Hi all,
I’ve never had a problem with reflective damage with all my characters. Recently, I decided to respec’ my Tactician into full physical damage.
I tried a Gunslinger (with Elem. to Phys. conversion) and a full Warborn S&B. And each time I just died to an unnoticed reflective elite mob. How is it that I can lose 17K HP in seconds? Because physical resistance is so hard to stack?
If so, how do you cope with it? without disturbing your build too much?
Sometimes you have to pay attention to what is going on. Never jump to a pack of monsters not knowing what is there. Before you jump in, look for stars above enemies’ heads, if they have stars, look at their aura or hover your mouse on them. I have a bleed build that can only counter reflect (no matter how much of reflect) by leaving the game. If I hit even with a normal Savagery attack, I die (over few seconds).
Physical builds suffer the most, mostly if you’re using Cadence and crit for a massive amount (e.g. 300k). You can reduce the damage in two ways, armor and physical resist, but as most soldier builds can have at max 25 - 40% physical resist, if you crit 300k you still can oneshot yourself.
I’m usually very careful, playing mostly squishy casters.
But I couldn’t believe my eyes when I couldn’t do anything with WoR + Healing Potion + Overguard and just watched my internal trauma reflected to death from 17K down to zero.
my current build:
GRIMTOOL LINK.
This is a serious flaw in the game imho, same thing has Diablo II had 8y ago before patch 1.13 - the Iron Maiden cursed Knights in Chaos Sanctuary. NO physical char could survive there, unless you just ran away. Almost nobody liked that feature, so it was removed. Why is it back in GD? At least nerf it for physical damage, since that is something that is hard to stack.
You can’t change anything in your build, tbh. Internal Trauma, as people told me, is only reduced by % physical resist, therefore if you apply a 20k/s IT DoT on a reflect hero, you take back 6666 damage per second, but it gets reduced by your physical resist (grimtools says 27%), so you take 4866 damage per second. You have only about 2k trauma damage, so avoid using trama skills and devotion procs on them and you’ll take about 500 damage per tick.
You could try having a shield such as Lichguard on swap.
Lichguard gives 80% absorption for 5s @ 20% health. So with %phys first, then the %absorption…the regen/pots might allow survival. Depending on your dot dps, extended dot %duration, and your maximum health… that 20% may be too tight.
You’d have to notice your trauma dot reflect fairly quickly and make the swap to your alternate set of weapon/sheild.
There might be other items like that you could have on swap. It’s the only one that came to mind.
Empowered is @ 30% health and Mythical is @ 33% health.
A shield and one-handed weapon on switch that gives ~25% physical resists on switch could also be a nice boost
Iron Maiden in Chaos Sanctuary, Diablo 2 is similar, but not nearly this punitive, as building around it was much, much easier. Berserk, Vengeance, maybe Charged Strike for zons, and you had a good way of converting your physical damage into something that didn’t get reflected. Also, special effects, such as resist reduction didnt stack with iron maiden (both are curses), and as such your defenses/resists were fine even while cursed.
Grim Dawn does not allow for this. The way bonuses to damage types and resist reductions are set up, you are funneled towards a single type if you want to do any meaningful damage. Stacking as much defense shred and resist reduction as possible, so changing to a different type you are resistant against is not nearly as good an option. Also your debuffs get reflected, so enjoy the assassin’s mark and manticore eating into your physical resists, when it really counts.
There is nullify yes, for those who have arcanist as one of their classes (a whopping 9 out of 28 combinationa), but there is also clutter on the screen, particle spam by everything and anything, and by the time you hear or see a reflect aura cast (be it by normal mobs or heroes), you are already dead.
It’s internal trauma that killed you. Flat phys is mitigated by armor and unlike other dmg sources, each source of flat dmg is checked against armor rating whether monsters or your own if reflect.
So with internal trauma just watch out for Reflect heroes, they have a pretty good visual aid that lasts 4 secs or so and lets you know they reflect during that period
Does anyone know the Dev’s opinion regarding reflective phys dmg?
uhh…as I was browsing through a character tweak…I noticed that the obvious was not mentioned.
= %reflected damage reduction from devotions. Owl (+15), Crane(+15), Solemn Watcher(+20). If you were able to work in those 3 you would have a 50% jump on it.
And if you can afford to use these augments: Kymon’s Fury and/or Uroboruuk’s Anguish, you can get up to 80%
The boar also gives reflection resistance
Ghoulish Hunger helps some, it’s good to have it on Physical builds with high damage.
Some items such as Sigil of the Bear King have some reflected damage reduction on it too for the reasons you’ve noticed, but I think there should be a few more sources of it still.
Soldier/Shaman classes are obvious choices to put ~2% reduction per rank on some less used skill, or on a component that doesn’t get used.
Rotten Heart in chest? Bump the OA from 18 to ~30 and add 15% reflected damage reduction, and it becomes more interesting, especially on HC.
Ballistic Plating is similar, because it doesn’t offer something to rival the bonuses Living Armor, Sanctified Bone and others give, it doesn’t get used at all.
I feel the same way about some 2h items, Titan Pauldrons for example could use this stat.
Thanks. I could add these Kymon augments and tweak the devotion path (boar and solemn watcher can be included easily). I’ll be forced to skip one powerful devotion though.
I don’t but as much as I rag on the game I’d like to say we should give them the benefit of doubt.
I haven’t played PoE in a long time but a few years back, I remember my Archer build coud be one-shot against a “normal” pack of mobs if they had the “reflective” keyword.
I just find odd that reflective does work the same way for physical vs. other damages, while stacking phys. resistance is so difficult compared to the other res. Or it’s just a feeling and the formula is indeed different for each type of damage ?
I don’t recall having much reflect reduction on my Tactician, but reflective monsters are not an issue whatsoever, even if I accidentally smack one.
Don’t touch spikey things.
If you base on a non-physical build, reflect is, most of the times, useless.
After a few tests, my assessment is simple:
When playing a physical damage based character, you have to consider “reflected damage reduction” as another resistance to max.
With 75% (= 3 x Kymon’s Fury augments + Boar + Owl + Solemn Watcher), Reflective mobs felt “normal”.
Crane devotion and Titan Plating component also give 15% reflected damage reduction each.
While the component is a bit off (most physical builds already have loads of pierce resistance) Crane devotion might be a good option.