Project Cornucopia: The Unofficial Rebalancing Mod

[ombra]

Hi,

wish you guys good luck. And I am eagerly awaiting what you guys will create!

I hope you find a solution to the missing aether chaos resistence starting at homestead.

Do you have an estimate when your first version will go live?

[Ceno]

Do you have an estimate when your first version will go live?

Not at all!

I’m exceptionally busy for the next week and won’t even start on it until then. After that, we’ll get to tweaking some skills together. We haven’t yet decided on a release methodology, i.e., should we release things in chunks (i.e., we’ve edited skills A->F and haven’t touched anything else, have fun and tell us what you think!) as we come up with them to let people play around with them or should we release the whole package (i.e., everything touched upon) and let people tell us if X is over/underperforming in Y circumstance?

I think somewhere in between could be healthy.

[LucidityOfPower]

Not at all!

I’m exceptionally busy for the next week and won’t even start on it until then. After that, we’ll get to tweaking some skills together. We haven’t yet decided on a release methodology, i.e., should we release things in chunks (i.e., we’ve edited skills A->F and haven’t touched anything else, have fun and tell us what you think!) as we come up with them to let people play around with them or should we release the whole package (i.e., everything touched upon) and let people tell us if X is over/underperforming in Y circumstance?

I think somewhere in between could be healthy.

I personally think “chunks” is better. A cascade that slowly marches towards completion means more time on feedback and less stress on making changes (since you’re working in sections and don’t have to tackle the whole thing at once). Also means faster releases and somewhat less work for you guys.

[Cryodacry]

Nerf of Pet stats and tieing these stats to cunning / phys / spirit

<3 luv you for ever if you do.

[adoomgod]

I’d like to weight certain epics/affixes/legendaries toward certain bosses/heroes/nemeses (although I’m probably not letting Fabius get his grubs on another Crescent Moon). But I would still like every boss/hero/nemesis to be capable of dropping anything, so its not as though I would outright remove any item from the drop pool of a boss. But I’d like to inherently give players a reason to farm X-out-of-the-way-boss moreso than Y-easily-found-boss, if they so chose.

The minutia and specifics of this are up for debate and I’m not making any guarantees that this will actually happen, because this is one instance of diverging from Crate’s vision (i.e., everything is equally droppable everywhere, aside from M.I.s). But I do think it could be a step in the right direction.

Basically we both like the idea but also have some minor conflicting feelings on the matter to sort through. For example I might argue against weighing any epics and legendaries for nemesi at all, but I AM for weighing specific affixes for some. And this is a slight weighing btw, so something you’d only notice after many farm runs vs. one boss as opposed to another. I like the idea of giving Heroes even higher weightings because you can’t control when you’ll see the one you want and where. We both completely agree it’s something we’d like to attempt and play with. How players receive the gear they covet so much is a core part of any ARPG and has to feel good.

Can I grieve about the imbalance of items? Like how there can be an ice+fire build, but there aren’t enough items to give the boost to the build. This is why we’ve got people who have 15-20k DPS, and others who have 60k DPS. This is a huge gap. And survival is a problem: you either have to go life leech, ADCTH, or really high regeneration with pots. I’ve built so many chars and they all fail because items don’t accommodate that particular build. Devotions, too, most often than not require people to go defensive instead of offensive because items can either make or break you. Also there are a lot of cool downs. If I’m not mistaken, “ARPG” should mean that a character doesn’t have to wait forever for his main spell. In other words, lower cool downs on (with lowered damage to compensate for frequency). That’s part of the “fun” factor.

Just thoughts of what could be improved. Some items just feel out of place or useless.

An example of a failed build: olexra’s flash freeze (cold) + demo’s fire strike. Seems like a good combo, until you find that the only way you’re gonna have more than 10k DPS is if you sacrifice health items and end up with 5k HP on ultimate and shitty resists. And if you want to go soldier for physical damage and olexra’s, expect to have low DPS and trouble killing stuff.

Cooldowns have a place in the game. I mean I could think of some interesting mechanics that would allow the removal of “hard” cooldowns, but It’d take a huge amount of work in any game, and probably isn’t viably possible in this game’s engine. Cooldown reduction builds are also very dangerous and very good and breaking the game, so we will look at adding more -% cooldown to the game, but we will be very careful to make sure you can’t get past the amount we want, and that there are trade-offs. Anyway, thanks for the feedback. As we wrote up in our original post, some of your grievances may not be addressed until we start working on and incorporating our second mod idea, new content. While we do have plans to rework some items that fail to compete with similar items, so that they can meet the needs of other builds, we will purposefully leave gaps where we feel the best thing would be a completely new item(s).

