I see this skill as a buff to my fire damage, not the core of a frost build.
It is a total speed skill, with the bonus of being able to trigger “on Attack” is the way I played it.
I intended to reply more but busy atm.
The % Weapon Damage on the skill never actually functioned. It was there, but it didn’t work. So it was removed anyways.
Just an FYI.
I think Disintegration deserves a buff too, but I don’t especially want to give it % Weapon Damage.
While being absolutely excellent in a cold build, OFF also functions as an excellent buff to fire damage (…on trash mobs which are already dead from the first hit). I am not sure what about my post made it sound like I didn’t think the fire resist reduction was an extremely important part of the skill - hence the decoupling Ceno has discussed earlier in the thread.
VF just… I’m not sure. It doesn’t seem to do enough. Compare it in balance to Solael’s Witchfire and you have one skill that gives 15% total speed vs one that gives 15% attack speed and chaos and vit boosts. Flame Touched already has fire and physical boosts - why does Vindictive Flame need to do the same thing? Why aren’t these boosts in Flame Touched?
My re-work would be FT = 15% ASpd, SW = 15% CSpd. I don’t know what I would do with VF because as a skill it just seems really meh. I don’t think I’d miss it if it just wasn’t in the game.
Looking forward to more replies!
I went to a lower level zone and killed stuff with flash grenade and VF. I did no “direct” damage, but just let all the proc skills kill stuff for me. Part of doing this was an exploration of how much my DPS was linked to these two skills proc other abilities. One way to buff VF would just allow it to hit more targets over a wider area, getting more procs.
I’m not opposed to nerfing something overtly overpowered, but I also don’t want to kill build viability. So if we touch the numbers on Brimstone it won’t be a very substantial change. Brimstone will probably be as good at slaughtering the masses as it is now, or at least approachably so.
Where I think we’ll be seeing some skills like Brimstone fall into line is if/where/when we touch upon Resist Reduction. Some sources of it are too high at present. Its not out of the question that we’ll tone those down, and when we do, I think you’ll see a slight decrease in the potency of things like Brimstone.
Glad this project has sparked so much discussion already! Thank you all for talking with us about various aspects of the game you could see needing improvement. Keep at it; we’re here reading everything, even if we don’t reply to everything.
So that it doesn’t seem as though we’re talking out of our ass with some of this stuff, we wanted to give you guys an idea of the major aspects of the game we wanted to touch upon. We won’t go into any minutia or specifics in this post (mostly because we haven’t settled on any as of yet, though we’re discussing them and invite you to do the same), but this is kind of our overarching to-do list for rebalancing the game.
- Make final levels of Celestial Powers substantially more powerful across the board, built for Ultimate difficulty (and improve baseline levels as necessary too)
- Fix enemy OA/DA; this could be achieved with a rework to the PTH equation, but would also affect players too; goal is to make DA stacking player-side viable while also lessening player dependency on OA
- Improve Magic Prefixes and Rare Suffixes; right now Rare Prefix + Magic Suffix tends to be pretty meta; rather than nerfing that meta, I’d rather supply another (or several) alternative(s)
- Decrease enemy life leech resistance in Ultimate to make lifesteal viable again (it’s OK to be less potent than it is in Normal/Elite, but being more or less ineffectual is a problem)
[li]Improve the following list of skills (improve does not necessarily mean rework, but it can!):[/li][LIST]
[li]Shaman: [/li][LIST] - Upheaval
- Blood Pact
- Stormcaller’s Pact
- Savagery
- Stormtouched
[li]Arcanist: [/li][ul]
[li]Entire IEE line[/li]
[li]Conversion[/li]
[li]Reckless Power[/li]
[li]WoA/Inferno[/li]
[li]OFF[/li]
[li]Disintegration[/li]
[li]Shattered Star[/li]
[li]Arcane Will[/li]
[li]Nullification[/li]
[li]Mental Alacrity[/li]
[/ul]
[li]Nightblade: [/li][ul]
[li]Execution[/li]
