One of the devs is busy streamlining and polishing up several zones. I don’t know exactly what he’s planning to do as I havent seen any yet, but things like removing a wall so it’s easier to walk around in level 10 or 14, or and extra lava bridge in level 12 etc are the things you can expect.
After normal you always lagged behind in levels, till you hit act 5 and you would gain 10 levels in just bloody foothills in nm, and then the same thing in hell. It’s now smoothed out a bit more and act6 giving you a final push before you’d enter the next difficulty which offsets the underleveling a bit. Besides, being lower level doesnt matter for the exp you get. If you can kill 'm just keep going.
player stats/bonuses. Pick a different merc if he dies too much. Act4 mercenaries taunt a lot so those will get more often. act1 or act3 mercenaries are ranged so they’re less prone to dying. They can’t leech life unlike regular pets, so skeletons etc can keep themselves alive easily.
The problem with the merc is, at the moment I need one with a good regen aura. Both of these are melee (Act 2 + Act 4). When you say player stats, does it mean he also gets my resists? That could explain a lot, because while my pets are decked out, I’m currently not.
I have a follow-up question regarding XP. When you say that being lower level is not important, does that mean there are no penalties for fighting higher tier mobs? What about lower tier? My other main arpg (PoE) has a level range in which you get full XP. If you leave that corridor, you get a penalty. So there’s no such thing in Grim Dawn? I honestly didn’t know that.
One more: How does the duration on “Amplify Damage” (Classic Necromancer) work? At level 20 it lasts almost 24 seconds, but the inherent damage debuff still only lasts 1 second? That’s barely enough to get a single hit in. Do I have to constantly recast it or does it renew itself?
Like i said i am a mouse.I explore everywhere.But because of rl i have to quit a lot of time so i end up grinding even though i don’t plan to.I lost my previous character that was almost fin with act 5(lost my character cause harddrive crashed) but will see how i do with my new character.I am trying a werebear druid.I usually play a caster so trying something new.I just can’t wait to get to act 6 to see the master piece
I’m sorry to hear that Pierre. I also want to play werebear druid but it’s still at level 20 after playing 5 other characters. I LOVE the concept.
I may try in Hell to go through EVERY area. I actually haven’t found any ubers in Act 6, not actually sure where they are, laughter.
Me realizing ubers are only in hell. World bosses then. And found no uber lairs.
I’ve been lazy lately and only killed a few world bosses with my golems.
EDIT: I felt like Act 6 expands both Act 1 and Act 4, my favorite D2 acts. Early Act 6 is a prequel to act 1, and late act 6 is an extension of act 4. My FAVORITE themes repeated yet again in another act.
Yeh crap happens.I am sad about my save games but it’s my own stupidity because i never back them up .I know a lot of people complained that act 4 is to big but i actually enjoyed act 4.I will do some parts 2/3 times over just because i enjoy it.I am taking a day off friday.It’s my birthday and to hell with that ima game the whole day.Only time i leave my room is when there’s food and then they will only see my shadow
Ok i found an act 2 sorc that i forgot about(have over 20 modded toons😁)I am not trying to insult the dev team as i think they done a marvelous job.The only thing that i personally would change is the evasion rate of enemies.I am pretty sure Ram planned this from the start so you invent in dex.
How it worked in d2 is you add enough dex for gear or 75% block and focus on vit for hp and enough str for gear.We don’t have double stats on gear i understand that.But for me personally it feels like i am force to go dex.I tried a pure build and i missed 5 out of 6 hits.I
I Look at it from both ways.Pure build = more damage but miss a lot.Dex build = more hits so canceling out the miss from pure build resulting in more dps.Only problem with this is that dex gives a lot less hp than the other stats so late game would be a wee bit harder by my calculation.It doesn’t sound like a lot but 100+ points will make a hell off a difference between pure and dex stat builds.
Anyways that’s my 2 cents.I had to find one fault .It’s also not a big problem and i may be overthinking things.I just did the calculation to the end game health compared to a pure build.
There is a penalty if you’re too high. Being a lower level is fine.
It lasts 24 seconds. The debuff is a DoT (like burn/poison). The way curses work is they tick every second. So it refreshes itself.
It going to be lowered on normal and slightly on nightmare. It’s mainly done this way to make people care about their stats from start to finish. Every character has either an Attack rating buff and/or enemy defense debuff. Best merc (imo) is the act5 frenzy merc for lowering enemy defense. Also make sure you are using El runes, amethysts, or other components to boost your AR.
I’ve only tried it once, putting 90% of all my points in intelligence while leveling and I didnt have much issues with hitting. But that was an arcanist that already comes with high AR buffs. You can always use the respec attribute potions later in the game once your gear/skills provide enough attack rating.
