Ranged and Caster Mechanics HC (differences from TQ); How to Use in Higher Difficulties

Grim Dawn Gameplay Discussion
1

When I heard about GD, and being the successor to TQ, I really was thrilled that team that made one of my favorite ARPGs, made a new game for me to enjoy and grind.

While I did have expectations, for the game to pass on previous TQ mechanics, I am seeing more and more differences in the gameplay, which would cause issues (for me) when playing higher difficulties especially now that there is an actual HC option for players. I just want to list some of the irks I’m experiencing at the moment, and while majority of it will sound like a rant, I am actually hopeful for feedback from older players on the adjustments they made to cope with this to get to my intended goal. I am not sure if these are something that will be worked on for future patches, so please do inform me if these are issues they are already aware of.

1. wall casting was disabled, and line of sight is now required to cast AoE

  • Wall casting was an abusable mechanic in TQ where in you can clear clusters of mobs with the safety of them not being able to get to you, making pathing much easier for even the most squishiest casters in the highest difficulties. While I am ok with this being disabled, what I am currently annoyed at the moment with is that you cannot use your environment against ranged attackers to block incoming projectiles and the game prevents the player from AoE casting them when a crate or a pillar is blocking “line of sight”.

2. Ranged Kiting - running back then pressing shift + LMB
*Doing this a on target most often than not results in your toon firing the first shot to the direction he was was running to, then readjusts to intended target after 1-2 shots. Response is a little better when kiting back then simply clicking on target w/o + shift, but the purpose of the shift is to prevent your toon from accidentally moving forward to the mob/baddie you are kiting. This is fine at lower difficulties but at higher ones, 1-2 shots delay can spell death for your HC toon.

I’ve been reading through builds in the forums especially those recommended for HC and I’ve found it weird that most of devotion setups are geared to stacking survivability options that allow you to facetank while dishing out your damage; which is really weird for me when going for casters and ranged toons.

It should be mastery of game mechanics that enable these kinds of types of toons to progress to higher difficulties not exaggerated circuit breakers that’s intended to bail you out, or even worse, resort to breakpoint capping to abuse survivability/cc skills. Kinda hard to do that though when the game makes it difficult for you to do so.

This also severely limits classes that can HC; given that Survivability is always the main focus.

2

Different ranges attacks have different LOS behaviors. Meteor-type spells can be used for indirect fire in some situations where a standard projectile would fail. You still need some kind of LOS but it’s much more forgiving.

There are also effects which scatter from the initial target, allowing you to kill a monster around a corner if he has a visible friend to bounce the attack off. Totems, mortars, and cloud attacks can also affect things you personally don’t have LOS to.

3

@Guurzak

Different ranges attacks have different LOS behaviors. Meteor-type spells can be used for indirect fire in some situations where a standard projectile would fail. You still need some kind of LOS but it’s much more forgiving.

This… either there is something I’m missing, or doing something wrong but the results of the discussed scenario is so erratic. Let me give some concrete examples:

Trozan Skyshard Casting Limitations

This concept would be understandable if I’m casting a linear spell like PMM or item skills like Fireball, but an AoE haveing LOS limitations is crazy. It’s like the game mechanics are really forcing casters to face tank.

I’m already dreading Cronley fight in higher levels as a caster based character.

4

If there’s a giant shrine in the way then you have no LOS and cannot target meteors. However, there are scenarios where you can see your target area and attack it with meteors but would not be able to attack it with normal projectiles. Attacking off of overpasses and over some low obstructions come to mind.

5

Source for the following: I spent 2500 hours in TQ and am approaching 1k in GD:

You can still technically wall-cast, it’s just that the targeting range of a lot of skills is far smaller than in TQ. Line of sight is usually not a problem for most skills except for AoEs which originate from the player. So PBAoEs, e.g., Callidor’s Tempest/War Cry.

I’m not experiencing what you’re experiencing. Reposition->shift->attacking is still a thing. I would say it takes practice, but if you’re familiar with it in TQ the timings are identical in GD. You can greatly enhance your damage output and survivability by doing this.

6

@Guurzack:
ok that confirms it then. Having that LoS limitation on meteor casting really changes things of how I wanna progress my caster. It’s no wonder why more builds are based off PMM and Death Ray; if you’ll have to face tank might as well use a skill build that clears trash mobs faster and much more consistent damage to “bosses & heroes.”

