Not enjoying Sunder at all

Grim Dawn Ideas and Feedback
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64

/sigh

You have been told you’re wrong at least 5 different times by people who, like me, have 100’s if not 1000’s of hours in the game and have played 1.2 extensively in the 1.2 test and at release. Just go to grim tools and upload your build already.

Case in point:

This build has eaten a lot of sunders in 1.2 after it released and shrugged pretty much all of them off, mainly thanks to 59% physical resist, layering of defences and solid attack damage converted to damage. And this is in SR85-86 too. Hell, it facetanks Benn’Jhar beautifully and can handle 3-4 mines going off on top in SR80-81 too. The only issue with it is it’s slow-ish, due to Vitality Blade Arc still being crap.

And here’s the other one:

It can deal with sunders easily in SR80-81 and can outright ignore them in SR75-76 due it’s obscene health regen. Hasn’t been fully re-rigged resists wise due to it being set to Cally spec back when I cloned and renamed the save file, but otherwise it’s fairly solid in the current spec. Definitely a bit too squishy in SR85-86 though lawl. Created from a gdstashed double rare MI build that kills Cally in under a minute, just with acheivable-before-the-heat-death-of-the-universe affixes.

But both of them would laugh at any sunders in the campaign. Hell, I’ve got a Magehunter dual pistol build that also laughs at sunders while sitting in it’s Inquisitor Seal in SR75-76. And it’s otherwise made of purest glass on paper.

Otherwise I easily learnt to gtfo of the way of sunder attacks and mostly do so, though IM’s and Anasteria in SR80+ still catch me out and Manifestation of Hunger is, frankly, garbage to fight as a melee build. But the Death Knight can just sit there and kill them, even in SR85-86. And it doesn’t take that much concentration either, I can do it half-awake (like this whole fluffing week), but that might be partly due to hyperfocus and 20/20+ vision on my part /cough

Though I do stop playing when I know I’m brain deads, because I now have a very obvious sign of that in that I start getting temporary aphasia due to 5 years of bad night sweats fucking up my brain… Seriously people, make sure you get good sleep.

Anyhow, word of advice from someone those executive functioning has taken a dive (I’d like to be back to the days of depression being the main issue lawl) - Take a mental step back, orientate, observe, think then act and then you might see what the rest of us are trying to communicate to you. Because right now, you are not listening and so are making yourself more frustrated as we also get understandably grumpy at you refusing to listen to our experiences.

And it’s also a skill you should have learnt by now, because it’s a very useful one if you happen to be neurodiverse and avoids oneself sticking their foot in it. Which having ADHD and Autism I am prone to and are actually glade Zantai delete my previous post, because I was being a right putz.

Unfortunately depression + 20 years of watching people be wrong on the internets makes me think this will go right fucking past you, though please prove me wrong, as I do like my flagging humanist faith in other people to be reassured that people can learn and grow.

And yes, I do grok why you’re upset, I just think the way you’re acting over it is [REDACTED] and lastly:

Post Thy Build Already!: Grim Dawn Build Calculator

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I don’t play other people’s builds. I do my own stuff. I always have. I regularly do my own stuff since Kickstarter and first releases. I do it and play with happiness and success in the game – full clears of Ultimate including key dungeons. Until 1.2 came around and broke it. It’s not any build. It’s a rubbish “dodge or die” mechanic. Stop trying to shove “builds” on people. I don’t care about your builds. I care about my characters that I can’t enjoy at all anymore because the game is no longer fun because overnight the difficulty was ramped way up and it became a game of reflexes instead of what it was before.

I’m not questioning that you, oh mighty master, can make a super facetank build that can survive anything. I trust that you can. I don’t care about that whatsoever. I don’t give a shit about what you or others can do with their builds or guides. I care about being able to have fun playing the game – with a variety of builds – without having to resort to twitch reflexes or a now-severely-narrowed narrow sub selection of build possibilities.

And to repeat yet again: it’s not a build. IT’S EVERY ONE OF MY CHARACTERS SINCE THE UPDATE. Overnight, in one patch, the game went from my home, my happy place, a top-5-of-all-times games that I sing praises to anyone who would listen… to one I dread even opening at all, and can only get short play sessions in at all before quitting. Because sunder+evade SUCKS and is a right lousy experience.

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Kindly observe your own advice and listen. Sunder+evade. Is. Not. Fun. It has ruined the game for people. I know it’s not just me. I’ve seen the discussions in GOG, and reddit, and Steam, and in private conversations elsewhere.*

EDIT: I just happen to be passionate enough about the game that I want it to get better, be the best that it can be, and share this (that sunder needs a redo), despite what the core fan base (which I consider myself part of, despite not being active here, but am elsewhere) generally disagreeing. I hang out with a lot of older gamers (being in my mid 40s myself), and there’s a lot of different perspectives there. So many of us are “bah, whatever, the world’s gone to hell, it’s not worth my time anymore” about things like this most of the time. But I care enough about GD not to let it go.

EDIT2, from * above: In isolation, people near-universally love the evade! It’s the combination of its requisite and precise use with sunder/pumped difficulty that is the problem.

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Ah yes, because the complaints department is always totes representative of what the community is actually feeling.

Shitting Elder Gods, it’s basics stats 101 that self-reported stuff is never a useful gauge of what’s going on it because it is usually utterly statistically non-representative. And if you don’t believe me, I can go find the relevant stats stuff to use as a clue-by-4.

Funnily enough though, the steam reviews show’s players aren’t bothered by sunder or evade, yes there are some, but they represent so little a ripple that the game’s gone up from Very to Overwhelmingly Positive lawl. Main grumps are the usual issues with translations, a new and annoying windows permissions issue with file changes that hit settings, pet survivability gripes and then finally sunder. Along with the usual trolls of course, because fanbois are going to fanboi.

So I haz empirical evidences that you’re wrong :stuck_out_tongue:

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/sigh

We’re not asking which builds others made you’re using.

We are asking for you to show what your build is set up like, via uploading it grimtools so we can see if there’s any flaws that may be an issue at play.

And we’ve said that numerous times so far. Very plainly.

And besides, given my own build heresies, and the fact this is Ideas and Feedback, you probably aren’t going to get skewered over your builds. Instead you’ll get some advice on how to tank better and probably learn some stuff you didn’t know yet. Elder Gods know I’ve done the same here with my own feedback grumps from SR80+.

Now I shall leave and get myself a glass of cider, because I have successfully avoiding being a bastard despite these testing circumstances. For it’s like trying to get through to a brick fucking wall and I usually pull out all the swears and snark to blast my way through when I run into those.

And just made a saving throw on a very snarky comment about criticism lawl. Right, food n cider.

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Am I going crazy? My build is nowhere near complete and outside a few very select sunders (mad Queen bullet hell, gargabol volcanoes, grava orbs, alex Meteor) I can pretty much facetank all of it? This coming from a class that is notoriously lacking in defense, the Trickster.

Edit: the first time I saw sunder in the wild I was like: “Sunder does not warrant this big flash on my screen” . Funny how experience can differ so much!

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Hm, having said I don’t usually see the indications gnomish posted I see them fine today. Just fought Viloth and could see both the skull and the circular indication. Didn’t change any settings so don’t know why I couldn’t see them before. :woman_shrugging: Was able to run away before getting sundered most of the time.

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71

Op… coming across super obnoxious here… you dont need look at skills… you press buttons on keyboard…

If you cant adjust to this easy to spot mechanic then thats on you. Simple as that. Its not much harder at all… and if your saying you cant do keys since sunder then your lying… youre playstyle is afk face tank watching second monitor? Maybe play the game and youll not die…

The yikes of this post! God forbid you play any other game released in the last 10 years because mate youre gonna struggle HARD!!!

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72

You all just got trolled good by OP.

He doesn’t want to listen to any feedback or suggestions. He wants Sunder removed.

Not gonna happen, so either OP goes away or… learns something.

I realised after not too long that most of the time you don’t even need to avoid sunder if your defenses are ok, and it’s a much better system than the old random mass RR you’d be unaware you’re suffering before being ded.

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75

Oh heaven forbid people have conflicting opinions from yours; may they never be expressed.

Thanks for the personal insults. I appreciate it. But there is something to this: Grim Dawn never was before, and should remain not to be, a game that cares about the personal reflexes of the player. Except it now suddenly (many years later) does and became immensely more difficult and less fun because of that.

No trolling from me – unlike a lot of others in here. Sunder+evade is terrible game play, exceedingly unfun, and has no place in a game like this. Just like Final Fantasy 15 and some others… If your so-called RPG has a “dodge button”, you’ve failed to design it well. The game should be about your character, not the player’s careful reaction times.

Um, no thanks. I don’t think I’m just going to button mash every skill button constantly. Funny, that they just even further improved the skill recharge indications on the skill bar, too. Huh, sounds like it is something people typically do!

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ngl, seems uncalled for even by my condescending standards… :neutral_face:

even ignoring all good games/popular games with dodge (ez ex Soulsborne series), i’d argue it’s not that simple
you’re “technically” not against a dodge button specifically but the reaction engagement
And a totally opposite but equally relevant argument could be made for “if your action game makes you never move or engage with boss attacks then you failed to design it well”
^and what you’re essentially after is a game that easily allows total static facetank (since you also earlier specified you dont’ wanna learn individual animations/attack moves) - not wanting to “react” to any boss attacks specifically
and having to avoid some attacks are not default inherently necessarily bad or design flaw, nor is “forcing” you to avoid them by making them hard to tank/high dmg (will 100% agree total guaranteed insta kill 1 shot attacks “to avoid” can be BS as mechanic, but that’s also not what sunder is)
Thus, since good design can still be including attacks to avoid means great design would then be about how to implement said attacks and convey them to the player “proper”, whether or not GD does that i’m not really gonna argue, but your initial reasoning is atleast flawed if nothing else.

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Another reminder to keep it civil please. Insults are uncalled for.

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Sunder+evade is exceedingly fun. Much better than sit still and tank everything terrible gameplay that had no place to exist to begin with. If every build in your game boils down to “just tank everything”, you’ve failed to design it well.
Game is honestly easier now anyway, bring on the Ultimate difficulty toggle already!

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Me - types out posts explaining stuffs and asking OP to please think. Plus post their builds already so we can all give them some pointers

OP - ignores that completely, ignores my point about their opinion not being hugely supported, proceeds to further dig themselves in a hole.

Funnily enough I know this sort of behaviour all to well lawl, but what’s driving this definitely feels very much like your standard ASD response to a change they don’t like. Locking the person into a reactionary response over the change if they don’t have the skills to recognise their ASD is being a pain in the rear. Could also be standard reactionary bs, but this level of dedication is usually more an ASD thing lawl, especially when it comes to a game. And yes, I say this as someone with ASD, now with the bloody scars to prove it :frowning:

Anyhow - End result - You get OP’s constant reactionary responses, rather than them entering into a dialogue to sort out the problems. And unfortunately, unless they can become self-aware of the behavioural pattern they’ve locked themselves into, this thread will remain a circular argument centred around their emotional reaction to a change. Which is shown furthermore by their unwillingness to use a mod or roll back to the previous patch, despite the very rational options both represent…

My suggestion then is this thread is locked, because OP shows no signs of recognising the hole they’ve dug themselves into and so will just draw reactions to their reactions and become increasingly grumpy and reactionary. Which isn’t good for them.

Though right now I just want to give them a big damn hug and tell them it doesn’t matter and it’s okay to ask for some help or just take a break, because change can be a pain to accept and embrace and learn to how to deal with.

Which given the fact I haven’t had caffeine yet + got crap sleep is kind of amazing, because my usual response is to pull out the clue-by-4 and fire up the snark-engines. Then again, this is about a game, not any of the other horrors this world has given us. /cough-cough

Then again, I did have my weekly meeting with my community mental health support worker yesterday, because I wasn’t joking about the scars caused by a massive ASD meltdown…

And speaking of which, I need some 4-bags-1-cup tea, because guess who ran out of coffee and spent their coffee money on steam due their ADHD? Well, I also need a melatonin prescription, and that’s NZ$30 too, as I need to lessen my zopiclone usage. As Pharmac doesn’t subsidise it fully like they bloody well should.

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80

A masterclass in projection, bravo.

Of course, once again, there’s the suggestion of any conflicting opinions immediately being squashed and silenced.

That’s what this thread is. I want Grim Dawn to be fun and enjoyable again, like it was before 1.2 pushed up the difficulty and introduced major feelsbad, player-punishing mechanics like sunder.

Oh, I’m quite aware of this. But as I stated above, evade itself is hugely popular. But most people aren’t able to untangle the problems I’m talking about with that. There wasn’t a need to introduce a big new player-punishing mechanic alongside evade to force its use. And I’m still hopeful that the right stance can be found. As stated, there’s room for sunder in the game, if properly valued. It’s just not there right now and is obscenely punishing and makes the game nothing but an unpleasant experience now. But you also need to recognize that I’m not alone, that there are others who share this opinion on sunder. And I can guarantee there are more of us who are not saying anything because of the very reactions as seen here and in other threads about the topic elsewhere.