Yeh.I am actually splitting my int + dex at the moment.I am play an ice sorc and missed a lot.It’s much better after i added dex.I actually read the document that said every class needs dex.I also use my devotion on buffing dex/AR.Not sure on mercs yet as i never got past act 5 when i lost my ssd and been playing with act 2 merc till then.
I was thinking maybe to take a dex class like amazon with my sorc just for her passives evade etc and the master bar will theoretically sort out my dex problem. I got it worked out in my head but i suck at maths it most prob won’t work when i am done
I finally reached Act 6 on NM and I got to admit that I’m struggling more than I thought I would. Baal was annoying as usual on a summoner, but that’s to be expected, cause mechanics. None of the previous act bosses gave me so much trouble as the Butcher and Leoric did. Maybe I’m lacking damage, but they felt way too tanky for just being quest bosses. They chased me around constantly, hardly keeping focus on my minions and the butcher wrecked my summons on top of it, so I had to constantly recast them.
Yes, he was a fearsome foe in the original game, but for Tristram’s sake, I just beat Baal I should not have any issues with the Butcher right after that. I use a 27 Amplify Damage, which normally softens up bosses pretty good, but it doesn’t seem to do too much in Act 6 so far.
It feels a bit wonky to be able to destroy the 3 prime evils without breaking a sweat and then struggling with literally the first miniboss in D1. Hence my silly idea to move the act, so that Diablo comes first and Baal remains the final boss, it would all make more sense from a progression point of view.
By the way, I played around with the Attract skill and now there are monsters in Tristram. Finally we know what happened to Griswold.
Act 1 - Act 5 progression has been continuously balanced throughout the years, therefore moving Act 6 before Act 1 is simply out of question because that would completely destroy all of the work that has been done till now. RoT is way too complex at this stage for such major changes even though I agree that it would make more sense to start with D1 and end with D2.
Right now I’m taking Andariel on in Hell, it may be impossible but I’m here, LOL! Monsters are up to 5 levels ahead of me at this point.
The golems are Hell viable because I have druid mastery and use oak sage for health and 2 wolves (2 points into them so if one dies I summon another) for health regen. So they both kill AND can survive (I still only have 2 fire golems) with the exception of dying against big bosses like Andariel.
My experience has been pretty good besides dying to bosses 10x each, LOL. Depending. The countess always gets me if I forget to max pierce resistance…
The only way I could be hell viable was remove from the masteries I thought I’d need for Healing Rain to keep them alive, and pump them into offense for my pets instead (only alot of points in golems but even skeletons stay alive in most circumstances). Turns out Hell mode is not hard because of damage , early on at least for this build, but because of HP, so offense did it instead and I’m continuing down those lines with main skills as well. I never even intended for it to be a full summons build, but that’s how it worked, as it was the easiest route. Firestorm is probably no longer effectve after getting out of Nightmare but for the majority of the game I could use it to soften opponents and not simply to buff my golems and other minions.
Act VI bosses (D1): Yes, I had a hard time getting to act VI with the boss right after Baal in Normal, and I had difficulty with the bosses in Act 6 as well, but I never got fully stuck on them personally. It wasn’t as much of a struggle in Nightmare.
My plan was to have bears, but I never got that far on the skill tree. Things often go wrong when fighting the minions of hell.
I thought I’d talk about my experience more, since ChapterMaster is having difficulties, to compare.
EDIT: I haven’t used any curses, just buffs and damage/attack speed % increases.
My main damage dealers are skeletons, but apart from that your build is similar to mine. Not too creative of a choice, but I also went with C. Necro and Druid, that combo is hard to beat in terms of damage and health buffs for your pets. I actually went all the way to the bears for the huge buff there.
What you describe also sounds similar to what I experienced. In normal my pets were dying left and right, so I became paranoid about their survival and pushed maybe too far into that direction. Now hardly anything ever dies on me, but the bosses take way too long to go down. Mephisto was still very smooth, but anything after that (Baal, Diablo A6) took considerably longer. I might have to adjust, because I can’t see myself playing this char up until 100 like this.
I’m stil confused about the effectiveness of Amplify Damage. It works great against trash mobs, but on bosses it seems to hardly do anything at this point. Are they really that overcapped on physical resist? That can’t be, right? Otherwise a char without that debuff would be completely useless against them when doing phys damage.
I agree Druid mastery isn’t the most creative in the world. I used it before with Necromancer, but it’s just so good and I’m not as familiar with GD classes and not totally confident with them. I couldn’t find other synergy.
So I did a skeleton/mage build long in the past that got over level 90 and had SOME endgame gear, with wolves eventually maxed too. I totally ignored golems on that build as it appeared to be a skill point sink I’d never recover from. I was right! But that was along time ago so the balancing is different now.
