The Occultist is, at the time of this writing, in a fairly odd spot right now. Some aspects of it are overpowered, some are underpowered, but virtually the entire mastery is a ‘support’ mastery in the sense that its skills benefit other mastery’s skills moreso than its own. In addition, there’s a recurring problem with the Occultist with itemization, as there are too many Occultist-themed items with +Vitality Damage and +Attack Speed or +Chaos Damage and +Casting Speed, even though within the Occultist these sorts of abilities do not exist.
This mod attempts to fix all of the above. This mod is partially a sort of Feedback/Idea for Crate to take inspiration from as well as for the community to physically enjoy in the meantime.
Before I get into the specifics of the changes made, I’d like to take the time to answer a couple questions I imagine some of you may have.
Q: Will this be added to Cornucopia by default, given that Cornucopia is a rebalancing mod and you’re one of its developers?
A: Not by my call. I wouldn’t argue against its merge, but I also have no intention to merge it at present. Occultist Redux is not an attempt at rebalancing the mastery (although some over-performing skills were tweaked), rather, it’s an attempt at redesigning the mastery toward something with more build possibilities and a broader sense of purpose all with the intent of making it fun.
Q: Why the Occultist?
A: As described above, Occultist is too much of a support mastery to feel complete. There’s really only three ways to use Occultist as your main mastery, and that’s with a Pet build, a DEE build or a SoC build. This mod attempts to broaden the ways you can ‘main’ Occultist while leaving its supportive nature intact, if not improving upon it. More importantly than that, I chose the Occultist simply because I’ve never liked the mastery since I first played Grim Dawn. It’s been powerful, and I’ve made plenty of characters involving the Occultist, but I never found the mastery itself functionally fun.
Q: Will you rework–
A: No. I have no intention to rework any of the other masteries in Grim Dawn. I think they already do what they need to in order to synergize with themselves and function wholly.
VERSION 1.0
^download^
Changes to the Mastery:
[spoiler][ul]
[li]Merged Bonds of Bysmiel with Solael’s Witchfire. Merged Manipulation with Second Rite. This was done for a couple of reasons. The first of which was to physically open up UI space for the addition of another skill line in the mastery. The second is to encourage investment in both SW and SR on a pet build, and to empower Hybrid Chaos/Vitality Summoner builds, all while simplifying and minimzing required skillpoint investment.[/li]
Note that this innately means any gear with +BoB or +Manipulation will bug out and will not properly bump up any skills, given that those two skills no longer exist.
[li]Removed Cooldown from Bloody Pox. Removed Cooldown Reduction from Fevered Rage. Bloody Pox feels clunky. I don’t think anyone would disagree with that. This will allow you to manually spread the ‘disease’ yourself if you want to, rather than needing to rely on its own spread mechanic (which, of course, it still has). You no longer need to drastically empower enemies if you don’t want to solely for the purpose of having no cooldown on the skill.[/li]
More importantly, this makes Fevered Rage that much more distinct from its base skill because FR is solely an OA/DA adjustment (and more % Current Life Damage) on enemies. If you think it’s worth the risk, take it. Otherwise, stick with the base skill with no functional penalties for doing so.
[li]Reworked the stats of Curse of Frailty and Vulnerability. [spoiler]Curse of Frailty: [/li]
No longer reduces Physical Resistance or Bleed Resistance. Now reduces Armor (by a %) and Life Leech Resistance of affected enemies.
Vulnerability:
No longer reduces Vitality Resistance, Poison&Acid Resistance, or Elemental Resistance. Now applies a Total Resistance Debuff to affected enemies.
There’s no questioning that CoF/Vuln were originally overpowered. Witchblades are dominating the meta due to CoF’s Phys resist reduction and the combo is virtually essential on such a wide variety of builds. These changes attempt to curb some of that OPness back in line. Vulnerability’s new Total Resistance Reduction is of the same values as it was in Vanilla. In a vacuum, this means that CoF/Vulnerability function the same for Elemental, Poison&Acid, and Vitality damage types, but BETTER for Physical Damage and WORSE for Bleeding Damage.
HOWEVER, Total Resistance Reduction does NOT stack. This means you can no longer stack Vulnerability with Break Morale, Raging Tempest, Mark of Dreeg, or Acid Spray (Manticore Constellation).
Again, however, this means something else…Vulnerability now benefits Aether and Chaos builds. The ramifications of this change are definitely too huge to discuss in this post alone, but hopefully it should sufficiently shake up the Witchblade/Devotion metagame enough and create some new, viable builds in the process.[/spoiler]
[li]Blood of Dreeg has been changed into a toggleable buff, and it has received a new transmuter. [spoiler]Many people have requested that BoD be turned into a toggle, so here it is. It (and its modifier) no longer have a flat energy cost, but instead now have a cost/second. Its cooldown is the same, however, and it still has a % Health Heal. This means that if you want to quickly toggle BoD on and off for the burst heal, you can do so, and use the skill as a heal as in Vanilla. For everyone else, the skill is now a buff.[/li]
I also reduced the Area of Effect of the buff from 20 meters to 15 meters, bringing it more in line with other AoE buffs (most of which are 12 meters, but I spared the extra 3 meters for more pet synergy).
The new transmuter converts 100% of Acid Damage into Chaos Damage while Blood of Dreeg is active. This applies to the flat Acid Damage you get from Blood of Dreeg, as well as the flat Acid Damage on various skills, most notably Dreeg’s Evil Eye. Finally, with DEE + the BoD transmuter, we have a Casting Speed skill for Chaos Damage that isn’t Chaos AAR.[/spoiler]
[li]Merged Mend Flesh into Summon Familiar. Merged Ember Claw into Summon Hellhound. Moved the other pet skills up a bit; the Familiar’s other skills can be accessed one rank earlier, and the Hellhound’s two ranks earlier.In short, the Occultist’s pets are more efficient. From this and the BoB/Manipulation change, pet builds should have many more skillpoints available to work with, especially hybrid pet builds. It also makes the Raven substantially more notable right from the get-go, due to its built-in heal. Mend Flesh scales the same as it had before, but Ember Claw scales somewhat worse. This is because Ember Claw was a 12 point skill whereas Hellhound is a 16 point skill. Ember Claw’s stats start and end (at 26/16) where they did with the original skill, however.[/li]
As with Bonds of Bysmiel and Manipulation, +skills to Mend Flesh or Ember Claw will bug out.
[li]Added a new skill to the mastery, Vital Assault. Features a modifier of its own, Life Leech. [spoiler]One of the big complaints with the Occultist is that it features a lot of flat damage seemingly benefiting a Weapon Attack, but features no such skill of its own. This goes back to the original problem of Occultist being a support mastery. Now, it has its own attack. This skill works with Weapon Pool Skills, like Fire Strike or Savagery do, and is centered around Vitality Damage. This skill has no Weapon Requirements.[/li]
Its modifier provides the skill with innate Attack Damage Converted to Health, +% Vitality Damage, and some flat Chaos Damage.
I tried to balance these skills similarly to Fire Strike while keeping in mind that it provides no AoE whatsoever and is only made available deep into the Occultist mastery.[/spoiler]
[/ul][/spoiler]
I hope you enjoy Occultist Redux. Let me know of any suggestions you have or bugs you find.
-Ceno
