Next Thing Discussion

[medea_fleecestealer]

AGAIN - stay on topic folks. This thread is about bloat in the game - nothing else. If you want to suggest/talk about other things then start a new topic, don’t post about it in this one.

[mad_lee]

@medea_fleecestealer

AGAIN - stay on topic folks. This thread is about bloat in the game - nothing else.

This is really confusing because Zantai did say:

@Zantai

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

But then he said

@Zantai

This thread is your opportunity to discuss the game’s balance and let us know where you think our focus will be best spent!

And then

@Zantai

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.

So is it about just the bloat of affixes or things that could be changed balance wise in general?

[Zantai]

@medea_fleecestealer

This thread is about bloat in the game - nothing else.

I really didn’t say that, lol. These threads have always been the kitchen sink of suggestions…for the new thing.

All feedback is welcome, but the main focus is going to be clean up of bloat.

[medea_fleecestealer]

Fine. I’ll let you sort out the mess the thread will probably turn into.

[ibugsy]

No probably about it.

[mad_lee]

Bleeding items have the most bland skill mods

Here are some different Bleeding builds that are moderately strong and that I made at different points of time:

1. SnB Bloodrager Trickster
2. Guilliotine Bloodrager Warder
3. Custom Vines Trickster
4. EoR/Blade Spirits snb Dervish

Now I also want to preface this by saying that from my experience and experience of top builders who tested dozens of the best specs for our top20 ranking Bleeding damage is not that strong unless paired with some other damage type (usually Vitality). Top builds that use other elements usually have better damage, better survivability (because they can leech) and on top of that their damage is frontloaded, meaning that you don’t have to wait for your enemies to bleed out.
This is why I think having such uninspiring mods that are basically a smidge of damage is a bit unfair. Out of 4 builds that I mentioned only Guillotine carries a mod that it’s not damage and that alters the skill in an interesting and meaningful way.

Suggestions:

- Bloodrager: -0.5 cd mod on the amulet and big radius mod to RoS on a full set, Blade Arc -0.5 cd mod on the set and some cool cc effect, maybe petrify? Savagery: +15-20% crit damage mod?

- Scion of Crimson Wakes: little duration mod to Swarm, like 2-3 seconds? EoR - some CC mod? Radius mod (can it even be done?)

Other green items/legendaries: similiar mods to make them interesting. Like Butcher of Burrwitch could definitely have -cd mod to Vire’s Might etc.

Is there a risk that Bleeding damage will become op with those new mods? I don’t think so. Damage wise it will be a small bump and in essence Bleeding will still work in the same way where you have to wait for mobs to bleed out. But at least it can spice up a pretty stale meta.

P.S. Different color textures with new mods will be dope. Like this sick looking wide af Ring of Steel for a Nadaan wielding build:

[afanasenkov26]

I’d also like to mentione the only flat bleed augment - Ateph's Command - Items - Grim Dawn Item Database - and even tho I tried using it on my Bleeding Blademaster - it still loses to flat phys augs. the only good thing is 8% armor, stun res is a nice stat but aforementioned builds have it almost capped, and flat values for some reason are nigh unnoticeable. dunno what to do with it, maybe buff flat and replace stun res with, say, 3% or 75 OA or sth else?

also would like to mention that there are 3 (three) 1handers that support bleeding BA but none of them has -cd mods, and overall mods are pretty meh.

@mad_lee

Top builds that use other elements usually have better damage, better survivability (because they can leech)

this was improved by adding extra healing effects to devos but imo it can be bumped a bit more.

[klasperstanze]

@Zantai

suggestions…for the new thing.

you’re leaving bread crumbs here, I can tell.
It will be a special “thing” indeed, yes for sure.

[thuter]

One thing that could aid the magic and rare random class skill bonus affixes is to make the rolled skills favour skills that have mastery points invested in them, so you get +2 to Sigil of Consumption on your Pet Conjurer, or +2 to Ground Slam on your Lightning Warder a bit less often. This has the added benefit of making them more likely to be useful leveling items.

[eardianm]

I’m am bit rusty on this but I recall being sad about trying to use the consolation prize Garbageballs pistol

Core of Gargabol - Items - Grim Dawn Item Database

Fire base defiler needs about all the love it can get to work, but 2x pistols only give 60% vit to fire max. Getting cold to fire for soul harvest investment, or lighting/aether/chaos to fire for additional flat damage, and managing to stir up some skill ranks as well, was a nonstarter when I last looked.

