I’d like to see Oleron constellation with some reflected damage reduction to balance things out a bit.
Dude, what are you PLAYING that you manage to do that? I mean, on my AAR build, hitting really hard, in Ultimate without having capped up my res for Aether or Fire yet, I STILL had a good second before Reflect would’ve killed me. I’ve no idea what glass cannon you are playing that got you insta gibbed to Reflect, because I’ve certainly never managed it.
Also, it DOES have a visual effect. Or just read the monster’s name, where it says “Reflection” or whatever.
Anything but tanks.
As long as I play tanks, my DPS is too average and my defense too high to even really notice the effects, but when I am tired of no-brain builds and want to go for something more challenging, I always end up like this. I play and I play and I clear whole areas, and all of a sudden, my char lies down on the ground and I am like “WTF?”. The health bar did not go down, as it does along the game all the time, it has just disappeared.
Most games reward to some extend careful players who like to go into strategies like dodging, careful positioning, sniping, stealth, hit-and-runs, crowd control etc to skip a part of the defense required of the character to mainly focus on attack and other skills. Grim Dawn does not allow this enough in my opinion. Your option is either to go tank or tank if you want to complete the game with a decent number of deaths.
Reflect is broken as it is at the moment. This is no spice, this is just a reminder that the game is designed for tank builds and tank builds only.
I really want to be clear on this: I have no problem having my glass sniper/caster/summoner being smashed into pulp by flesh hulks, chargers/stunners big enemies, bosses etc. I did a mistake when approaching them and that’s OK. That’s the game. You do a mistake, you pay for it. But energy-free/universal/no-range-cap/no-damage-cap/no-need-to-even-just-bother-targeting reflect is full BS.
This is true. Reflect in GD, contrary to a few other games, does give you some warning. It can be debatable whether this always work, because in the thick of battle and with multiple mobs there is so much going on the screen that you will often miss the cues.
But the problem really isn’t if the game warns you, now is it? The problem is how you are going to deal with a reflect mob. For the majority of builds, you don’t have any other choice than to ignore it (if you can actually get away from it) or brace yourself for a tremendously long and boring 1hit-1tonic fight while you wonder why on earth you have to be doing this on an ARPG, of all games.
So, on one hand you have the very common scenario that you will very often miss the game clues because the whole screen is struggling to grab your attention to the multiple things that are happening at the same time (good on you if you have the capacity to deal with this. Most people don’t). On the other hand you still have the problem that the game mechanics behind Reflect are unduly punishing and not befitting an ARPG style of play that tends to pride itself on fast and rewarding action.
EDIT: The Retaliation mechanics in GD are so much more fun and integrate so much better into the mindset of someone playing the game, that I often wonder why even have wasted time coding damage reflection. Not just on GD, but on any other game where instakill features are present, I often consider this to be a developer thing. And not something done with the player in mind.
I don’t know how the fight turn to be a long and boring one, the reflective skills of mobs are not permanent and they are weak without it, you just need to wait for the skill to be on cooldown to kill the reflective monster/hero. We are not playing the same game if a fight against an ascended Archmage, a reflective hero or a skeletal knight is tremendously long and boring …
Exactly.
“Just read the monster attributes” is theorycraft. This makes very little sense in game in some situations.
I play an action game in multiplayer against monsters I now pretty much fully know. When someone in the party engages an enemy crowd, I fully support it. That’s a timing thing. 2 seconds too late and he dies and you’re next. Why on earth should I check the attributes of enemies I have killed hundreds of time at least already? I know its generic strengths and weaknesses and the team is prepared to it one way or another. This is an action game, not some strategy/adventure stuff.
But some may not agree with this, so I have a more direct and clearer example of what I mean:
Steps of Torments > first locked room, with that chest in the middle spawning on and on unique bosses.
I recall once again that this is multiplayer ultimate, with monsters on steroids, not your vanilla solo. Life and death is a matter of seconds. It is critical to freeze/slow/stun/knockdown or at least to put in low health or to somehow keep busy as many as possible as quickly as possible.
So when you have just cleared a wave, what do you do?
You lay your thermite mines, totems, sigils, blackwater cocktail etc to get ready for the next wave.
And when it spawns, if you have a rather weak caster, you stay away from the crowd and start spamming straight away your flash freeze, devastation, canister bomb etc.
And what happens, how do you feel, when you then fall on the ground, just lying like you suddenly feel like sleeping, no hit, no blood, nothing with nobody right around you, no attack, really nothing, nobody even looking at you or targeting you?
How do you feel now?
That’s Grim Dawn’s Reflect for you. And I couldn’t agree more that it could only be implemented by somebody who couldn’t care less about how it really works in game.
Retaliation only works it if it specific and obvious: a spined turtle or somebody with a spiked shield with piercing melee retaliation makes sense, some caster with a blue with snowflakes aura around him doing cold/frost retaliation makes sense, some fire monster with fire around it doing fire damage around it makes sense. I have no problem with that. That is a feature you can identify and manage accordingly.
We really don’t play the same game (vanilla solo is easier than multiplayer where you can combine more damage type and resist reductions ?) …
Even in a confuse fight like chamber of souls you must be able to check who you are hitting and except if you deals massive crits with your skills (like shadow strike on Fabius Blade Barrier), the reflect shouldn’t one shot you
Especially since a good build must have at least good resistance to the damage it deals and enough hp/hp regen to survive to its own skill reflected, hence the difficulties already mentionned with Internal Trauma since you can’t stack as much physical resistance as resists to damage like fire/burn or poison
In conclusion, that’s your problem if you play a glass-canon, not the problem of the game mechanics
I know its generic strengths and weaknesses and the team is prepared to it one way or another. This is an action game, not some strategy/adventure stuff.
If you know them, you know that some monsters/heroes have reflection skills … the only “strategic” issue here is to not kill yourself with your own attacks when you see one (which is not very complicated …)
I’m sorry but what you said sounds like a joke. Only a specific subset of monsters in this game can reflect. Not to mention that none of the reflects are permanent, with a fairly long cooldown and a pretty clear visual effect when they’re on.
If you keep killing yourself on reflects with a decently built character, that’s your own damn fault for not paying attention.
Now I still think reflect is a dumb mechanic in ARPGs, but the way Grim Dawn does it is fairly easy to deal with.
Yes, for most characters. But Internal Trauma build has the most problem with reflect, cause he cant mitigate his own damage, and cant use ADCTH unlike physical damage user.
One can get ~100K internal trauma DoT with S&B build. As for the fear of dying from reflect the only thing that I really found dangerous are Laceration crits…IF you use them. And I didn’t use it to get those numbers. No need.