil change. Cyclone and Trozan builds sure love Maelstrom.
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Key word retal.
I have more than enough data imo that points to the regen changes as a negative. It’s all I been testing since last patch.
And the key words in my post: high armor and phys res.
Of course the regen changes were negative. Everyone knows regen was nerfed. I’m saying those builds are still viable in superboss fights if you also have the above two things. And @Retal_Abuser was right, facetanking Ravager is kind of an absurd benchmark anyway, heavens forbid you have to kite a bit after he hits enrage.
BTW what’s your peak regen without Ugdenbog potions?
Mine was IIRC 17k, now it’s down to like 11.5k, so it is a sizeable nerf
Wow, didn’t expect anyone to remember that Yeah that’s me. Did I gain a bit of infamy? 
The maelstrom thingy was just a joke btw, maybe I didn’t voice it well, to me it’s quite a trope that pretty much every second patch has nerfed the wind devil skill tree 
Do you find it overnerfed?
I’m pretty sure a net loss of 25-30% regen is sizeable, I’m no expert though on builds so IDK if regen was a predominant recovery tactic.
I merely had a Warder that was pretty damn cheap with his insane peak regen, I mean perhaps he was a bit too powerful defensively? But at the same time, Warder does struggle a bit with certain things. For once, his kill speed ain’t that great, also - he’s particularly weak against arcane since dispel strips him out of his multitude of buffs and he doesn’t have a reliable way of dealing ranged damage. I’ve tried to mitigate things a bit with swarm+rend and also vines+sands, but those things just don’t cut the mustard deep in GR.
Also, Wadrder is helpless against Rashalga deeper in GR, like all melee probably. I think Rashalga’s shotgun does around 500 000 damage around GR70 already, I recall being oneshot by it while having 50% sorb with 270k HP.
I didn’t read much forums, so I was quite “out of meta”, haha. To me, a strong build would be something that facetanks ravager (or can ignore ravager and still kill him quickly - like summoners). Sorry if that is a bit absurd
I’m actually not sure what that anti-regen crusade accomplished. Strong regen builds remained strong, weaker builds became weaker due to “collateral damage”.
screens
Ulzuin Shieldbreaker
Avenger Warder
Barrelsmith Elementalist
Pyran Shieldbreaker
Bysmiel Conjurer
Trozan Druid
Doombolt Pyromancer
It’s worth noting that health regen is the only healing source for Trozan Druid (as well as burst healing from Giant’s Blood and Wayward Soul, but it’s once per 9-10 seconds, so not reliable). Pyran and Bysmeil ones also don’t have much for healing other than regen, but I’m not too concerned about them.
Others have life leech in one form or another, so those changes didn’t affect them much. Avenger is a funny case because I could care less if I have 10k regen or 8k, as both are high values. So yeah, color me confused for those changes ::scratches_head::
edit: also just noted how Avenger before the patch had less attack speed, but somehow more attacks per second? Dafuq? XD
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Yeah I totally agree with this. Builds with high defenses will still be ok against superbosses and the like, which is what I was saying, or trying to say. But, what about glassier builds that didn’t have that in the first place? Idk. If one or two builds were overperforming, then just nerf those builds, don’t nerf health regen in general.
Lifesteal was and still is the “sustain” meta, so I didn’t understand all the regen nerfs either.
Well, at the same time, I could park my Warder ie. at Wave 120 @ Cruci and basically outregen all incoming damage as long as I maintained a high level War Cry on my enemies (which is what, -35% damage ? That’s a lot. Which is why I always used Warborn Visor).
Perhaps this led to the nerf. Pretty sure I cannot do that anymore. My peak regen is no longer 17k, meaning I cannot regen half my HP every second. I believe I had 320 or 330k HP before 1.9.2 patch.
However…
getting that much regen pretty much requires a dedicated regen build.
Builds that used regen to just “make up” the health lost while kiting got screwed, eh?
Perhaps it’s like Wildblood?
