(Suggestion) Stream Line Damage Types

Grim Dawn Ideas and Feedback
1

I have played Diablo 2/3, Path of Exile, Marvel Heroes, City of Heroes, etc. I recently bought Grim Dawn and have been playing a lot in the last 4 days.

One thing I would love to see is to reduce the number of Damage Types in this game.

We have Fire (and Burn), Ice (Frosburn), Lighting (Electrocute), Physical (Bleed), etc. I feel the DoT version of the damages is way too complicated. This makes maximizing gear very difficult in this game.

I don’t recall a game with this many type of damages.

Can we reduce damage types to:
1. Fire
2. Ice
3. Lighting
4. Physical
5. Poison
6. Chaos
7. Arcane

This will make the game easier to understand and better chance of finding the gear with the right damage type. I really don’t understand the reasoning behind separating Fire from “Burn” (or Lightning from Electrocute). It seems overly complicating and unnecessary.

Thank you!

2

Way too late in the game’s life cycle to even contemplate a change so drastic.

3

Even if it wasn’t too late, we would have no information on how much Pierce, Bleeding, Fire and Aether resist we have. You’ve put all physical-based resists into one, so why not just make it Physical Resist and Magical Resist instead? All damage types have their own reason to be separated, bleed doesn’t scale with physical nor pierce resist, IT does scale with physical resist, bleeding with bleeding resist, pierce with pierce resist.

Other issue is, if we just had physical and magical resist instead of all these resists we have right now, everything in the game must’ve been changed to this idea, doesn’t matter if we remove one or two resist, all items would need adjustments. Equipment would be boring as fuck, we’d have only two lines of resists, nothing else, some useless stats like RNG and stuff, which would make the game very, very boring.

Aside of the fact that Crate would need to waste so much time on doing what you’re asking for, that it’d be better to make another expansion instead of tweaking the game.

4

As Asylum101 said probably way too late to contemplate changing now. But the devs have said themselves there are too many damage types so if they ever do a GD2 I expect they may cut back on them then.

5

A number of features in Grim Dawn may seem overwhelming or complicated at first but with time it becomes easier to manage like any other game.

Games that are too streamlined can sometimes mean they are rather shallow or feel like they have less impact.

Diablo 3 for example:
Damage types for the most part in D3 are meaningless since at the end of the day the DPS number is the only thing that counts and enemies don’t really have any resistances.

I will admit that a few features or design decisions have contributed to screen clutter but at this stage it would be quite unlikely to see any massive changes as the ones you are suggesting.

6

I’m against decreasing the number of damage types in GD2. Maybe making bleed pierce’s DoT but that’s it. Don’t kill the best arpg in history.

7

I’d rather have everything split rather than mixing stuff. Imagine fire resist, burn resist, lightning resist, electrocute resist, chaos resist, brain-damage resist… wait, brain damage is not even a damage type, though… Well, you get my point.

8

…I don’t, sorry.

9

I’m conflicted about which damage types I’d like to see in an eventual GD2. I agree that there’s probably one or two damage types too many, though I’m not sure which should be axed.

I’m not really a fan of Acid damage. I liked how in TQ Poison damage was a DoT and nothing else, much like Bleed in GD. Aether and Chaos seem too important to the story of the game (Aetherials and Cthonians) to be removed. Vitality might be the odd one out, seeing as it’s only really at home in the Necromancer tree. However, it’s fun as a damage type focused on life leech. Maybe just removing the DoT component would free up enough space.

Physical
Piercing
Bleeding
Poison
Fire (Burn)
Lightning (Electrocute)
Cold (Frostburn)
Chaos (Entropy)
Aether
Vitality

Removing Trauma, Acid, Vitality decay and adding a Chaos DoT. No Flat Acid means that poison would more naturally be paired to other sources of flat damage (Piercing & Vitality). Same goes for Bleeding (though it already functions like that in GD).

EDIT: I also liked Life Leech, which was removed from GD a while ago. Perhaps it could make a return in GD2 as the DoT-component to Vitality? I feel like Vitality decay really lacks identity, while Life Leech felt unique in that it was the only way to leech health through a DoT.

