Let's talk about Cooldown Damage Skills

Grim Dawn Ideas and Feedback
1

– firstly sorry for my english, I hope to continue writing can help me –

I have playing Grim Dawn approximatively 1500h.
And I have testing most of the “Cooldown damage skills”.

Basically I name “Cooldown damage skills” (CDS) all the skills with cooldown and damage.

In all of my 85 builds, two of them are based on it. A Grenado/Canister commando build (already make a review on this skill here : http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/showthread.php?t=41975) and a two handed battlemage with forcewave/blade arc/blitz, callidor’s tempest and a good cooldown reduction (47%).
This two builds are my worst, but those I like the most. Using the good spell in the good moment is very enjoyable play style.

But.

A spammable damage skill will be always better than a cooldown damage skill.

- In term of damage :

Take a exemple with Blade Arc
What build with Blade Arc use the transmuter ? I don’t think make a mistake if I said almost none. Because the cooldown diminushing drastically the damage of this skill, even with the damage increase.
Even if you use Blade Arc without transmuter only 2 or 3 times during 5s, it’s still better than one Blade Arc with transmuter every 5s. The only reasons to use Blade Arc transmuter is for a DoT build, to add a strong DoT.
But Blade Arc is cool because you have the choice to use the transmuter or not, like Callidor’s Tempest, Primal Strike or Forceweave.
But you have not this chance with Amarasta Blade Burst, Grenado and some other.

Even if you use a CDS between a spammable skill, you don’t feel any damage difference, particularly against the boss. You generally don’t see a good hit in his life bar. The only exception was Devastation and Shadow Strike with good damage, but a very high CD for the first one.

- In term of bonus like crowd control or buff/debuff :

Ok, each of CDS have a bonus.
The crowd control are good against trash mob but absolutely useless against boss (freeze, stun, knockdown, life reduction…), the only who have a good CC bonus is Ring of Steel with Circle of Slaugter from the “Target fumble attack”. The perverses effects of this was those skill don’t use for the potential damage, but only for the bonus (CC, buff, debuff).
A good exemple is Blitz. The better way to use Blitz is to put 1 point in Blitz and 12 points in Blindside. The charge and DA debuff are absolutely more interesting than the damage.

- Conclusion :

I generalize this post to simplify. But I think sincerely that the problem is for almost all of the Cooldown Attack Skills. That’s not a hasard if Time Dilatation become one of the most powerful Constellation in GD, it permit to a CDS to become a spammable skill for some second.
That’s why I never see a build who maxed Doom Bolt or Primal Strike (without transmuter), except for some TD build.
IMO the best solution is :

  • Improve drastically the damage of CDS. At least 25% but I sincerely think 50% isn’t a bad idea.
  • Make Boss sensible to CC like Freeze, Stun, Knockdown, with an internal cooldown of 10s (for example). In this way you can apply a CC only each 10s. To avoid abuse of this specifity. You can make that the duration don’t count in the insensibity duration. For example, you apply a stun for 3s and when the stun is finish, the 10s of insensibilty begin.
  • Nerf Time Dilation, if you apply my two previous proposals, you have a risk that Time Dilation build become absolutely overpowered. A possibily can be to make Time Dilation recast for free a skill you launch without diminushing the CD.

Thanks for reading

2

I definitely agree. I’d like to see cooldown skills be considerably buffed even if it means a nerf to TD (and let’s be honest, TD builds feel pretty cheesy anyways). Cooldown skills really need more of an “oomph” factor.

3

You are meant to alternate your main damage ability or auto attack (the one you spam) with cooldown abilities.

Some spells are versatile and can fulfil both roles and some aren’t. Cooldown abilities aren’t weak, they are less versatile and only serve as secondary attacks. They aren’t meant to be used as main attacks.

You still want a main attack, so pick one. Picking 2 main attacks is pointless, you can only use one at any time.

If you spam blade arc every 2 seconds then keep it as it is, if you don’t then get the cooldown passive, it’s that simple. Any other option is a net dps loss.

4

You missed the point. Re-read this section of the first post:

“Even if you use a CDS between a spammable skill, you don’t feel any damage difference, particularly against the boss. You generally don’t see a good hit in his life bar. The only exception was Devastation with a very high cooldown.”

Thus, even if the purpose of cooldown abilities is to alternate them with spammable attacks, there is no reason to do so because the damage increase is negligible. You’re better off just spamming your primary skill and ignoring cooldown skills unless you have a DoT build or the cooldown skills serve an important utility function.

5

I didn’t miss any point.

