just a small note/reminder, (not that it really matters in the grand schemes of things here),
but tri elemental conversion works multiplicative with mono ele, so you wouldn’t get 100% combined with path of three, but like 75%
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It’s confusing to measure the effectiveness of a build that way, it’s better to do it with the time it takes you to complete it.
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No, this “doesn’t meet top20 standards = bad” narrative that is being associated with us and tirelessly regurgitated by some community members is not at all how I or other top20 builders think but rather what some people here think what we think when they can’t engage in a normal discussion or out of arguments.
Meme to me means couple of things: first is a deliberately anti-synergetic build made just for the sake of it like Pierce Oppressor or idk Bleeding Druid or melee chaos Sorc. I also call memes builds that have synergy from masteries and items but perform at the level of “component builds” (like builds that use a spell from component or some item), like your build. Those memes perform poorly despite synergy for different reasons: sometimes it’s just the core skills/support for them being severely underpowered or outright awkward (like that weapon forcing you play with Censure which is a really really suboptimal choice for physical Paladin).
Nobody (except for one individual) uses “time remaining”. Reason is because it doesn’t really tell anything about performance. Rather use average time to complete SR 30-31.
I have played an optimised version of this (example in the op) and it kinda sucked.
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My constructive criticism is based solely on the sentinel/Vire part of the post:
When it comes to the set, it’s odd because one mastery (occultist) is solely support IIRC. If you play the set at face value you will definitely get the above result.
Is this referring to the sentinel combination only or all set ups? If it’s “all” set ups then I find this statement is subjective at best.
Now I never played vanquisher’s. Can that set with proper items use Vire alone and clear per your standards? If so then I see your PoV.
This change I could get behind. AS in a small value to the MH.
Now if vanquisher’s already does this then making a reta version seems okay but I wouldn’t be so quick to do it. Reasoning being is a lot of things might need “down the river” tuning because Vire would be really good and a player could take small hits to Vire and play a build with more button economy and it might then become over tuned.
I say this because I do have a shield breaker that uses the set with the acid canister conduit with Mask of infernal truths and full fire to acid conversion and by my “standards” is absolutely fine and this is with poor rr shred. Lots of buttons though right…canister, Vire, absolution, movement rune, set skill, helm skill, etc. not everyone is willing to play like that and I get it.
Now since this door was opened I will address this part since I have been constructive.
Sorry but that’s how it comes across. It comes across as “if you don’t play it my way then bad.” It comes across as a unwillingness to acknowledge that people playing have different agendas/goals.
Do you want the loot from the treasure room post SR run? The vids I seen tell me no, you guys just exit and are essentially fighting the timer. How much does dying matter to you? Likely only in the context of something succeeding or not.
I loot the room because I want loot and if I die it’s a full reset. As such it can take a long time to test set ups because I have to rearrange the entire character as I am not using 3rd party tools (not that I see anything wrong with it, it’s a choice I made).
Labeling something as a meme when it can clear the current hardest balanced content in an acceptable time to the player just furthers the stigma you are getting IMO.
Now you are entitled to your opinion and/or your definitions right? Well so am I. So most of the suggestions that come from certain community members I find narrow minded because they are clearly influenced by a very rigid build philosophy that is based on time and not on what ARPGs are meant to do. Now this is okay for you (if how you play is fun for you) but if you want the stigma to go away don’t push subjective build philosophy on others. Simple.
If someone posts a meme build, try like making the meme build better and not telling them “meme bad, I already optimized it kek…play like this or bad.”
I will repeat what I said before. This comes from a place of concern not hate. The vast majority of players don’t care about times with the exception of getting the extra chests or self improvement…as in a measure that the character is getting better.
I’m out after this post. Said my peace. Won’t return to this thread.
Constructive TL:DR some AS on the main hand would be welcomed.
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Sentinel. But I can’t see Warlord or Witchblade being particulary amazing either. Do you have examples of those builds maybe?
Why would I want the loot if my Grim Dawn has been figuring out and testing endgame builds those last 6 years? What you see on our videos is us stress testing our builds and playing them aggressively to find their limits and finetune them further. I guess judging from your comments you just don’t understand it.
Well your choice is akin sticking a stick in your own bicycle’s front wheel. If you really want to test thoroughly and efficiently you gotta use third party tools. Otherwise your testing is going to be homebrew level just like your builds. Which, AGAIN, I don’t mind, but you are seeing and understanding the game on a different level. And it would also be fine had you not been shoving your casual approach down our throats.
You have a wild imagination. Do you realise you are just creating narratives out of your own head? Like you are putting words into our mouth and then disproving them, never trying to engage in a meaningful conversion. Meaningful conversation here would be conversation centered around Grim Dawn, that means grimtools, videos of runs, discussion of builds relative power, understanding what skills/items/devos etc. are underpowered/overpowered.
Instead you are continuing this one sided argument which basically can be boiled down to “You elitists - BAD, meme builds - NOTHING wrong”.
Which again, who minds that? But clearly if you want to properly balance the game, who do you go to: veterans with thousands upon thousands of hours figuring out every possible builds or casuals who played 3 homebrew builds to level 100? And I hate that I have to explain myself in every post now, it’s not about JUDGING or who is bad or good.
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You seem to think that I thought of the top20 when I said “extremely high standards”, but that never occured to me. I never even looked at that thread, no idea what the top20 standards are. I just had the general impression that your standards are extremely high compared to mine, that’s all.
That’s not good, it just sows confusion.
That definition makes sense.
That one doesn’t really. A person who made such a build can’t know if you are saying their build is a joke because the synergy sucks or the builder sucks at building.
At least now that you clarified what you actually mean I can deduct that my build isn’t bad because I completely suck at building (maybe a little bit) but because the skills and items I chose aren’t good at what they are supposed to do.
I don’t understand what you mean by awkward and suboptimal.
The only thing that’s awkward about the build is that it’s not so easy to get into the flow. Chaining VM with the movement rune skill and evade would probably be more fluid if the cooldown was lower (which would also increase DPS and bring the build a little bit more towards being “good”).
And why is the weapon suboptimal when it’s the only one that reduces VM cooldown without converting away from phys dmg? The only alternative I’ve seen on first glance is Gavel of Ravenous Souls + Tome of Names. But that would require a complete revamp of the build, not something I’d want to do unless I had the feeling that it’s unplayably bad (which it isn’t).
Build-specific discussion aside, I also would like to address some of your points from your reply to Shadowpast about testing and the meta-discussion.
You clearly DO mind, otherwise you wouldn’t keep dismissing builds and playstyles that don’t meet your criteria all the time. Sure, you understand the game on a deeper level than most others, but if you want to see more than always the same 3 people in your threads, stop the gatekeeping and accept that people who have a more casual approach to playing the game can have legitimate feedback too.
But that’s exactly what you did, several times in this thread. Those “narratives” don’t materialize out of thin air. For example, you dismissed my build as “beyond the scope of this discussion” because you think it’s meme = not good = bad. Then BabySnakes said their build feels good despite being unoptimized, you dismissed that too.
You also implied the discussion is only meaningful if we use 3rd party tools and record speedruns = your way to play.
Maybe you shouldn’t have called the thread “How VM builds feel”. Feelings are subjective. A more appropriate title would be “How highly optimized VM builds perform in speedrun stress-tests”, that would leave no ambiguity about what you actually expect from any given feedback.
It may never have occured to you, but how about both?
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I’ve been a part of the “toxic top 20 build test” discussions, so I’ll try to state my points clearly and succinctly:
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If the best builds have a certain performance, it’s only natural that all other builds will be compared to that performance to see how they stack up. Builds only “feel bad” when they’re compared to the top-performing builds. But we can also simply nerf the best builds if everything else feels intolerable, but some skills are more inherently tailored to speed than others.
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Following from point #1, how a build “feels” is entirely subjective. Speedruns inherently place the runner in situations exponentially more difficult than anything else. If the top builds can inherently take 30K incoming damage per second, a build that can only take 20K incoming damage feels “squishy” in this context; if players only encounter situations where the toughest challenge they take is 15K incoming DPS, the “squishy” build feels completely fine.
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The same applies to offensive skills: why are we judging Doom Bolt - a single target nuke - based on its AoE performance? Yeah, the spam version allows you to play it like an auto-attack, but it’s inherently a cooldown skill. Ideally, it’d be weaved into a build with another skill that can be spammed to improve the clear.
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My biggest complaint is that the constant push for speed means that any skill that has a unique interaction is instantly discarded if that interaction doesn’t help the need for speed. A Vire’s Might build that could beat SR 30-31 under 6 minutes used to be great; now it’s unplayable and “needs a complete overhaul from the ground up.” Volcanic Stride was intentionally designed to be an amazing devotion proccer - the fact that damage devotions procced from it don’t meaningfully contribute to a build’s DPS is the devotion’s fault, not Vire’s Might.
