Next Thing Discussion

Grim Dawn Ideas and Feedback
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Shocking no one, we’re working on our next update here. Let’s call it…the next thing…yeah, that seems good.

Some of you already noticed Grim Internals might be dead. As such, we will be baking some of its most popular features into the base game, no DLC required. This will not be all encompassing as not everything Grim Internals did is going to be a good fit as an official feature, but we hope to cover the important basics. Stay tuned for more on that.

As is tradition, we are going to be taking notes for the, uh, next thing. This one’s theme is reducing bloat.

If there are magic or rare affixes that offend you on a primal level, something that if it rolls on an item you need just feels like the game is trolling you, please let us know in this thread. We want to trim where we can, buff where it makes sense.

It’s worth mentioning that we will be increasing the loot bias for affixes that match the base item’s attributes (ie. fire affixes are more likely to roll on fire-base items).

This thread is your opportunity to discuss the game’s balance and let us know where you think our focus will be best spent! I will note however that apart from some extreme exceptions, we’d rather avoid mastery changes. Masteries are in a great place overall and, for the most part, we do not really need to tinker with their baseline performance. Itemization, and to a lesser extent Devotion constellations, are where we’d make the most changes. Major redesigns are virtually out of the question.

Our overarching goal remains the same: to increase the variety of viable builds in the 4:00-4:45 Crucible range, SR70-90 in the Shattered Realm. I think it’s important to remind the community to be honest about these expectations. We are not going to buff builds because someone ran a 4:15 Crucible clear. A few seconds slower does not make a build dead.

It’s never fun to see nerfs, and we’ve consistently made an effort for every patch to have buffs vastly outweigh the nerfs, but approaching nerfs as somehow unhealthy for the game is simply not going to get you anywhere here.

If you wish to help us achieve our goals, please share your personal experience with builds and provide your results!

Feel free to post any builds you’ve been working on that you feel could use a bump. Note that we may not agree with every suggestion, particularly suggestions for How a build should be buffed.

Please don’t make suggestions about changes/redesigns of core skills. Unless you enjoy screaming into the void for therapeutic reasons, in which case carry on. At this point, class skills see extremely minimal, if any, changes.

The most valuable information to provide would be a GrimTools link and where you feel the build struggles, whether that’s survivability or damage, and whether you are testing your performance in the Crucible or the Shattered Realm.

Please be considerate of others posters and, as usual, set reasonable expectations for what a build should be capable of (an indestructible vitality build probably shouldn’t be pushing sub 6 minutes in the Crucible, nor does a 5 minute build need buffs).

Following the guidelines from the Posting Feedback thread applies:

27 Likes
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i’ve mentioned this a couple times before
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but +class prefix on caster weapons massively makes it tedious to get a decent prefix/“not entirely waste an affix slot”, specially if that weapon is technically intended for a weapon attack build of some sort, eg Riftscourge slicers and such, specially compared to regular weapons that can atleast get a flat dmg prefix or better chance of 2 useful affixes regardless of single rare, double rare or double magick
unsure if the increased weights are gonna fix that
if not, and maybe still, maybe a possibility would be to remove the +2 magick class prefix on sceptres and daggers, keep the rare class prefixes, and then add +%dmg as a magick prefix option on caster weapons?, - this would make them useful to both weapon and caster builds should it roll a magick prefix

another is the magick elemental resists prefixes, there are way too many of them, and with the removal of mono resist in devos made them slightly less useful too
we already have the mono ele res affixes vanishing from the pool at 70; but do they even need to be there at all? even for levelling?,- when we have both impervious and resistant prefix too during levelling?
and for end, do we really need all those impervious variations too?
imageimage
*reminder that impervious exist on boots/legs etc too and resistant exists on jewellery/shoulder etc too, just used quick grabs from GT to illustrate, i’m not referring to these slots specifically but all slots/all these affix in their various places

impenetrable and purging also disappears from the pool at 70’ish, this is fine
but there is just an overabundance of single or dual ele res combos,
as it stands there is basically only one “good” pierce prefix, and that’s impervious with pierce+acid. Having mono ele there just messes up your resist/“wastes” a stat slot a bit, not 100% unuseful but also makes it more bothersome to compensate the 2 other mono eles elsewhere if got pierce+single ele res
i have 0 good suggestions how to fix this, since only having prismatic and pierce+acid impervious in the prefix pool might be “too easy”?, but as is it’s too many affix combos competing or interfering over the same thing imo, both levelling and at end.

i think that’s my biggest “gripe” with affixes atm,
-aside from the everlasting meme of regen affix frequency on jewellery and belts :grin:

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Holy shit. This is amazing. And the game is already complete but you’re constantly improving it all these years!

I love you guys.

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Impervious/Resistant (Magic Prefixes) dilute the affix pool too heavily.

