Not enjoying Sunder at all

Grim Dawn Ideas and Feedback
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The more I’m playing 1.2, the more I’m not enjoying the game anymore. The Sunder/dodge mechanic is not fun whatsoever. It completely changes the game into a twitch reflexes and monster attack memorization/hardcore focus game instead of an enjoyable ARPG. I can’t do any of the skeleton key dungeons on ultimate now, whereas I used to have no problems doing them most of the time.

I don’t want to have to memorize attack patterns, or squint closely to notice a millisecond-longer attack animation. It’s hard enough paying attention to my own skill recharges and positioning that I can’t also stare at the minutia of the enemy’s animations. I don’t want to have to have an instant reflex to hit “dodge” (and hope it doesn’t get me cornered somewhere). And when you’re hit by sunder, you’re almost assuredly going to die soon after… No more fun “oh shit oh shit, run away and recuperate” moments like we used to have… Just hit and then dead.

The game is just WAY less fun now, extremely more difficult than it used to be, it’s it feels like there’s a huge new “filter” on which builds and who can be successful at completing the game than there used to be.

When I want to play a sweaty-palms precise-controls game, I’ll go play Nioh or something instead. This game shouldn’t be like that.

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you don’t, enemies have a uniform warning FX cue for sunder shared by pretty much all attacks with sunder, except for perhaps the “obvious” one of big giant falling rocks like Aleks meteor, otherwise they all have this big orange/red spiky + skull icon glowing FX

https://imgur.com/a/yYeSgXa

that part however is going to be necessary for many cases; unless you build a “bit” extra tanky
^which is possible btw, you can still outstat sunder, even from something as hard as endgame bosses

you shouldn’t usually instantly die from sunder, usual extreme avoidance cases like before aside as ex Aleks meteor or Gargabol volcanoes; which also killed you before
unsure what squish builds you’re running if the big giant (meme) sunder debuff warning isn’t enough to get you to run to safety?
Sunder
idono, to me it’s so obnoxious i’m part of the people requested to make it go away - and in most cases you should def get the good old “run away and recuperate” moment when you get that CoD bloodsplatter covering your screen :sweat_smile:

other than yea, yep, pretty much, game def changed a bit/became different in terms of activity or build stat requirement/“chonk ceiling”

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I have no clue what I’m looking for here, and haven’t seen what you’re describing at all. And, like I said, my eyes are elsewhere, not staring at the boss. And there are enough effects on screen all over all the time, you couldn’t even notice this sparkle you describe in between all of the other effects going on anyway.

And that’s a bad thing. There didn’t need to be more filters against who and what could be successful at and enjoyed in the game. And the game didn’t need to turn into a twitch reflex game. It’s a bad change.

I don’t appreciate your being offensive. Obviously I can tell when I am sundered (so I know I’ll promptly be dying to the extreme incoming damage thereafter). Circuit breakers are pointless now since they’re immediately passed through because of all the extra coming in too.

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dafuq are your eyes not on the boss for :sweat_smile:
either you still needed to have eyes on bosses before; because they still had some nasty attacks, or you build so tanky you could eat those attacks, in which case you still can

the big orange/red spiky flash + skull icon
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they are not, again you might need extra stats to facetank through sunders, but in most normal build cases you should still get plenty of time to run away when sundered, and circuit breakers most definitely still help there, even at endgame

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What part of these is hard for you to understand?

  • I need to pay attention to my recharges.
  • I need to pay attention to where I’m moving/my cursor.
  • The screen’s FILLED with effects already, so it’s not like I could see an extra sparkle.
  • I also haven’t seen what your zoomed-in screen shots show, even on that slith boss shown itself.
  • Even if I did, I’d still need to find a place to point my cursor to and then dodge away (if there is even room – most boss rooms are tight)… No, not fun gameplay for this game…

And all those aside: It’s still that the game has turned into a twitch-reflex game with the sunder vs evade mechanic. That’s not an improvement.

