Not late. We plan on updating this mod consistently after we release every version, so it’s never too late to give feedback. Ceno already tackled IEE and ended up doing what I considered to do to it in the first place. DoT damage can be quite good now, the numbers just needed to be better.
We also did some… other things to the skill line. :] I’m working on Nightblade now.
Is there an ETA on when you guys will try to release the mod? Are you guys going to do beta releases or wait and do full blown releases?
I am watching this mod with bated breath. The first post basically addresses all the beef I have this game, which I have sent as feedback to the developers before. Here is it again, in full, if anyone is interested.
For the record, I love Grim Dawn; I have gotten friends playing it, talked to others about how wonderful it is, and every evening after work I would spend 2 to 3 hours on it. I really appreciate the work that the developers have done on it.
So that’s said, here are what I love:
Now for what I think where improvements are due:
1)DA, health, damage absorption, resist and armor are the only valid defense options
Due to unavoidable damage, the large number of swarming enemies and environmental damages all classes need health (hence Physique), and the good defensive gears with +health has high Physique (again, Physique). Mirror and Sphere become “must-have” in higher difficulties.
The issue is that Nightblade is too squishy , and any combination of Nightblade which doesn’t involve Shaman and Solider needs to stack a lot of Physique. The defense options for a Nightblade doesn’t work too well in my experience.
Veil of Shadow: Doesn’t help with being swarmed, and it takes a moment for the damage and debuff to kick in when an enemy engages you in melee.
Ring of Steel: The small radius requires precision, and stun/freeze doesn’t work on champions and bosses
Blade Trap: Enemies can still attack while trapped, and doesn’t help with swarms. It looks like it is intended for smaller fights, vs. heroes and bosses however the duration against those types is woefully short. Since we are dealing with swarms most of the time, a CC that only affects 3 common/champion is not particularly effective
Phantasmal Armor: Armor is the least of the important defensive stats there is.
Shadow Dance: I have tried stacking Dodge chance to 25% and Deflect chance to 38%, and the damage burst in Elite is still there.
Here are the other defensive skills from other masteries which doesn’t work well from my experiences:
Curse of Frailty: more of a damaging debuff than a defensive one, as it doesn’t help with swarms, charging monsters and enemies with movement speed buff.
Armor of the Guardian: I did a Witchhunter build with this maxed out to test it out; the armor boost doesn’t help much when most attacks have some form of magical damage on it.
Blast Shield: It’s too niche (fire and pierce), doesn’t scale well.
Stun Jacks: It’s very hard to judge the distance, spread and the timing to get it to stun an incoming enemy.
Grasping Vines: At level 1, the chance for its defensive abilities to proc is too low. The area it covered is small enough to require precise targeting.
Flash Freeze: It is subjected to casting speed, which means it doesn’t work well with Mavien’s Sphere (maybe intended?). There also seems to be a “lag” time when the attack connects and freezes; after my observation, enemies are only freeze when the “ice circle” passes through it, not when it touches it. I have to check again though
I think the other defensive skills not mentioned here work well - PB, Mavien’s Sphere, Mirror, Flashbang, Blade Barrier, Shield Training, Overguard, Menhir’s Will.
I guess my beef with defensive options, especially with Nightblade, is that it doesn’t feel like a ninja or a rogue-type character. Whenever I play a Nightblade melee, I will try to get heavy armor with +health, resists and DA, because its defensive options doesn’t help much. A lot of people on the forum says a Nightblade is not a “tanker”, more of a hit and run. However, there are no skills to facilitate that, because:
I think that the Nightblade needs a boost to mobility – ability to disengage – while dealing damage, and some form of reliable close-range CC. Ring of Steel is the best at this, however the component which I care about – duration of stun, doesn’t scale (while Forcewave does scale its duration of stun)
Sorry for the rambling, I sometimes think skills for the Nightblade does too many things, I will be perfectly fine with Ring of Steel as CC with no scaling damage (if that helps balance), or PB being a pure defensive options with no boost to attack speed (it should be two skills instead, or the offensive part of it as an Exclusive skill).
3)The game relies too much on swarming
Past Act 2, most of the challenges come from swarms:
Lots of the CC, defensive skills doesn’t work well on swarmers - Blade Trap and Night Veil, to name two.
Enemy mechanics which I would like to see more, besides swarming, are:
However it seems that most synergies in the game revolved around numbers, for a number of factors. For instance, in D2 I love to use Glacial Spike to hold the enemies in place and then place a Wall of Fire underneath it. That’s the type of synergy I am referring to.
For a few cases in Grim Dawn, I haven’t really found such chances. Most synergies in the game is through numbers. Not that it is bad – it’s a ARPG and the time-honoured tradition of min-maxing is expected. I;m just kind of bummed that there aren’t too many non-number-crunching synergies out there. Mostly those doesn’t work out because the numbers aren’t in favor - or at times, there’s an effective and efficient way to kill than those combinations.
Here’s a few I have tried:
Phantasmal Blades + Blade Trap: Blade Trap affects too few targets, doesn’t work against bosses and the points invested in it can be used to boost DPS, the ultimate CC. Suggestion – Blade Trap reduces piercing resist instead of a DA penalty.
