[Mod Release] [Mastery] The Engineer

Grim Dawn Modding - Projects
41

Asylum101 had done it in TQ so maybe ask him how he did it, as far as I know it should more less be the same (obviously only making assumptions I’m nowhere near smart enough to actually do modding).
The auto equipping will make everyone stay away from unarmed I’ve already switched to range because of it and I was only using it for 10mins

Fair enough makes sense, it was more a QoL suggestion rather then balance if you want to keep it purely to unarmed no worries.

Ok cool I’m looking forward to it :slight_smile:

42

Like that exclusive nice replacement/addition for the expensive sentry guns definitely work the investment, however it isn’t clear do they scale with pet damage Samual’s ones or do they scale with your own damage multipliers?

And man your tool tips are awesome and funny!! Are you an author or something?

43

Ahhhh shoot. I forgot to specify that they do scale with pet bonuses. I’ll add it to the list of things to do for the next patch. Definitely going to be going over a few of my skill descriptions. Some of them could be better. And I’m sure balance concerns will continue popping up, probably more once the mod is merged into DAIL, but who knows.

I’m not an author or anything, I just like making silly fake lore.

44

Haha fair enough

I must apologize for the grief I’ve caused with Focus Finder, indeed having a larger pool makes throwing sentries out easy and focus finding makes it really easy to regain energy back or original idea was indeed the right decision.
And 2 of the iconic buffs are in good spot with upkeep time now, the Iconic Safe Spot is perfect how it is(DA boost MIGHT need to be lowered don’t know yet), while at my current point Iconic Sentry is useless HOWEVER it looks like its going to be grossly over powered especially later on and against bosses both OA and attack speed need to be halved or every drain tripled.
Not sure about Iconic Incendiary as I don’t have access to it yet but it looks like it may be in a good spot.
(I tested the exclusive on a test character I have)

Honestly I wouldn’t merge it with DAIL anytime soon even though people are asking for it, you should first get it balances for base game as that’s what most people who use your mod would be doing (plus I’m not using DAIL :stuck_out_tongue: yet at least).
And secondly if you get it balanced for base game it would be easier to balance it for DAIL and you would need 2 separate versions of the mod anyway 1 for DAIL and one for base.

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45

Sentry imitation has always felt like the most useful one to me, but I think I will wait and see what people think of all of the imitation abilities at higher levels. I may very well make the energy drain scale quicker for all of them, and have been considering doing that for quite some time.

There are a lot of unknowns right now, so I decided to release the full mod perhaps prematurely, but definitely in an at least decent state. I can’t personally balance a huge variety of playstyles at every level, but there are more people out there who can help give ideas, and DAIL will help bring those people in.

It’s always a bit risky to balance without adequate data, and it’s unfortunate when a bad balance decision gets made. The more data, the better the balance can be.

You’ve been giving some very specific suggestions on subtle issues and scaling, which I do greatly appreciate since that’s really the hard part. The fine balance is always the hard part. The big stuff always gets found and solved pretty easily, like the fact that Turf Turner was a literal actual nuclear bomb for a while there.

46

The Sentry Imitation is indeed probably the most useful one and definitely has no issue with an energy drain increase, The Incendiary one could be just as useful if not more so due to rather high damage absorption and +Max resist can get very close to immortality, as I said though I haven’t really played with it much yet but the energy drain looks OK though there probably wouldn’t be a problem with increasing the energy drain.
However the only significant thing Safe Spot imitation is providing is health and health regen (later being useless without high flat regen)
The DA could possibly turn out OP but for the most part with OA/DA scaling doesn’t seem to be anything to huge and consider there is plenty of other ways to get huge health and Regen bonuses without draw backs it is by far the less useful one and shouldn’t have any more changes to the energy drain.