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what recharges? and how is that different from before?
good pilots paid attention to their circuitbreaker cooldowns (assuming that’s what you mean?) - scrubs like me didn’t; and still don’t “it’s not a requirement”

this hasn’t changed? in what way? like i said there was still attacks before you had to avoid; most of those are the ones that got sunder, with some extra bosses getting it too
easiest example is again Aleks meteor, or Alkamos frost pools, Sister what’s her face volcanoes etc “you still avoided these attacks before”
+in general you didn’t and dont’ want to stand in puke pools (even if regular hero pools don’t sunder)
^this hasn’t changed

it tends to stand out, and most bosses you fight generally isn’t in super crowded areas, your skeleton key dungeon note is a good example of this
^def crowded in Crucible ofc, but outside that it’s nit like you’re fighting bosses as if it’s totem spawns
“in general you should be able to spot it”, - when you start to catch on to it that is ofc (if your eyes aren’t on the boss, which again i don’t understand?, then ofc you wont ever spot it - “but why arent’ your eyes on the boss”)

you don’t, you can just press the evade button and it will jump through the boss - still reactionary function for sure, but unless you’re fighting in "the floor is lava"land you don’t actually need to move your cursor

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I’m glad your Super Saiyan eyeballs can take in every pixel of every scene in perfect detail. Please take the elevator to the “Elite Special People Only” floor, where you can praise one another’s gloriousness and stop being dismissive to legitimate complaints by those who are clearly not as Awesome and Perfect as you.

Recharges: It’s different from before because I’ve never, ever, before had to stare at the boss.
Cursor: I’m sorry, I can’t pay attention to where I’m going and where I’m moving my cursor and my skill bar and see a little sparkle around the boss too.
Stand out: As I’ve said, I’ve literally never seen it, even at low level before the game’s constant effects covering the whole screen. Clearly it doesn’t.
Evade: “iframes”, and mechanisms that require them, have no place in a game like this. They’re for entirely different genres. The whole sunder-evade thing is a big negative to Grim Dawn.

And others not yet listed:

  • Looking for, finding, and taking out the summoned help.
  • Dodging the big attacks on the ground or ranged attacks bouncing around.
  • Circling around the burning tree with narrow spaces between the flame funnels.
  • Glancing to see what buffs/debuffs I have on me/wearing off.
    My eyes have basically never looked at the boss I’m fighting.
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well friend, if you don’t like the new mechanics you can play forever in 1.1.9.8

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you give me way too much credit there my man :sweat_smile: →

^i’m actually a “poor” pilot/casual pilot, but yes my eyes are on teh screen, and on the boss, just like they always were, and despite not having MadLee skills i’m still managing to spot the Sunder FX warning, and from my experience it tends to stand out more than other stuff
^but again, if your eyes is not on the boss, and for whatever reason never were, then yes that’s def some new/additional initial adjustment to be had - but like i said, i can’t wrap my head around that; because before sunder bosses still had deadly attacks, certain telegraphed attacks you had to manually avoid, or ground effects to move away from
so how you ever managed to play the game to the point of getting the habit of never watching boss is straight up beyond me, because to me there was plenty sweaty moments before, gargabol volcano, zantarin shotgun, and obviously Grava nulli

still no clue what you refer to here, makes even less sense with the new addition

unsure if you even read what i wrote before, so :man_shrugging: i guess

cool, like i said, in my experience it stands out among effects enough even i can catch it (and i’m not that good a player), but again, if you’re used to never watching stuff in the game it probably explains a bit in that regard/“much more visual noise” to now adjust to

the other part i’m not gonna comment on since that’s your sentiment to something more subjective game/genre wise

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That’s unreasonable. 1.2+ has a lot of other, great, changes beyond turning the difficulty up irrationally high to 11 with sunder. And will be required for the upcoming expansion too. Please contain your unhelpful snark.

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So you really don’t pay attention to your skill bar to see when your skills have recharged to use them again, or when your potion has recharged so you can feel safe going a little more aggressive for a moment, or to see if your “oh shit” skill has recharged yet or not? (And now you also have to pay attention to the evade recharge too.)

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oh you mean regular skills cooldown
generally don’t, i just tap my fingers on the keyboard, still do - highly inefficient, like i said, not technically a very good pilot
i use my heals/WoR, PB, BoD basically on spam “not when i need them”/most appropriate for my health bar :sweat_smile:,
recast inquis seal even if i don’t really have to,
i click mirror or nulli when i feel like it, - when means i might also then “spam” the button while it’s still on CD because i’m not actually directly paying attention to it,
i constantly forget to use Mark of Torment (because that skill annoys me) and frequently use it poorly/on the wrong target
i basically spam ABB (still) regardless of Lethal Assault buff duration still active (before it was 4secs buff i’d still use it every 1.6secs, not it’s 8secs i still use it every 1.6 secs)

