T2 Devotions are too weak compared to T1 or T3

Grim Dawn Ideas and Feedback
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With FG right around the corner and with it multiple T3 constellations that will lead to new devotion patterns, I wanted to bring up T2 devotions. By T2 devotions, I’m referring to those devotions that require significant point allocation to provide little affinity bonus. As it is now, a good portion of T1 devotions are outright better than T2 devotions; not just because their procs are better, but they provide far better affinity bonuses with fewer point allocations. The current practice is building around multiple T3 devotions such as Dying God + Time Dilation or the 3 T3 Order constellations, and once the new T3 devotions come out, constellation points are more valuable than ever.

Some T2 devotions that definitely need to be looked into:

Scales of Ulcama: Requires 8 Order points even though Veilwarden T3 devotion only requires 6 Order, provides no resistances, and the proc is Vitality damage. Why would anyone try and go for 8 Order when Dying God and Rattosh boost Vitality damage massively and provide huge Crit damage in exchange for a small health drain which Vitality casters negate better than anyone?

Targo the Builder: Only really seen in Ravager videos where Block damage + Armor is incredibly important. Only provides 1 Order. the DA nodes in the arms are outclassed by Turtle (Turtle!) and if you’re taking the Order route, it’s nearly completely obsoleted by Obelisk of Menhir.

Tempest: Seven nodes in order to get a proc with around the same damage as Hand of Ulto’s, but without the RR component and with 5 times the cooldown? When all of the T3 constellations provide much better stat bonuses, why would anyone go for Tempest?

Assassin: The nodes here are better than the other constellations, and the proc looks okay if you’re surrounded by enemies, though you probably have enough AoE as it is that adding a ring of spikes won’t make too much a difference. Likely looks better than it is because the T3 Pierce constellation is much weaker than the other T3 devotions.

Affliction: Already being discussed in another thread, so I’ll just defer to that one.

Wendigo: Probably the biggest example of a completely obsolete constellation. Uses the same affinity requirements as Dying God but gives nothing that Dying God doesn’t do 20 times better, bonuses are extremely poor (10% less damage from Beasts? 5% Casting Speed when Dying God gives a 10% Total Speed bonus?), and affinity bonus is only 2 Chaos when nearly every other constellation that gives Chaos affinity is far superior to this devotion (Fiend, Bat, Ghoul, Jackal, Chariot of the Dead, Viper, Kraken (if playing 2H), heck even Behemoth gives something useful, even if the proc has far too much of a cooldown for it to get widespread use).

I hope something can be done to stem the tide of “rush for all the T3 constellations you can get and use T1 devotions to get all the affinity you need for it.” If T2 devotions continue to give poor affinity bonuses, the nodes should be nearly as good as T3 devotions so that people may want to consider something like “take 2-3 T2 devotions + the main T3” instead of “Take the main T3 and then take the nodes of a different T3 because the stats are so much better than anything T2 has to offer”

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Take both Obelisk and Targo to become a walking citadel.

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Scales of Ulcama: Requires 8 Order points even though Veilwarden T3 devotion only requires 6 Order, provides no resistances, and the proc is Vitality damage. Why would anyone try and go for 8 Order when Dying God and Rattosh boost Vitality damage massively and provide huge Crit damage in exchange for a small health drain which Vitality casters negate better than anyone?

ITs more about worthless nodes. Energy regen is weak, %health is useless in current meta, health regen is a joke. Proc is okaysh for vitality casters, but vitality devotion route is set in stone and it does not allow to pick 8 order.

Targo the Builder: Only really seen in Ravager videos where Block damage + Armor is incredibly important. Only provides 1 Order. the DA nodes in the arms are outclassed by Turtle (Turtle!) and if you’re taking the Order route, it’s nearly completely obsoleted by Obelisk of Menhir.

Its a tanky devotion for shield tanks. A good one =).

Tempest: Seven nodes in order to get a proc with around the same damage as Hand of Ulto’s, but without the RR component and with 5 times the cooldown? When all of the T3 constellations provide much better stat bonuses, why would anyone go for Tempest?

