Mechanism questions on "melee", "ranged", "fumble", "Impaired Aim", "avoid"

Grim Dawn Gameplay Discussion
1

First, two assumptions, correct me if anything wrong:

“Melee” attacks can be blocked, influenced by “xx% chance for target to Fumble” and “avoided”(xx% chance to avoid melee attack);
“Ranged” attacks can be blocked, influenced by “xx% chance of Impaired Aim” and “avoided”(xx% chance to avoid projectile)

Several questions:

  1. How can I tell exactly whether a skill is melee or ranged? Eg. " Rashalga, the Mad Queen" has a “Ranged Attacks retaliation” skill which seems to trigger a lot by my stoneguard Warlord.

  2. Apart from these two types of “attacks”, are there other types of "attack"s? (“environmental” seems to be another type)

  3. Is there any damaging skill that is neither “melee” nor “ranged”, and cannot be blocked/fumbled/avoided?

  4. Is there any damaging skill that is 100% hit/ not through OA/DA check?

Thanks a lot!!

2

I’m pretty sure it’s like this, yeah.

1 - It’s something that you have to experiment with to find out which skills are considered melee or ranged. Does you Stoneguard Warlord use Targo’s Hammer devotion proc? The game consider those ranged and if you have several active, it will trigger the life reduction projectiles from her red aura a lot.

Then there are skills that the game considered to be ranged like Grasping Vines, which is odd.

3 - Spell based skills are unaffected by fumble and impaired aim. Skills like Forcewave, Panetti Replicating Missile. Aether Ray, Drain Essence, Flames of Ignaffar, Callidor’s Tempest and some others.

4 - Don’t believe there’s a skill that ignores the OA/DA check.

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3

Thanks for the great reply!
Would you elaborate more on the 3rd point? I get the feeling but still not quite sure what makes a skill “spell based”. You said “spell based skills” are unaffected by fumble and impaired aim, what about block and avoid?

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4

Since these skills are neither melee or ranged, avoid melee/ranged doesn’t work on them. Don’t know about block but i don’t recall the blocking sound that you hear when an enemy blocks one of these skills with its shield, so i’m gonna go on a limb and say blocking doesn’t work on them either.

5

I know Forcewave is unaffected by fumble. I am interested, whether there are spells, that are affected by fumble or by impaired aim?

Impaired aim affects ranged auto attack like Fire Strike, but if you’re in close ranged, even with Gun- you are prone to fumble.

6

if scales with casting speed or attack speed is my Guess

7

All the skills that i know are immune to fumble and impaired aim are cast speed based. So yeah, that seems to be thing that determines that they are immune to both those debuffs.

Phantasmal Blades is affected by chance to avoid projectiles though, something i don’t believe all other cast based speed skills. Except maybe Dreeg’s Evil Eye.

8

“cast speed based”!! wow this sounds to be true!!

Nightblade seems to be a unique class… Kind of make sense that attack speed works on nightblade’s “cast speed based” skills… Oh in Phantasmal Blades’ description it does say “+ X Projectile” lol