Tempest + Flash Freeze: More than just the -fire resist%, it’s the ability to kill mobs while they are frozen in place, and not attacking you. Both skills are an energy hog, unfortunately. A nightblade with dual wielding could kill more effectively with lesser expenditure in energy. Suggestion: swap the transmuter effect for Tempest and Wrath, making Tempest a CC and nuke skill by default, and Tempest to be the spammable one.
Some sort of CC + Storm Totem/Mortar Trap: sounds good on paper - I freeze/stun/slow enemies and use Totems or Mortar Trap to finish them off. However, as most enemies swarm, and the mortar trap’s projectile lands so slowly, it doesn’t work out.
and melee characters still need armor because most of the damage (at least half?) is physical. The issue is - even so, melee characters will still be wrecked without resistances.
There is also the issue of ground damage. Kiters don’t have the problems, but melee characters have to deal with that, especially the poison clouds left behind by the scourges – which I think is ground damage because enough at ~70% poison resist it’s still taking a large chunk of my HP.
I am not saying that there are no effective melee builds; I am saying that due to the lack of defensive options, melee characters which aren’t high Physique, or a combination of Arcanist/Solider, has it way more difficult. Some options will be great; otherwise I think all melee playstyle will be same for most melee characters.
Thanks for reading.
DoTs needs to be heavily revised again; it’s no fun to be needing 80% resist in all categories because DoT could potentially come in any element. Bleed is one of the biggest offenders there is.
The lack for love for hybrid magic/melee character is annoying too, for I love those kind of classes. I now begin to see Ceno’s point back when he was arguing against the removal of elemental flat damage from prefixes/suffixes.
As for monsters, will the mod be looking at including other type of challenges instead of having enemies swarming you from all directions, or one-hit-kill attacks?
Enemy resistances is also a troublesome point – attacks and devotions that reduce enemy resistance are now “must have” at higher difficulties. Could suggest scattering “reduce <elemental resistance> by X” throughout the devotions by their themes.
There is still the AR/DR issues. DR needs to be something besides just a miss chance; the critical hit meta is still strong.
Two handed weapons need more effect than just “more damage”. I was thinking if I would do a mod, every two handed weapon will have a build-in proc. A two-handed sword could proc an area of effect attack, a two-handed axe could cause bleed etc.
Since the devs seem to have giving up addressing the “fun” issues of the gameplay, I be watching this thread closely.
No ETA yet. But considering we’re about down with our first round of buffs on 3/6 classes, and I’m working on a fourth now… beta release shouldn’t be far. Should be within 3 weeks. I’m shooting for within 2. But it will be a beta release which simply touches up or revamps class skills. Not touching constellations, items, or monsters yet. We want player feedback on our changes to the class trees. So yeah, fragmented releases. The second release will incorporate feedback we agreed with and probably have us branch out into tweaking constellations.
Thanks for the feedback. I’m working on night blade atm so it’s useful. Keep in mind that only some of what you mentioned will be addressed in the first release. Other parts later, and some of it we might be fine with.
I tweaked execution, elemental awakening, phantasmal armor and anatomy of murder tonight. We take the issue of ultimate’s burstiness forcing us to build tank seriously and it will be addressed a little bit in release one, more so later.
Right now we’re focused on making bad skills viable. The interesting difficulty will be added in toward the end so you’ll have to wait. This is because we can’t build interesting difficulty mechanics on a foundation of poor player-side balance. But yeah, I have a lot of ideas for challenge dungeons and new threatening monsters. Can discuss more tomorrow.
Great to hear all these! However I do understand that modding to take time, and I agree with you that the more interesting stuff have to come after the player side has been balanced.
Can anyone tell me how poorly ring of steel scales into the late game?
Daily-ish status update to keep you intrigued: We’ve more or less finished our first pass on all masteries, except for one (Occultist). There’s a couple straggling skills (Canister Bomb, Ring of Steel) that we’re still trying to think of ways to improve, as some of our ideas for them couldn’t mechanically pan out.
Once that is done, we’ll be moving onto Devotion, tackling the unused Constellations and improving essentially every Celestial Power for use in Ultimate difficulty.
After that, it’s not clear what we’ll shoot to complete. We may do an initial glance at some itemization changes and some enemy tweaks, but the bulk of those is likely to comprise their own releases. When we’re satisfied with what we’ve got, we’ll be releasing a build of the mod for you all to enjoy, in which we’ll appreciate hearing your feedback while we tinker with more things. Expect that release within two weeks. It won’t be the full release of the mod (as hinted at above), nor will anything within it be set-in-stone, but it should at least give you guys reasons to try out more skills and Devotion abilities. Our goal, for now, is to complete the objectives described in this list to the best of our ability. However, it won’t be the entirety of that list that is within the first ‘release’ of the mod, as that list likely comprises several more months of work. Ironically, the bulk of the list - the skill changes - are likely the easiest to complete.
Stay tuned, friends. Fun times are on the horizon.
When this comment was written we had already touched IEE up, but not in the ways you’ve described. Despite this, I’ve still come back to read this comment four times now and feel I owe you a reply.