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As a counterpoint, sets should be designed with a skill’s limitations in mind. Rotgheist is a set done correctly because DEE is meant to be the main nuke, while Vire’s is more of a mobility skill that adds a non-negligible DPS. Sentinel of the Three is a bad example because it Vire’s Might is the only offensive skill the build has to offer, which ends up highlighting the inherent weaknesses of using it as a “main DPS skill.”
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Awkward as in mechanically awkward, because Vire semi spam especially when you have to utilize Vire’s core damage and not Tectonic is just awkward to play in GD. Suboptimal exclusive choice because you are not choosing one of the two very powerful Phys damage exclusives but instead taking meme Censure. Physical damage double dips into %damage values because of armor mechanics so losing on 150% damage from exclusive (and crit or OA) for damage reduction that you can get anywhere else and some phys rr is just a bad trade off. And you are forced into it.
meant Censure
It’s not a legitimate feedback when you are forcing your casual one build anecdotal experience that contradicts experience of multiple veterans upon everyone.
It is all these things. It just proves the point I made in the op. If you had fun with it - it’s great, happy for you. But it doesn’t make the build good and competitive.
Or maybe you should not be telling me how to name threads or how to do feedback in Grim Dawn and focus on giving relevant feedback yourself.
Look, when you have some kind of ache in your body and then you go to a doctor with 20 years of experience and he tells you it’s probably x and y but then your high school buddy Brad that hasn’t really been in your life that much that you randomly run into after that doctor appointment, Brad tells you that he had the same kind of ache and it’s definitely z. And he knows it because he dropped out of med school in first year to pursue his dj career.
How about you listen to both?
Sure, but you can’t bring up your personal squishy build and say “hey guys, it’s totally tanky, thus this skill/devotion/item it uses is fine”, right? Same if the build is inherently slow because of how underpowered the skill/support is for it, you can’t bring it up because you personally like it and say “That’s actually totally fine, because I don’t mind the speed”.
Again, it’s not a push for “speeds”. It’s an attempt to bring underpowered but unique skill to the state where it’s not underpowered anymore. Please tell me you are missing old DEE or old PRM? Or are you missing times when skills like Grenado or Mortar Trap were bloody useless. I mean not so long ago Bloody Pox centered builds were bad even for meme builds standards. Tell me you are hating all those facelifts that our feedbacks helped with over the years.
I mean if people weren’t busy discussing “toxic top 20 build test” you would’ve actually noticed that Banana proved here
How Vire’s part on Rotgheist is actually worse than a component skill.
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Well, you did shoot yourself in the foot by putting the word “feel” in it and then telling people their feelings (and opinions) don’t matter.
More on topic:
I actually like this suggestion. Better than making a second Vanquisher imho.
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See, this could have been your argument in the first place and we could have talked about how the build can be brought more towards being “good”. Instead you chose to wave it off as “beyond the scope of this discussion” because you only seem to care about making already “good” builds even better.
It was just a suggestion, take it or leave it. But if you talk about feelings, expect other players to share their feelings. If you then wave off these feelings as irrelevant, expect backlash. Don’t go whining about “mean casuals won’t stop calling me toxic elitist”.
That’s the most ridiculous and distorted straw man version of my argument you could think of? C’mon, I expected more from someone with more than 6 years of experience putting filthy casuals into their place. Also Brad is still alive and travelling the world spinning wax so that “some kind of ache” isn’t even a life-and-death situation like having to decide between the mutually exclusive feedback of an elitist vs a casual player 
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I think you guys push the envelope about your feelings a bit too far.
Stay on track guys
The playtest is about talking on how a skill combo feel in some cases.
But it’s moslty about adding feature and talking on the performances of builds/skills/sets.
That’s how you keep a community alive, making new patches with new balances.
If you want to post a meme build and be ok with it than what is your goal with the playtest ? I personnally think that beeing ok with weak builds goes against the idea of balance in the playtest, regardless of your goal or agenda.
The beauty is if there is something else you want to be balanced than you can create your own post.
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Look, I will gladly share my GD knowledge if someone asks but I can’t be overexplaining stuff every time I say something about GD. I already spend A LOT of time testing A LOT of builds every test patch, and every time me and banana are facing same kind of backlash from much less experienced players who think that we are pushing some kind of agenda or want everything to be top20 or want every meme build to die etc. etc.
