Light of Empyrion devotion

Grim Dawn Ideas and Feedback
1

After doing some extensive theorycrafting related to the Light of Empyrion devotion cluster, I’m still confused about its purpose. What sort of build is it intended for? I’ll list some of the problems here:

First, the cluster offers decent resistances (25% elemental, 15% vitality, 15% aether, and 15% chaos), but no one will invest 18 primordial and 8 order solely to access these resistances. If someone wants decent resistances, they’ll go for something more accessible like Crane instead. The resistances are fine, but they’re not alluring enough to warrant such a high investment.

Second, the cluster offers 80% fire damage and some flat fire damage as well. This leads me to believe that this constellation was designed for fire-based attacking (rather than casting) characters, but there is not any other Order or Primordial constellation which has any synergy with fire damage. The fire damage boost is certainly high, but it is not offered anywhere else on this side of the devotion map.

Third, the cluster offers boosts to pet resistances despite the fact that only Panther offers decent pet bonuses on this side of the devotion map. No pet user would go for Light of Empyrion simply for these marginal resistance boosts to their pets, and if they did, they would be missing out on other important constellations like Mogdrogen, Shepherd, or Bonds of Bysmiel. Pet users also want defensive stats like flat hp or DA, and this constellation provides neither. The only explanation was that the bonuses were designed with a Pet Hybird in mind, and in this case, a pet hybrid player would still prefer constellation such as Revenant or Mogdrogen.

Fourth, the nearby constellations are very defensive and heavily favor shields, which leads me to believe that this constellation is intended for melee shield users. The active ability also only activates only when struck by a melee attack, which supports the notion that the constellation was designed for melee characters. If this is indeed the case, why does the active ability have such a low proc chance, such a long cooldown, and such low damage? The damage of the proc is fire and burning (both of which are horribly supported by Primordial and Order), and the weapon damage component scales up to a measly 35%. This means that, once every 4 seconds, you have a 20% chance to deal a piddly amount of weapon damage and non-synergistic fire/burn damage when struck by a melee attack. You’ll also lower the target’s armor, which would be great if this constellation supported physical damage (it doesn’t). Every 4 seconds, you also have a 20% chance when hit by a melee attack to confuse trash mobs 50% of the time…:rolleyes:

This constellation needs… a lot of work. Has anyone been able to use it successfully?

Attachment: vflame.jpg

2

http://grimcalc.com/build/3xKalVS

I used it on my Elementalist Retaliation build some time ago.

I want to pick the character back up, but on Ultimate it can be a struggle vs casters/ranged. Zaria for example is a huge pain. The thermite mines do barely any damage and that’s realistically my main source of damage aside from retaliation itself. Still a fun build when fighting melee.

I’ll agree that Light of Empyrion just doesn’t really fit anything else except retaliation/shield builds.

  • The % chance to confuse shouldn’t be there.
  • The flat fire damage from one of the constellation nodes doesn’t really help much. It should be flat fire retaliation.
  • The damage is slightly better than Vindictive Flame but due to the cooldown is actually worse. When compared to “Vengeance” from the Avenger relic which has a an even lower cooldown but hits 3-4 times harder it’s hard to like this constellation. Damage needs to go up substantially.
3

I am leveling an Elementalist in MP. I am not using pets, but my friend will benefit of the armor reduction. Will take a while before I can comment on its successfulness.

4

I’m currently leveling a melee shield-bearing pyromancer in ultimate and I’m using Light of Empyrion, but despite having 800% fire damage, the damage from the active ability is negligible. I know that 800% fire damage isn’t much, but as I stated in my first post, it’s rather hard to accumulate fire damage when the rest of the fire-based devotions are on the opposite side of the devotion map.

The radius is also surprisingly small–I notice that the fastest trash mobs swarm me and proc it while the stronger mobs remain outside of the radius. By the time the skill is up again, 90% of the mobs are already dead and I’m chasing stragglers. In an action RPG, 4 seconds is a LONG TIME. Against trash, it will only have a chance to activate once. I’m not ready to spec out of it yet because I essentially designed my character around using it, but I’m disappointed to say the least. The high cooldown and low radius make it useless against trash, and the low proc chance and melee exclusivity make it useless against bosses that attack slowly or don’t use melee attacks at all.

I’d suggest doubling/tripling the flat damage, raising the weapon damage to 100%, reducing the cooldown to 2 seconds, and changing the proc to “20% when hit (not only when hit by melee)” to make it more effective against heroes/bosses. Add 80% increased physical damage to a node so that there is at least some synergy with the -armor granted by the active. Either that, or remove the -armor and replace it with something that is more synergistic. Also give some flat HP and armor to a node so that the constellation synergizes with its requirement for the player to take melee hits.

Alternatively, one could vastly increase the AoE (think maxed olexra’s flash freeze) to make it a dedicated trash clearing skill.

