Hardcore mode and Shattered Realms!

The only Battlemage I would suggest is something like a Warborn Warlord with a Siegebreaker with with all kinds of defenses you can muster. And funnily enough I am guessing the most safe way to farm with it would be with EoR.

That’s why all the top builders dislike Shattered Realm, it’s random, it’s a wall for a lot of builds and class combinations and even with best Shard farmers you are bound to die occassionaly due to randomness.

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SoT and BoC become useless once you have acquired 90%+ of the items and are hunting for something very specific. At that point it’s either cruci 150-170 or SR 45+. A typical 45-46 run takes about 10 min and nets me around 8-10 legendaries. I still get occasional blueprints there too.

Yeah, that’s why I wanted to make use of Voracious Reach (Yugol’s relic). If it could get at least 100-150K DPS… It doesn’t work, the relic got nerfed lol. Maybe it’s time to revisit my EoR warlord.

I have tested Acid Yugol’s Relic Witch hunter and it’s beyond horrible. EoR Warlord is indeed a godly spec, I wonder how stupid op it is with a shield.

Let’s find out. I have this one ready to roll - https://www.grimtools.com/calc/bVAgQmwN
What Devotion changes would you suggest?

All right, here is the build I propose for Hardcore.

I have changed some items too, those boots were pretty awful, imo, it’s better to sacrifice a ring slot rather than a boot slot. Barbaros are a must. Changed gloves to get more trap resistance. Changed devotions to more defensive ones. Not sure if that mana is enough. If not, then one Bloodied Crystal is to be changed for Ectoplasm (and less Cunning/more Physique). Or Arcane Spark instead of Tainted Heart.

I’ll give it a wirl. So, no shield in the end?

I think hitting with both weapons and converting elemental part of EoR is more important in the end. For shield it should be Cadence + WPS spec imo. But EoR is so oupie the way monsters interact with it it might be actually better for deep shards then shields.

From my experience of EoR (I have build fire and lightning Paladins), it’s silly overpowered.

Tried both the phys EoR and your Lightning Paladin. They are both very strong, but can’t avoid occasional damage spikes.

So far, I’ve been able to reach SR 60+ in HC only with these 3:

  1. Mortar + Cadence Commando - https://www.grimtools.com/calc/xZy6JGAN
  2. Fire Retaliation Commando - https://www.grimtools.com/calc/M2glqDYV
  3. My personal creation - Frankenstein EoR 60% Acid 40% Phys Retaliation Warlord - https://www.grimtools.com/calc/q2M7kylZ

As a hardcore player the only thing that still annoys me in SR is the fact that you get insta charged by a couple of bosses in high SR shards. Other than that I think SR is in a pretty good state now, was better than at FG release. Also the size increase to log’s and theodin’s arena is awesome.
All of my (meme) builds have at least cleared SR35-36 in HC and some of them 50-51 or 65-66. 75-76 is a little sketchy in HC, but can be done consistently with specific builds aswell. Imo not every build has to be able to get that far and also farming 50-51 or 65-66 can be very rewarding.

TL;DR: imo SR is in a much better state than at FG release for HC and doesn’t really need any nerf. Only thing I would personally change is how aggro in the boss lvls work.

I’m not talking about nerfs but balancing damage spikes in boss rooms. I think we are on the same page here. All Devs have to do is make some areas bigger and spawn bosses further away so that we can engage them selectively.

Also, nice to see another HC player doing SRs. Not all of my builds can consistently farm 35-36, though I prefer 45-48 for optimal drops.

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You won’t get fucked if you use tactics. This game mode should not be made for idiots that only press a button and run through it. I ran SR 70 with a pet build that could get crit by literally any monster. Nemesis bosses had about 25% chance to crit me and I still managed to do it. It’s all about how you play it, not what your build is. I saw a guy smashing SR 80 I think with a Devastation Warlock (I think he went cold damage or something, don’t remember) and he did it.

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Do you and that guy smashing SR 80 play hardcore? If so, please upload a video where you get a small arena map with a bad boss combo (like Grava + Aleks + Iron maiden) and your tactics prevent you from getting rekt. Yes, you can use tactics in a map like this no problem - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_es63L-x_UU
In fact, quite a few of my builds would succeed if I could engage bosses one by one.
And here is a no aggro run of SR 75 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHpyP7K7GiQ
but if you look at his health bar when fighting the bosses - that’s a complete fail in HC. And he got such an easy boss combo, Fabius as the only real threat…
Even this guy, who has a 7000+ regen retaliation commando (check those stats), struggles in SR depending on boss combos and mutators. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yh31qNqS2g
I have this char and he’s probably one of the most resilient I’ve ever seen.