I can understand that reasoning but honestly I think it would just cause more headaches for yourself due to a lot more work plus you would be trying to balance around something that is already unbalanced if you merge with DAIL before balancing around base game.
Imo you a hell of a lot more likely to make bad balance decisions when taking DAIL into consideration as I can tell you now DAIL is without a doubt unbalanced. No offense to the guy doing it but for the most part from what I’ve read he’s just merging every mod into one and that is just catastrophe for balance.

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47

Reduce cast rate increase from Stanley’s Safe Space to 1third of what it currently is at max level or remove it as it casts waaaay too fast at max level without gear support as soon as you add gear on top it becomes absolutely ridiculous
And reduce both sentry type durations to 45secs, 3min is way too long and makes it too is to stack max amount during boss fights or to create killing fields to lure monsters into

I hate to say it because it’s so much fun to throw a multitude of sentries out but the only way you can balance the skills is to limit them to a 5 summon limit. I’ve taken out Almagation and Herald of Flame (which are pretty decent challenges in normal) with no trouble due to being able to summon so many.
While a single target can only be hit by 8 different allies (including yourself) being able to have 15-20 sentries out at once means that the enemy is guaranteed to get hit at least 8 times which quickly adds up. You will also have to try and make it, if it’s possible, so that the Sentries and Incendiaries share a summon limit. If that’s not possible then you are going to have to drop both summon limits to 3 to balance it.

48

I’ll have to agree with Nightmare balance suggestions, the sentries are way too overpowered because of the summon limit. Duration I guess you can let it at 3 minutes, there aren’t many battles that last for more than 45 seconds anyway besides Logh.

But I don’t agree with the shared summon limit workaround (because as far as I know it’s impossible to have a shared limit. Believe me I tried). I’d suggest putting them both at 5 summon limit until Crate hopefully implements a way to make a shared limit.

Also I don’t understand why they scale off of pet bonuses. They act more like the Shaman’s totems or Demolitionists mines/mortar. And I seriously think it would be better if they scaled off player damage bonuses instead. This would open up a new field of possibilities instead of going full on summon gear or hybrid, which feels weird when you think about what you’re playing. They’re mechanical constructions, not living beings.

By the way thanks a lot for the mega link, it’s really nice.

49

If they were to be made to scale off your multipliers they would become even more OP they are proc machines especially the incendiary one.

Honestly 5 of both would be too much need to drop it to 3 maybe even 1 for the incendiary (chuck any devotion on it and it is guaranteed to go off a minimum of 5 times within a couple seconds).

Both Mortar and Storm totem have a much slower static attack speed where the sentries as pets can get their attack and cast pushed up massively making them even more powerful, with the way they are designed going a hybrid pet build is actually really easy and best way to balance the skills while still being able to buff them through skills, items and devotions.
I can understand your thinking over them being mechanical and not living because that’s what they are, but through my playing it I can see it’s easier to balance them as pets plus you aren’t stuck with 1 attack speed.

Also Koba you need to change the proc on the exclusive.
I know I said it was good and it is but that was just a short test character play around, properly using it has made me realise it makes standard sentries essentially void and a waste of skill points as the exclusive proc is so much stronger and easily procced

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50

Going to address the several replies from while I was asleep. Not going to bother quoting because it would get really crazy long. In general I just want to say that I really want to keep most of the current theming of the mastery (Energy use, ridiculous temporary bonuses) but agree that some things definitely need to be changed.

Sentry Imitation: Very likely to get an energy drain increase.
Flamer Imitation: Yeah, it’s near immortality, but it’s constantly draining your energy while active, making it so it’s hard to do anything else. You’d probably end up needing to use it when you get yourself into a bad situation, in which case you may not have been being careful with your energy usage in the first place. Or if you’re trying to play a tankier build, you won’t have the energy to sustain it very long in the first place. Probably fine how it is, especially considering it already starts more expensive than the other two.
Safe Space Imitation: Probably the most tank-like of the imitations. Or at least the most useful for tankier builds because of the lower cost and decent health regen bonus. I am pretty happy with where this skill is at currently.