10

If GD2 ever happens we won’t get Aether and Chaos for the players. Those two will be enemy-exclusive only. I think Zantai himself said that.

11

this would be an even bigger mess.

The OP’s complaint is however valid. Crate itself stated they wouldn’t go with so many damage types again, and the pierce/bleed thing is an artifact from Titan Quest (where the engine comes from), and Aether/Chaos were originally supposed to be enemy only damage types but were given to the occultist, and arcanist in order to set them apart from the other masteries.

What makes it worse, is that we end up with a resulting affix bloat, and legendary bloat, conversion problems, that makes the endgame loot hunt all the more tedious.

If anything, it’s the single-type %bonuses (of the aether, of blood, of scorching) that should be combined either by theme (elemental vs eldritch vs phys-related), or by a base physical-magical, or physical-magical flat-magical duration bonuses. Think spellweaving but only 3 suffixes. Flat damage can stay single element but the % should boost a larger group.

same goes for RR. have all-rr, magical rr, and non-magical rr at most, do away with the cold-poison, the fire-chaos, the lightning-aether pairs, and that way you leave the skills to interact with each other more freely. You’ll end up with more variety for less work.

12

I’m sure Zantai is totally looking forward to reducing the damage types in the current state of development. All that balancing. :smiley:

The complaint about Fire and Burn being separate is kind of moot because the majority of Fire items have % Burn Damage, same for all damage types that have a DoT equivalent.

And last, Internal Trauma is the DoT equivalent of Physical, not bleed. Bleed is a damage type separate from all others.

Let’s not go crazy, leave Acid alone.

13

I don’t get what is wrong with a flat damage in a DoT damage and a DoT damage in a flat damage. IT still scales with physical resist, so why remove it? I could agree with the acid part, it seemed weird to me when I first started the game. Vitality decay is also not an issue as it also scales with Vitality resistance. If Life Leech was a part of Vitality damage, it’d be one of the most wanted and hated damage types. Hated because no boss would actually feel that, and loved because RR would make Vitality damage literally the best damage type in the game.

I’d rather get rid of chaos and aether and merge it together as “death”. Vitality could get into that damage type too, or leave it as vitality but remove chaos and aether instead. Bleeding could be a part of physical and pierce, if something, something, blah, blah. From what I remember, Chaos and Aether were added to the game only because Aetherials and Chthonians, and they were originally intended to be enemy-restricted, so we don’t need them anyway, they were added because someone at Crate got drunk, apparently. :stuck_out_tongue:

Physical, bleeding, pierce, elemental (still split, but as one damage type in the resist sheet, hovering on it would show fire, lightning and cold resist separated), poison (acid is actually bullshit) and vitality (which is “merged” with aether and chaos) is how it should be. Main damage type duos: physical + bleeding, pierce + bleeding, vitality + elemental (DoT or not), physical + poison, pierce + poison, physical + elemental, pierce + elemental would fit. As for DoTs, would be nice if there was something like “physical damage over x seconds”, “pierce damage over x seconds” etc., burn, electrocute and frostburn would stay.

If we had to describe damage types, physical, pierce, bleeding, poison, elemental (and DoT) and vitality, it has sense, but if we describe chaos and aether, we’d just say… Vitality and physical? Chaos would be the vitality part, while aether is more of a death, so physical would also fit, but vitality does too.

TQ had it actually balanced well, I mean, there was one damage “sort” for each damage type (except for elemental, I think) and they were combined with another types. Aside of that, I still don’t know which resist does bleed scale with. Is there even “bleed resist” in TQ? Back to the topic, GD would look (at least imo) way better with the idea of damage as TQ had. Thousands of str/dex/int, sure would look way better than a character with HUGE FUCKING FIST that has only 500 physique or a SUPER FUCKING ACCURATE SNIPPER that has 300 cunning because his build reduces the weapon requirements by 75%. Some people would say that % damage is better, I’ll say that it is kind of true, because if we had multiple magic damage types (like we already have) we could maybe even easily focus on all of them at once, but on the other hand, we could leave the %damage as it is, but reduce the values on items by 90%, so we have not 2000%, but 200% increased damage, which would maybe require some additional work, but would be less bullshitty than it is now (again, imo). I actually love the way TQ had it implemented, because as much as an item can be cursed or magically enhanced, it doesn’t make sense on armor. Jewelry, relic, gloves and weapon does make sense, though. It also increases the difficulty of the game, in TQ you gotta think the best way possible to hit like a truck or like Zantai when he pushes the ban button, while in GD it’s like, I’ll pick this, this, oh, this looks nice. Boom, 2k% damage. Oh, right, I wasn’t talking about this anyway, but this still does connect to the damage type variety anyway, because in TQ only vitality and elemental scaled with intelligence, while physical with strength and piece with dexterity and poison and bleeding stood there being independent as well as leech damage.
I still don’t get how you can manipulate poison with your intelligence or bleeding with your dexterity. Anyone can explain? Crate? :smiley:

14

well, I have nothing against rolling Aether-chaos into vitality, as it won’t hurt balance all that much. I mean nowadays we can’t have what existed maybe in the earliest builds where “vitality damage is low but has so much RR it still works out in the end”, because you can just grab a 100% conversion to vit item or set and magically your strong flat (acid, elemental, whatever) damage still works but has huge RR to boot! Neither does the old “big chaos damage but less chaos rr” work anymore, because we have legsets here, witching hour there, and the conversion from chaos to fire and so on and so forth, to the point where any identity each damage type had is more or less gone.

the only exception is physical/IT because reflect still exists and physical resist isn’t trivial to cap unlike the rest.

15

I love the variety of damage types. This constantly creates imbalance, but you have so many options to choose from. Please, Crate, don’t simplify it. Maybe pair Pierce and Bleeding as ya said, but that’s about it.

16

I dont think that the amount of damage types is what makes grim dawn a good game, at least not in my eyes.

And lets be honest, there are really only two damage types in the game: dots (damage over time) and direct damage. The different names for the damage types dont change what they do. They dont differ by secondary effects and its not as if you could actually inspect the resistances of your enemies to see which enemy is best killed by which damage type. So no, the different names dont really add any depth in my opinion.

What it does, is making itemization more frustrating, because many interesting items cant be used in conjunction with your favorite spells because they support other damage types. Conversion may be a small solution to this, but also heavily depends on your drop luck and if there even is an item or conversion skill for the given damage type.

17

Even pairing pierce and bleed would require tremendous work for Crate. The whole devotion system could be revamped (bye bye current mogdrogen) not to mention lots of attacks. This system is staying as is. And i like it. I love the idea of an “enemy specific damage type” tho, like what aether and chaos should have been. Of course with corresponding resists we have to gear for.

18

You could.

There is actually some kind of difference between damage types. Only cold freezes (lol of course, but bosses are all immune so it’s sad). Poison is the most powerful dot aside from bleed (or used to be, now poison itemization sucks so you don’t see this often). Among the three elements, dot potency goes fire>cold>lightning in general. Mobs generally have high vit resist compared to other dmg types and also lower pierce res. It’s not a complicated system but it’s there.

19

Not entirely true. Each damage type has its own set of enemies that heavily resist it, meaning each damage type struggles with their own set of enemies.

Then there’s stuff like physical being reduced by armor along with % resist, lightning having huge gaps in their flat damage leading to the most erratic damage in the game, cold and acid having static flat damage values but it’s lower than other damage types, vitality being paired with ADCTH meaning lower damage to compensate and so on.

Then there’s stuff like stun being mostly present in lightning items and freeze on cold items, same for slow on the latter.

20

The secondary effects come from the skills, not the damage type. Using cold on a weapon does not freeze enemies. The other differences you mentioned are just numbers wise, not mechanically.
The different numbers depend on the skills and items used, so saying poison is generally stronger is not really true as you could find certain items that boost other dot types more, but not find the ones that boost poison. You can say statistically speaking, poison is the most potent, but still depends on the skill you want to use and which items you find. But this is subject to balancing anyways and not interesting game design.

You are right about being able to datamine the resistances of enemies. But do you really tab out of the game to check the resistances of the enemies before engaging? So I think its safe to say that gameplaywise, enemy resistances are not relevant.