[li]Blade Spirit[/li]
[li]Amarasta’s Blade Burst[/li]
[li]Ring of Steel[/li]
[li]Elemental Awakening[/li]
[li]Blade Barrier[/li]
[li]Blade Trap[/li]
[li]Phantasmal Armor[/li]
[li]Anatomy of Murder[/li]
[/ul]
[li]Occultist: [/li][ul]
[li]Destruction[/li]
[li]Doom Bolt[/li]
[li]Entire Bloody Pox line[/li]
[li]Entire Familiar line[/li]
[li]Infernal Breath[/li]
[/ul]
[li]Demolitionist: [/li][ul]
[li]Blackwater Cocktail[/li]
[li]High Potency[/li]
[li]Demon Fire[/li]
[li]Entire Stun Jacks line[/li]
[li]Improved Casing[/li]
[li]Ulzuin’s Chosen[/li]
[li]High Impact[/li]
[li]Skyfire Grenado[/li]
[/ul]
[li]Soldier: [/li][ul]
[li]Fighting Spirit[/li]
[li]Oleron’s Rage[/li]
[li]Rending Force[/li]
[li]Entire Cadence line[/li]
[li]slight buff to Menhir’s Will[/li]
[li]Squad Tactics[/li]
[li]Menhir’s Bastion[/li]
[li]Veterancy[/li]
[/ul]
[/LIST]
[li]Add more base health to masteries (we’ll be breaking the 38 points of Health/Energy mold!)[/li]
[li]Removal of Energy Burn from items/Devotion. (From Ceno: Energy Burn has a certain novelty to it, especially when - for instance - you prevent Chthonian Harbingers from exploding on death. But getting minor stats of Energy Burn here and there becomes a huge nuisance against reflective enemies, and for weapon-skill based characters, that Energy Burn is permanent. So, for now, we want to remove it from the game so that players are more inclined to take particular items/affixes/Devotion nodes for a wider array of builds. Where Energy Burn could come into play again is on an active spell, so that players can choose particularly when to burn an enemy and thus can choose not to do so on a reflective mob.)[/li]
[li]Touch up on speed hardcaps. Movespeed will definitely be augmented. Attack/Cast speed will get a stern looking at. Chances are, if they are boosted, they’ll not be pushed higher than 250%, if that.[/li][/LIST]
The Arcanist IS pretty lacking in skills that actually DO have %weapon damage though, and while that makes sense for the theme of the mastery, it might be nice for hybrid arcanists to have more tho choose from than JUST the tempest. One Idea I had was a “magic bullet” transmuter for replicating missile that gave it weapon damage and made it scale with attack speed instead of cast speed, but requires a ranged weapon. It was the flavor text for the Arcanum Sigillis that gave me the idea. If Agrivix wasn’t going to actually fire magic from it, why make it a gun in the first place?
Wouldn’t it be better limiting Reflect mechanic to direct damage only? Aka no reflectable DoTs or debuffs, which is IMO the main source of the problem, not the energy burn itself.
EDIT: And speaking of WDM and Arcanist, any idea on how to make Implements be actually useful for non-WDM builds?
All fair points. The skills you talked about are a lot of the main ones I’ve thought about. Brimstone is an extreme outlier that needs tough love. It’s too easy to make it too good. Ceno says it well above. We want to see if it falls in line when we tone down resist reduction. If it’s needed it’ll be a very small one.
I generally agree with what you said and each of those has been discussed for those reasons in the past. Considering we are improving many things, some may be left less improved than you want because they’ll be indirectly improved by other things.
As Ceno said, no real plan to put wpn dmg on disintegration. Straight buffing it and then seeing if it needs additional stats.
Cdr 100% will be left impossible to reach probably. We may cap cdr at 80%ish so we can put it in more places though.
Alternatively I’d be okay with large cdr on a 4-5 piece set bonus, the set having drawbacks in relative stats.
Large cdr on a temporary buff that procs out of your control. Considered for a new item and a rework of aeon’s hourglass.
But 100% cdr just from stacking it on slots is super dangerous and impossible to balance.
We rather make it so reflect just ignores energy burn. But that might be an engine thing,same with dots in general. Because believe me that was our go to thought.
Better question to ask first is do implements even need to be useful to those builds. While it’s a nice thought the game functions without the synergy there. Is something in the talks but not near the top priorities now.