Devotion Abilities: Hmm, I didn’t know you could put devotion abilities onto summons and have them go off when the summon attacks. The more you know. This could be a problem. Almost all of the devotion abilities have cooldowns in some form, though, so those are still fairly okay. Overall, I’m not SUPER worried about this new information, but I definitely didn’t account for this.

Safe Space Cast Speed: I agree this should probably be lowered. Doesn’t really have any reason to be high.

Summon Duration: I like the ability to create sentry nests and killing fields, personally. Don’t think there’s any harm in making the summons last so long.

Summon Limit: I’m really reluctant to lower this, since it would go against one of the themes of this mastery and reduce it to a much more standard summon class. I have come up with a few balance ideas which preserve my original idea while hopefully fixing the issue. Let me know if any of these (or any combination of the three) strike your fancy:

  • Give turrets MUCH less health so they break down if they take any real damage
  • Increase energy scaling on all summons again.
  • Decrease damage on turrets.

Scaling off Pet Bonuses: I do think this is the way to do it, and will likely leave it as is.

Exclusive Skill: Yeah, your concerns make a lot of sense. The turrets it summons are equivalent to skill level 16 of the standard sentry, and they do spawn pretty often. Their summon limit is already slightly lower than the standard sentry, but I think I should bump that down further to like, 3, and maybe use a lower level sentry. Tools are a bit limited in scaling attached skills like that one, and that’s why I only made it only have 6 levels.

51

I vote for decreased damage. Increased energy scaling would get seriously ridiculous and giving turrets 1HP is kind of bad. Although lowering their health a lil’ bit wouldn’t hurt.

All right, I guess the turrets are powerful enough to justify you going with pet bonus scaling.

52

I agree with you on all 3 Imitation skill with exception of sentry needing more energy drain the other 2 are awesome where they are and they are fun to use I’m actually enjoying them more then I thought I would.

As for the devotion on pets, it is actually pretty well balanced even without you knowing about it :stuck_out_tongue:
Sure Incendiary sentry is a proc machine but so are many other skills such as Calidor’s Temptest Peletti’s Replicating Missile, any of the Auto-attack replacers, the Hell Hound, Blade Spirit etc, so you don’t need to balance it the devs already did that :wink:
Of cause if you go adding or changing devotion then that may change.

Honestly probably the biggest issue with the summons is that in 99% of cases monsters and especially bosses totally ignore them and attack you instead so they are essentially immortal, lowering health isn’t going to change that. Instead what you need to do is increase the aggro they draw/hold but in doing that will create a new issue of making you immortal because of how easy it is to replace them.
Sure they could use a decrease in damage but you can’t decrease it too much otherwise they will become useless without a lot of gear and devotion support in higher difficulties because of resistance and armor increase on monsters making hybrid classes nearly imppossible to do with BiS gear, which I believe you want to avoid seeing as it is a hybrid mastery.

Indeed from how I believe you want them to work scaling they of pet damage is the only way it can work.

How are the tools in scaling attached skills like that limiting? From what I have seen on other mods, sure you can’t increase the damage through skill upgrades but instead you just give each level of the granted skill an upgrade every time a skill point is put in, instead of leaving it static like you have done? You may need to create a weaker/stronger version for each skill point rank but you should be able to scale it with point increase?

53

Going to be testing out mainly damage decreases on the sentries for a little while to try and find something that makes sense.

Regarding attached skills, I can’t believe I didn’t think of having a separate skill for each level. I think these mod tools are melting my brain a little bit. I’ll try that out, it seems like it should work.

54

Another option that could help alleviate the problem, against bosses at least is add a 1 or 2 second cool down.

I suppose I should leave my complaints about some of the unarmed skills alone for awhile then :stuck_out_tongue:
Except for as I mentioned earlier in the thread they really need an exclusive weapon type it is way to frustrating to have to continuously unequip every weapon (the skills work fire with a shield of offhand).