If 1 second = 1 attack and main attack = 1K and secondary attack = 2k

Over the course of 5 seconds, 5MA = 5K damage, 4MA +1SA= 6K damage.

If you use your spells the way they are meant to be used, you always come out on top.

6

But whats the point ? Playing a demo in a build and using firestrike can do amazing dps and going for grenado or canister bomb would just make you weaker.

The same is for most builds. There are a few skills like shadowstrike that are really good but most cooldown skills aren’t, and your usually better off just going for a lmb attack.

7

Not the way it works at current though. It is more along the lines of your spam attack doing 1k damage/sec and you have 12 skill points.

You could invest those points into a cooldown skill to alternate in, this cooldown skill will do 2k damage in 1 sec and can be used 1 sec in 5. Good right?

Except…you could spend those 12 points into a passive or semi passive buff that’ll increase your spam attack to 1,350 per sec instead. So ‘the mathz’ would look something like:

1k X 4 sec + 2k = 6000

1350 X 5 = 6750

Obviously those numbers are completely fabricated but the trend is true if you look at the vast majority of cooldown skills. The big outliers, damage wise, are:

Shadow Strike - a one on one slayer of epic proportions
Devastation - great vs groups or slow/stationary big bosses.

The rest aren’t so much worth taking if you are also running a spam skill and are ‘C’ teir or lower builds on their own. Trozan’s Skyshard? Lowish damage unless heavily invested (beyond rank 16/16 base + modifier investment) and an odd cooldown timer to weave in to begin with - also pales in comparison to shadow strike for one on one. Grenado - requires lots of points without packing a really noticeable punch compared to a well invested firestrike. Similarly when was the last time you saw a lightning savagery character who took wind devil (for something beyond resist reduction) or lightning totem to drop totems/devils between savagery hits?

This doesn’t look at crowd control or debuffs, which can be worth taking. But is purely about mixing in cooldown + spam skills as a means of pumping out damage.

When I run spam builds I stick to reinforcing the spam skill and utility skills. When I run cooldown based builds either its poison or I accept that Nem type fights will be drawn out 3-4 minute affairs at best.

8

I’m agree, but it’s the problem actually.

The damage of attack skill with a cooldown is too low compare to a spammable.
Even with a good Blade Arc (with transmuter) who deal x3 or x4 the damage of your spammable, it’s still not interesting considering the 29 points you need to invest in it.
Invest this point in Battle Cry, for exemple, is absolutely better in term of impact during the game. Improved damage of the spammable, defensive ability too. And cost less in points.

Just look the top tier build who are actually posted in the forum. The only “Cooldown Attack Spell” who can be maximize is potentially Shadow Strike and Devastation.
None use Blitz with 16 points on it and 12 points on Blindside. Only 1 points for the charge and sometime some points in Blindside for the DA debuff.
Same thing for Canister Bomb, who is used essentially for the stun effect. you just need 1 point in it and 3 point Concussive Bomb.

The reason is simple, the impact of this skill in term of damage (or CC against boss) is near of zero. You have no feeling of what those skill do. The gain of damage you can have are so low that it’s still better to invest this point in a support skill or a passive.

Even a Druid playing Trozan’s Sky Shard and Wind Devil, who have high end set stuff, good synergize, will be never a top tier build. It’s viable but deal very low damage and a more vulnerable compare to dual wielding Blademaster or an Ultos build.

I give you a personnal example in one of my build. (http://grimcalc.com/build/jJsEhRm)
In this build I have 47% CD reduction, all my physical damage are converted to elemental or aether damage. And I’m playing with a two handed weapons (Temporal Arcblade)

Well, let’s talk about Forcewave.
I have tested Forcewave in cooldown mode (without Tremor). With 47% CD reduction, Forcewave have 1.3s of CD. That’s a very low CD.
But, even with this very low CD, the spammable (with Tremor) stay better in term of global damage. The damage I deal each 1.3s of spamming is better than the damage I deal with one hit each 1.3s. And I don’t have a good casting speed, 125%.

That’s the problem. Even with a build design to use often as possible skill with cooldown to do damage, a spammable stay better than the CD version of this skill.

That’s why I said that this CD skills and transmuters need an heavily damage buff. Increase CC, debuff or buff, change nothing, we will stay in the situation where player just put one point on it.

9

This issue is similar to pet attack skills, pets auto attacking and proccing devotions ends up being efficient than using attack skills in pet tree

Since %damage does not scale well builds are all about proccing as many things as possible, multiple damage sources, debuffs which all go better with just auto attacking, spamming things or just using 1 point long cooldown to proc stuff

All this also makes weapons/items which have procs better than weapons/items with castable skills in general

10

It’s certainly a DotA-esque feel.

