[Suggestion] Help Out Internal Trauma: Fix Octavius Defenses and Buff Fist of Vire

Grim Dawn Ideas and Feedback
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Hello Crate and Forum Regulars,

I want to touch on two problems related to the sad state of internal trauma which are 1) certain aspects of Octavius set and 2) Vire, the Stone Matron devotion.

  1. OCTAVIUS

Octavius is seen neither among the tanky builds tackling deep SR nor Crucible speedster glass cannons. I would not argue for the latter but why exactly Octavius is no good for deep SR? It by all means should be: mobile DoT nuker stacked with cc res and defenses. One reason is sustain but this feedback is not about it. The second reason is the set’s defensive stats.

OCTAVIUS IS SEVERELY LACKING IN RESISTANCES. This 4pc set has only 5 lines of resistance stats all of which are low to mid value. This would be rather low-ish for a blue set. After trying out many setups over the months and reviewing setups made by other top builders, I conclude that at least one more line should be added: acid res in the vicinity of 25/40%. Preferably, 1 more line should be added so that 3 out of 4 pieces have double res like most good sets. A build low on resistances cannot possibly dream of deep SR. No matter the other stats.

At the risk of asking too much, I’d also like to see an addition of trap res. It is not available for warlords anywhere,. Grey Magi boots do not fit the rachetype. Chains of Oleron component is problematic due to the main problem - resistances. It is very hard to maintain solid deep SR performance without trap res.

  1. Fist of Vire

Vire is supposed to have two functions - phys retal and internal trauma. It fails at both.

RETAL. A single node of Menhir has more retaliation than the whole Vire constellation. Debatably, T2 Boar has better retal stats. Vire has the amount of %retal equal to T1 Wolverine.

DIRECT DMG. Same goes for direct damage. The whole constellation has 80% dmg. The norm among dmg type dedicated T3s is 180%. No flat damage of any kind. 3% cunning is nice but not enough to make up for it. This is all below expectations for a T2 constellation. And as opposed to Empyrion which also has 80% dmg, Vire has no real redeeming qualities.

PROC. Proc is also quite bad. It has much less trauma than T2 Boar (285/s) and only slightly more than T1 Bull (Vire has 197/s, and Bull has 175/s). Same goes for attached weapon damage values - less than T2 Boar and only slightly more than T1 Bull. Arguably, both Boar and Bull have more effective AoE. Passive proccing is nice but 20% chance is very low. Another constellation with a similar proc - Spear of the Heavens (similar because it procs on the enemy with very little AoE) - has 50% chance (let alone way better dmg values). The phys dmg reduction is quite redundant. The few builds that don’t already have it in the masteries will almost always go for the better option - Empyrion.

DEFENSIVE STATS. The redeeming quality of Vire could be its defensive stats. 115 armor, 150+4% health and 4% phys res - not mind-blowing but fine. But the resistances - 10% aether and chaos is okay but 20% pierce and bleed are almost completely redundant for the archetype. All in all, the defensive stats are about the strength of a T2.

I do not know what changes to propose because pretty much everything is bad about Vire, the Stone Matron. But let’s try. 1) Pierce and bleed res could be removed or lowered to 10%, elemental res should be added at 15% and aether and chaos should be raised to 15%. Empyrion has about that much. 2) Proc should have big AoE (BIG FIST), and/or better chance to proc. 3) Total %dmg should be raised to 100-120%

7 Likes
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I tried Vire in Octavius Tactician and substitute it, isn’t worth it and not in your path. Vire’s requirements are really demanding and to use it, needs to be very good, which isn’t the case for trauma. Don’t have much experience with retal but don’t think is good there either, definetely needs buff.

Octavius set suffers from early FG powerhouse state of shield builds, now is below average set. Internal Trauma can’t life steal and defensive stats and resistances on set are lacking. Even set can make inherently tanky combo like shielded Warlord looks a bit glassy. Tacticians are worse obviously.

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Tried Fist of Vire on both Targo and Octavius. It’s simply shadowed by other devotion setups… Not really worth picking even if you go for high shard defensive setup. I dare say the constellation needs more %damage, and the proc itself needs less cooldown, more aoe, more wd% and more flat trauma, all of this with a greater chance to proc.

