PRM Needs A Buff

Grim Dawn Ideas and Feedback
1

With the increase in boss health in the Public Test Patch it now becomes very obvious PRM needs a badly need an increase in damage. Crit% helps, but it’s not enough to deal with 100% heals or Kupa in deep SR. Even with loads of item support, especially when using Elemental PRM on a Magehunter. As then you’re lacking in Elemental -RR% help from items and only increase it via 15% with WoP via the Heart of Malmouth amulet’s modifier + myth Tome of Names. But due to how Elemental Resist works, that’s often not enough sadly. So raw damage output becomes even more important.

Compare this to AAR, which is now in a really good place for it main variants compared to previous patches. Though I think Pierce AAR is still “lacking” from memory.

Best way to do this would be to increase damage scaling with the 1st 3 nodes and ideally add more DoT besides Lightning to the 3rd node. This would in turn allow the more memey PRM types to work a damn sight better.

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*worst way
“this adds powercreep” - which is not a great solution for something that just wanna buff an already fine skill purely for deep sr
It impacts campaign power when base skill gets buffed for “endgame”, - which is again less best when the skill is already doing plenty fine in regular SR 30-31

if you’re struggling with Kuba/heals in deep SR, might suggest exploiting this for fight item swap Brawler's Distinction - Items - Grim Dawn Item Database - instead of making the game easier as a whole (when it just got a notch in the counterbalance)

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Then don’t go there? :thinking: Or don’t stand in his pools?

You made me check my amazing PRM build, because I thought maybe I’m misremembering, but: Mage Hunter, Level 100 (GD 1.2.1.6) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator still does totally fine in SR30-31. Even with that low health and the meme shield and all the blues. It deletes trash in seconds. Bosses aren’t the fastest, but it’s still fine. I can’t imagine a better build having issues.

Not every skill has to have amazing AoE and amazing single target damage either. This is clearly an AoE skill that covers the whole screen, so you can expect some lower performance on single targets imho.

Please don’t make the game easier. :crossed_fingers:

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I feel like we can’t really (u and I) bash a lot in balance departement when we go such lengths where others don’t atm.

Can’t blame them, but what I would like to see about panetti is it’s missiles when being shot at bosses, swang or dance around the endpoints, similar to as → ring called “Reign of Ice and Fire” proc.

I think that would be cool and partly solve single target damage, for balancing purposes even lower the damageif needed but then at least the missiles keep hitting targets not evaoprating into tin air like fire strikes brimstone.

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[ attempts saving roll on that bad build ]

[ barely succeeds, because Oh Voy it’s bad, so bad it’s "amazing :stuck_out_tongue: ]

Nyet, this is a build that is exploiting all PRM buffing items, so it should be more capable vis damage output. Instead it feels a bit like 1 handed weapon Blade Arc, only with far better AoE because of how PRM works. And I have obscene +Crti% with it too, but it still hits pretty softly for a skill with this much invested. Case in point, I can get FoI up to far higher sheet DPS and decent Crit levels and it feels better than this against bosses.

Anyhow, managed to work out that adding Ghoul works well enough, but it’s still pretty slow at present due to the 40% boss health buff. So deep SR is a bit of a slog. Though weirdly cruisy outside of boss shards now O_O

As for not standing in Kupa’s pools - lolwut? They’re basically unavoidable at this stage as there’s a very low cooldown for them and so the ground becomes covered in them. Only solution is to out DPS his healing capability since we can’t disrupt enemy skills that well in this game.

And vis deep SR - you get MOAR rewards, also the challenge is much more than SR34-35 even for the Top20 like builds. Which is why I’ve gravitated to running it mainly when item farming. Because otherwise I get bored or burnout. Only time I regularly run SR30-31 is for speed testing and working out the best approaches for that. And when doing that I usually skip the rewards unless it’s one of my non-tester builds.

Also, to get to this point PRM damage output wise you have to have all the items and rolls, which is going to be a lot of fluffing farming. Probably 20hrs+ and it still wont make this build a top20, even if PRM got some buffs. As Magehunter as poor max health and it’s single -RR% ability ultimately limits it’s possible damage output no matter the damage skill taken. Never mind being able to pilot it effectively and keep yourself alive.

This is why AAR got a series of buffs, but as anyhow who actually plays AAR builds will tell you, AAR builds are not uber builds generally. Hell, only 1’s in the Top20 and it’s pure Aether AAR.

Though Chaos and now Vit AAR are now in a pretty good spot. Would be nice if Fire were too, but it all comes to down to available -RR% sources vs enemy resists sadly :confused: Which is why rings/relics with -RR% have become so important in builds.

6

/sigh

[ tempted to rant about this being a single player game and how I’m comparing this, settles on teh medal…]

Really? That medal on a PRM build? Nah, better off adding more DoT to PRM and thus preserve being able to use a PRM medal. Because in my 1000hrs+ SR running I’ve found DoT’s are a very effective counter to Kupa’s heals if you can’t get high chunk damage/crits to completely negate his healing. And it’s health% based too, so the boss health buff makes his pools far, far more effective.