Picking a secondary ability is like picking a support in DotA. The CD skill starts off stronger than your LMB at the start of the game but ends weaker. Going LMB is like picking a carry.

Buffing the CD skills is not the solution imo, it just makes the early game on CD skills a breeze (which it already is for these builds). It’s a hard balancing act.

11

Why not look at other games in the genre for inspiration, or at least a rough idea of how it should work. A skill that does direct damage with a long cooldown wipes the screen moreoften than not. Or at least kills any mobs it reaches. In GD most cooldown skills feel like they have too small aoe radius together with bad damage. As if they are more utility than damage, and you are supposed to use 2-3 of them and a spam skill in every build. But you won’t even have enough points for one together with a spam skill. Unless its callidor or ray with devastation.

12

Yep, but increase the range of AoE is not a solution. Because the skill stay bad againt boss. And globally, in GD the main difficulty is the boss. If you want invest point, it’s to fight them.
the other problem is that an insane AoE zone can make the fight against trash very boring. It’s more interesting (IMO) to overkill some mobs and continue to fight than to kill all the mobs with one or two spells.

Other point.
Look Devastation, Devastation is not good because it’s a strong AoE. It’s good because it’s a strong AoE with multiple hits. Like a spammable, during a time, in a zone. That’s the reason who made Canister Bomb a decent AoE Damage too, not so strong than Devastation, but not so bad.

I don’t know if you have an other solution, but personnaly I don’t find an other solution than drastically increase damage.
As I explain before, with Forcewave, diminushing the CD doesn’t work. Increase AoE is not interesting against boss. And increase “bonus” don’t encourage to invest lot of points.

After, with my personal test. During the levelling of my Commando, if I remember, I having 12 points in Grenado and 6 points High Impacts at level 50. It’s a good investement for this level. Even with that I wasn’t able to one shot lot’s of yellow mob in veteran and almost none in elite. For a skill was design to deal huge damage to very few target.
Finally this problem appear early in the game.
Now, in Ultimate, with 26 points in Grenado and 12 in High Impact, legendary stuff, the problem stay the same.
And if a player invest 16+ points in Grenado, and 12+ in High Impact at level 50, it should be logical if he wreck yellow mob and deal huge hit on boss in moderate difficulty.

And finally, that’s what I want. Feeling something when I use this skills.

We talking about near 22 skills who are potentially underpowered (depending sometime of transmuter ex : Primal Strike), with their modifiers. 626 skills points potentially you don’t want use. Sometime, only use for buff/debuff/CC… (Blitz), procability of devotion (Storm Totem).

That’s a really huge problem in term of build diversity.

[ul]Primal Strike (without Thunderous Strike)
Wind Devil
grasp Vines
Storm Totem
Callidor’s Tempest
Olexra’s Flash Freeze
Trozan’s Sky Shard
Phantasmal Blades (without Frenetic Throw)
Amarasta’s Blade Burst
Ring of Steel
Blade Trap
Dreeg Evil Eye (with Focused Gaze)
Sigil of Consumption
Bloody Pox
Black Water Cocktail (with High Pontency)
Stun Jack (without Quick Jack)
Canister Bomb
Grenado
Blade Arc (with Clean Sweep)
Forcewave (without Tremor)
Blitz
Counter Strike
[/ul]

13

Surprised no one has brought up the concept of procs, which are essentially what all endgame is built around and favor fast autoattacks rather than cooldown-based skills.

Blade Arc (with Clean Sweep)
Storm Totem
Sigil of Consumption
None of these are underpowered because, in the case of Clean Sweep, their damage is so high, or they consistently apply their damage over time, in the case of ST/SoC, while actually outlasting their cooldown too.

Edit: Duck King made a good point about the similarities of DotA, but I mildly disagree with the semantics. Some skills in DotA are always going to be useful regardless of the stage of the game. Armor Reduction, Armor Buffs, slows, stuns, etc. (not considering BKB, which I think is an outdated concept and needs to be reworked). Likewise, such debuffs in GD could prove to be always useful as well, and the perfect place for them is on cooldown skills. Unfortunately, bosses - the big offenders when it comes to single-target - are essentially immune to everything. That’s where the core of the problem is. Tone down that immunity, tone up their other defenses, and then sprinkle debuffs through cooldown skills, and you’ll begin to see more usage of them in the long run.

14

I guess you didnt read my post since I started with pet skills

15

Correct. :stuck_out_tongue:

16

Surprised no one has brought up the concept of procs, which are essentially what all endgame is built around and favor fast autoattacks rather than cooldown-based skills.

