So been playing GD awhile now, love the game… I play only HC and have died with 6 or 7 toons up to now on different level span, highest 66 learning the game and its been fun.
Today i started to finish leveling Jajaja Cadence Witchblade. He was lv 84 and decently geared with 2 pieces of markovians and other nice epics and legendaries. His dps was 17,8k, 2046 defence 9503 Life 1708 armor and good resistances (17% physical resist). I had Menhirs Will to 6, Blitz at 13 with Blindside at 10.
With the buff to cadence and Blitz i felt really good and clear speed was fast and i never felt in any trouble whatsoever.
Was in Tyrants Hold massacering stuff finishing the quest. There where small goblins everywhere when i Blitzed forward pressing first mob at the end of the screen i instantly died to a reflecting little goblin shaman. .
Now my personal feelings regarding reflect is that it should never be able to instantly kill a well geared toon from a charge skill like this. It is normally easy to avoid but of course always a scare in HC.
Before Blitz got buffed i could always blitz in i felt in reflect mob and i would never be close to dying.
Would love to hear your opinions regarding the matter. And was my toon under geared?
I know which goblin shaman hero you are talking about. Nearly killed my Saboteur the first time i fought it.
Blitz got a big buff in the last patch, so using it against reflect enemies is highly risky. The same applies to Cadence.
Your Menhrir’s Will is too low level (always max it in HC or at least put it in high level) and your WB health is too low. I have the same build and even without the 15% health boost from the bonus set oost, my WB would have around 13k HP in your level.
Well, the advice above doesn’t really matter for your WB since he’s dead though.
I just hate reflect spells in general. The same goes for life reduction attacks.
Short answer - you’re just badly geared/built.
I mostly follow same Witchbalde build, and never suffered too much from reflect. Yes, i feel that some damage returns to me, but i can easily deal with it.
Get more ADCTH, it helps a lot. Also, overcap your resistances, because resistance reduction is also reflected back.
Yes i could always be better geared of course but i did not feel under geared and i thought my defence and armor rating was above par. My Life steal was 11%. Yes a little bit low life for sure though.
My res was btw: Fire:64 Cold:25 Light: 40 Pois:80 Pierce:85 Bleeding:68 vitality:89 Aether:11 Stun:48 Chaos:86
Just occured to me: “Also, overcap your resistances, because resistance reduction is also reflected back”
This is why I’m shy about physical dmg builds on HC, despite their great potential. 30k phys dps pretty much means that you kill yourself in less than a second.
Reflect is pretty dumb. Not as a mechanic but just how much damage it does. It needs to be nerfed or capped at some percent of your max hp. So you could never take more than some % in one blow.
Super silly how many characters kill themselves on reflect in less than 1 second. My aether ray guy does.
It’s like the only way to die… Not because a horde over ran you or you got stunned or frozen or took some bad boss hit. Just because for 1 second i shot the wrong guy while his subtle orange thing was up
I think it would be a better design if other things did more damage directly to you and reflect did a LOT less
Aether Ray at least has a safeguard option - blast shield & overcapped aether resistance. It doesn’t work out for phys damage, because you can’t really bring phys resistance up to 60+%, and if you die from a single reflected hit Blast Shield won’t work too. :undecided:
There are definitely strategies and such which help vs reflect, but that doesnt change my opinion that it is just stupid.
My doom bolt does more damage to myself on a reflective guy than a doom bolt from the last boss in the game. Thats just silly. Enemies should do more damage to me than i do to myself. I think over half of my total character deaths are on reflective bosses (never hc but still).
No. As far as i noriced, only “X reduced resistance” and “X% reduced resistance” can be reflected back, while “-X resistance” cant. However, certain enemies can cast CoF
BTW, most (if not all) reflective enemies dont have passive reflect. They use their “reflect” ability occasionaly, and after some time, it fades - so you have a window to deal damage without the risk. Some enemies are even immune to damage while reflecting - a clear indicator that you should NOT attack them for a while!
I have decent armour(1400-1800) and armour absorbtion (93%), ~20% physical resistance, 13% ADCTH, 71% block with 75% reduced block recovery and up to 4k damage blocked, 18% damage absorbtion, and good HP pool (15.5k). I dont get hurt much by using my own Cadence/Blitz on reflecting enemies, despite dealing up to 80k damage with those hits. Are we playing different Grim Dawns?
Weird. IIRC champions reflect 33% of damage. 80k*0.33 =~ 27000, after 20% phys res it’s around 21000, minus 4k if blocked and minus 1800 from armor is around 15.2k. You should barely survive this, unless you convert a lot of damage into something else or I have an outdated data on reflect mechanics. Are you sure that it’s the 80k hit that was reflected back at you, or it’s just your peak damage dealt? It’s not the same.
P.S. 15.5k hp is a very good result. Unless it’s a warder, in which case it’s just meh.
Edit: I think I have to just roll myself a Blade Arc warder and check myself how it really is for phy damage
there are mobs already reflecting offscreen that you can blitz to and die.
there are mobs that can spawn with “of valor” and “of vengeance” shields that will reflect up to 39% (highest i have seen, maybe even higher…) and kill you instantly with average end game DPS. no warning, no cue. i think this is because of a recent change in item affixes on gear and will likely get fixed because it’s straight awful to have in the game.
the anti reflect options barely help, i have 20 with constellation and 10 with ring enchant. still can reflect myself to death with a blitz or a big cadence crit, and that’s with a rather tanky build.
why do all ARPGs have this weird crush on reflect damage anyway? nobody likes it and no one ever will. if you build glass canon in HC, you will likely die at one point, no need to put such high reflect “just to make sure of it”
Agreed with the other posters here saying that the reflect mechanic is not fun. I’d consider the complete removal of reflect from Grim Dawn a positive change: reflect on heroes and champs disproportionately penalizes normal gameplay, and character reflect is a sad, useless joke considering how mob DPS to HP ratios look.
I think the problem is mostly with physical heavy builds, since no one has 80% physical resistance, unlike someone who can nuke for 100k with fire damage, where most of the reflect is mitigated by resistances.
this penalizes people who focus on mostly physical and trauma, and it also penalizes people who chose 2 handed weapons because of the slow big hits that will instantly kill you before lifesteal gets calculated, compared to dual wield or 1h where you attack faster with smaller hits, giving you time to lifesteal.
It’s Witchblade.
My 80k can come from Blitz. 40k hits with both weapon and shield simultaneously. IDK how it happens, but i dont feel it’s 33% reflect.