Disregarding our CT discussion earlier, there is one skill I’d want some feedback on and haven’t found any.

OFF is, arguably, a very powerful skill against anything that can be frozen. And then you get to something that can’t be frozen and notice that ALL its dmg is completely tied into the freeze duration. As a result, anything that’s immune to freeze is completely immune to OFF as a whole. And to top it off, you can’t bind constellations to OFF either, most likely as a result of the dmg coming from the freeze the spell inflicts and not the spell itself.

Now, removing the freeze immunity from bosses will make an already very good skill completely bonkers but on the other side, why should they be immune to the dmg of one of my main spells, rendering half my build inert. As far as I know, there isn’t another ability that works the same way and even with 100% resistance to one element, you can still find ways to dmg stuff.

I’d really like some thoughts on this.

Unfortunately we have to work within the restraints of the game’s engine so I’m not sure how well we can disconnect the freeze from the damage of OFF. We are aware of this and will look into it though. If it cheers you up, one of the things we want to do in our extremely hard challenge dungeons, and not in all of them, but in some we want to give the bosses slight weaknesses. So maybe one boss, randomly, is slightly vulnerable to freeze. We would probably give him a buff he can occasionally cast to make himself immune here and there, but when it’s down he can be frozen for a rather short period of time. There’d be no indicator of this and it’d be up to players to randomly discover which bosses have which weaknesses.

And the idea is that the boss would still be rather challenging with freeze working somewhat, and extremely challenging without freeze. Other bosses will require much more complicated solutions… (imagine a boss who’s weakness shifts at different %'s of hp… huehuehue)

That’s just a rough example btw. We’ve even considered making some bosses that basically require multiplayer or an insanely broken build to beat. :]. But I’m getting FARRRRRR ahead of myself.

Something to consider though since I went off your question and rambled: What if we added a potion or item that temporarily let you convert your ice damage to another type? Voila, you can hurt the boss again, albeit with partial conversion you’ll hurt them less.

Let me be clear: I think there should be occasional punishment for building in a single damage type. I also think there should be workarounds. While I personally (I don’t think Ceno feels as strongly here) defend boss immunities, I do think they should be easier to break. I think some bosses still do have like 500% immunity on stuff. But I’m also understanding that some immunities might be best unbreakable. Generally stunning bosses is a terrible way to trivialize a fight. What’s cool is that we CAN make it so that some bosses are only freeze-able/stun-able/trap-able/slow-able for a phase of their fight.

I think somewhere in between could be healthy.

Probably a long discussion we should and will have in private, but I will say right here that I think I concur with an added statement:
Chunks makes more sense the earlier in development we are. People are hungry for changes and so are we, and the more feedback we get the better.
It makes a lot of sense to me to do chunks, but nice meaty chunks, not lazy tiny chunks, and release them as we go. We can even start working on the next chunk while we’re getting feedback from the first, because we can touch upon areas we didn’t on the first chunk that don’t directly interact with the first chunk, and then adjust things from the first chunk based on feedback. God I can’t write when I’m tired. I’m going to bed after this.

Basically I think that while you and I should play around a bit with changes we make first, and as soon as we’re moderately happy with them we should let em have it. People might find huge version changes more satisfying, but being able to tweak as we go will be more helpful to us. Things will be most touch and go at the start so we might as well wing it a little, and as we hit our stride we can start slowing down and releasing even larger versions.

Like, I’d be okay with our first version not touching monsters at all (asides from DA let me edit in lel) but touching a large amount of skills and the mastery bars. That in of itself would be a really nice improvement for a lot of people I think. I also think that in terms of being able to prioritize what needs our attention will happen naturally and organically if we let people help us more as we go in the first versions. I’m confident in our ability to sift through the feedback and pick what we agree with and disagree with.

[Ceno]

Unfortunately we have to work within the restraints of the game’s engine so I’m not sure how well we can disconnect the freeze from the damage of OFF.

I have an idea for how to fix the OFF and Blade Trap problems without touching the way the skills are designed at all. If my idea works out, you’ll have full OFF and BT damage/resist reduction/da reduction against bosses, even if you don’t freeze/immobilize them.

I really hope my idea works. I think it will.