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Vire is not predominantly a trauma devo, it serves other purposes as well. Oleron is trauma

Octavius endurance in SR was considered OP a few months ago. What happened?

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+1

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Yeah, basically. It needs everything… :joy:

Oleron is phys and trauma 50/50. So, that would make Vire… 15/15? :wink:

Seriously, these other purposes, one could argue that defensive stats are the redeeming quality but are they really? They are hardly T2 worthy. Those extra res are not needed in most cases.

Pets, retal, Dark One, Death’s Waystones happened. Octavius is okay-ish for 80, maybe even early 90 if you can dodge one-shots and don’t mind 15-minute Kuba/Kaisan fights. So it’s not exactly the “SR busting DoT tank archetype.”

It’s got no res. Things like Dark One can afford 4 Dreeg’s Omen (the 30da) augments and still have all res lux. Most no-green Octavius setups would need that many extra slots to get those res at a similar level.

Try to guess without checking: which T2 retal devotion actually has LESS retal than Vire. Good chance you’ll guess wrong. Actually, I don’t know. Boar, Affliction and even Phoenix all got almost the same % but more than double the flat. Only Hyrian got no flat so maybe it? But it has more %…

But I can tell you without riddles - Vire Fist proc is the very worst retal proc on the map, including T1s.

Actually, that’s not that pressing an issue. You can deal with most trap problems with a blink rune.

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And what’s wrong with Sr 90 then? Sounds like a very good SR level.

And i don’t get why it is relevant to compare it to Dark one or other builds. Just because one can it doesn’t another one has to as well or better

I think that IF it needs something it should be appart from Oleron and even empyr. it’s easy enough to get %dmg on phys whether you go upper right or lower right with devotions.

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If other setups have bountiful resistances out the wazoo that lets you trivially overcap everything and also gets their damage needs addressed doesn’t that sound like iunno, overstatted items?

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Kind of yeah… Some small bumps in every mentioned aspect

Perfectly fine, in this case at least lower the cd to 0.5 and increase the AoE to lets say, double of the current range?

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that’s a bit too much on retal chars. if they need dmg at least increase rata a lil bit. For anything else, idk, bit more flat dmg on it i guess

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That 90 is a big maybe. And it struggles much sooner than that.

But why shouldn’t it? It’s supposed be “the tank,” isn’t it?

Not so sure it’s that easy… What got %dmg at upper right? Bear got 90% (more than Vire as a T2, by the by… :rofl:) but trauma don’t take it. Azraaka, which is taken over Vire by every sane builder of phys builds, got no trauma either (this is why I suggested that Vire is for trauma). Ulzaad helps, true…

On the topic of Octavius, 9 out of 10 setups gotta use Open/Closed rings due to shit core stats so that’s another 200%dmg in the red.

…then Octavius got shitty resistances in the wazoo. Don’t agree 1 res per piece is low?

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Compared to high performers it is certainly low. Could it do with buffs? Yes I agree it’s due for some love now that the meta has grown. But at the same time your highlighting of this drastic discrepancy in resistances (overcaps even) has me wondering how many of these builds are above the arbitrary level that might see them adjusted - and said adjustments might not be considering the benefits of getting all overcaps for zero sacrifices. Acknowledging that Octavius would not leap into god tier from some minor buffs is easy here, but thinking about how lopsided resistance handouts to different builds drives their performance is a bigger topic that isn’t so easily finalized with a call for yes/no

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Is it? Hammers got 15%rata and they are capable of many hits per second. Affliction got 8% but it’s 3 pools at a time covering lots of area. Hyrian got whopping 26% and it covers 10m radius with better proc chance and only twice the cooldown. Vire is definitely the worst of the lot.

If that 22%rata on Vire is too much for better AoE/more frequent procs then why not lower it? If crap AoE and less frequent procs is supposed to be the flavor then most definitely it needs a lift in dmg.

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+1 to vire devotion buff, she really feels underwhelming right now. Boar is better for both internal trauma and retal. If the proc had either better utility numbers or straight up more dmg (also nodes need more dmg as ya1 said), it would be useable, but right now it just loses to tier 2 devotions. Another problem with it, is that it kinda lacks identity. Oleron is a good active for IT, boar and hammer good on block devotions, so vire could be very interesting for 2h or offhand internal trauma builds, but it’s just a little too weak right now.