In truth, we (adoomgod and I) both looked at IEE independently and came to the same conclusion about how to improve it. I myself implemented that conclusion. But it serves to improve cross-mastery synergy with Arcanist, and like you say, Arcanist has plenty of that already and is lacking in synergy with itself. Our revised IEE doesn’t solve this.
So really the reason I’m replying is to warn you that, in this vein, IEE is not fixed. But I’m also replying to ask you to try out the revised version and see if you can make some good use of it. We have not ignored your comment by any means, and in reality your comment is nagging me. 
I do hope our new IEE is more desirable than the old one, but rest assured, if that is not the case, we are certainly taking your route (or some degree of it) in fixing the skill. 
I regret nothing.
What kind of a metric are you looking for?
Honestly, I don’t know. It is a one-point wonder as it doesn’t really do much damage, and I put points into it for the stun. I’ve tried using it as part of my auto-attack setup, but it is definitely lackluster when compared to a max-out Shadow Strike (with Nightfall) on your LMB. The range, stun duration and AoE doesn’t scale up, IIRC. The long cool-down, plus that most mobs swarm you in the late game, simply means that using RoS for CC is usually futile.
Example Below is fine.
I want to see if it can’t become a main staple in a build. But I worry I’m just going to turn it into the cold/pierce version of OFF. Which is fine but redundant. I think I may sort of do so anyway, and then come back to it later to add things that make it more distinct. Hmm.
I think the intent of the skill is CC and defense; I was thinking - if I would mod it, I will change Ring of Steel to either give a +armor boost that last for a short while after use, or add a proc to the player which he has 10% chance to trigger another Ring of Steel when he’s attacked (the proc could last for 5-10 seconds)
Or it could be both a CC and a debuff; perhaps enemies struck by it has reduced resistance to bleed and pierce
I was thinking of adding a debuff or two to it. I like the idea of a chance for more rings of steel. I could just rename it time rings of steel. I will do my weird ideas, first, but damn, that’s one I’m coming back to.
I had the exact same thought, adding range to it will make it look a lot like OFF. But it definitely needs some range. I wouldn’t mind seeing it as a powerful and expensive toggleable aura, dealing pulse damage of some kind (but then I guess it looks like Veil of Shadow…).
It’s like they took Flashbang and tried to make it melee. It just isn’t good enough at any one thing to be useable.
As far as feedback on it, the range is definitely too short and can miss even enemies in melee range somehow. I think it needs 6ish meters. The pierce damage is lackluster, the weapon damage only scales to 100%, and the stun is very short. 75% conversion to cold is also weird on the transmute. The modifier doesn’t really fit with the skill - the major tweaks could be here to add more damage instead of a weak melee flashbang.
Cold dmg on night blade has already been a thing. Acid/poison night blade has tried to be a thing forever. Maybe I’ll change it to acid conversion and add item support later.
I’m thinking of scaling the stun, setting the range to 5.5, I improved its damage already, and possibly add another debuff. Alternatively to the debuf I was considering making its cooldown scale down in ultimate levels.
I really like extrakun’s idea of it giving you a temporary buff that let’s you proc, on being hit, additional weaker rings of steel.
Do people even like the bleed damage on it? Hmm. I’m getting more inspiration. Thanks guys.
IMO the major weakness of RoS is the low range, it kills the skill. If you are swarmed by mobs and you trigger RoS, there’s a great probability those in the periphery to remain untouched.
Then it comes the DPS. Skill either need CD reduction (3.5 sec.?!?), or serious damage increase to compensate the ridiculously high CD.
Third is its passive support - circle of slaughter is awful.
TLDR:
Skill provides low range and low damage every 3.5 sec, plus a bad passive support in addition, for too many skill points required.
These are my observations on the skill, a personal opinion.
Ring of Acid. Now we’re talking!
I’m not saying Cold is weird on nightblade, just that it was a weird skill overall because the cold conversion didn’t really add anything to the skill. Most transmuters actually do something.
I don’t really use bleeds on my nightblade and I have +100% bleed duration. It just doesn’t really appeal to me and I don’t feel like I can get it in enough places to make it useful. I do not know if this opinion is consensus.
Ring of Steel procs on hit are definitely already in the game as item affixes. I don’t know if I am arguing for or against this idea.
Yeah you could just get those too. Become a rings of steel monster. Non stop rings of steel. I think I’m going to add poison to the circle of slaughter skill… unless I can make the transmutor convert both the pierce to acid and the bleed to poison. Then I’ll just buff the bleed. Weee
Also I’m enjoying this dialogue ahead of release. It helps condense my overload of thoughts and possibilities per skill. I think I’ll do this more often in the future, but no promises.
I wish you luck in any possible way.
But I have strange feelings about this initiative. I dont want to offend any of the modders, but I think that the devs have a better overview of what changes are right or wrong, and the modding should be somehow synced with them.
I do realise that their resources are limited and so they can’t implement all the things they would like to.
Do you plan to coordinate your work and share ideas with the devs if you both have time and dedication for it? I really hope a lot of changes you’re working on will be approved and included into the official version at some point.