[Cryodacry]

Ceno,

I went ahead and added this Discussion thread to the Mod Compendium I

[LucidityOfPower]

Cooldowns have a place in the game. I mean I could think of some interesting mechanics that would allow the removal of “hard” cooldowns, but It’d take a huge amount of work in any game, and probably isn’t viably possible in this game’s engine. Cooldown reduction builds are also very dangerous and very good and breaking the game, so we will look at adding more -% cooldown to the game, but we will be very careful to make sure you can’t get past the amount we want, and that there are trade-offs. Anyway, thanks for the feedback. As we wrote up in our original post, some of your grievances may not be addressed until we start working on and incorporating our second mod idea, new content. While we do have plans to rework some items that fail to compete with similar items, so that they can meet the needs of other builds, we will purposefully leave gaps where we feel the best thing would be a completely new item(s).

I didn’t mean to completely remove it or anything, but have stuff that decreases cooldowns with maybe a NEGATIVE effect of having reduced damage. This could create, like you said, interesting builds. But yeah, I guess you know what you’re doing and what you want to accomplish, so I’m all for it.

[sfbistimg]

I dont get why people keep knocking Callidor’s Tempest. My Druid has over 17K DPS and it has 55% Weapon Damage so it can benefit from life steal. It melts packs like butter and combined with Devastation it also beats bosses without much effort.

[Ceno]

I went ahead and added this Discussion thread to the Mod Compendium I

Thank you! We appreciate it!

I dont get why people keep knocking Callidor’s Tempest. My Druid has over 17K DPS and it has 55% Weapon Damage so it can benefit from life steal. It melts packs like butter and combined with Devastation it also beats bosses without much effort.

Yeah, I mean, it’s good, dude. It’s better than good, actually, it’s probably among the best skills in the game. But it just doesn’t feel good, at least not to me. Hence the contention.

CT has long irked me.

[…]

(These changes went through (potentially verbatim) and lo and behold, Most’s Callidor’s Tempest build is kicking ass. But it still feels monotonous to me, albeit to a lesser extent because of the increase radius.)

[adoomgod]

I didn’t mean to completely remove it or anything, but have stuff that decreases cooldowns with maybe a NEGATIVE effect of having reduced damage. This could create, like you said, interesting builds. But yeah, I guess you know what you’re doing and what you want to accomplish, so I’m all for it.

This is literally one of the most obvious ways I’ve considered to implement more CDR. Be it on a skill, temporary buff or item. Definitely something that will be played with… later. As long as I limit the slots where CDR appears so you can’t get close to 100%, should be fun and fine. Should be? Should be…

I dont get why people keep knocking Callidor’s Tempest. My Druid has over 17K DPS and it has 55% Weapon Damage so it can benefit from life steal. It melts packs like butter and combined with Devastation it also beats bosses without much effort.

Your build is literally the reason I said CT is fine. It begs the questions though: are there other ways to build CT viably into ultimate? Not like swap one item out, but a few, or big devotion changes. Second question: If not, does it matter? One viable build per active skill is more than some get :rolleyes:.

Also devastation is… extremely strong. So, does CT NEED devastation to be good vs bosses? Are there any alternatives? Does there need to be? Sigh.

Also have to ask how good CT is without the gear? Is it too hard to build into? I’m actually 100% fine with gear-reliant builds. I mean you can always farm on a non gear-reliant build, and I think it’s interesting that some skills be more item dependent than others. Some skills can scale well all the way to the end, some skills can scale well only once you break into their ultimate levels. Diversity is the spice of life.

I’m also wondering about devastation. It’s so fucking good. It makes me wonder if it’s too good or if other spells just need to be better. Bleh. Looking at you doombolt.

But yeah I briefly played with CT when I generated a lvl 85 for your build. As you can see in my signature it’s the next thing I want to test before making my mind up about changes. Skill feels fine to me, but it’s been a while so I want to double check. I don’t really want to change anything with the skill when it’s already good, just because Ceno doesn’t like how it feels heh. But perhaps if he can convince me, and you, a progenitor of a CT build, that the change is even more fun, we’ll change it. Anyway goodnight guys.

[sfbistimg]

This is literally one of the most obvious ways I’ve considered to implement more CDR. Be it on a skill, temporary buff or item. Definitely something that will be played with… later. As long as I limit the slots where CDR appears so you can’t get close to 100%, should be fun and fine. Should be? Should be…

Your build is literally the reason I said CT is fine. It begs the questions though: are there other ways to build CT viably into ultimate? Not like swap one item out, but a few, or big devotion changes. Second question: If not, does it matter? One viable build per active skill is more than some get :rolleyes:.

Also devastation is… extremely strong. So, does CT NEED devastation to be good vs bosses? Are there any alternatives? Does there need to be? Sigh.