Tempest proc is good for CDR heavy builds. Nodes are good too. You can pick it with Ultos or with spear, but not all 3 of them.

Assassin: The nodes here are better than the other constellations, and the proc looks okay if you’re surrounded by enemies, though you probably have enough AoE as it is that adding a ring of spikes won’t make too much a difference. Likely looks better than it is because the T3 Pierce constellation is much weaker than the other T3 devotions.

So you think nodes are good and proc is okay, so why change anything?

Wendigo: Probably the biggest example of a completely obsolete constellation. Uses the same affinity requirements as Dying God but gives nothing that Dying God doesn’t do 20 times better, bonuses are extremely poor (10% less damage from Beasts? 5% Casting Speed when Dying God gives a 10% Total Speed bonus?), and affinity bonus is only 2 Chaos when nearly every other constellation that gives Chaos affinity is far superior to this devotion (Fiend, Bat, Ghoul, Jackal, Chariot of the Dead, Viper, Kraken (if playing 2H), heck even Behemoth gives something useful, even if the proc has far too much of a cooldown for it to get widespread use).

Kinda agree on this one.

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Well, physical builds with Gladiator belt can make use of Scales proc. Not anyone though

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The larger issue is that even with AoM and 170 Crucible, there’s really no reason to become a walking citadel. Heavy armor sets like Justicar have enough defenses and offense that the extra defenses become superfluous, and classes that are meant to be tanks like Soldier with Menhir’s Bulwark have no issues with defenses but don’t have the offensive oomph to take down enemies before combined debuffs take down even the mightiest tanks.

I imagine super-tanks would be really cool for Fevered Rage tanks that melt enemy defenses but exchange it for increased enemy offenses, but how many skills concentrate on that? There used to be a few builds that concentrated on massive OA debuffs before the DA cap ruined that possibility, but how many builds are there that take debuffs seriously outside of RR? I love the direction Crate is taking with using sets to make Traps and Freeze viable strategies, but it would be even greater to combine skills and devotions to make massive OA or DA buffering a viable strategy so that you can take something like Targo and Obelisk and not suffer with 30 minute Gladiator clears.

Out of the T2 devotions that don’t provide RR, I like Revenant the best because it provides a good assortment of universal stats. If you’re going to spend 6-7 devotion points on a constellation that only grants 1 or 2 affinity points, the nodes better be worth your while, since even the first nodes on most T3 devotions are much better than most T2 devotions. Nodes like Ulzuin’s Torch, Dying God, Spear - their presence makes constellations that give large affinity bonuses much more valuable, so the low-affinity bonus constellations have to have juicy stats to give an impression of real choice.

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I’m surprised you didn’t mention Bysmiel’s Bonds. The speed node is really nice, but the only resistance it offers is Vitality which is heavily saturated on pet builds, the total damage is okay, but the proc skill pet is so bad that it’s a liability to use it. Pet builds are already overloaded with temporary buffs and the need to use manual skills to trigger other, better celestial powers that the need for an extra active skill with virtually no benefit is just never, ever worth it. I’d probably at least occasionally complete the constellation if it had a normal node with anything useful instead.

Staff of Rattosh by comparison gives much more useful aether resistance, similar damage, better player bonuses, and supplies 3 Primordial and 2 Chaos affinity vs Bysmiel’s 3 Eldritch.

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^
I had made a devotions discussion thread that was moved to General Discussions for some reason. In any case, I ran with the Bysmiel’s Bonds Eldritch Hound to max xp in a Pet Hybrid build against various content and farming. (The build was decently effective with fairly high pet stats and primal Instinct doing much of the work).

My conclusion:

T2 Bysmiel’s Command (Bysmiel’s Bonds Constellation).

I’ve been playing with this from 0-19/20 (current). The general nodes are ~ok but I think the Eldritch Hound proc summon:

a.. needs about 2x the current damage numbers.
b. needs a method of changing the AI behavior like other summons (agressive, normal, defensive). It is relatively fast, but when the other summons are set to aggressive= the behavior is noticeable. It would be nice if the health bar showed up, but that's not critical.