And given he can spam them relentless it’s a frankly boring mechanism in SR. Less so in the Campaign when you lack the relevant resists and health regen though. And end up having to run around in circles lawl.

Oh and this wont just buff SR, you’re forgetting we have a new difficultly and now the Nemesis turning up in it, never mind the endgame bosses etc. And any ability that get’s this many + damage items etc and is still lacking is going to end up with less people making builds and promoting it. And a key part of GD’s staying power is it’s ability to allow for hundreds of builds that can and will work in the game and do all but the strongest end game bosses.

Nevermind the best way to buff them is increase the scaling, which due to how PRM gear is generally done, is going to be a royal PITA to get to on the 2nd and 3rd nodes and get the maximum possible damage scaling.

Anyhow, on of the ur cases in point, see Blade Arc and the lack of builds posted for it in the last couple of years compared to Primal Strike, Bone Harvest or ye olde Forcewave. It’s fallen away simply because it hasn’t got the damage potential those other skills have, even if they’re not fully invested into. Hell, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a cooldown based BA build posted for so long I can’t even recall the possible age of one.

Where as even Elemental Cadence Battlemages got a showing in the last couple of years :stuck_out_tongue: And that’s because Zantai finally have it some better support. Even if “engine limitations” meant it only got -RR. Should have been a proc that gave a big chunk of elemental -RR%, but Zantai is Zantai and moves in weird, eldritch ways :upside_down_face:

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i’m very much not
i just don’t want that new difficulty to get pre-emptively lowered from immediate powercrep, - which is something i’ve mentioned multiple times (and even would make it entirely superfluous)

which is probably also why it’s good to stay within those same established frames, to not skew things, as the hundreds of builds are both there, but also simpler when the proportions are even.

If Zantai officially raises the balance considered metric to sr 34 or 36+ so be it, but even if so/when that happens, i’ll still mope about baseline buffs being the poor choice as it affects campaign and levelling, which is still where most people play the game, so sucks when that gets constantly made easier in the name of hyper endgame.
(specially when end builds can literally be target buffed on specific 94 items)
Until he does that, this is then very much a mess of your own making by wanting to run so high challenge content(and dismissing tips), creating that not everything is equal for

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[ msg from Mess’s subconscious -

Hi, it appears you’re missing all important context that was plainly written, context that grounds PRM vs other skills. Please re-read prior post and amend yours to reduce Mess grumpiness, because ignoring context just annoys them and wastes time on top.

msg ends ]

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If other skills are MUCH MUCH better than PRM, maybe they need a nerf. PRM does more than fine in the balance target. It has already been massively buffed last year(?). Of course it’s not top 20, most things aren’t top 20 only 20 things are top 20

Now for blade arc I can see someone making a case. When I tried it out a while ago I wasn’t exactly impressed. But that has very little to do with PRM.

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Topic for a different day but this would be something we would be thinking in harmony, although when u built it just “specific” with bleed, da blade arc is insane… not instant but insane which leaves enemies bleed out even right after u die 10 seconds ago.

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missed nothing, you missed the key points
it’s about difficulty, powercreep, sr 31 vs self chosen sr 34/36++ pain - it’s little different than saying X builds need to be buffed because struggles against calla or crate etc; not everything is supposed to be equal there, you stepped out of the equality zone on your volition
If you want some lvl 94 FoA items to add 800 dot to PRM, have it, baseline buffs are bad.

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/siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiighs

Except in the end I’m still working on SR30-31 balancing, mentioning SR34-35 was just to show some of the issues that level range reveals. Which shows it’s mostly good, but even piling on all the buffs etc it’s still a bit lacking for the point investment. Wouldn’t take much to make it better either. And I’m not aiming for Top20 levels either, just a bit better over all DPS.

Which could be easily helped and one of the low hanging fruit is the 2nd node from Fire% to Elemental%, but otherwise it’s just upscaling raw damage a bit.

As for difficulty - I could touch that ball of [REDACTED] properly, but here’s the key thing, GD is a game where you choose your own difficulty via settings and how you do and play your build. It is not a competitive MP live service game and it’s a game that works due to the shear diversity of builds possible. So buffing skills to make them more attractive helps attract more players to try them out.

Which is why I don’t see this whole “teh balance” argument as holding any water, outside of the more broken Top20 type builds of course. For I’d rather see a thousand thousand build’s emerge rather than left unmade because they don’t feel fun to play.

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it’s already good for regular SR, so doesnt’ need buff there - so yes you’re again trying to backdoor in deep sr balancing
And like it or not basic difficulty balance matter, it becomes a detractor when the game becomes too easy right out the gate, even on the “enhanced” difficulty, just by maxing your base skills; this has already been a complaint (that’s increased in time along with powercreep) - so yes it matters when stuff impacts campaign and levelling too.
Endgame related buffs should be on endgame items

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