RR ascended bonuses to wind devil, curse of frailty, etc. outcompete all the other bonuses

Grim Dawn Public Test Discussion
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The -3% on the jewelry is particularly offensively strong. I think the % on weapons should be 2% for 1 handers and the % on jewelry could be reduced to 1% and still people would take them. This would change the RR gained from 27% from stacking all slots to 15%.

Ill Omen and Word of Pain as well. 27% extra RR from gear. I see it stacked on every single slot of top builds these days and always try to choose it myself. The only scenarios in which I don’t take them is when I need more defensive stats on a build, my build doesn’t have access to those skills, or when I need one or two slots to have a refresh reset ascended bonus or something niche… in which case then I just stack RR on all the others.

Let’s do a direct comparison:

Stacking RR to CoF Ascended bonuses = 27% RR
vs.
Stacking -DA to CoF Ascended bonuses = -750 DA to enemies.

Having done some testing and napkin math to verify, on a 3500 OA character vs. The Dread equates to about a 22% increase to chance to hit (which I assume means 22% more crit or less?) Even if you factor in the crit multiplier breakpoints and whatnot, this pales in comparison to the benefit of 27% RR.

What other amazing bonuses have to compete with this insane RR? Well…
callidor

Let’s take a random non-top Callidor’s Tempest build I found on Discord and see what stacking the above ascended bonus would do:

Factoring the 136% weapon damage, flat damage on the skill etc., ignored the DoTs, and this ended up being about a 1.45% increase to the base CT damage the build has before ascended bonuses. Armor gets less, 2h gets more, stacking CT bonus is about a 17% base damage increase to callidor’s tempest. LOL. And this is a comparison to a nuke version of CT build so it would probably be lower on a build stacking stuff for spam CT.

So guys, do you want GLOBAL 27% RR, 22% more crit chance, and some crit multiplier boost, or a… 17% increase to endgame base damage on callidor’s tempest? Oh and it’s aether only so if you’re not converting that into your damage type, it’s useless.

Edit It might be close to 20% on the above build, didn’t factor in unconverted damage well enough. But again, on spam CT Battlemage, Level 100 (GD 1.2.1.3) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator you end up with a significantly smaller increase!

Let’s not forget that RR is more powerful the more resists an enemy has. So beyond being at MINIMUM a straight up 27% damage multiplier, RR stacking from ascended bonuses can be WAY more valuable for builds with less access to RR against nemeses, bosses, etc.

I don’t give a fuck if people get mad at me for pointing this out, I’d like my offensive ascended bonuses to be in some realm of competitiveness with each other. Please gut the ascended bonuses to global RR.

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Well a lot of the other bonuses are just bad…

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It could just be that the offensive bonuses directly to skills are too shit. Yes. looking through the other ascended bonus the CT ascended bonus seems to be particularly weak so maybe not the best comparison.

The Wind Devil bonus gets stacked much more often since shamans have a lot of health and don’t have as much RR to different damage types.

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They do outcompete. I did use them on few builds, but can’t say they felt game breaking or overpowered. I think other bonuses can be improved for sure. Like if Crate can’t give us meaningful damage bonuses to Callidor’s Tempest (12 flat is literally less than what one ring augment gives) then give us meaningful utility bonuses to such skill, like:

  • radius to CT
  • duration to BWC
  • extra projectiles to stuff like Canister or Stun Jacks etc. etc.
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said it before the RR mods should go :sweat_smile:
Unsure how bad/“boring” the da shred bonus is since we do technically have direct flat oa on the generic side :thinking:

srs, why was this not on the table when it was for Trozan :sweat_smile: even if it’s not “direct dmg boosting”, it atleast have fun factor potential if you’d manage to get “12” affixes and then have a hardcap OFF/War Cry screenwide Callidor :smile:

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Didn’t we learn this lesson before when chillstrifes ate everything else alive for cold builds?

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RR asc. bonuses also open up options for classes with access to only 1 mastery with RR (or with none for that matter) so they feel more impactful on those kind of builds, which I believe is a good thing for build diversity. That being said, I would like to see other asc. bonuses being equally as strong or build enabler, like those mentioned on this thread already (specially for underused skills).

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There’s a lot of “clearly best stat” and “clearly worst stat” going on with ascended bonus; though I think the biggest loser and most egregious example when it come to ascending gears is pet builds.

They basically can’t make use of any of the regular ascended stat, and the only ascended stats they can make use of in a meaningful way is usually the RR one and the aura one like Blood of Dreeg or Mogdrogen’s Pact, in which you usually get crit damage (some ascended stats for Mogdrogen’s Pact give DA but who care). Necromancer at least get ascended bonus directly for Skeletons, which is actually nice; but nothing for Blight Fiend nor Reap Spirit, also doesn’t help that they have no aura

Now I get that RR and crit damage are valuable, but like, us pet users get just these options? Nothing gamechanging or build-defining?

Now ultimately I make sure my build can stand on its own before thinking of ascending, so having no relevant ascended stats doesn’t hurt too much, but yea

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I’m very open to the idea that the real impetus to my OP was just the lack of good skill based options on ascended bonuses. But maybe that’s the intention? That there’s a clear winner for skill bonuses for each build and then a smattering of good generic bonuses? That’s not unreasonable.

I guess I just feel like the clear winners are pretty obvious each time I start ascending gear and I expected it to be more of a variety of choices? But the generics do largely fill that roll.

Maybe I’m just wrong in this thread. The RR amount seems pretty strong to me though. You’re right that for single RR classes it’s a godsend.

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In all honesty I expected the same, so hopefully something can be done about it. More variety in power is always good, imo.

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This doesnt pale at all on a high crit damage build. Assume you have reduced the dreads particular resistance to say ~0% (which is something basically all dual res shred classes should be able to do)

In this case a full RR stacking via wind devils ascendancy mods would give you said 27% damage increase.

Now if you stack -DA and you roll a build with some beefy crit damage multipliers, your overall damage would increase by WAY more than those 27% - exactly how much depends on your previous OA, crit damage and dependency on dots. But id argue that if you run 200% critdamage+, the + 700 OA via CoF will net you at the very least a 50% damage gain, and thats a conservative guess.

I think the -RR ascendancy bonus is very strong for single -rr masteries, and thats what it was designed for in the first place i suppose

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I totally admit I wasn’t thinking deeply enough about how much it opens up the game for single RR builds.

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