So like with that example (that was a half-joke obviously) you just have to trust that doctor without making him explain everything to you in the most tiniest details possible. He only wants to do good by you after all!
Weak compared to the 4 minute speedrun builds. If you wanna talk about VM builds, let’s include all VM builds that come up, not just those that are already good.
Not many players care if a build takes 4 or 5 minutes to beat SR30-31, a few players see a huge difference there but from the perspective of most others, there really isn’t.
The build I posted is more in the 10 minute ballpark, if you think that’s slow then it should be looked at, not entirely dismissed as a meme not worthy of the discussion.
I think here we are all on the same page. Reason why I didn’t bring up Phys Vire it’s because it’s that bad.
Last test patch I suggested that Eternal Shard amulet should have it phys to fire conversions REMOVED to help phys Vire builds (and because those conversions are USELESS for Fire builds too) but Zantai refused.
And Phys VM would need more than that. Ideally you want that big fist weapon reworked too (that Censure mod is just not it and that Vire mod is super weak).
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slight note on the players not caring, they might feel it however
10-30 secs gained might in Banana/Lee improvements might not always translate the same to other players/builds, because they are already at the edge of what they can do/pushing the limit.
But it might mean a build in casul hands goes from 7minutes to 5.30
or it might mean it’s still 7 mins because we simply fight a totally different way 
point is it’s not onesided improvements as might seem.
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I don’t know why you’re acting like I don’t do my due diligence. I liked your suggestions 100%. It was banana’s “rework Volcanic Stride entirely” as opposed to numerical changes to the stride while adding the buffs you asked for that prompted that reply.
Most of the time, we are on the same page and I’m on board with most suggested improvements. It’s when people ask for complete overhauls of certain skills while only giving 1-2 examples (ideally 3 examples with different supporting classes would be sufficient if we’re doing anything as drastic as some of the things you’ve proposed before) when I put on the brakes and try looking for alternate solutions.
Also, I don’t have nearly as much time to test things as your group does. I’d love to test things for myself and see if I come to the same conclusions. I just don’t have the time to do so.
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Probably the latter. 
I think these things are important to mention these when talking about fixing a skill. Physical Vire is obviously supposed to be a thing, as there are several items that explicitly add support for it. But if it then doesn’t work out at all, kinds makes all those items (half) worthless.
I took the time to beat Forgotten Gods and get my faction rep up so I could sort through augments and resists and sustain. Wound up swapping Yugol for Affliction and getting lucky on pants and hands drops and hit the jackpot on the Pestilence of Dreeg I wanted. I do miss the turbo acid bolts and max res from the Conduit and am coping.
Current build: Sentinel, Level 100 (GD 1.2.1.3) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator
I’m doing about 70% more DPS single target than I was two days ago (Seeker boss shard goes down 85% in one cycle instead of 50% on SR 33, and Vire’s tooltip DPS after buffs is up from 125k to 180k. Boss room bosses on SR 32 take about 20 seconds each instead of 30). While my resistance overcaps and CC res need tweaking it’s probably fixable a bit by shuffling devotions and components and grabbing a better ring. Total health is an issue since low armor and leech value means big crowds can overwhelm so there’s a bit of hit and run involved.
I’m still new to SR beyond 32 so I’m learning real fast who has reflect auras (hello, Zantarin) and meteors (hello, Anasteria) and so it’s a process to do 32-33 but it’s been fun learning compared to skater Tempest Vanquisher or setless Spellbinder Shadow Strike.
My wish list at this point is maybe +1 or +2 to Vire’s Might on the Sentinel Chest armor because it’s really tough to cap out Vire’s at 26/16 because most the +Vire’s gear is on Phys/Cold/Fire setups. My other wish is maybe adding knockdown to the Sentinel 4 piece bonus because you can’t take the knock down node on the skill tree because of the fire conversion.
Hmmmn, nice to see VM can be made to work, but frankly I’d rather they’d put the %retal onto Bloody Pox, since the set blocks a lot of the items that give it more damage and this set is thematically about using BP for making enemies commit suicide.
Also, really, it needs more armour (similar to Perdition) and I’d kill for the +5% health healed to BoD to be shifted to give %regen instead. Since working out how to run BP with Fevered Rage has lead me to see Giant is the way and the truth:
More OA would also help, because OA is badly needed
Anyhow, RF is also hard to build into if also going more fully into retaliation if not using something like spam AoM.