Let's talk about... 1h melee Savagery

Grim Dawn Ideas and Feedback
1

Savagery as an auto-attack performs pretty wierd in it’s current state. I have no complaints about the 2h Savagery, it’s pretty good and performs well in general, both on ranged and melee weapons. The thing that I want to discuss is the state of 1h Savagery in this game.

First of all - the DW Savagery. Currently there are three ways to make a decent DW Savagery build - either based on cold damage type, using the Korba’s Hood or making a bleeding trickster. Cold Savagery is actually pretty OP in my personal opinion.

All other DW Savagery options are either mediocre or straight up bad.

Here is a little list of different possible Savagery damage types and my personal thoughts about them:

Aether Savagery (using the Conduit of Wild Whispers) - pretty mediocre due to the lack of gear. Not that horrible tbh, but’s it’s one of the weakest melee aether builds that you can make.

Physical Savagery (using the Beronath sword) - bad. I have tried a lot of different builds with different class combos, but neither of them performed well. Any more or less difficult enemy is a pain in the a$$.

Vitality Savagery (using two Malmouth Scepters) - I have seen a crucible build using this concept and performed pretty well. But still not as well as some other available end-game builds.

Pierce Savagery (using the Mythical Brutallax) - bad. Has become a local meme on the forum already.

Ok, I agree that the above damage types are pretty exotic and that one skill shouldn’t cover all damage types. But, there is also…

Lightning Savagery - very mediocre. Pretty strange that the base skill damage type isn’t supported for 1h melee users in any way. It is possible to make some sort of Lightning Defender/ Ultos trickster, but from my personal experience it doesn’t perform very good.

Everything I’ve said above was about DW Savagery builds. Now, let’s talk about non-DW 1h Savagery, using the shield for example. It’s simply unplayble. No matter what damage type you want to use.

But Saw, Shaman is a 2h mastery!

Well, soldier is a shield mastery. But for some reason Cadance performs well with most available damage types, with 1h (DW and non-DW) and with 2h both melee and ranged weapons. Cadence in my opinion is a good example of an auto-attack, that allows different playstyles without sacraficing the actual damage.

I have three suggestions to deal with the “1h Savagery problem”:

  1. Buff the Savagery skill line and nerf Might of the Bear to make 1h Savagery a more valid option (of course nerfing cold Savagery as well).

  2. Introduce some sort of a transmuter (like the Might of the Bear) for 1h weapons. (don’t forget to nerf cold Savagery)

  3. Implement more gear options into the game, that allow DW and 1h/shield Savagery to be on par with other good end-game builds (and nerf cold Savagery).

This comment of mine kinda sums up the whole OP, so I figuered I’d add it here:

2

Question:
Is Cold Savagery so good because of N&O or is there something different I don´t know?

3

I always thought Savagery is not too good, however, I always liked it more than Cadence. Not that Cadence is bad, it’s good, and best when dual-wielding.

I’d say that the lightning damage from Savagery has either no or very low impact on your damage, but in the end it’s not as bad with a two handed weapon. I do agree, though, that without any support for it it’s kind of pointless to pick it.

Personally, I would rather leave it as a two handed replacer, than a global auto attack replacer because Shaman already focuses on casting, two handed weapons, pets and survivability, which is kinda impressive for one mastery. Not saying it’s OP or anything, but I think allowing to be good even with dual wielding COULD make it kinda strong. Buffing it via skill modifiers would be a nice idea, for certain damage types (lightning too, it’s kinda weird that it doesn’t perform too well with its own damage type).

If Crate would choose to make it better with a one handed weapon, would be nice to see damage increase and attack speed increase, not defense increasing ability like physical resist, because it’d break the game and make it way better with one handed weapons than with two handed.

4

I guess it’s the combination of Korba’s Hood Savagery mod and the overpowered N&O. Actually full-Korba Savagery is also pretty good.

5

Pistol Shield savagery works well on Vindicator with a variety of damage types.

DW Ranged Lightning Savagery works well on Vindicator.

Physical, Vitality, and Pierce DW melee Savageries are all pretty solid. Don’t know why in the world you’d use Bero sword for the Physical one, though. You get much more damage by trying to amplify Weapon Damage instead of the base lightning on the skill, which is a very negligible value to waste a 1H slot for.

`course, I detect this is a Crucible thread, so we’re undoubtedly going to disagree on what “good” means.

6

Don’t think it will make the Shaman mastery strong or smth, but will increase the build diversity a bit.

7

This thread is about 1h melee Savagery only. I’ve played with 1h ranged Savagery myself and I think the main reason it performs well is the Inquisitor WPS.