Glacial (Rare Prefix) and -of Blight (Rare Suffix) (both armor) are both very disappointing compared to Rimefrost (Rare Prefix) and of Dreeg’s Gaze (Rare Suffix, for Poison/Acid) or of Solael’s Malice/Soulwarding (Rare Suffix, for Vitality).

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ah shit, here we go again

  1. some items have quite redundant active skills that are of no use. Examples - M. Peerless Eye of Beronath, Darkblaze Amulet, Krieg’s set granted skill (that has flat rr as full set for some reason). problem is, all those skill are mostly whacky and useless/deal insignificant damage to be considered worth putting on the skillbar. I suggest turning them into procs - this will at least add some value to them and make some usage.
  2. of Venom suffix is just a worse version of “of Corrosion” one, so maybe it’s worth removing the former?
  3. can we get more petrify res for chaos/vit devos and/or itemization? for now it’s just nowhere to be found.
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Had me in the first half ngl.

Another convert for the proc alliance against the tyrannical Zantai.

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corrosive
corrosive911×436 45.5 KB

poison
poison891×424 41.6 KB

We have two common prefixes for acid/poison…every other damage type has one common damage prefix. Could shave one of them off? Also to echo what others have said…the resistant and impervious affixes are needless bloat. As well as stuff like ‘insulating’ ‘negating’ ‘nullifying’ (legit never ever seen one of this in game lol) , anything with single resists. Only one that is actually half ass decent is ‘Prismatic’ with a chunk of ele res.

This one may seem a little drastic…but can we please remove all the class affixes? EG…Inquisitor’s, Demolitionist’s, Shaman’s etc. Besides having to get the affix itself to drop from a bloated pool, if you get the wrong skill points it’s so fucking frustrating and pointless. Like I haven’t seen any builds recently (or ever, IIRC) use one of these affixes anyhow.

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Seeing amulet and caster weapon prefix Magi’s, Interrogators, and Seer’s got “Skill Cooldown Reduction” while things like Arsonist’s only receive chaos resist or Heretic’s minimal chaos damage boil my blood and make me want to turn into big mean green Kaisan.

Seriously though I think the +3 skill green affix on weapon and amulet should have their damage changed to %all damage even though it’s only 25%, should make it less awkward than Redeemer’s affix of +3 to Path of the Three with 30% fire damage. The CDR value is good for Arcanist, Inquisitor, and Shaman. Occultist, Necromancer, and Demolitionist should get Casting Speed, while Soldier, Oathkeeper, and Nightblade got Attack Speed.

It’s prefix sibling the dual class green affix like “Purifier” +2 to 2 skill should get their damage changed to % all damage, and it’s also not balanced in terms of other bonus, for example non damage bonus for the Saboteur prefix is 20% Pierce Resist which is not equal to like Purifier’s 3% OA, Blademaster’s 6% Physique, even Druid’s got 15 health Regen. Also I believe Druid’s is the only double class prefix that can spawn in medal but not in any type of weapon unlike the other 35 class combinations.

The final Prefix bloat that also needs to be addressed is the yellow +2 skill bonus, this prefix got 216 type, each is unique and got no stage like others affix, and can spawn in Amulet, Rings, Medal, Helm, Chest Armor, Dagger, Scepters, Off-Hands. Wild suggestion (and kinda boring) would be to reduce it to 9 green affix, each is +1 class mastery but only limited to spawn in weapon and helmet since both slot got no MI with +class skill so should not get abused (I think?). More insane/sane suggestion would be to delete it entirely, and increase all MI, Blue, and Legendary that still have +2 skill to +3 skill in all slot that got that affix in the first place.

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I quite like the idea of removing the class affix despite using lots of it in my build (especially medal and amulet), but it will require a careful balancing and an increase to all other MI, Epic, Legendary item slots that have +1 or +2 to have at least be +2 or +3. Losing a combined +4 or +7 skill for build that use the affix is not fun without compensation.

Here’s an example of the build where I “kinda” abusing those affix to full extend :point_right: :point_left:

Aether Pet Birb and Skull

In no way this build is legit

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That’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make….:stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes: lol jk

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Good idea I think!

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don’t think you would lose anything
in general when affixes have been removed before they weren’t removed in such a way you lost them on existing items, they just got removed from the future drop pool
*personally wouldn’t consider a build that uses +4-7 skill from the biggest RNG prefix something that should be “recommended” as build anyway, since it would take ages for other people to farm it legit :sweat_smile:

personally i don’t have much issue with +2/magick class prefix existing on jewellery slot, since it’s far less bloated there compared to caster weapons atleast,
unsure if new/improved weights would make it tolerable to others to still exist there tho

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that’s why, that affix is too much random that even a legit drop can be considered as fantasy build if it got used