Yep, I’m absolutely agree with that. It’s an other point I wanna talk, but I have prefered to restrict debate in some points (damage actually) and avoid that the discussion go off in all directions. And talking to procs problem after. Sorry Dekaron, don’t see your post ^^

Concerning Blade Arc, it’s possible, I never tried to make a huge critic build with it. But I believe you.

Concerning Storm Totem and Sigil of Consumption, I have hesitate to add it in the list (like Black Water Cocktail). Some skill like this (a sort of “DoT”) are often good. Like Thermite Mine and Mortar too.

That’s where the core of the problem is.

I don’t think it’s the core of the problem, but just a part. If you make the boss sensible to CC, without modify anything in CD skill. You still in the case of you put just one or two points in this skill, only for use the CC.

17

While I do agree that some CD skills are a bit weak and could some adjustmentscoughGrenadocough, some of the skill comparisions listed here makes no sense…

Blade Arc with Clean Sweep is a very strong secondary skill because not only it can hit pretty high (over 100k with some builds), it also adds a pretty strong DoT on whoever it hits, plus it offers a pretty good CC.

Now onto Sigil and Storm Totem, if you’re comparing them in terms of damage alone, then you’re doing it VERY wrong. These skills aren’t meant to be your nuker… they’re meant to be used as an extra support to your character, while you attack with your main skills, so of course, if you compare their damage with other main damage skills, they’re gonna feel weak.

ABB is some sort of Cadence-Blade Arc hybrid skill which offers a rather nice AOE damage (most notably with 2H weapons) has a very good AOE range and is meant to be used as either a LMB skill or as a support skill, in case you’re interested in the extra buff it grants to increase the damage of your other skills. I personally enjoy it and use it a lot with my 2H Blademaster as a LMB skill.

Like I said, I agree that some skills feels a bit weak towards end-game, but not all the ones listed here are weak.

18

That’s why I said “potentially”. I have not tested all the skills in the game, but I just listed all the skill who can be underpowered. ^^

Tried to make your list for comparaison can be a good idea. And other reader too.

19

My issue with your post, you are comparing spammable attacks vs cooldown attacks when you should be comparing cooldown attacks that you think are okay vs cooldown attacks that you think are weak to make your point, and you are comparing single target attacks vs group target attacks when you should be comparing single target vs single target and group target vs group target to make your point. All these abilities have different names, because they are different and are doing different things. And you mixing everything together makes little sense and certainly doesn’t support your conclusion.

For the sake of the argument, I’ll simply say that aoe attacks are well aoe, and are meant to be good against multiple foes, and when you are using them against one single enemy, they are obviously not at their peak of their potential.

I think one issue with the game that is being overlooked in this discussion, bosses are as far as I am aware pretty much always one and single entity, and yes it kinds of limit the choices you have when you fight them, since single target attacks are always going to be better. If bosses fights were a bit more diverse, with you fighting several mini-boss at the same time instead of one bigger boss, maybe you wouldn’t feel that way about those abilities.

Edited cause I answered the wrong person hah.

20

I think a lot of this depends on how important you regard min-maxing. Some people just play and want to find interesting builds that work, others want the absolutely best and most optimized builds, or at least one that doesn’t have a lot of wasted or redundant investment in the limited available resources.

I’m in the latter group, and I think it’s safe to say that no one in that group would consider maxing a secondary skill just so you can use it every few seconds to do something that is worse than your main attack (basically, the problem of this thread).

Maybe it does serve a secondary purpose or has better AoE, but GD just isn’t the kind of game that works like that. Why not? Because AoE, while useful, is not that valuable compared to having high damage and mobility when it comes to end game clear speeds.
Some exceptions are skills like Primal Strike that do both good single target and AoE with the right build, but they are rare and need great gear.

But the main thing is, no optimizing gamer would max 2 different attack skills and their passives, those extra 30+ points are a crippling blow to your net build.
And that’s not the only thing: you also need to get a secondary Devotion skill to bind to it which means more points “wasted” as there is no gameplay reason to get one, since you can’t use both skills at the same time.

The bottom line is: [b]whenever you’re not holding down the mouse button with your main skill, you are in fact losing damage.

[/b]So at best, cooldown skills like this currently serve a utility role (you can bind a utility Devotion to them, too), but the 2-maxed-damage-skills kind of build just isn’t a thing if you value efficiency.

That’s something that needs a major rework by Crate, it’s undoubtedly a significant incongruence in the current game.

P.S: see also: this thread which touches on a similar issue.