Also have to ask how good CT is without the gear? Is it too hard to build into? I’m actually 100% fine with gear-reliant builds. I mean you can always farm on a non gear-reliant build, and I think it’s interesting that some skills be more item dependent than others. Some skills can scale well all the way to the end, some skills can scale well only once you break into their ultimate levels. Diversity is the spice of life.

I’m also wondering about devastation. It’s so fucking good. It makes me wonder if it’s too good or if other spells just need to be better. Bleh. Looking at you doombolt.

But yeah I briefly played with CT when I generated a lvl 85 for your build. As you can see in my signature it’s the next thing I want to test before making my mind up about changes. Skill feels fine to me, but it’s been a while so I want to double check. I don’t really want to change anything with the skill when it’s already good, just because Ceno doesn’t like how it feels heh. But perhaps if he can convince me, and you, a progenitor of a CT build, that the change is even more fun, we’ll change it. Anyway goodnight guys.

The Lower levels of Callidor’s Tempest are pretty weak for how much it costs. It’s why I usually level with Lightning Nova until Act 4 Elite. You can use other gear especially if you go Sorcerer as you will want to use Warpfire /Aldanar’s Vanity combo instead.
CT doesn’t need Devastation, but since in has 100% synergy with it I don’t see why you wouldn’t take it.

[DarkestDisciple]

Love the idea of the mod! Thanks for being willing to put in the work for all the rest of us!

My thoughts on skills that need some work:

Upheaval
Being a WPS that doesn’t stack proc chance like other WPS makes it pretty undesirable. I would love to see it turned into a proc-on-crit skill like found on gear, if that’s even possible. Could make it much more usable and create the possibility for some interesting 2h caster build if done right. Numbers would probably have to be rebalanced, though.

Forcewave
Feels like Blade Arc always edges it out. Base skill and Tremor could both use some love IMO.

Canister Bomb
Love the earlier idea about making it “waves” of explosives.

Thermite Mine
Sure, it’s pretty powerful, but it feels quite frustrating to use as well. May not be a big issue.

Amarasta’s Blade Burst
Does this really need explaining? The investment never feels like it pays off.

Olexra’s Flash Freeze
I do like the idea of this and Blade Trap being usable on bosses, but I feel their power would need to be greatly adjusted downward.

[system]

What do you guys think of Bloody Pox? I mean on one hand it is awesome at proc’s but because that power comes from 1 skill point the rest of the skill is undervalued.

Bloody Pox is both a DoT and a Debuff and each other moderator adds the same. It feels like it trying to do too much and therefore doesn’t have the power needed to contend win ultimate. I feel the bleed and poison number need a bit of boost and maybe make the debuff as transmutations

Are there any abilities in the game that “consume” DoT’s?, AKA Jade Harvester.

I feel that would work quite well in Grim dawn. Doom Bolt as an example could consume vitality/bleed Dots on target and convert them into a AoE. It would encourage setting things up and tactical nuking.

[Quique]

Hi again!

Wanted to ask, what are your guys thoughts are on resists? I like to read the build forums a lot. And it seems to me that every successful build published there has to rack up resists all the way up to the caps.

I would like to see resists work in a more strategic way: Like based on the need to fight certain X boss, for example.

Same with resist debuffs. They feel mandatory.

Could be wrong, though. I’m not as experienced as most of you. Just my observations.

[KoalaeiO]

Edit: Ninja’d!

Nightblade’s Blade Trap.

I have an idea for how to fix the OFF and Blade Trap problems without touching the way the skills are designed at all. If my idea works out, you’ll have full OFF and BT damage/resist reduction/da reduction against bosses, even if you don’t freeze/immobilize them.

For OFF, making it an actual castable debuff (like Haunt) with “Freeze target for X seconds”?

[adoomgod]

Posting from phone so bear with me.

The Lower levels of Callidor’s Tempest are pretty weak for how much it costs. It’s why I usually level with Lightning Nova until Act 4 Elite. You can use other gear especially if you go Sorcerer as you will want to use Warpfire /Aldanar’s Vanity combo instead.
CT doesn’t need Devastation, but since in has 100% synergy with it I don’t see why you wouldn’t take it.

Thanks for the tip. I don’t mind at all that it’s weak at early levels. I had a small talk with Ceno about this, but not everything should be intuitive. Some skills should be like hidden gems which reward players who push them in investment.

Upheaval
Being a WPS that doesn’t stack proc chance like other WPS makes it pretty undesirable. I would love to see it turned into a proc-on-crit skill like found on gear, if that’s even possible. Could make it much more usable and create the possibility for some interesting 2h caster build if done right. Numbers would probably have to be rebalanced, though.