I’m particularly hopeful because Crate, and especially Zantai, have shown that they are extraordinary game developers and that they’ll be able to find the right values for things in a couple of patches. It’s just pretty disappointing that I’m going to have to go without Grim Dawn for all this time while that balance is discovered.

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Evade is -by far- the best thing that happened to this game i think. The game became much more dynamic and fun to play, rather then being a stats-war it’s kinda used to be. Sunder is infinitely better then random RR mass that you got from everywhere, where the only thing to fight it was to gear silly overcap amounts.

I disagree with some here about Sunder being weak though. Yes, tanky characters can ignore it to some degree (unless it’s high SR) but in SR’s you get like 50-73% more damage, i mean what more do you want? 300% more damage taken? Iron Maiden for instance is already a bit ridiculous atm i think.

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yes, there was, we got evade because of sunder, not the other way around
and the alternative to sunder was the thing you really didn’t want: individual unique boss animations/attacks to learn - because the game has been requested over the years to have more engaging fights, and devs obliged on this and used sunder as the mechanism instead of needing to add dozens of new specific attacks and animations

it’s proper valued, in fact in some cases it’s way too undertuned; which you can see by the amount of builds and chars totally disregarding sunder, even for ex Celestials

logic would suggest goes the other way around too…

personally, no offence meant, i sincerely hope they don’t “cave” and adjust to your kind of balancing, the game had been way too easy for years, extreme powercreep had trivialized everything, forcing players to selfimpose gameplay restrictions more and more to get old (and more) challenge/difficulty out of the game
What you want i think is not just fundamentally bad, it would be a return to state of the game where it had gotten worse.
Sunder is is the “easy” fix to disregarding enemy debuffs by just stacking resist overcaps. What point is there in an enemy/boss attack or debuff if you just ignore it by stacking a basic stat.
Meanwhile all other player stats had gotten so abundant we’ve gone from 10k hp meta to 15k to now 18-20k hp, kill and clear times faster than ever; incl during leveling
^there needs to be some sort of counter balance to the increase in powerlevel, sunder does that a fairly simplistic way and causes you to engage with the original design of the bosses and their attacks instead of just planting your feet and laughing at them in yellows…

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That’s a game design philosophy decision. As an RPG (yes, ARPG, but still “RPG”), the game should be about the character’s stats far, far more than the player’s own specific physical abilities. Obviously, there’s always going to be a little of both in a game like this. But the way sunder was implemented pushes it really, really far into the “player’s personal failings” and away from the character’s stats.

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there is no such rule, wasn’t even a rule in the og ARPG diablo, you’re making up a rule that doesn’t exist and applying it broadly to a genre that never had it

doesn’t, because you can still easily outstat “as you’ve been told a dozen times”
again, you’re hugely overestimating the impact, “as you’ve been informed by many players”; and constantly getting suggested you might be building extra squishy because otherwise you should not struggle like so under normal circumstances, because Sunder is in most cases forgiving enough chars can eat it without evade, and in a bunch of cases still totally facetank it and doesn’t even have to run away when debuffed.
^this is not subjective, this is objective and you can tell it’s a fact of the game by the multitude of people informing you about it

etc etc etc

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If I was to take some sort of educated guess, I would be willing to bet that the anti sunder community is a minority.

I say educated because the amount of people living in ultimate and/or endgame are a tiny fraction, further more sunder is basically negligible in normal/veteran. Also, as @RektbyProtoss pointed out, there are far more dangerous foes that don’t sunder in campaign.

I would also like to site something you admitted. It is a fact that you claim that “all” your builds are suffering. To me, that shows exactly where the problem lies…and it certainly isn’t GD.

Stating that you need twitch movement reflexes is a grossly incompetent statement, especially when the sundering hit, typically, will not kill you…but more so the following damage if a person was too naive to gtf out of the way.

If anything the argument I seen against sunder, here in this thread, speaks of sheer laziness, the unwillingness to improve one’s own game skills, and the ignorance when it comes to specific game mechanics in terms of what and what not to pay attention to.

@RektbyProtoss has it right when he said that sunder is (paraphrasing) not so bad. If I had my way I would jack sunder up, making it more punishing while removing the need to overcap res.

The game would be far less fun if it stayed how it was and no one but Crate has any context of what the xpac will do for this game in regards to sunder and dealing with it (as if moving out of the damn way wasn’t enough right?).

Don’t ruin the fun for others when you have solutions to solve it yourself in a single player game. It would be me telling CR runners or whatever to have their times go from sub 3-4 to 20 min.

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