(Suggestion) Stream Line Damage Types

It wouldn’t, if you did nothing else. In context, the suggestion is -> force fewer damage types, make them more functionally unique.

Basically this. I rarely say “I want to do AETHER DAMAGE today!” It’s more like, “I want to use these skills together, what would be the best conversion option and how would my Devotions look?”

Damage compatibility mattered a lot more when Conversion wasn’t in the game. Even then, because Magical->Magical conversion happened much later after the initial release of conversion (which was really only Physical -> Magical), damage typing was still very important and highly selective. However, now that Magical->Magical conversion is so prevalent (which has, for the record, been something I’d been pining for) the lines between damage typing have been blurred and they really all just kinda mix together in a grey, amorphous mass.

Eh, even in the Dark Ages before Grimtools, when we were all on grimcalc and gracefuldusk, we knew that
Burning Dead were immune to Fire
Cold Ones were immune to Cold
Chthonic Leeches were immune to Vitality
Chthonic Harbingers were immune to Chaos
Aether Crystals were immune to Aether (this is no longer the case, THANK GOD)
Skeletons were immune to Bleed
Shar’zul had very high resistance to Fire, if not immunity
Mogdrogen was immune to Lightning
etc.

Sorry to quote like that. I might have added something you weren’t actually explicit about due to poor paraphrasing. I’m on mobile and editing is a pain.

Dmg types are mostly irrelevant. It’s the skills builds are all about. And skills are all about dmg types they do. So, logically, builds are about dmg types. It’s customary that dmg type is the first or the second word in a build title - self explanatory.

Mechanics-wise, there are only two dmg types, direct and DoT, and all the rest is just a flavor, different color. I strongly disagree. Dmg types in GD have a distinct identities due to what possibilities are offered within the groups of masteries, skills, items and devotions they represent. This is their function. Limiting the number of dmg types will only make the game poorer in this aspect.

Chaos and aether. Removing them means removing arcanists and occultists. Now, supposed there had been plans not to include aether and chaos in original GD either, you can see now how much poorer the game would be without them.

Enemy resistances are bogus. You wouldn’t even know about them if it wasn’t for grimtools. Yes, I would. I would see that I deal less damage to Kubacabra with my vitality caster and that it takes forever to kill Shar’Zul with a Firewave build.

Example of getting punished for not killing fast enough. Crucible.

Um, what? Yes we would and yes, they are telegraphed. When i see something called the Cold One, i know by its design that this enemy is highly resistant to cold. Then you have bleed and Undead, which by design are supposed to be highly resistant to it (makes more sense to be immune to it but it would make Bleed useless against half of the second act). Exception being Moosilauke and Nemeses are outliers when it comes to resistances (at least one resist they have is tied to their damage type though).

I’m not gonna deny some resistances are random, like Aleksander high poison res and Grava having 0% chaos res when he’s the Voiddrinker, but saying we wouldn’t know enemies resistances is absolutely silly and nonsensical. Just the fact any human being able to notice the struggle when he/she notices the damage is unusually low just says to the player this enemy is highly resistant to the damage type.

somethingsomething cruciblebalancedoesn’tmatter

For lategame builds, its not suprising to concentrate on only a few damage types to maximize your killspeed. So having your main damage in the description or the build title isnt really suprising either.
My assertion was that people create builds by combining skills and just accept the main damage type which results from the skills they picked.
So having the main damage type in the title is a consequence rather than the explanation how people create builds.

Lets think for a minute, if we remove all damage types but keep all possibilities items, devotions and skills offer, how does this make the game poorer? I agree that this would definitely make the game poorer on a cosmetic level, but mechanics-wise, not really.

Again, think about having all the same skills with the same mechanics, just with other damage types. How does that make the game poorer? Though I really like the aether colors.

I just scrolled through some monsters in the grimtools database and many of them have quite arbitrary resistances and yeah I give you that many immunities are somewhat telegraphed through the model or the name, but do you argue that those really affect your playstyle? For me at least, it didnt for 99% of the game.

This is what I was refering to:

I asked you about an enemy that is actually a threat to you, that needs to be killed fast and you argue about the score multiplier timer? The timer is no threat to you, its just less rewarding to kill slower.
Maybe I missunderstood you, did you mean the current meta is having as much killspeed as possible without dying? If yes, then I have to say that I dont see your point, because this is just standard ARPG philosophy and has nothing to do with resistance mechanics.