Forcewave
Feels like Blade Arc always edges it out. Base skill and Tremor could both use some love IMO.

Canister Bomb
Love the earlier idea about making it “waves” of explosives.

Thermite Mine
Sure, it’s pretty powerful, but it feels quite frustrating to use as well. May not be a big issue.

Amarasta’s Blade Burst
Does this really need explaining? The investment never feels like it pays off.

Olexra’s Flash Freeze
I do like the idea of this and Blade Trap being usable on bosses, but I feel their power would need to be greatly adjusted downward.

Upheaval, haven’t personally put much thought here. I like the concept but in practice it falters, especially since crit chance was nerfed as well. This skill needs love, but I don’t exactly just want to make another WPS either… though two handed could use one. Hmm

Forcewave, I have had a couple ideas here but will need to generate a level 85 completely built character so I can test it against other builds better.

Thermite mine. Ehhhhhhhh. It’s sort of a skill I’ve been unconsciously avoiding because it’s not my kind of skill. But I’ll take a hard look now that you’ve mentioned it. If it’s strong but frustrating that’s still a category of, to be addressed later, if at all.

ABB, we’re well aware. We have like four solid ideas to help this out though. I’m confident one will stick.

OFF, I’m entrusting this to Ceno atm.

What do you guys think of Bloody Pox? I mean on one hand it is awesome at proc’s but because that power comes from 1 skill point the rest of the skill is undervalued.

Bloody Pox is both a DoT and a Debuff and each other moderator adds the same. It feels like it trying to do too much and therefore doesn’t have the power needed to contend win ultimate. I feel the bleed and poison number need a bit of boost and maybe make the debuff as transmutations

Agree on BP. I’ve suggested more or less the same thing to Ceno. We’re not sure how much is just an issue of buffing. We plan on adding more items to support it later after we buff it though. So still may not be great until mod 2. I definitely want it to scale better in its ultimate levels.

Funny thing is I was just talking to Ceno two weeks ago about making a mastery based on combos, and consuming DoTs. Will be hard to implement. No plans to rework and anything existing to behave like jade harvester.

Hi again!

Wanted to ask, what are your guys thoughts are on resists? I like to read the build forums a lot. And it seems to me that every successful build published there has to rack up resists all the way up to the caps.

I would like to see resists work in a more strategic way: Like based on the need to fight certain X boss, for example.

Same with resist debuffs. They feel mandatory.

Could be wrong, though. I’m not as experienced as most of you. Just my observations.

We agree, completely. I don’t feel as strongly as Ceno but I think he was exaggerating when he said you should be able to “feel comfortable walking around with 0% resists”.

But ultimate should require less investment in resists than it currently does, and the need for resist reduction is plainly ridiculous. We hope to lower enemy resists across the board, with some receiving buffs in other defensive ways. (HP, chance to dodge, castable debuff or a debuff aura, for example) We still want high resists enemies that you beat with resist reduction, but now it feels like everything is beaten with resist reduction.

We hope that after we lower enemy resists we can also lower the numbers on all player side resist reduction so it doesn’t end up so darn overwhelming.

[Cryodacry]

Funny thing is I was just talking to Ceno two weeks ago about making a mastery based on combos, and consuming DoTs. Will be hard to implement. No plans to rework and anything existing to behave like jade harvester.

You will have to Nerf the holy hell out of bleed damage or restrict it to acid only to balance this. Bleed hits for Ridicules values if you count the whole duration of the dot. Before resists Brutalix alone is doing millions of damage over it’s duration. 450% duration and 2000% bleed damage on a base 5000 over 15s bleed. Popping that zit would be catastrophic to even bosses. Even if it is once every 45s…

[adoomgod]

You will have to Nerf the holy hell out of bleed damage or restrict it to acid only to balance this. Bleed hits for Ridicules values if you count the whole duration of the dot. Before resists Brutalix alone is doing millions of damage over it’s duration. 450% duration and 2000% bleed damage on a base 5000 over 15s bleed. Popping that zit would be catastrophic to even bosses. Even if it is once every 45s…

Or perhaps just make it so consuming the DoTs only does a % of what the total dmg would have been.

[Paavo]

You will have to Nerf the holy hell out of bleed damage or restrict it to acid only to balance this. Bleed hits for Ridicules values if you count the whole duration of the dot. Before resists Brutalix alone is doing millions of damage over it’s duration. 450% duration and 2000% bleed damage on a base 5000 over 15s bleed. Popping that zit would be catastrophic to even bosses. Even if it is once every 45s…

or, since it’s already going to require a ton of work to implement, just limit it to like 3 sec worth of DoT damage.