Hahaha no worries the mod tools are way over my head so it’s easy to see how you could miss options with them, that’s what people like me are for, play a bunch of other people’s mods and see what they have done, then allow other modders that don’t know about it know :wink:

55

Was just looking over the exclusive skill and I think I accidentally made everyone who uses it completely invincible with the life leech retaliation. Curse my shortsightedness.

If you’re being mobbed by a huge group, you’ll get a TON of health very very quickly. Unless you get nuked, you’re invincible. Can’t believe I didn’t realize that. Must not have been really with it when I made the skill.

I’m making the leech amount smaller and spreading it over a longer duration.

EDIT: Aaaand here it is, version 1.3

  • A few changes to skill descriptions and such.
  • Increased energy drain on sentry imitation.
  • 1/3 Safe Space innate cast speed bonus. Less ridiculous.
  • Exclusive skill rebalance. Less sentries allowed out at a time, less likely to spawn, and now scale with skill level properly.
  • Exclusive skill also makes you less invincible. My bad.
  • Sentry rebalance. Nerfed but arguably still extremely powerful.
56

I haven’t noticed any significant increase in survival with it, if fact I haven’t seen much of survival with it although I guess my AoE weapon damage isn’t that high…

You’re going to have to increase the -% energy regen of the 3 imitation buffs as with the exclusive it is much easier to cancel out the -300% regen, might as well buff it to -999% regen that way it is 100% impossible to cancel out thus impossible to abuse the buffs.
Turns out ~700 spirit =200% regen, I thought to get 200% regen you’d need ~1000 spirit considering you need ~400 (I was sure it was ~500 spirit…) spirit to get 100% (in base game you rarely go over 500/600 spirit which is ~130% regen)

Did you change the spirit scaling? That actually seems extremely weird… that is a huge boost in energy regen over a short distance…

57

Good call on the -%energy regen for the imitate skills.

I haven’t changed the way any of the stats actually scale, but you did just remind me that I forgot to change the bonus spirit from the exclusive skill after I made it a 10 level skill. It might be a bit too high.

58

Indeed it is rather high reduce it to anywhere from 150-200 by max level (the energy regen is extremely important so don’t nerf it lower then that, maybe 170)

Also you have nerfed sentry damage too much they will deal essentially no damage in ultimate I think, they are dealing almost no damage in normal even with 150% pet damage
Remove burn damage and increase physical by 25%

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59

It felt pretty good to me at level 7 and level 35 when I tested it. It’s just a matter of having a large enough energy pool to put a lot of them out there.

I also quickly cheated a character to like level 70, geared up on vendor trash, and tried things out. Even at a distinct disadvantage from a build and gear standpoint, things seem to be working fairly okay. I tweaked damages a little bit, but everything felt pretty alright to me.

Having that character will definitely help with balance at those levels. No point just speculating…

EDIT: Maybe for once I’ll push out a release without a blatant mistake in it. Let’s give it a shot.
1.4 has been uploaded and the links in the main post have been updated. Here’s the changelog:

  • -999% Energy Regen on imitate skills. Should be no way to out-regen them now.
  • Nerfed spirit on Exclusive skill. Another oops, byproduct of increasing the skill max level last patch and not accounting for the change.
  • Cooldown for Exclusive skill turret proc.
  • Messed with exclusive skill leech retaliation. Don’t see this stat very often in the main game so I honestly have no idea what I’m doing with it.
  • Re-buff of sentries to some degree. Attempting to ensure high levels scale well enough.
  • Nerfed flamer a bit. +pet fire damage from devotions and such make it a bit too absolutely ridiculous. Increased range to make up for that a little.
60

This mod certainly looks interesting. A class similar to this was present even in Hellgate London, and that was my favourite. Have downloaded it and would try it later. Thanks for making it.