  1. I’m not trying to tell anyone how to make their builds or what’s most important when doing it. What I’m trying to say is LESS DMG TYPES IS A BAD IDEA FOR GD2.

  2. If you remove dmg types than it defeats the purpose of buildcrafting. It doesn’t make sense if you can combine every skill with every devotion and every piece of gear. If you want two dmg types that fit in every slot you can go and play Tic-Tac-Toe.

  3. Example of a single enemy who you need to kill fast or you die: Reaper. Stackable rr, charging attack and low-chance high-power wps. Every second you let him live makes it harder to survive. Also: Grava and Alex (the latter especially for pets). You don’t wanna let them use their power attacks cause every time they do you can die easily.

It matters! It matters to me and the rest of the 0.000001% player base who killed Theodin on Ultimate! :smiley:

Do 30-80% resists really matter when we have 100+% resist reduction for most damage types? 110 is considered “low rr”, and 210 vit rr is what valguur ritualist runs around.

Having 9 identical flat and 6 identical dot damage types isn’t variety, and isn’t interesting. it’s bloated. With conversion, any uniqueness of a skill in one or two (transmuter) damage types is erased when you can just convert it to the build you want to make. Storm Box mechanics? combine with beronath reforged and you have phys/it lightning.

Elemental Word of Pain? You can make into acid or vitality.

or physical.

Cadence? I found it in anything except for the acid variety.

And you have to provide decotion, item, etc. support for all the types and all the skills, which takes enormous time only to have the forums in uproar cause one build takes 3s longer to kill mad queen than pre-patch, or crucible takes 6:30 instead of 6:15.

I think you get my point.

That seems a bit dramatic. I think there’s a point where too many damage types actually hinders buildcrafting. It makes class synergies more complicated and more difficult to parse for the typical player. It also means that each damage type doesn’t feel as unique.

To combat that to a degree, we’ve leaned towards having damage pairs that are frequently seen together (ex. Chaos and Vitality, or Cold and Lightning). Conversion helped as well.

I’m not convinced that culling some damage types would hurt build diversity. I think it would make your choices feel more meaningful, which is why if there is a GD2 some day, it will definitely be a step we will be taking. Most certainly you would see flat and dot damage share modifiers. Elemental would likely be removed as it only complicates things and requires additional explanation.

Not only they don’t feel unique, but they also need additional items to work. Just look at how many items you had to add in order to make some builds actually work to a degree, Vitality Death Knight, Bleeding Trickster etc. Some masteries also have so many damage types that even appropriate items can’t make certain builds work, conversion does help much, but it’s not enough sometimes.
If conversion converted RR too (which happens in FG, right? Or does only the new mastery have it?), it would get rid of another huge wall in builds, but then conversion might be OP (just look at fucking Curse of Frailty and Beronath sword, lmao, -55% physical resist, oh, and add the belt 100% vitality -> physical, 85% RR).

Basically, it seems that Grim Dawn 2 will happen, maybe not today nor in the next year(s), but it seems that you guys are planning TOO MUCH for future projects… :stuck_out_tongue:

I had to read the entire thread again so I make sure that I don’t contradict a previous statement I made. Imo, if we remove some damage types for a future GD2, these, along with a pierce/bleed merge are the only things that should be done. I’m not really a fan of removing Chaos and Aether as these two damage types have already made their mark on the game and it would not feel like GD again (imo) if these two were removed, especially since the lore itself stated that the Grin Dawn happened (or got accelerated as AoM reveals) because Arcanists had to mess with Aether for science.

There can always be an explanation on why there’s no more aether or chaos damage. For example, the evil chaos lord has been defeated and there’s no possible source of chaos damage anymore. There’s always a way.

I agree. However, the line beyond which the number of damage types is bloated has not been crossed. In fact, I believe that this particular aspect of the game is very close to perfection. As a big fan I’m afraid that the opposite line might be crossed - where for the sake of simplicity and convenience the game will turn into a tic-tac-toe slash hit-the-mole-with-a-legendary-hammer.

Please don’t forget that it’s the variety that sets Grim Dawn apart. It’s complicated, yes, but this is one of the things that keeps the community alive.

When I hear “no more aether and chaos” I feel a little like a chess player who’s told that knights and bishops will go cuz, you know, too complicated…

Seems a little shortsighted, no?

Variety can be improved in many ways other than just damage types. No one saw the Devotion system coming, for instance, and look what that gave us. We didn’t expect Skill Modifiers either, and now we didn’t much expect movement runes on Medals. I’d be optimistic that GD2 would have some surprises in store for its hypothetical audience as well.

