Note: I’ll continue watching how retaliation goes and give my feedbacks by editting this topic, as the PTR changes version by version.
Before Version. Jan 24 goes into live:
Very glad to see there are plenty of retaliation changes referring to our suggestion. It’s a good start. Yet there are something I want to mention:
About retal devotion routes.
It’s good to see there begin to be strengths and weaknesses of t2 devotion maps and t3 devotion maps individually. Now we have a reason to use t3 retal devotions. However, it is in fact also a overall nerf to all retal builds even when you take one t3 retal devotion (except physical ones). One thing I want to mention is that except 3 retal builds that made it top20, there are only 3 retal builds made it top60 (43, 53, 60) and two of them were Hellborne. This means retaliation is, if not considering the 3 top20 ones, not something that needs an overall nerf. Level 100 (GD 1.2.1.6) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator shows a classic retal devotion map involving one t3 devotion and it also got the undeserved misfortune(-70% all retal). Other one-t3-devotion retal builds also got something similar. Thus I suggest a small buff to Obelisk. 40-60% all retal damage would do it well. At the same time, tune down Vire’s newly added 80% physical retal damage to 40% to prevent overbuffing. Won’t have any influence on the three top20 retal builds.
About some other RtA skills not mentioned in my latest thread:
Cadence(Agony): Lacks RR. Agony’s proc is a single-target one thus in most cases acid retal soldier lacks acid RR a lot. I would suggest a 20 RR to cadence modifier so that when you dualwielding it, you can have 40 RR, which is 12 more than Manticore devotion.
Bramblevine: This is something I played back to v1.1.9.8 and have forgotten for a long time. The build is Elementalist, Level 100 (GD 1.2.1.6) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator. SR 30-31 is 4:45ish (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bllVfa-yJ0E, 5x SR30-31 [1.2.1.6] - 23:28 (4:42 average, one death)). It is another overnerfed thing, and its being nerf came from lots of aspects. Its damage nerf was mainly because of Dawnguard set adjustment, when most of the set’s power was moved to Champion of the Light. Yet the most serious thing is its sustainability. Its ADCtH was decresed by 1% along with monsters’ Life Leech Resist increased signally, but it didn’t benefit from the overall healing effect buff. Final life leech was dereased by a half. You can see in the video there are plenty of times when the HP went very low but I can’t draw it back. Luckily I have micro this time. I would say it needs maybe 1% RtA and plenty of ADCtH.
As for the three top20 retal builds, RtA Aegis, RtA DE, RtA Blitz, Brimstone and so on, I’ll keep watching them after Version. Jan 24 releases.
This, as with fire/lighting retal builds reaching to the 2 T3 retal devotions is bloody difficult to get a max damage route. Menhir obviously is easier to get to, but yeah you’d loose a lot of retal flat damage and the all important +retal%
Also, we need a fire retal + a lightning retal T3 devotions if they’re going to go forward with this change.
Plus, it’s not like retal alone is the key to a retal build being successful, as without some form of sustain via an attack etc the build will die very quickly. Never mind it being slow to kill things from low attack damage. Which makes me think the key to reducing retal performance isn’t nerfing T2 devotions, but rather the amount of retal added to skills etc very slightly.
Before we get started, I want to define two factors:
a. Damage is “high”: means DPS is high, in theory or in fact.
b. Damage is “fast”: means you don’t have to stack your skills (for example Sigil) and can reach your DPS in the very beginning. Or your damage mainly comes from burst skills (for example grenade).
Now let’s start!