nop, don’t
because Sunders are, outside crucible, always on a much longer cooldown than evade; and evade (aside from traversing maps) i strictly reserve for sunders
other "avoid this"attacks i use regular rune movement as usual, which i basically also pretty inefficiently spam, tho less so when it’s just 1v1 boss fights
again, you don’t really have to pay half as much attention as you think or that much more compared to before; i don’t either.
Only thing you need to adjust to is, now, actually putting your eyes on the screen/boss (still don’t understand how that habit got formed with the deadly attacks existing before) - and when you see orange sunder flash (which i promise you you can get learned to noticing) hit the evade,
you don’t even have to move your cursor off the boss (infact it helps to have it stay there so you can reengage fast after the dodge - super handy chain with ex blitz or such)

yes, the game def got a bit more active, or a higher stat build requirement if you wanna full facetank/fight passively
but all the rest, i swear, you’re overestimating the effect/requirements of,
don’t mean to be elitist (truly not that great a pilot) but it really is that simple as “adjust to spotting Sunder FX warning+auto hit evade” that’s it,
rest is still the same and you can do the same/be as inefficient and casul with your hotbar skills/cooldowns as before just as i am

since it seems you edited this in/i got a new quote mention

didn’t change,
^and if you’re busy fighting those you’re probably not in sunder range anyway
again, i’m still paying the same attention like before, my eyes are no different in regarding to attentiveness to spotting healers/priority targets (which are still gonna be far and few between in sunder fights)

didnt’ change - and if you’re dodging those anyway you’re probably not getting sundered either

no idea why you’d bother manually dodging those, outside Morgo bullet hell, “straight” flying projectiles can usually be ignored, and the projectiles you do wanna avoid, meteors/falling rocks, are the same you still wanna avoid/the ones that has sunder

in which case you don’t get sundered anyway

why? (atleast for the debuff part), debuff window is basically meaningless to watch ? :thinking:

then how did you stay alive before; because they had tons of lethal attacks and stuff you wanted to avoid before 1.2 too
again, Meteors, volcanoes, pools, Nulli, Shotguns, MQ aura, etc etc etc - these attacks are still in the game, were still there before and absolutely lethal and warranted avoiding; and funnily enough most of those are the ones with Sunder effects now (devs sneakily made you avoid most of the same attacks now as before)

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oh yea, totally forgot to mention tqFan modded out Sunder on like day 1 for those that didn’t like the new mechanic :sweat_smile:

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A mod shouldn’t be required to make the game fun again. Every boss that comes up now is a dreadful slog and unpleasant experience now. The mechanic needs a serious, deep, rework (if not official removal). Sunder has sapped nearly all the joy out of the game.

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would personally disagree on that part, but that’s also the subjective aspect of the debate ofc

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Disable post processing and or reduce particles to medium or low.
No screen cutters anymore, preventing you from spotting sunder sparkles.

Use gd autocaster or another auto hot key script.
This way you don’t need to pay attention to certain cooldowns anymore.

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In the words of the sages of Dark Souls - Git Gud

Seriously, with the current severe state of my ADHD and reduced executive functioning overall affected my Autism symptoms, meaning I’m prone to loosing track of things in hectic situations, I can still recognise Sunders very easily. Even on today’s like today when I’ve had crap sleep. The only time I die to them is when I fail to check the map in Shattered Realm and get bum rushed by the Iron Maiden while in a mob or accidentally draw in 2 bosses in a boss shard.

And that’s only with my more glassy builds lawl. My more tanky ones eat sunders for breakfast.

Also, most boss fights in the campaign are usually you vs the boss without mobs in the way, so usually it’s visually clear enough to notice the very obvious Sunder VFX.

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I am very happy that they introduced the Sunder mechanic. If not for that, the game entirely turns into a stat check. I understand that that is a big part of ARPGs, and it is still a part of Grim Dawn. It’s just that it has been supplemented with additional mechanic, and I think that’s fun.

Good thing for you is that there are at least two options. Either rollback to the previous patch, which Crate has given option to everyone, or install a mod that removes Sunder.

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I must admit that Sunder isn’t really for me either. As far as seeing those “indications”, nope. Now I know what they’re supposed to look like I’ve been watching for them today and still haven’t seen them. Just fought the Sentinel in the Hidden Path and I saw nothing like that before it sundered me. So :woman_shrugging:

These are my video settings, they’re not low by any means.

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God forbid memorizing a dozen boss patterns. Teh horror.

Anyway. Pet builds don’t care about sunder. Retal doesn’t care about sunder. Generally tankier setups can facetank sunder unless it’s really high SR. Just find a build more suitable for your playstile, and the game can be played same as before.

I personally enjoy sunder-dodge interaction due to how much it enables glass cannon playstiles that really weren’t functional before. And how much clearer the telegraphs are, as opposed to previous cases of “lmao you ded” and digging through grimtools to figure out why.

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