I know you guys joked that I whined about wildblood - I did, yes But I can’t say I wasn’t right, because Crate undid some Wildblood nerfs in subsequent patches. It was overnerfed. Then came some buffs too, like Uroburoouk’s Reaping becoming essentially a better Savagery, which led to me regaining a LOT of skill points…
I’m not sure about regen per se. PERHAPS instead of globally nerfing regen, the nerfs should be targeted instead.
Ie.
- Avenger set
- Savagery +health regen %
et cetera.
I’m not sure about Giant’s stars and Tree’s active skill nerf, I think it hurt everyone, not just the offenders.
That being said, I never play builds that have sustain problems, that’s just a big no in a hack’n’slash to me. Any kind of hack’n’slash, TBH.
From data across all my hps characters it amounts to something around 25-28%.
Now I built two identical builds utilizing Targo’s. One using a combination of hps with 8% life steal but built hard into hps. Devo path, menhir’s etc etc. the other has just the life steal on the MI shield but builds hard into just damage. Which do you think performs better over all? I bet it would be no surprise.
But were the hard dmg life steal sucks is accidental arcane orb hits, traps, fumbles, and no targets to leech. Everyone knows this.
However when your hps is 4K building hard into it (with procs up) and having loss 28% of that, yeah sorry you can’t help to wanna shit on the magical spreadsheet.
So now I am messing with other set ups. One, since maul is easy to make devotion wise I been playing with fully converted physical dmg to see how good the leech is there. Right now it feels like converted bat just harder to full convert.
At the end of the day, Hps feels like shields but worse meaning that to use a shield effectively (not a stat stick or must use for a skill) you usually gotta commit a good amount…but hps, even when committing hard, under most circumstances, nerfs your dps hard while still being out healed by converted leech skills or leech itself.
In addition look at most hps gear slots. Most lack some sort of damage stat on it. Even if you “balance” for dmg and hps outside of avengers and such, it’s bad. If I am not mistaken I can’t even roll a green weapon with mods that have hps. I took a quick look this morning and didn’t find one.
Looking at healing procs, even with giants blood attached to the oathkeepers circuit breaker (the name escapes me) it’s only 80% proc and I have open shrines on hc ultimate and am surround by a shit ton of mobs and the damn thing still doesn’t proc at times before the circuit breaker ends. Wayward soul is the same. I binded it to mirror and it is still 20%. Maybe it’s always been like that but that’s just bad.
There is no universe where hps, outside of certain situations, was over performing. Most posted builds don’t even run it.
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I’m inclined to agree. I only played Warder because I just couldn’t get enough of the looks of procs (Zolhan and FeralHunger in particular) in combination with ragdoll physics. It never gets old. And I mean never, I’m past 2500 hours into GD and I still enjoy seeing enemies fly away.
But deep in GR, I would often curse the fact that I cannot kite, literally no Warder skills give you kiting abilities, I tried ALL devotions but none of those offer any solid DPS, I mean MAYBE oleron but oleron is wayy to hard to build around, feels like a waste to get all those wimpy purple constellations just to reach 20 purple orbs. Sigh. The rest, well, Swarm+Rend is pretty damn good, not gonna lie, a timeless combo I used from day 1 of vanilla game, but not enough at GR80+ to just kite with IMO.
And there are things down there that just hurt, if you cannot get rid of mobs guarding double arcanes (warder can’t) you’re boned, plain and simple, sooner or later you’ll eat a dispel effect and bam, ded. I mean, with Wildblood I can just spam vines till they die (which doesn’t even take that long), but Warder? eh.
I’m writing specifically about Warder because I have most experience with him, but also, I think it’s one of the few builds that could reach 15k+ hp regen per second while maintaining acceptable DPS. I mean, it’s clearly no summoner, but 300wd from Avenger Zolhan hurts like hell. So I guess he was the one that got nerfed the most. It’s a pretty flat reduction of power, there were certain enemies/GRs you could just mindlessly out tank, now you can’t. And because of the nature of this build (pure melee outside swarm+rend), you can’t kite either.
Can’t kite, can’t tank, what the hell am I supposed to do?
Oh well. Once I get my next urge to play GD (comes every couple months), I don’t think I’ll play the Warder. Time to retire, old buddy!
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