Btw guys. Haven’t confirmed with ceno but I want to make the BASE move speed increased by 5%-10%. This makes every 1% move speed on items worth 1.05%-1.10% instead, relative to the vanilla meta. It would also let me be more stingy with move speed on items since the base will feel better and I can be a bit more controlling of where and how you get move speed, and how much.
Also want to note that the to-do list above is only for now. Subject to change obviously, but more importantly only touches on our immediate priorities. After we finish our first rounds on this list and are happy, a new list will be created. There is much we have planned that isn’t ready to be discussed due to uncertainties
I can certainly see why you wouldn’t want to allow 100% CDR, since that would allow things like permanent Mirror of Ereoctes which would obviously break the game completely. I do think flat cooldown reduction is worth considering though. At the moment the game has way too many attack spells with cooldowns, to the point where I honestly end up feeling that attack speed is just inherently better than cast speed because it at least works with the weapon attack.
If it was possible to get about a second of constant flat CDR to use with the %CDR then things like Sky Shard and Grenado could actually benefit from cast speed while still being limited because of the energy cost. Energy would also actually matter more since it would become the limiting factor instead of cooldowns.
If that were possible without modifying the engine, I would gladly do so.
I don’t believe that’s the case, though.
Liking the sound of this mod a lot. Similar to work I did on Torchlight 2, I am aiming towards making an Item Expansion that focuses on increasing prefix and suffix options at both the normal and rare levels. Currently working out the stat patterns to make sure what I add is relatively balanced.
I am also working on creating a tier of Epics that have random affixes but come with 2-3 innate effects to add more variety in addition to new static Epics and eventually, Legendaries. Just running in to bumps when it comes to actually testing the items at the levels I want them to drop and integrating them into existing loot tables with as little disruption to existing files as possible to make it as compatible as I can.
I’ll definitely keep an eye on here and eventually start up my own thread once I have more to show for myself.
Intriguing concepts being thrown down so far! I’m eager to see where this goes. Will you be sharing specific planned patch notes before version releases to get the broader community’s input?
Before we consider adding more suffixes and prefixes we plan on just removing/improving the current bad ones. Honestly we don’t think it’ll be too hard to make and edit gear once we design the skill kits well. Balancing stats on gear isn’t so hard until you give them unique procs and skills. I’m not saying it’s easy either. Mostly just time consuming and requires a lot of testing.
No. Ceno did already provide a general idea of what we’ll initially be working for now, for first release. We think the community’s input will be of more value when they actually TEST what’s in the patch notes and let us know how things go. It’s like this:
We don’t want to have to explain things a hundred steps ahead every time someone has a complaint. In fact, we simply won’t. We will explain our intentions and concerns about the changes we make though, to give testers some direction.
It’s like, say we release patch notes early and someone doesn’t like something? Well the reasons they won’t like it will be nothing but hypotheticals. After testing it we can hear them out and actually confirm their experience, or it may be that while they dislike it, it’s working toward a more long term goal and will only feel bad for the shorter term. Etc.
But after our first release this thread will transition to where we talk about development process stuff. Like what we’re currently doing, what obstacles we face, and just chatter in general (not on a regular basis so much as when we feel like it.) So I think in time we’ll organically find a good balance.
Ceno’s already started working on the changes we discussed, and since he’s much more familiar with how to use the program with me I’m figuring out how to duplicate the changes he makes on my end within the program. It’s not too complicated, just need to make it feel comfortable, habitual.
Are you accepting assistance?
Hey Ceno, seen you around a ton, and saw this both here and on the subreddit.
Thought I’d toss in a few of my suggestions based on my experience. For now I’m just going to keep my suggestions to the two characters I’ve played through Ultimate the most; Bleed spec Trickster & Cold spec Spellbreaker.
[I’ve marked the ‘priority’ of the suggestion with up to 5 asterisks]
SHAMAN:
Devouring Swarm
Suggestion 1 (*****)
- Increase the max duration from 5 seconds to 8 seconds. Scale duration from 4 to 8 seconds (0.25 sec per pt).
This is essential for the sake of making any DS specs FUN. No Debuff/DoT is fun if you have to spam it so often, especially on bosses. At a mere 5 seconds duration this becomes a chore to cast, and it limits the ability to spec/gear into using a lot of active skills. An 8 second duration would allow for more specs that attempt to utilize many skills and procs, and increasing the duration does not significantly increase its power.