So my stone cold lock of the century options

1. Buff firestrike and necro WPS to the moon so no conversion is needed. This is bullet proof with no knock on effects and fits the spirit of the OP perfectly
2. Add in completely new itemization for Garbageballs, maybe a full purple set for fire autoattack defiler. See item #1 for reasoning why this is great
3. At least give the pistols cold to fire global conversion and up Vit conversion to 50% per gun. They are blue so they can’t get the cool mods but having a fire option to go with the gigachad purple vit pistol option would be fun

[Gnomish_Inquisition]

@Zantai

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)

just realizing something, “how much” bias increase we talking?
like, is it gonna be such an increase that getting “mismatching” dmg affixes becomes highly unlikely, ie getting aether or chaos dmg affix on Chillstrife, Flamestrife, Korvaak Storm-Blade suddenly becomes a “don’t even bother trying”/use GDstash territory? or is it still going to be “reasonably” possible to obtain ?

[lMarcusl]

↑↑ That right there. I remember what it was like trying to farm a Groble Sky Effigy with Vitality damage on it for transmuted Storm Totems. Or Mogara’s Fangs with Vitality damage on it for Howl of the Wendigo. Or Warden’s Fortress with Aether damage on it for Krieg. Given how many conversions we can get on various skills, going strict on the bias could clash pretty bad with the freedom we have in building our chars. If anything I’d be for widening the bias a bit so that at least the reasonably predictable conversions to skills (such as Vitality for Storm Totems which is right on the tree) are easier to farm for.

[idiotica]

I find it odd that the physical and cunning of “of heroism” is 2-4% in the low lvl range, but fixed at 3% in the high lvl range.
Maybe it could be 4-6%…? too op?

[HmaKvla]

please add an option to enable music underground. i get it, the atmosphere it should create, but i enjoy the soundtrack more.
i could just play music outside the game you say ? no because i also like the music that’s playing in certain areas or fights.

also

how to make cthonic seal farming more exciting
it’s easy, which means boring

1. create baseline, example 30min farming to get an average
2. buy 9 tail
3. use 9 tail on your back for 30 min
4. add amount of chtonic seals from step 2 with stash to inventory

solution ? blooms for example are good, you could farm like seals, or do rouge like dungeon
maybe add seals to chtonic rouge like ? i know seals are dropped by cultists but i would favor game play.

[Deathstalker]

@Zantai

suggestions…for the new thing.

@klasperstanze

you’re leaving bread crumbs here, I can tell.
It will be a special “thing” indeed, yes for sure.

It has been a dark couple of years and things will get worse still most likely (plague, war, economy, climate disasters etc)

But seeing Zantai still trolling and playing with words… stirring some old forgotten hopes maybe (however impossible they might be)… makes my heart fill with joy.

And for that, good sir, thank you

[IraqiMaestro]

Hi Zantai, while i understand that major redesigns are not going to happen, I have a humble request. Can you please redesign Ragrathar’s Horn MI? This MI is basically not used at all in levelling and end game builds. May i suggest removing the Ring of Steel modifier and instead, convert either Sigil of Consumption to cold damage for Warlock/Witch Hunter levelling OR 100% Rune of Kalastor conversion to cold damage for infiltrator / mage hunter.

Also, the Fleshwarped Tome is always being outperformed by Pulshing Shard MI. May i suggest removing the modifiers for AAR and instead get a conversion to Aether Doom bolt. The Sigil of consumption modifiers can be kept.

[Gnomish_Inquisition]

@IraqiMaestro

Also, the Fleshwarped Tome is always being outperformed by Pulshing Shard MI

pretty sure fleshwarped is sold in terms of endgame build utility where you can get lifesteal “enough” via other sources
stripping it for AAR would remove the BiS? dmg offhand in terms of AAR dmg builds i think, so might not be that good

[grey-maybe]

@Gnomish_Inquisition

BiS? dmg offhand in terms of AAR dmg

Spellshock Tome - Items - Grim Dawn Item Database

---

@Zantai

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.

• Yellow mastery prefixes on off-hands, drop way too frequently, dont bring anything to the table, a total waste of prefix.
• Yellow resistance prefixes that provide one or two of elemental res.
• Rare mastery prefixes on chests and medals, most of them are very underwhelming stat-wise and hitting right skill points is basically a pipe dream.
• Of Corruption suffix on off-hands is rather underwhelming compared to the rest suffixes with %cs, even the ones with proc.
• Some shield affixes are just horrible compared to the others, you can get +23% phys res Durable (which for some reason exists in 2 variants, although im not entierly sure the worse one drops) or you can get Adamant with mighty 15% shield damage blocked, or a straight up res prefix from armor like Ordered and stuff. Some rare damage prefixes have flat but dont have %damage, like of Hurricane. Then all rare acid affixes on shields are scewed towards retall, and i mean all one of them, theres no suffix. Generally speaking, shield affixes seem to be kinda forgotten.

[Gnomish_Inquisition]

@grey-maybe

Spellshock Tome - Items - Grim Dawn Item Database

doesn’t have conversion, so you lose entirety of disintegration to clairvoyant making the flat the same, and has no native crit dmg, so is less overall

[xOMOCHIx]

Will there be more items supported in the future regarding some retributions? Cold, vitality, chaos, and aether can be forced to be created by transforming attributes, but they are memes.