It’s not directed towards HC per se, but i’d argue it follows the same mentallity:

My Point is and that’s why i quoted that, people seem to forget that we have 9 Masterys with 36 possible Classes, and with that many many ways to build your Character. We’ve different areas within the main-game; Roguelike Dungeons, Superbosses, Nemesis etc, we have two additional Game-Modes with Crucible and Shattered Realm plus your Hardcore-Mode. It’s impossible that every aspect of the game is equally balanced, and if they would try, let’s say in your example, than it’s even more impossible to “fix” only one part, without influencing another Part.

You cry over a extra Gamemode for an Goal, which is set by the community (SR75) and not by the Devs themself, and ironically, you act high and mighty with your differing between Softcore and Hardcore, claim how super-easy it is to play SC compared HC but than again orient with your “goals” on the Softcore-Crowd. What do you expect to happen, when Crate would consider your suggestion and implement the solution? I’d say in that case it would make it also easier for the SC Crowd and they Goal would get higher again, and we would see you in the next month in this topic again, cry over that Crate should balance HC again because you might now beeing able to do SR75, but unable to the new SC standart with SR120 (example).

Maybe it’s only me, but when i grew up with Diablo Series and understood / found out about the origins of the Game, i learned that the initial core-idea of diablo was to give the Gaming-Community a Game which might original based on Dungeon Crawler and Roguelike but with an more accessable, consistent and playerfriendly experience, actionpaced and an multiplayer on top on that, and if you look at majority of ARPG’s / Hack’n’Slays which are diablo-esque. Permdeath / Hardcore was only an Side-Feature for extra-challenge. Still i would go as far and argue, that your Stormy Sea vs Olympic Pool argument is BS, because if it comes down to the difficulty itself, both are pretty onpar, and the thing HC Players struggle is the same what SC People struggle… it’s simply the punishment of failing which is differently and less impactfull to SC, which would be in your metaphor like both side swims in an stormy sea, but if the one fails he die, if the others fails he get rescued and have to retry. (And interestingly enough it seems like HC player in general tend to believe that “dying” doesn’t impact SC players at all and have fun with that… which is from my perspective rather wrong… no-one enjoy dying / failing within a Game [except he have an masochist nature] it’s simply that said people don’t want to waste their time by the neccessity to redo everything they’ve done so far… and yes, in terms of mentality atleast on that you are correct… in HC you play more cautious). Also i’d argue its a misconception on your side if you tend to believe that SC Builders who try to help you and argue with you are in general People who gives you an advice while they themself keeps dying with said build and still manage to do it. I rather say People like Maya and such wouldn’t argue with you, if it’s not for their builds with 10/10 and not like you claim that every SC Player argue with you with an 9/10 success rate which would be in case of HC meant the death of your character.

/edit:
I’ve to add, i don’t have anything against HC Players per se. Sometimes it’s their elitism which bothers me, but overall i’ve respect for this type of players to have the nerve and patience to play HC(well sometimes i also played HC, but rather J4F than mainly), and i would’ve agreed to an certain degree with you, if in GD it would’ve been the case that the balancing and Game-Design would’ve be broken to the point of beeing unable to do (all) Mainparts of the Game (though than again i’ve to point out, if it would be the case than it would also effect the SC Players…), but come on; this critique about higher SR Levels, where the Community (and not the devs) set the SR 75 as maincourse is quite wrong and doesn’t have actually do anything with the game or devs themself. It’s the purpose of this Game to bo randomized and get harder and harder, to a point where it can gets unfair, otherwise it would’ve been an endless grinding without any purpose or if more streamlined and predefined, like someone mentioned here already. would be a crucible 2.0…

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its also hard to brag about HC skills in an offline and mod-able game such as Grim Dawn. Just make copy of char files before you start the SR run. If you die, just replace the save file by the old ones. Or resurrect via Grim Stash. Then when you finally do your successful SR80 run on HC, post videos and pics and get 5 inches longer e-peen. Not saying that all or even the majority of people that plays HC do this, but it exists nevertheless.

Thanks again Guys.

I’ve stopped crying and am taking my elitism somewhere else.

Have fun!

FWIW, I thought you had some valid points.
SR is still relatively new so it’ll probably see more changes in the future. Keep giving relevant feedback and you could be part of the process.

I have consistent successes in HC SR 75 with my melee mortar commando, i think the difficulty is decent once the small arena issue got resolved.

Generally i think us HC players need to stay vigilant at all time when doing harder endgame content and be ready to strike that ESC key with lightning speed.

My hardest boss combo so far was Kaisan, Korvaak, Grava and Gabal’thun, with really shitty mutators like 70% more HP and physical resist for mobs and 10% less total damage for me… honestly i would just quit, even before the boss room because of those mutators.

I know I rant about this now and then, but I always say that HC is softcore with one more button in the rotation: ESC :stuck_out_tongue:

When I play HC, I refuse to use ESC since I do not think that is pretty vigilant…

Do you ever upload any videos ? I notice in ur builds are just pictures and info about doing some stuffs easy.

I don’t do videos, no.