Suggestion 2a (****)
- Expand the radius of the swarm on impact from 2.5 to 5 meters at max rank.
This would convert the swarm to a wider splashing AoE instead of a very narrow-column. It is too important of a skill for both the damage and debuff to have to spam 2-3 times on AoE packs. Not only is it silly to require players spam it, but it is not a FUN way to play.
OR
Suggestion 2b (****)
- Change the functionality of the swarm to chain to any enemy within 2.5 meters. (Similar to ‘Chain Lightning’)
This would solve the same issue in a different manner. It would also be more fun/interesting. Chained effects are underutilized and largely only get used by lightning specs. Applying a chained effect to a swarm also makes sense for a ‘swarm’ skill.
Grasping Vines
Suggestion 1 (**)
- Enhance the visual indicator at the target area’s edges to better see which targets are within its range. Enhance the ground animation to better see when it is active on brown/green surfaces.
Pure quality of life change to make it less frustrating to see. This is probably too much to ask since it requires a lot of art work, but it’s something that is sorely needed for GV.
Suggestion 2 (****)
- Increase the max duration from 4 to 6 seconds. Scaling from 4 sec to 6 sec (0.125 sec per pt).
See: DS suggestion #1. With DS’s duration at 5 seconds and GV’s duration at 4 seconds the frequency of having to spam these two skills is simply unreasonable & NOT FUN. This change would be a bit more significant than for DS because of the power of the snare/slow, but it is already spammed to keep it up anyways so it would only reduce the number of casts, not increase the power. It also would require max point investment for 6 ticks rather than simply investing just a few points, which is often done.
Mogdrogen’s Pact
Suggestion 1 (****):
- Reduce Mog’s Pact from 12 points to 10 points.
- Increase the flat regen to 60 Hp/sec at max 10/10… but swap regen bonuses with Oak Skin (Flat regen <-> % Regen).
- Increase max HP %regen bonus (now on Mog’s Pact) to 50%.
- Increase max flat energy regen to 10 per second.
- Add up to 20% bonus energy regen to Oak Skin (2% per point).
Frankly, Mog’s Pact scales like shit. It needs to scale better and be worth keeping max points in. HP regen not only scales poorly but it loses a lot of its effectiveness in Ultimate where damage is far more spiky… so it needs a huge boost to regen, but needs to be also be more costly, and pushing the flat regen deeper into the tree would require a heavier Shaman investment. The energy regen also scales like shit. Max points in Mog’s Pact should NOT be worse for energy regen than 1 single point in IEE.
Suggestion 2 (**)
- Reduce Tenacity of the Boar HP regen% bonus from 100% at max rank to 60%.
This balances out the bonus given to Mog’s Pact. Tenacity of the Boar is already incredibly strong from its OA/DA bonus, it doesn’t need all that HP regen bonus which makes it compulsory to spec into. Compulsory skills are not fun.
NIGHTBLADE:
Ring of Steel/Ring of Frost/Circle of Slaughter
Suggestion (***):
-
Increase Ring of Steel cooldown from 3.5 second to 5 seconds.
-
Increase Ring of Steel Weapon Damage to 130%, Piercing Damage to 380 at max.
-
Increase Ring of Steel stun duration from 1.5 seconds to 2.5 seconds.
-
Increase Ring of Frost freeze duration from 3 seconds to 4 seconds.
-
Increase Ring of Frost damage conversion from 75% to 100%.
-
Add to Circle of Slaughter; Increase radius of effect from 4 to 6 meters.
-
Increase Circle of Slaughter’s bleed duration from 3 seconds to 5 seconds.
Just a nice boost to melee, which could use help in a lot of ways:
*The RoS cooldown increase makes it less of a spammed ability allowing specs to include more skills (which is more FUN).
*The RoS/RoF’s stun/freeze duration increase compensates for the cooldown increase. Also gives bit more melee survivability.
*The RoF conversion increase makes it a much more enticing Cold spec ability compared to Execution, Phantasmal Blades, and Shadow Strike.
*The CoS range boost would make Ring of Steel are more reliable & effective AoE than simply ‘melee range’.
Heart Seeker
Suggestion (****)
- Increase max chance to pass through enemies from 65% to 100%.