When Component Completion Bonuses were up in the air for removal, I voted against the action because I believed it’d cut down on the customizability of characters. And, you know, maybe I was right. But the pros for having removed Completion Bonuses from Components far outweighed the cons and I would never want to go back to the old system. Crate has done such great work that would not have been possible had Completion Bonuses stayed. Point being, it’s unwise to picture changes in a vacuum. Think of what can be done in a system to expand upon such changes.

Edit: FWIW, don’t get me wrong: if this is something you’re staunchly passionate about, by all means, keep pushing for it. I love Aether/Chaos damage too and would hate to see them go. But I’d welcome further creativity in their stead as well.

You said many times that its a bad idea, but you didnt really adress how it reduces the complexity.

It doesnt defeat the purpose of buildcrafting, not in the slightest. You made your own counter argument. Being able to combine more skills and items to create viable builds is increasing complexity and diversity because you have more combinations to choose from.
The fact you didnt consider, why you thought this would be a good argument: just because you have more combinations to choose from, doesnt mean all combinations are suddenly equally effective. There would still be combinations that are simply more effective, which need to be found.

All your enemy examples are bosses. Bosses that always need some time to kill because of their large hp pool are not good examples.
Here are some examples of enemy mechanics that need to be dealt with in a certain time:

  • An enemy transforming into a stronger one when not killed fast enough.
  • An enemy channeling an ability you need to interrupt (by stun or killing) otherwise receiving high amounts of unavoidable damage.
  • An enemy with a small hp pool that explodes on death dealing high amounts of damage

I just looked up your examples on youtube by searching “grim dawn insert boss facetank”. None of these bosses seem to feature such a similar or alike mechanic. Actually, they all feature many fast and unavoidable attacks, which you are either able to tank or die. I included the word “facetank”, so I can check if you actually need to kill them fast, but seeing that you can facetank them with the right setup doesnt support your claim.

I dont mean to say that everybody needs those mechanics to have fun or that I want those mechanics in Grim Dawn, I just want to point out that you seem to have a strange understanding of the game and the impact of the proposed changes.

The damage types do not add varierty mechanical-wise, because they have no mechanical differences, so having more doesnt increase build variety. And not having as many damage types doesnt turn Grim Dawn into tic-tac-toe. For me, those conclusions are again, really strange, I am sorry but I cant follow your line of thought.

Excuse me, if I sound aggressive. Its just a sign of my lack of understanding. I am not able to understand how you arrive at your conclusions and this frustrates me. I may sound zealously to you about some ideas, but I just want to exchange some thoughts and my goal is definitely not to destroy your experience with the game by suggesting intentionally bad changes.

Does the OP mean DoT damage types? Like combine those together with flat dmg types?

It’s really inspiring that you even did research in an effort to prove every last thing I said wrong. Thanks for at least trying to be civil about it in the last paragraph.

As for letting aether and chaos go, maybe someone could run a poll. I’d say nay and let’s leave it at that.

If damage like Aether/Chaos goes, then I will lose interest in GD…

I feel the damage type diversity is not purely for game-play reason… each source of damage has its own identity… And some people are even suggesting Chthonics and Aetherials who are archenemies, to share the same damage type…

Also, it will reduce the number of role-plays we can do with Grim Dawn.

The variety of the damage type is one of the big reason I like Grim Dawn, and if it’s simplified so number crunchers can more easily maximize the numbers on their meta-builds, then count me out…

Do you realize that you can mechanically roll the two onto a single damage type, managed by a single damage bonus on items, and a single resistance, and still have the types as different?

Imagine having an aether prm deal arcane damage with a racial bonus towards chthonics, and chaos strike dealing extra arcane damage to aetherials, via racial bonuses added to slathsarr’s crest and riftstone…

1 type, 2 different mechanics, much more distinct.

I have imagined that and I think it just makes me lose even more interests. I still think the damage source will lose their identities. “Arcane” may be distinct, but chaos and aether have lost their identities. Also, if I equip an item that used to specifically increase Aether maximum resistance, with your mechanics, it would now also actually increase Chaos maximum resistance; again, very conflicting.

And with “Arcane” singled out for this mechanic, I feel it’s inconsistent. Why is “Arcane” only getting special mechanics?

However, it’s all fine. People can ask for whatever they want, but then they just make the game into what they are are interested in, but not the GD I am interested in.