Questions about DA

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
1

Yo guys
So i did back into GD since shortly after the release of FG.

Long story short: all my previous chars (one years old at the time) felt not good enough anymore to tackle the new content.

So i levelled an archon (eor + cyclone set) and a retaliation-fervor physical based warlord. These two facerolled all the content i put them against (nemesis are incredibly easy now, dunno what happened here) except for 2 things: the Callagadra and Mogdrogen fights.

That dragon just destroyed me in <5sec, while i could bring Mog to half hp. Keep in mind i try to avoid consumables at all cost, or the whole game would seem pointless if i do that.

After like 100 tries using all the legit stuff i had i deciced to go all-in with gd-stash to do some extensive testing. My first successful Mog kill (not even using health pots) was with a spellbreaker with maxed cd + hourglass (to perma ascension) + maxed blast shield on a 6.2s cd vs 6 sec duration. DA was on the ~3000 range, so he had like a 5% chance to crit me. Still, using ulzuin’s ammy (5% max light) when blast shield was up (and all other bonuses down) i was taking literally zero damage. Ofc the char was overcapped specially in lightning res.

This char failed Cally miserably however (lasted like 10 sec)

So i did rework my warlord into a stoneward-almost pure reta build. 4800 to 8900 armor, 4000 da, ~50 physical res and heavy focus on block (but not capped) and went to fight that thing again. This time my health did never go below 75% (this was only happening once in 10-15 secs) and i did the whole fight without using anything but the skills, without adcth and using the menhir skill (relic) as my only sustain. Surprisingly this char did fare well even vs Mog despite having only 25% lightning overcap at the time.

Happy with the results, i prepared myself to reproduce this build using only my -legit- items. I lost some defense, but not much. The only noticeable loss was in the DA department. 3400 vs previous 4000.

And yet, now i need to pay attention to the fights. Cally can bring my health’s down to menhir’s will levels of activation fast, while mogdrogen can actually kill me in his 2nd stance (and i have 91% lightning overcap now)

So, wtf is going on here? Is DA the main defensive stat now?

2

Did you record your fights and watch them, trying to be as objective as possible? Many conclusions people arrive at in this game stem from subjectivity. This game’s mechanics are quite complicated, much of their variables have not been made public, much of it is RNG. Making definite statements about GD mechanics sometimes sounds a little like saying “Johnny’s always getting straight flushes!”

Yes, DA is important. But there are many other variables. Especially max resistances. Even as little as 2-3% can make a huge impact.

3

While i did not go as far as watching my own video i’m well aware of arpg’s nature so i tested the stuff numerous times. The consistency is there.

Yet since the conclusion i had to draw left me somewhat perplexed i had to ask more knowledgeable ppls if huge DA can now really provide that kind of discrepancy in defense.

As a side note, the build itself is a joke. Ye, you can’t die, but you have like 50k physical (lol) dps with ~60% RR (30 from warcry so only up 33% of the time) . Cally took me 15 minutes or so :smiley: Not mentioning the “Inammovable Colossal Bulwark of Redoubt” that i shamelessy gave myself :cool:

EDIT: if i use the "hacked’ 4k DA build with a legit shield (14% phy res lost) i still take considerably less damage that if i go to that fight (callagadra) with full phys res but reduced DA.

Confused

4

It’s totally ok. Everyone builds the way they wanna.

You’re saying your performance against Calla dropped after equipping “legit” items. I don’t know what that means. Same items but not top-rolled or different items? If it’s different items that there can be a thousand things that changed without you noticing. Or even without it making its way to the char sheet.

5

All the items i used are technically legit (all can be found in game). You can replicate the build 100%, given enough time and luck, just playing the game normally.

What i meant by "hacked’ is that i used gdstash to give myself the items i was missing for the tests i had in mind.

Now my -legit- selection wasn’t as -ideal- as the items i cheated-in so ofc i had to adjust here and there.

I lost about 16% physical res, 12% block, ~300 armor and ~600 DA, first 2 parameters mostly due to the shield i mentioned being somewhat really rare to drop (with the exact affix combo specially).

The concern begin when i put the opop items back in, but still leave DA to the same level (3400) and i end up taking like 200-300% more damage

So basically you can think as char A (4k DA) being hit for 100 and Char B (same items, same stats, just 3400 DA) being hit for 200-300. This become way more evident vs mogdrogen, where i take something like 300 to 500% more dmg.

EDIT: Just found in the outdated wikia that if the attacker has a low OA vs DA ratio, it get a less damage multiplier. This, coupled with the fact that it would miss a lot could explain the thing. Cally hits were reduced to the point where the other defenses (specially flat absorption from overguard, ascension and obelisk proc) could make them null.

Still, would be nice to have a confirm if this is still the case

6

In your first test, I’d vote for phys res and armor being the culprit. In your second test (only da) I would risk suggesting that you’re overlooking sth. DA only affects crit multipliers, chance to crit and chance to hit. If you’re not being critted, da has no impact on the strength of hits you’re taking. Only on their frequency.

I don’t know all enemies’ oa values and da shred values by heart but with 3.4k da you should be critted very rarely, if ever, unless you’re fighting multiple enemies in deep SR with oa mutators.

7

Directly quoting:

“PTH Threshold 1: 75 (1.0 damage)
If your PTH is lower than 75, any attacks that land will do reduced damage. The damage reduction multiplier is equal to your PTH / 75 (ex. if your PTH is 70, you will do 93.33% of normal damage on a hit, or 70/75). It is highly uncommon to go below a PTH of 75, though it can happen against targets that are significantly higher level than you”

PTH being percentage to hit. Now accordingly to monster database callagadra in ultimate has 2754 base OA, and following the other PTH formula cally should have a ~60% chance to hit us with a 0.8 multiplier on landed hits (at 4k DA)

Now, before testing stuff once more i would really like to know if this work like Ya said and the wikia is garbage :wink:

8

In truth, both your Wikia and what I said is garbage. Official guide on this very website says it’s not PTH/75 but PTH/70 that gives you damage reduction from da. Min PTH is 60 so max dmg red you can get from da is 14% no matter if you have 5,000 da or 5,000,000 da.

I never knew that. Sorry.

9

Welcome back ETK.

Hope you stay long enough to post one of your cool builds;)

Ya pretty much said all about DA.

I’d like to add that VS CAlla, all you need for DA is to not get crit. But to survive her with your build you need decent enough phys res. Above 30% as she can bring you bellow 0 even with that, and great armor. That’s basically it.

This is a more offensive GTi used for a fast kill

As you can see my DA is nothing amazing

10

As ETK said, he already killed Calla with and without da. What he wants is NOT TO GET DAMAGED BY CALLA. Allowing Menhir Will to proc? Shameful!

So, da actually does provide some benefits from stackign it very high: up to 14% dmg reduction. Not only do they miss you 40% of the time but their hits are 14% weaker! I never knew about it!

#stalwartme

11

I misread then. Well it;s totally doable i think.

12

Nah, that i didn’t got dmg is a thing that happened haha, wasn’t my goal, specially cuz to achieve that you need to sacrifice too much offense to the point the game feel very bad to play.

But was curious WHY this happened when the only substantial difference was 600 DA. What Ya posted the 2nd time explain the whole thing even more than what i did got from that wikia.

@SuperFluff
Yo bro, i think one of the builds i took as inspiration for my test was one of your lol :wink: