Tested, you can NOT in fact bind a devotion to Chilling Presence, the Shard of Asterkarn aura. I assume that’s because it’s on a weapon. The other two you mention are not toggled auras, but rather temporary cast auras with cooldowns.
In fact if you do a quick search on grimtools there’s actually VERY few items that can do this, like maybe 4 or 5 in the entire game. Since the one i tested doesn’t even work, i wouldn’t worry too much about this bearing any relevance to actual gameplay.
I for one would love to see them open up devotions to more abilities, it adds quite a bit of content every time they expand the possibilities.
Seal of blades in its current state is rather crippling for game diversity. So long as I’m in need of a way to mindlessly proc a devotion I just think “bind it to a seal of blades, doesn’t matter what damage type this build uses.” And since we’re always using seal of blades there are clear outliers who benefit much more from this auto proccing. If those builds were left with their current SoB prowess we would be in a world where you either go the SoB super benefit build or something less optimal. Time has shown when players know a build is very strong they will gravitate towards it in larger numbers. What does that do? It kills diversity because of clear outliers and yields a stagnant game state where any new thought is cut off by a reminder that Seal of Blades is king and it’s wishful thinking that other stuff can compete in the relative field.
The problem is that the current state is far from balanced. Builds that have access to WPS skills and/or auto attack replacements skills have a far easier time to proc offensive devotions that builds that lack them.
I mean if you follow your logic it would be pointless in the current game balance to play a non DoT caster. Yes this change would also boost the DPS of DoT casters even further, but that could be solved by reducing Dot damage across the board.
Though it might be better to allow you to bind multiple devotion to some skills like PRM and AAR instead, although I’m not sure the game would allow that without heavy rewriting of some of the game’s code.
Since players love the SoB’s interaction with devotions, why not make all the other seals provide a similar effect corresponding to their element(s) instead of nerfing fun?
Edit: It is used mostly to clear trash mobs, which people avoid like plague once they are done with reputation and leveling, I personally don’t find it as gamebreaking as some people think.
i think the solution isn’t to nerf SoB, but make ALL damage-radiate type auras able to have attack devotions placed on them. the current model for devotions is EXTREMELY restrictive on where you can put offensive devotions- yet defensive proc devotions (even very high damage ones) you can bind to anything in the universe.
The OP’s point isn’t correct, as i have yet to find an offensive item aura you can bind devotions to. And if the aura is a cast with a duration and a cooldown, it’s not an aura it’s basically an attack lol. Sounds like they didn’t change anything.
Yes.
I agree, that buggy behaviour of offensive devotions, linked to damage auras, should be fixed (namely, devotions should proc ONLY when that damage aura “ticks” on enemy, and not from ANY other skill/proc as well).
But i still think that offensive auras should allow binding of offensive devotions (maybe, with a bit decreased chance to proc for balance sake, but still).
I tested Horns of Ekket’Zul, and its damage aura allows binding offensive devotions, and shares the same buggy behavior as was described above. So no, Seal of Blades isnt the one of this kind.
I don’t think it’s buggy at all, and almost all procs have cooldowns anyway. You’re not procing any better than a high attack speed weapon attack, it just givess you more options. As for that helmet it’s not even suitable for most builds and you’ve probably found the only item in the game outside SoB that can get assigned an offensive devotion proc.
The solution is to add MORE options for offensive devotion assignment, not less. That way more than a few spam-based builds can use them.
I actually bound dryad to this because this is my first character and I have no fucking idea what I’m doing but if Crate decides to remove this I might have to reroll or spam the Barrowholm life leech potion non-stop because Dryad and Bloodthirst are the only things keeping my magehunter alive.
The buggy behavior is that the aura is not the only thing procing the devotions. It seems that when a devotion is attached to an aura, it does not behave as expected (I tested this with an aura on my chest piece. Something like Aura of Ignaffar). Instead of procing when the aura hit something, it was procing when I cast Flames of Ignaffar, when DoT ticked on targets, and pretty much any time I did damage from any source, it was procing. It’s great, but I can see that is a bug.
Welcome to Grim Dawn! My advice would be to grab on to a super tank or a pet build if you want stability, as those never seem to be nerfed or move out of the meta. Most everything else is a crap shoot on whether or not it will survive the next update. Some builds will become useless but most will still work, just not nearly as effectively.
99% of the content is easy, and the rest is relatively hard. But what exactly is that 1% of the content? Killing few bosses that you don’t really even have to kill, since it’s easier to get loot elsewhere.
That sounds awful actually but then again I come from PoE where builds are killed every patch when new broken stuff comes out. Honestly, I’m having a blast with this FoI Life leech “”"“tank”""" I put together. Mostly playing for fun.
I’m really disappointed. There isn’t an alternative, workable devotion setup either. Either this build uses SoB to proc devotions, or it’s not even remotely viable. It’s a niche build, it’s not like you can smoke 150-170 gladiator with it.
Is there some way I can mod the game to make this work? I don’t care about online. I’m not even opposed to using cheat engine to force the ability to mount onto SoB, if that’s necessary.