Since you are using Druid I’m not totally sure where the problem is. I just took out Andariel easy enough, at level 76. 11k HP doesn’t feel like alot…
The way I handle bosses is I simply get better at the mechanics and taking cover from one death to the next until they are dead. If I haven’t played in awhile I have to relearn how to fight to stay alive. With many bosses before I got to be more of a damage dealer, I couldn’t use firestorm at all on Act 6 bosses or they’d easily take me out as I aggro’d them.
With the Butcher I’d run away when he was about to do an area damage skill that he has to prep for or it’d kill me every time, then run back and take him down in HP more.
Mainly my damage at this point, I’ve died only a couple of times so far. My pets are sitting at +400% life and +1100% damage and the latter doesn’t seem enough for Hell. I could shift around my devotions for more damage but I’m not sure if that’s the issue or if I should focus on AR or crit or something along those lines. I feel like for pets it’s harder to estimate what the root of the problem is, because in GD we don’t get detailed attack stats for them. It’s way easier to see when your char is the damage dealer.
My best bet is probably slapping higher-level runes on everything, those seem to give the best pet stats by far compared to components and anything else really. But I’m hesitant to do that, because I started with an empty stash so I feel bad to waste them on intermediate gear.
I want to craft the Spirit runeword, anybody knows where I might get a 4-socket monarch shield?
So the first thing I did when I got in Hell and saw my INSANELY low DPS was equip 4 high level runes (one was already there, so 3), and put on adria’s buff’s for pets she sells that are normally rewards in Grim Dawn for completing lots of quests (it’s a membership of guilds), went for attack speed and extra damage if it had them for my pets. Then I reversed my passives and went for the wolf constellation (forget name) that includes bleed damage and other more minor constellations.
As far as runes you don’t need to do the highest ones, you can go for the ones with attack speed that make the biggest difference since you have 1000% damage bonus. I have 18, 22, and 2x 27. I admit the level 27 rune is probably the best…
I have +866% damage and 93% attack speed bonuses for my pets. I have increased fire damage for myself and my fire golems from one constellation, so that’s rare synergy putting fire spells and pets together. My firestorm does Mogdrogen right now, and my act 3 mercenary (fire) and golems both have the -fire resistence to enemies equipped. I removed shepperd’s call as I removed all points from that constellation to make room for Mogdrogen.
I don’t know if any of that helps, just comparing…
The passive tree adjustment made the biggest difference of all of those. The runes definitely helped SOME. Adria’s specific Hell items helped SOME.
EDIT: Before Hell I managed to equip the 3+ all skills mace with the Horodric Cube. That helps, and I have the +2 Necro skills chest armor, it will be some time before I can afford to craft +2 skills if I don’t find a set by then.
Once you have a good enough attack rate for progression in Hell, the runes start dropping like mad, usually lower than level 20 I think, or there about…
The problem with the runewords is, I’m missing all the high bases. Heart of Oak requires a Seraph Rod and Spirit needs a Monarch shield. I searched this thread and Ram said the best chance to find one is the cow level…can’t get there either, barely saw goblins so far.
I even pondered going a retal route instead. Iron Maiden is a crazy skill, but that would require a complete reworking of my gear. It’s probably not very effective with a high number of minions though, because the outgoing damage gets fractured too much. Retal pets sounds cool though, I gotta admit that.
Ah, I have the +2 all skills shield as well. And I got a second +1 all skills helmet with better Nightmare rolls around when I killed Baal or after (Lich King?).
Generally if you aren’t getting the proper crafting materials you open all chests and smash all destructibles. Yes, there’s a level of luck, but that way you get more rolls and chances to get them. An area where you can clear fast and there’s losts of destructibles around I suppose is the best strategy for quick acquisition, I’d hope…
Well that’s about it from me.
I haven’t killed one Goblin to get to cow level, but at least with an extra act there’s now more places to level up and prepare.
Nothing is immune to physical and nothing will be after amplify damage. The effectiveness of amplify damage is mainly determined by your -×% physical resistance value, as amplify damage modifies the current resistances after-×% resists.
Use fissure or volcano instead
I’ve found them as early as act6 on normal, and act1 nightmare.
For pet builds, matriarch spear is considered to be one of the best items. (Runeword)
Wow! I never noticed the spear as I’m biased against 2 handed weapons, LOL. But that’s REALLY good! Still, would take forever to craft.
Yes, I’d have to see how many mastery points I have to replace Firestorm, thanks. I don’t cast it alot and just found a +2 clay golem ring in a vendor (I guess I was foolish for not looking sooner) and so now have 3 clay golems (haven’t tried it out yet) and so anticipate no issues for quite awhile even without power leveling/farming.
I LOVE the concept.
I should not have any issues with the Butcher right after that. I use a 27 Amplify Damage, which normally softens up bosses pretty good, but it doesn’t seem to do too much in Act 6 so far.