@Ceno:

  1. while it may not be a problem for the skill hitting the intended target; it does become a problem however, when trying to use AoE casts in practical/safe manner, which until now I thought was common sense in the fundamentals of using casters. Apparently, GD devs don’t seem to share my interpretation of common sense when they tagged “AoE casts” with LoS restrictions,

  2. yah i tried testing it with a new character and the shift+lmb function seem to be working well. i must have been hit with some kind of debuff or cc that caused me to aim at weird places, which i interpreted as faulty mechs.

7

My starcaller is laughing at the idea of facetanking and slow trash clear. He cleared the Tomb of the Watchers in Ultimate yesterday at pretty much a full sprint.

8

@Guurzak: I’m pretty sure with enough Skill recharge reduction, you can start bombing the whole place for it to not even matter. But I don’t want to be messing around with breakpoints just yet, not when I’m so new to the game.

In the first place, this thread wasn’t started because I thought it was impossible to clear a caster, it’s more of irritation from being prevented by mechanics to establish good fundamental caster play, and have to resort to abusing breakpoint capping/optimization in higher difficulties just to clear (High HP pool, high HP regen, low cooldowns for life saving skills).

9

This, to me, was also kind of a surprise and a slight bummer. It seems constant damage mitigation and healing sources (hp regen, healing procs, attack damage converted to life, possibly some circuit breakers) are necessary even for a lot of ranged and casters. It makes your health bar go wild like Barbarian in Diablo 2 in the middle of whirlwind while taking damage and leeching health back except a lot of characters will play like that instead of their health gradually diminishing to zero until they rest away from battle or drink a potion. It’s like almost every build boils down to finding near god-mode where your health bar is constantly recovering back to 100% in the blink of an eye while taking damage left and right. It feels like borderline exploitation of the mechanics, but required often to even be ultimate-viable and especially gladiator-viable.

I think it’s because there’s a limit to kiting. Enemies charge at you and shoot projectiles too fast to dodge – your character simply doesn’t move and animate fast enough to dodge absolutely everything. I never tried Titan’s Quest but big Diablo 1 & 2 fan and I had squishy sorceresses that would die in one hit in hell on some maps, but could go through the map without taking a single hit. In GD it often seems impossible – even characters designed most for kiting need a balance of offense and defense, not just heavy-duty offense. If you try Crucible you’ll really see that – I don’t think it’s anywhere even remotely possible to kite to the extent that you’re not taking a single hit. You just can’t dodge every single thing – most but nowhere close to all. If anyone thinks otherwise they can try a modded 1 hp character and see how far they get in Crucible gladiator.

It’s blatant you take damage in this game no matter what even when you play flawlessly without a single mistake. The game even makes you walk straight through aether fire in many cases with no way around. Player skill doesn’t avoid damage completely or anywhere close. I used to hate tank builds in ARPGs. This one made me love mine, since my tankiest builds are the only ones that don’t drop dead out of the blue. It turned me into a defensive player instead of an aggressive one, thinking about defense first and offense later (opposite of what I generally do, since in other games skill could make up for a lack of defense to a much greater degree IMO).

Where the game really shines to me is not the action-oriented, bullet hell-dodging side where you’re dodging and kiting gracefully, but really just designing a build that doesn’t have to do so – one that can withstand the punishment the game has to offer head-on, while simultaneously dishing out a lot in return. The closest I’ve gotten to feeling like I’m playing an action game is with nightblade where you can seem to use shadow strike simultaneously as projectiles are flying to you to dodge them – playing a near flawless game where you don’t take a single hit against a boss by kiting and shadow striking.

Even the most successful caster types in this game who might stand a chance to beat the hardest content are not featherweight and squishy. They’re actually face-tankers. In fact for the vast, vast majority (I think pet and poison builds might be the only exceptions, but the latter ones that are really good and geared up properly can still face tank) your effectiveness of your build significantly boils down to whether you can facetank a lot of the toughest bosses in the game. If you can’t then your build tends to be sub-optimal in nature – it doesn’t matter if you’re a hardcore spellcaster.

Another thing that was counter-intuitive to me is that, at least in my opinion and what I’ve tried so far, I feel like ranged casters are actually more gear-dependent than some melee builds. Melee build skills can provide so much flat damage while casters tend to have to ramp up their skills and damage bonuses with gear, not merely inherent skill points and devotions, to really start doing reasonably well. I started out originally with arcanist line combos thinking that was least gear-dependent and I feel like I was incredibly wrong. I always thought in most RPGs that a caster can even walk around naked and still do quite well – not so here.