About the three top20 retal builds. Dawnbreaker Warder: It is nerfed in a good way. Directly tuning down its sheet retal damage is right. It loses about 10% of all its damage (count other types of retal damage in and taking %res difference into consideration). It’s a bit more than I thought it should be (~6% because at the very beginning its not a super high-damage build), it is acceptable. Evident damage loss is observed. Besides, though this Warder used to have “high” damage, it was and is not “fast”. The SR changes encourage high-mobility and fast-damage build, neither of which is this warder very good at. SR time goes down from 4:05ish to 4:35ish. Very successful tuning so far. FOI Purifier: Nerfed in the way as expected. Damage was reduced by 8%-13%, depending on how you build it. Evident damage loss is easily observed, and it is probably overnerfed. Purifier is of very poor mobility. Its SR time goes down from 4:00ish to over 4:45ish. I would like to suggest dial its RtA back, fully or partly. Hellborne Shieldbreaker: Nerfed in the way as expected. Damage was reduced by about 15%. Damage loss is acceptable. The shieldbreaker is very good at both mobility and “fast” damage output, so it’s still the fastest SR farmer among all retal builds. SR time goes down from 3:30ish to 3:50ish. Sub 4 is still not hard. Considering it’s not very tanky, I assume there should be no more nerf.Moreover, its sustainability partly relys on super-fast killing, it may be not only slower but also more dangerous. Thus some health regen buff compensation is reasonable imo.
About RtA Aegis and RtA DE. Aegis: It’s simple. It was just overnerfed over the last few patches and continues getting nerfed now by devotion nerfs. Different verions of the builds got % retal damage reduced more or less (This old slower version Archon, Level 100 (GD 1.2.0.3) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator got -70% and this new not-that-slow verion Archon, Level 100 (GD 1.2.1.6) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator got - 100%). It’s time we dial the Conduit’s nerf back a little. DE: Things are far more complicated of DE. If you don’t take Celestials kill time into consideration, in v1.2.1.6 RtA DE builds’ rank will be Physical≈Aether>Acid>Elemental (see them at A few retal builds and some thoughts on retaliation [1.2.1.6]).Let’s leave elemental one and Hellborne one alone and take deeper looks into the remaining three. In v1.2.1.6, Aether one deals more damage while Physical one was tankier. Acid one was neither high-damage nor tanky. In PTR. Feb 3, Aether one got -70% all retal damage along with Dawnbreaker 2-piece nerf. Having DE’s RtA buff, Aether one got its DE damage increased by 4% but sheet retal damage decreased by 9%. It’s in fact a tiny nerf. Physical one got +100% physical retal damage, which means a 5% raise in sheet physical retal. Along with DE’s RtA buff, its DE damage is increased by 20%. SR time does up from 4:45ish to 4:15ish. Good job. Acid one got -100% all retal damage. Its sheet retal damage is decreased by 5% and its DE damage is increased by 9%. Hardly any better in fact. It is still very poor. However, acid RtA DE’s issue is more complicated. It’s more like an acid retal issue that needs discussing. So let’s keep what’s done to RtA DE and go on tuning acid retal instead of RtA DE.
About Infernal Brimstone and Dreegal’anore
As for Infernal Brimstone , @Uncle_Mac has the same ideas as mine. (Infernal Brimstone feedback). In fact there’s no buff at all. I tried Grenade Shieldbreaker, RF Shieldbreaker, and DEE Pyromancer. RF Commando is the worst one. Though Grenade Commando is the best one, it’s still only a 4:45ish build which has nothing to do with good performance. Now Infernal Brimstone is still an inferior to Hellborne, unless it can have another or two more RtA skill modifiers. Blade Arc, Fire Strike, RF, EoR. Anything is ok. Dreegal’anore shares the same problem where its best style is DEE rather than Judgment. So just create new RtA skill modifiers.
Systematically buff to acid retal is needed.
Acid Retal DE is just an example. Acid Retal builds suffers a lot from the devotion tunning, and anti-acid bosses are always the hardest ones for retal builds. I prefer to buff acid retal items.
About RtA RF.