Dunno about octavius, I’ve never played it, so can’t properly judge it. Afaik it should be in the “fine, but not op”-tier.

As ya1 pointed out in another post, the only tier 2 retal devotion that is worse than vire (and that has a similar identitiy crisis imo) is hyrian. Hyrian and vire are both very similar actually and both need some change imo.

Which purpose does it exactly have though? I agree with ya1 that it tries to be too much at once, but fails at all.

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Yes, it’s on hit, not block, it goes wherever on the map and also debuffs

Only twice the CD? :smiley: So Vire will do twice as much damage to a boss for example …

It doesn’t fail at all, the only real downside to Vire, in my opinion is that it’s a bit too expensive in affinity but that’s how it is. The devo tree is pretty tight in how it’s calculated and that’s not gonna change,

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Vire is quite weak compare to other T3 constellations. 20% reduced mobs physical dmg? When physical/retal builds have tons sh** of armor value and physical res. The proc is mediocre too (20% when hit vs 30% yugol 50% spear of heaven), and physical builds have no cdr so 1s quite long delay.

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Vire cannot possibly deal twice as much dmg as Hyrian even against a single boss. Hyrian got 1.5 times better chance to proc, its rata is 1.2 times higher, wpn dmg is 1.75 times higher, direct flat is also higher. Everything is higher - on a T2. But most importantly, AoE, compared to which Vire proc is straight-up trash. 20% on hit with those numbers and that AoE is garbage. Give it 50% like Spear and it still will be worse than Spear.

Exactly. It’s too expensive because it looks like T2 and it’s priced like T3.:stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

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Personally i’ve not had any issues it’s proccing it. And i’m not sure how to debate argumens like these. It’s 20% like Empyr (as it has been buffed recently to be on hit) and it procs wherever on the map.

When FG was launched players kept making memes on how OP Octavius was and all that’s happened since then was getting some nerfs to IT and some flat. People still used vire back then and no one complained about it, not to mention it didn’t even have rata, which was something I’ve pushed for myself to happen quite a bit. The rata part is excellent on the right build where you said it yourself that phys retal is strong

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I wouldn’t call it “some nerfs to some flat.” Virtually everything went: the masteries, the devos, every piece of gear. I believe Crate overreacted back then because it were the first weeks after the release of their biggest expansion, and the vibe was like “what out of the million new things we did could’ve gone wrong?” And because the FG poster-boy was an oathkeeper, and everyone had been hyped for Aegis, so out went the over-nerfs to everything even remotely reminiscent of the shape of a shield. Retal survived somehow (it has this rare quality that lightning also has: un-nerfability) but Octavius got hit very hard (Virtue, too, BTW). IIRC Octavius went first even before the obvious correction to Overguard transmuter for retal.

People were making memes out of Octavius because it was novelty. In truth, that Octavius back then was NOTHING compared to the raw memeism of today’s Spites, Anguishes, Dark Ones, AARs that’re better than any skill even if you use no gear, 100% lightning converted to cold and such, unnerfable Cyclones with 100% fire to lightning, etc.

I’m not calling for making Octavius op like the above. Just finding it its rightful niche: deep SR “DoT & Run” crawler. But the damn res are just too low. You could give up on hardcaps and stash some greens or get Empyrion for a little bit more res… but why can’t Octavius achieve that with Vire - the designated trauma devo? (The list of reasons is in op.)

I’m not sure Vire is the reason why phys retal is strong. Vire gets taken by retal - I guess - for the same reason it’s taken by… those who have patience to take it for trauma. Because there’s nothing else to take once you settle for Menhir and purple retal/trauma devotions. It doesn’t make it good.

But okay. I get it that for retal - where you get swarmed on purpose and don’t delete everything in a glimpse so hits per second amass - Vire procs get consistent even with that 20% chance. So, fine. But the title of the thread is trauma. For trauma Vire sucks.

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Chance on hit instead of attack is the way go for retaliation builds, since they don’t always have enough skills to proc everything and even non retal physical Warlords have quite the trouble. You bind your main attack to Assassins’ mark and you basically don’t have other good procers, perhaps Guardians to some extent.

Problem with Vire are all from these:

  • expensive requirements
  • low damage on proc/not enough ground to cover. Btw proc looks cool visually.
  • not great stats on the nodes.
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