Seriously… enough silly RNG. Why is the BEST possible chance still an unreliable 65% chance? Nobody maxes this because there’s no reason to.
Blade Spirit
Suggestion (*****):
- Increase the duration by 100%, but do not allow two spirits to be active at once.
- Increase its movement speed by 50%
- Make procs bound to the skill originate & effect the player, not the Blade Spirit.
Blade Spirit is incredibly powerful, but equally annoying and UNFUN to use. Having to recast it so damn often is like having a pet that runs away every 8 seconds that you have to constantly summon. It moves to slow to change targets effectively, and while it is good for procs those procs go to waste if they involve any kind of buff or lifesteal. For an end-tier skill this skill shouldn’t be so UNFUN that you spec out of it just to rid yourself of the hassle.
That’s it for now. Will do more if they’re welcomed.
I too have a suggestion from experience. Played all through ultimate on my AAR sorcerer and took spear of the heavens for my devotion goal. Yes it has good nodes but the skill is awful. The damage is insignificant at best (like one tick of AAR, maybe) and a second of stun turns out to be maybe half a second in ultimate due to universal cc resist. And of course it does nothing to heros and bosses except tickle them. Completely underwhelming for a tier 3 constellation.
In terms of directly modifying files and contributing the modded files to the mod itself, no, not at this time. There are various problems that we’d need to consider to start taking on more people:
-
Vetting people. We’re not really concerned about people fucking with the mod intentionally (i.e., deleting stuff, making something overpowered intentionally, etc.), but we do want to make sure the people working on it have a vast array of experience with Grim Dawn itself and so can make changes while understanding the ramifications such changes could have for certain players. While adoomgod and I can’t see everything, between us we’ve been at Grim Dawn for over 3,000 hours so far, and I’ve got another 2,000 on Titan Quest. So we can see a lot, trust me.
-
As adoomgod puts it, “too many chefs ruin the pot.” While getting a great many people working on the project from a great many sides would cut down on the overall time required, it could dilute things because the overall result would not seem as coherent. Regardless of how experienced we all were, if our team consisted of 5x adoomgod’s and 5x me’s, our project would probably be shit.
-
With less people, arguments end faster. We don’t really argue a whole lot between us (which is also kind of the point), but when we do, we can settle things more quickly because we don’t have an uncoordinated inundation of comments coming this way and that. Even if we’ve fucked up on the part of a resolution to an argument, we’ve at least made some semblance of progress with it and can always fix things later. Point being, we’re trying to minimize time spent in discourse and maximize time spent modding the game.
-
Actual communication. adoomgod and I are chatting well through Discord. I’m in the process of helping him get set up on github as well. Beyond that, we may also take to Skype voice chat at times and may also need to test things out in multiplayer. Syncronizing this with more people could prove very troublesome and counterproductive.
Having said all that, we are still open to working with the community. We continue to read and consider all of your input here; it’s very helpful! As time proceeds, we may start asking the community specific questions about specific items/skills/monsters. “Of the two changes, A and B, for skill X, which would you prefer?” And when we start releasing patchnotes (alongside minireleases) we look forward to learning how the community feels about them.
That’s it for now. Will do more if they’re welcomed.
Yes, please do! There are some things you suggested which I’m not sure are possible, but everything you suggested will be considered! Thanks!
@Avyctes, Spear of the Heavens is definitely getting buffed.
Just to add to the above, there’s no reason to complicate what already feels like a good thing, and we feel like we got ourselves a good thing.
However, we’ve already hit some roadblocks with the modding tools. Be it our ignorance, or the tool’s clunkiness, or something about using the original DBR files instead of making new ones… the process isn’t working as we thought it should.
Some stuff is going fine. Adding health to mastery bars for example.
However changing skills is turning out to be super weird.
Ceno got one skill working. But for both of us another 2 are just red x’s even though they look correctly done in the editor. And another skill for me won’t change at all. Looking into it though.
Point being is I think Ceno and I would like to feel a sense of mastery over the tools before we get more people involved. So as for adding chefs to our kitchen, I’ll think about that again in a few months, when our kitchen should be working seamlessly.
To quell any worry that this is going to take us forever, we’ve gotten a lot more skills done in the two hours that have passed since this post. Stay tuned!