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aye, but being “too random”, atleast to me, doesn’t mean it has to be removed/not exist at all, that just makes it random/extra fantasy material
so long as it doesnt’ interfere with “regular”/real affixes, then i don’t see a problem
which is why i have the issue with daggers/sceptres, because there you have 200 magick class prefixes and 1000 rare class prefixes competing on the prefix slot, with little/“nothing” else for magick prefix,
but for jewellery you have lots of stuff still, so it might be slight bloat, but it’s not like it’s ruling out useful stuff, so entirely removing them from jewellery would be kinda sad, imo

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One option to keep the “blooted affixes” would be a drastic reduction of the individual probabilities for these affixes (so that the sum over the probabilities would be equal to another affixes). And to get something out of the skill bonuses (getting the right one is then even more unlikely than before), some kind of blacksmith lottery to reroll the skill bonus while keeping the general affix (cheaper for yellow, more expensive for green affixes) .

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I also think magic class prefixes should be removed, even though they’re occasionally useful.

Funny thing is that without those you’re only left with pet prefixes for off-hands, so a few need to be added at least, such as stalwart and aggressive and some defensive affixes.

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Can’t quite agree on this. While yes, some of these skills may not be technically worth putting on a skillbar for a lot of builds, them being active skills makes them useful as a skill to bind Devo procs onto. I know for sure at least one of my builds uses the Darkblaze Amulet over a different option just cause it’s desperately short on skills for Devo activation. Let’s keep them as active skills and just buff them to usability where needed instead, if their weakness is the issue.

For affixes, personally I always roll my eyes whenever I see an MI I’ve been looking for roll with the “of the Sea” suffix, or “of Meditation”. Generally builds will figure out a way to handle their energy without relying on an affix roll, and in the case of “of the Sea” I’m not really sure what the energy bonus achieves. Can’t think of a single build where I’m concerned about my max Energy. It’s not like this is PoE where we’re reserving 95 % of our pool for auras. That said, maybe it’s better to keep it in anyway, just in case its removal suddenly breaks some build’s entire Energy sustain.

And even though mastery skills are kinda off limits I’m gonna give it a try anyway. Given the way Horn of Gandarr has been buffed, War Cry stands out like a sore thumb now in terms of DR skills. It’s the only one where you have to dedicate at least one item slot to make the skill actually do its job. Nobody wants to have their survivability tool only have 66 % uptime. Either you have to figure out a way to keep it up almost all the time or you ignore it. It’s worthless to be only survivabe less than 70 % of the time. Can’t say the same for Ill Omen, Horn, AoC or BWC. Even lvl 1 BWC with High Potency has full DR uptime. Giving War Cry the same CD as duration would just bring it up to par IMO. Horn would have the advantage in damage, cc and option to lifesteal, War Cry wins in AoE coverage, its ability to apply skill disrupt, and can be expanded with extra cc and rr at the cost of more skill points. It just doesn’t really make sense after the buff to HoG for Horn to be that much better than War Cry.

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"know my pain"
:grin:

3000%, i know the OP said masteries was in a good place, but it was brought up too at the time of HoG got buffed, with multiple potential solutions, and for the life of me, i cannot fathom why nothing got taken in…
it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever for war cry to, now, be this gimped"underwhelming" by comparison
upping the DR duration to for 100% uptime without Warborn helm would not break anything, meanwhile it would still require warborn helm to utilize the RR for full effect, (or even Terrify for those crazy few), meanwhile even if the DR on War cry got increased duration to match uptime with HoG, Gandar would still pt for pt be better, so atleast increasing DR would/should be tolerable…

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Actually, forgot to mention Blade Trap and OFF. This might be venturing too far into the redesign territory. Oh what the hell, at worst this gets ignored.

Basically, it irks me that neither of the skills is truly useful endgame without its dedicated set. They are the only skills in the game that basically evaporate from your skill tree when you enter an SR boss room unless you have a specific full set on. I haven’t done it for OFF but I do recall once upon a time using the Blade Trap Conduit on an endgame build. It was both wasted skill points and a wasted item slot. Basically, my wish would be for the duration OFF and Blade Trap have on bosses with Conduit to become the baseline. So at least even if it isn’t a mindblowing effect it doesn’t eat the amulet slot in the process. Unfortunately this means adding trap/freeze resistance reduction to the skills, since we can’t just nerf boss trap/freeze res (that would make all sources of trap/freeze stronger and we could get into chain disable territory). So basically, the cc res reduction effect of the Conduits would get baked into the skill and the Conduits would remain just for the extra RR they bring. Rimetongue and Mageslayer debuff resist reduction would be nerfed so that the net duration with the set stays the same as it is now.

I know this is about as likely as another expansion being announced. Tomorrow. But a man can dream.

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CDR is the strongest stat in the game along with %damage, 4% cdr is MUCH better than some casting speed or some attack speed.
I would rather say cdr for all of those “seer’s” like prefixes.

Will try to write a big post later