Don’t see how Pierce Savagery is better than Belgothian Strikes. A whole skill line preforms worse than a granted item skill :undecided: Also don’t see how Physical and Vitality Savagery are solid when compared to some strong end-game options like Warborn, for example.

8

So by your definition something can only be good if it isn’t worse than other options? Seems a little skewed and cyclical. Something will always need to be buffed and the power creep will be insane!

Warborn Cadence is its own can of worms, and it isn’t as though one gets Belgothian Strikes for free - you need dedicate four pieces with immense overlap with other sets in order to get it. So if you want to do a Pierce Autoattack without using 4pc Belgo, you still have options like Savagery or Cadence (or, god forbid, Pierce Firestrike :eek: ).

9

I just want to see some actual balance in this game one day. For now 1h melee Savagery is pretty underpowered in my personal opinion, that’s all I am trying to say here.

10

And balance means all skills are equally powerful?

11

Balance is something more than being equally powerfull. In Grim Dawn you can choose your character to be more tanky and deal less damage or have more DPS and have lees defence. And still be able to complete all end-game goals without any problems (not including Superbosses here) At least that’s how it’s supposed to work. Most 1h Savagery builds (exept cold, bleeding and vitality maybe) are neither tanky, nor they have good DPS to compensate for that. And it takes much longer for them to deal with enemies than for other end game builds. That’s a balance issue imo.

12

So in order for Grim Dawn to be a well balanced game, we need to have 1h chaos melee savagery good?

13

It’s more like “In order for Grim Dawn to be a well balanced game, we need a Cadance physical Soldier with a Shield to be on par with a Savagery Shaman with a Shild in terms of damage and survivability” :wink:

It’s really hard to explain a game balance idea correctly when English is not you native language :rolleyes:. Though, it’s a good practice I guess.

14

I mean, I would totally be up for having more S&B melee options than Cadance.

15

Savagery could be that option, but it’s simply very underpowered for now, that’s what this thread is about. As well as melee Firestrike btw, but that’s a whole different story :stuck_out_tongue:

16

Imo, Fire Strike is the best auto attack replacer in the game, from masteries. Savagery is, for sure, way on the bottom.

17

Firestrike is awful in melee, it performs way better on ranged. The only way I see to get melee Firestrike to do damage is to use that green Barthollem hammer.

18

Wtf are you talking about? Melee Savagery >>>> melee Fire strike. Fire strike can only barely compete with Savagery while using Barthollem (which comes with its own problems due a lack of other desired stats on the weapon).

Sure ranged fire strike has more flat damage and Brimstone AoE but:

  1. It has far less conversion support then Savagery. This 4 combined with damage types it deals means you never able to take full advantage of the large amounts of flat damage it offers (Melee does have a more decent amount support).
  2. It takes more skill points to max, both in terms skills and the mastery bar.
  3. It lacks the DA, OA and attack speed bonuses that Savagery has.
  4. It deals less weapon damage then Savagery (this really adds up if you add in WPS skills)

Franky I would argue that Savagery is actually better then Fire strike.

19

Cold and Vitality Savagery performance is a result of flat dmg stacking with further dmg increase by WPS from NB/Necro and RR sources. Both Cold and Vitatlity has a easy BiS items with conversion that grant you both skills and conversion and everything you need to own. =)
There is no flat lightning outside of Brute force, thats why 1H lightning Savagery is underperforming Same with pierce and phyz dmg. There is no aether support on Shaman, thats why Shaman will never be so good as, say, spellbinder or Apostate.
Even worse for chaos cause chaos suck.

20

I’d have to agree with Ptiro here. It’s not that lightning savagery is bad by itself. There’s just no support for 1h lightning in general. Stormheart works but it’s still not that great compared to what 2h lightning gives you. Spark of Ultos probably works well but haven’t tried it.

Now look at cold, even without the N&O RR and conversion steroids you have pierce to cold, acid to cold, lightning to cold, fire to cold conversions. Coldstone stacking, a free nuke in Blizzard, and just general cold synergy with nightblade. Vit is similar but has less support. Still works because synergistic WPS with Necro.

Bleed is a different beast. It only really uses savagery to lifesteal. The main sources of damage are the bleed mods on wps and bloodrager. Weapon bleed dmg can be delivered better on say, cadence but soldier doesn’t have RR so there’s that.

I’ll just have to reply with the classic “wait for FG” response. We still have to wait for more of the oathkeeper skills but lightning savagery archon could be a thing depending on what items we get.