I know that my suggested buffs might sound a bit heavy-handed, but this is a Tier 3 offensive constellation proc we’re talking about… it should be impressive at SOMETHING at least. Right now, both the nodes and the active skill excel at nothing. Not survivability, not damage, not boss-killing, not wave-clearing… nothing. :cry:

5

I’ve never used the Vengeance relic, but on my melee pyromancer I use Solael’s Decimation. Every .5 seconds I dish out 4k chaos/vit damage against anything that touches me; it hits twice as hard and 8 times as often compared to light of empyrion’s proc. Thus, although my relic is different I have the same experience as you; light of empyrion pales in comparison to other high-end “when hit” procs.

6

I’ve made an Elementalist tank/support who was purely focused on defense while another person who I play with made a pure offensive Warder which works quite well.

Devotion I went for Tree of Life, Light of Empyrion, and Obelisk of Menhir (among others obviously).

Put a bunch of points into Grenado for decent burst damage/aggro then maxed a lot of auras like Flame Touched/Temper/Mogdrogon’s Pact/Heart of the Wild/Oak Skin in order to provide large offensive and defensive buffs to the other player who went pure damage via 2h Savagery/Brute Force skill lines.

Light of Empyrion giving confusion / armor debuff helped in this situation.

7

I’ll just post a quick comparison of damages. I was also left with only around +800% fire damage as well. Made a quick vid too.


Vengeance looks like a light blue shockwave and it procs in almost every fight. Due to vengeance dealing physical damage I need light of empyrion to proc first followed by vengeance.

I have no issue with the armour reduction btw because it synergises with many other defensive shockwave skills. Soldier’s Counter Strike being another.
I just don’t like the %chance to confuse.

8

It’s a key skill in my Commando tank/retaliator. I’m 100% blue-white devotions (Also have: Dryad’s Blessing and Cleansing Waters; currently migrating points from Turtle to Targo the Builder.)

General build is Overguard, Vindictive Flame/Ulzuin’s Wrath, Flame Touch, Menhir’s Bulwark. Current key gear: Conflagration relic, Pyroclasm Mark medal, Legion Firestarter weapon and Skybreach Bulwark shield.

Currently happily working on Elite (just killed Cronely) and pleased. Though it’s part of a multiplayer duo with my friend’s Druid (Ice/Lightning AOEs). I keep him a live and control crowds while he does the killing, mostly. But I do stand on my own, stay alive pretty darned well, and have appreciable (but, pales in comparison to his) damage. I can clear places. Slowly, but can, when I have to go solo. He can’t, very many, because he’s a bit fragile (though starting to work on defensive skills since starting elite, which is letting me get a bit more offense in to round out).

9

10niechars

10

The confusion is thematic. The theme is that it’s a “bolt from the holy god” kind of spell. (Notice the boost to undead and cthonics.)

11

I used it on a DW Firestrike Commando. ‘Used’ being the key word here, because the proc is especially underwhelming - as is often the case with T3s - and the other bonuses were minimal.

The resists are OK but Elemental Resist is overly common anyways so focusing two nodes of a T3 constellation on it is a letdown. Seeing literally any of the other resists would be a lot better than Elemental.

Pet stats are irrelevant as you explained.

It has very little +% Damage.

More Chthonic Racial damage is really the only redeeming facet of the constellation.

Also what’s up with the extraordinarily small amounts of flat damage in Devotion? 8-14 Fire on LoE, 5-24 Chaos on Dying God, 20-24 Cold on Leviathan, 9-18 Physical on Oleron…those bonuses are exceptionally minimal in Ultimate…or Elite…or ever, actually.

12

I agree this devotion needs some work, one of the few I considered outright bad. Pet stuff is ??? Resistances are nice, but they’re not that hard to come by I’d rather have something else. Proc does no damage, if it’s procced against someone who is not undead/cthonic is actually heals them

13

I mean, they go through both your stat amplification and then your weapon damage amplification, then possibly total damage amplification, so it looks low when you look at the base number, but after you amp it by 4500%+ possibly it looks tons better. 20-24 becomes 900-1080, for example. Considering a single node can add that much damage to a single hit, it isn’t that bad tbh. Especially for dual wield.

14

I’d like to know how you’re getting +4500% damage.

15

It isn’t uncommon to hit 1500% damage of a specific type, right? And this damage is added to base weapon damage, meaning anything using weapon damage can amp it further by whatever the weapon damage number is, be it’s Execution’s or Shadow Strike’s insane ratios (Both can hit 300% just on base points), the more reasonable ratios on Cadence or Zolhan’s Technique, and anything that supports dual wield damage can apply it twice easily (Looking at you Execution/Shadow Strike).

Yes, it means that Nightblade gets by far the most out of the nodes in general, but that isn’t a terrible thing that specific classes synergize better with certain things.

I personally think just a minor buff to 2-handers to automatically double the base value of all sources of flat +damage would help a lot in this case in equalizing the difference between dual wield and 2-handers.

16

Yeah, OK sure. But at that point, where you’re getting 900-1080 bonus damage, you’re basically guaranteed to be hitting well over 50-75 thousand noncrit. So you’re looking at around <=2% bonus damage…yaaaaaaaaaaay.

Nope, not worth it.