RF Warlord (Warlord, Level 100 (GD 1.2.1.6) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator) is now 4:10ish as it was in v1.2.1.6. Things seem to be fine but I found some issue after I tried different setups. Only those who use Final Stop shield can really deals effective damage. RtA smite is 35% times 2 = 70% per hit. If you take Okaloth’s Visage too, RtA smite will be (35+25)% times 2 = 120% per hit. This is the only thing for RtA RF warlord that deals good damage. This definately narrows the item choices of physical retal warlord. Considering physical RtA DE is doing very good, i’m afraid further hunreds of % physical damage buff won’t be proper. If you take Infernal Brimstone’s problem into consideration as well, you’ll find that RtA RF is outdated. RtA Savagery is now 20% RtA but it still can’t carry an build alone. RF’s 15% is too low. I would suggest to buff it to 20% and accordingly reduce hellborne’s RF RtA mods to 4% and reduce Final Stop’s smite RtA mods to 30%. Don’t have to worry about Dawnbreaker RF warlord or Dawnguard Archon because they are obviously worse than Dawnbreaker warder.
About CounterStrike.
To the Dawnbreaker Warder, CS damage remains similar (80% RtA per second in v1.2.1.6 and 75% RtA per second in PTR). If you don’t lower CS’s CD to a very low level, its buff is very tiny to a build. However, CounterStrike buffs did make some ideas feasible in theory. This 0.2s CD chaos CS Witchblade (Witchblade, Level 100 (GD 1.2.1.6) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator) is what I built and I said at that time it needed buffing. After the CS buff, it now has about 250k dps in theory, but in practice it’s much much lower. The first problem is, 4 meter radius is too short for a core AoE skill. As a contrast, Callidor’s Tempest is 5.8 or 6.8 and has higher DPS. RoS is 5.5 meter and is of super “high” and “fast” damage. The 2 meter radius mods on Dawnbreaker set is also an important factor that made it successful. Thus I think first it need some radius mods on the Conduit. 1.5-2 meters on the Chaos CS Conduit is very necessary. I would say let’s merge the Chaos and Aether CS Conduit. Keep the Chaos one as a result and redesign the Aether one, because the Aether one has a conflict with Blood Knight’s Visage. The second problem is, the 250k dps is only in theory but in practice it can’t even reach half of it. Triggering is an issue to be solved. A similar skill, Vindictive Flame, has 100% trigger rate and also can lower its CD to 0.2s, and has similar DPS (235k, Shieldbreaker, Level 100 (GD 1.2.0.3) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator ). It is playable but not OP as well. Imo CounterStrike should also be made 100% trigger rate to be playable as a core skill. If technically trigger rate can be added by the Chaos CS Conduit, then use a modifier. If technically it can’t (as far as I know about game mod, it can’t at present), making CounterStrike itself 100% proc on hit is also good and won’t make Dawnbreaker Warder or something else OP.
EDIT:
How can I forget RtA EoR!
About RtA EoR
The build is Dervish, Level 100 (GD 1.2.1.6) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator. Damage is very good now, but sustainability is very poor. DW RtA EoR does not have Obelisk or Anvil so it is not that tanky. Tried a few runs and died a lot of times. Life leech is a big problem. I would suggest a touch of ADCtH mods to EoR on Agony, so when you dualwield it, you can have better leech and sucessfully finish a run without death.
EDIT 2:
I forget Bramblevine…
About RtA vines.
Bramblevine is very very horrible. The build is Elementalist, Level 100 (GD 1.2.1.6) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator. SR goes down from 4:45ish to over 5:30. Its damage was nerfed again. Life Leech is far from enough. RtA vines build has very bad mobility and its damage has nothing to do with “fast”, these makes the build even worse. It needs more damage, and more ADCtH to get rid of being called trash.
EDIT 3:
One more thing…
0.2s CD chaos CS Witchblade is now still over 5:30ish…
EDIT 4:
Correction:
Infernal Brimstone: Grenade Commando, RF Commando→Grenade Shieldbreaker, RF Shieldbreaker
Just a mistake when typing…
I wanted to add feedback for Acid rta Vines. Coincidentally updated it right before the test patch and now with extra leech to Vines and some changes to Obelisk I am willing to test it again. Here is it currently looks:
Sustain is very sketchy on it, also need to change ring affix to cover resists (somehow resists are super tight on it despite Oak Skin and conduit.
Gonna experiment with different devos once new patch hits and report here.
