Is Internal Trauma damage worth focusing on?

Grim Dawn Gameplay Discussion
1

It seems IT damage is always paired with Physical on items so is it actually worth building around IT rather than going pure Physical?

I’m leveling a Commando and I keep changing build because I’m never satisfied, I’d love to make use of the IT damage from Grenado and Cannister Bomb IT, as well as Blade Arc but it seems all of this is worse than straight up spamming Cadence (which is boring even for my first time playing a Soldier).

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2

The real question is: is there anything in the game that is immune to internal trauma?

Since I suspect that not many enemies along the whole game can really resist to this, I see no reason why not building up that kind of damage. To fully focus on it sounds a mistake, since it is a DOT, and that you somehow always need direct damage, but it looks like a very good complementary damage to me.

IT probably is the most efficient DOT in the game with the burn I think.

If you go Commando with Grenado and Blade Arc, you can knocklock most enemies anyway, so who cares…

3

I think the only thing people always say is that physical resist is rare so if there are reflect enemies you don’t have much resistance to your own damage type. You could compensate (other than physical resistance) in other ways such as high hit points or maybe if a Battlemage Maivens etc

Or if you recognize a reflect enemy and you can resort to a different damage type for that fight.

4

Internal trauma damage is strong. You could go pure soldier and be pretty decent. As claudius mentioned, however, any reflect damage mob becomes very dangerous with this damage type. I’ve stacked up to 51% physical resist and still almost killed myself a few times (I’ve since reduced that amount a bit and just began ignoring skeletal knights).

Internal trauma also has great support from devotions, one of the best of any damage type IMO. Assassin’s mark reduces physical resist and Bull Rush and Blind Fury do IT damage. Nodes in Bull and Oleron add flat IT damage, too. If you use a shield, Targo’s Hammer has an IT bonus on it, Trample does IT damage, and Shieldmaiden has a node that adds flat IT damage. There may be a few other things of note, but these are the main ones.

(If anyone of influence is reading this and decides that a change needs to be made, balance can be achieved by improving the other damage types, and not making the IT devotions worse.)

Edit: To address your specific circumstance, I don’t know how good the Demo IT damage is. I play a Soldier/Occultist. Transmuted Blade Arc is the highest source of IT damage, and maxed out Cadence probably falls right below that. But Grenado and Canister Bomb aren’t too far behind (see Grim Dawn DoTs for Dummies: A Primer). Cadence is just a really good source of IT damage because the damage multiplier is so high and it benefits from all the flat damage you gain from Deadly Momentum and Oleron’s Rage.

5

The biggest issue with IT for me is there just isn’t enough increase to duration. Which makes it harder to stack compared to other dots.

6

Instead of creating a new thread I will use this one.

If the damage output is 1000 internal trauma over 3 seconds, is it 333 internal trauma damage per second, or is it 3000 internal trauma damage during those 3 seconds?

7

Although I believe grimcalc lists the stat differently; you’ll note that grimcalc lists X damage for Y seconds, rather than X damage over Y seconds. Grimcalc lists the dps whereas in-game lists the total damage dealt.

8

The main problem with building around Internal Trauma is reflect. Just imagine how your HP will decay VS internal trauma, that is reduced by physical resitance (almost non-present)…

9

My pure soldier focusing on trauma faced Bolvar the Bloodbinder in ultimate. Bolvar spawned with a reflect and retaliation item. That was a long and gruesome fight. One hit, run and pot. Rinse and repeat again and again. I refused to let him live. I had to unequip my trauma duration medal to have any chance of surviving any of my attacks.

10

Reflect is not the main problem with internal Trauma, Reflect is the main problem with the whole game.

Even if you do damages from which you have good resistances, you will still get an amount of damage returned that may compromise your fight.

On this topic, I don’t think that the problem is with physical and IT damages and their resistances, but rather on how damage reflection works.

11

Reflection doesn’t come up a TON, and it’s not a huge, ever present threat like it is in say, Path of Exile. It exists, but you generally know you’re looking at Reflect, and it’s not often that you kill yourself to Reflect before you have the opportunity to realize what you’re hitting. Even my hardest hitting squishiest builds leave me enough time to notice that I’m hitting Reflect before I die… Though if I’m tired, or just not paying enough attention, Reflect does still kill me at times.

I’m not sure we entirely need Reflect, though. POE needs it, as much as everyone there hates it, because it’s the only thing enforcing any kind of defenses for the majority of their game. Without it, glass cannons would be the only builds until you aimed to farm the very highest content, and that’s not a good thing. Here, though… We are in actual danger from even just having a couple bad heroes spawn near each other. We need defenses all the time, not just when we come across Reflect. I’m not sure what purpose it’s fulfilling other than simply being there.

12

Reflect Mitigation for IT is very easy

The lack of improved duration makes it a PITA to stack DoTs

As of now IT is one of the worst DoTs in terms of support just above Vitality Decay which lacks any support whatsoever

13

Technically they added Vit Decay support in Occultist… A little. Not a lot, but it’s there now.

14

I would say the main interest of internal trauma is its ability to be converted to magic DoT.

15

Lucky you.

I have stopped counting the number of times I died because of that broken feature. And by dying, I mean instant death from an enemy that is not even targeting you, and that has most of the time not even noticed you. My teammate enters some room, starts attacking the monsters around, the whole mob rushes on him, I come next and unleash all my ranged/area/DOT attacks etc, most die, lying on the floor, I check my tankmate health: doing OK, going well, and then my character also lies on the floor, like going to sleep. No hit, no blood, no monster right around, nothing. I am like “what?..”, check the health bar: the bar is empty, no health bar. I am like “WTF?”. The health did not go down, the whole bar just disappeared. I think maybe a bug or something, check the monsters around, the remaining one is another reflect asshole unique, and am like “k…” and respawn.

I take no risk by saying that this is at least 1/3 of my instant deaths in ultimate.

Reflect like it is at the moment is no challenge and is no fun.
The penalty that it represents to glass cannons/casters is way too harsh.

I would buy a mod with reflect sent back to that stinking place where it is from.

The damage reflection should at least feature a visual effect, require the monster to enable the ability and consume energy over time (like any aura, any buff) and/or to target a specific enemy and to feature a visual attack regarding ranged attacks that you can dodge. The way it is at the moment with fully permanent/automatic/energy free/universal/self-targeting/instant/very likely no cooldown/no damage cap/and worst of all no range cap setting is complete BS. I have died sometimes with the reflect asshole out of my screen.

I have no problem with some spiked enemy with flat melee retaliation or something, or I don’t know, some cold or fire retaliation from a visually obvious protection spell. It is part of the monster feature, you can identify it and you deal with it accordingly, that’s balanced, that’s the kind of game mechanics you would expect from a video game in 2017, but OP full reflect on random unique monsters around just does not work. At all.

16

For me, reflect mobs just add a bit of spice and challenge to the game. So you can’t just spam-LMBs through the whole game everywhere but have to pay a little attention too.
Besides, I still don’t get it why the reflect skill on mobs isn’t up 100% of the time unlike for the player with e.g. wearing the Dawnbreaker’s light set and reflecting every single attack back to the attacker.

17

All reflective heroes have a yellow aura when they reflect damage, Ascended Archmages have a blue one (Mirror of Ereoctes), Fabius and some cronley’s heroes have their blade barrier and Skeleton knight have their shield/reflect aura (kind of white), so it’s entirely possible to avoid to attack them when you notice that

And these abilities are far from being permanent, so you can just focus on other mobs before attacking the reflective ones when their aura/reflect skill is on cooldown

18

Ok, just like in Titan Quest. Thanks.

19

I’m with some of the sentiment here. Having died to reflect numerous times already (some players may not know what we are talking about until they reach Ultimate and especially if they start farming), I came to loath this game feature.

We are all reasonable players and understand the value of a game that challenges us with its features. Some challenging features we see as positive, adding to the experience of the game and asking us to to become better at it or making equipment/skill choices with our characters. But other features we just see as plain trolling. They are frustrating, not fun and there’s a sense in the back of our heads of unfairness and cheapness.

Damage Reflection is such one feature. It’s hard to say it kills the enjoyment of the game since Grim Dawn has so much more going for it. But it is cheap and unfair feature that frustrates its players more than it helps them understand the value of a challenge. And offers nothing in the form of a rewarding gameplay, since to effectively deal with it one needs to change the course of his character entirely.

20

But there is quite a difference between having 87-92% resist (to poison, for example), that mean you take only 8-13% of reflected damage, and having 5-25% resistance (take 75-100% damage, 7-12 times more).
My WitchHunter deal massive poison damage with huge duration increase (+500% or so). He feels reflect, but it isnt deadly for him cause he has 87% resist, massive HP regen (500/sec) and 2 strong heals. Reflected poison just nullifies his regen.