Now compare this to against T1 4-pointer Raven that gives 6 lightning damage to all pets @typical 700+ (hybrid)-2000+% (pet-centric) bonus with >100% crit (depending on items). For argument, say, 120 non-crit elec damage [@2000%] for every pet. Also ravens nodes are comparable for bonuses imho.

I’d argue that Eldritch Hound in its current form is generally not worth the going the full constellation. The key bonus star in the Bysmiel constellation is the second one = %total pet speed.

TLDR: Eldritch hound proc needs big damage boost. (or some other boost to place it as an attractive T2 proc…)

P.S. on a different note, it seemed to me a shame that Primal Instinct had only + to Shaman. Shaman is already a fairly powrful mastery with an overdose of abilities and items. I thought a +1 to other various classes would have promoted more variety with this Relic. But I used it in spite of not having Shaman as the pets are ok for a hybrid.

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I agree with most examples.

Assassin has really juicy nodes and decent procs, so I wouldn’t call it useless since Pierce doesn’t have much anyway before FG hits.

Scales of Ulcama has a great proc, but affinity requirment and small bonus make it a bad choice for most builds. I tried to use it on a vitality build, but then I don’t have enough points to take both Manticore/Dying God and Rattosh. Physical builds with Gladiator’s belt can use it, but mostly for mana and they’d rather use Harp or just Arcane Spark.

Don’t know anything about Targo, but tank meta is currently on hold till FG, there is no real need for tanks right now unless players particulary want it. And if I already have a tank with Shield Maiden and Obelisk I’d rather take some damage to leech better than another boring armor proc.

Affliction proc is awful, devotion bonus is awful, only good thing are the nodes.

Tempest is a cool devotion for Ultos builds that naturally have a lot of CDR, but since AoM and introduction of Ultos devotion I would rather take Ultos + Spear or Ultos + Dying God, because I need that OA/DA and weapon damage procs are much more enticing. I never see Tempest on top builds for that reason.

Wendigo is just awful and again, vitality builds wanna have Dying God + Rattosh + Manticore or Dying God + Rattosh + something like Harp and there is never place for Wendigo anymore.

My suggestions:

Scales of Ulcama: Make it grant 3 yellow nodes or 2 yellows and 1 blue. Make the requirment 6 yellow nodes (so it’s in line with the route to Rattosh).

Assassin: I think it’s good as it is. I would rather have proc to be on hit not on critical hit since every pierce and physical proc is on critical hit already.

Targo: no idea since I don’t play soldier or tanks god forbid

Tempest, lower purple requirment to 4 and increase bonus to ~3-4 affinity points. 5 purple requirment always messes up the whole lightning devotion route that only needs 4 nodes. Otherwise it will remain a gimmick and people will always take Ultos + Spear or Ultos + Dying God

Wendigo: Maybe remove one nod and increase bonus to at least 3 affinities.

Affliction: Make the proc better. Like remove cooldown. Or add ~15% weapon damage and lower cooldown to 1 second. Right now devotion proc is worse than Imp (and worse than any devotion proc tbh). Maybe add couple of affinity points for completion bonus.

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I was under the impression that if you took Viper the RR from Hand of Ultos doesn’t stack.

In any case Tempest is actually a good devotion and easy to squeeze into pretty much any lightning build.

I’ll agree Scales of Ulcama is in a bad spot. I can’t see a build that could benefit from taking it. The nodes are pretty weak and 8 order affinity points are better spent elsewhere. It’s a when hit proc, but it scales with vitality damage. Guess if you go melee vitality but most of your devotions will be in the opposite direction unless you’re going tank.

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Others I am not sure, but I do agree Wendigo could use some buff

I forced two of my vitality damage characters to use the Wendigo constellation, but it just really feels like waste of constellation points

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The idea of a consistent high-adcth no cd proc with AoE potential (as opposed to somewhat testy Bat and high cooldown, completely out of place Scales) is great, but Wendigo just too pricey and still doesn’t provide. Definitely should be looked at.

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I support Tempest giving 1 extra affinity, either green or purple.

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CD is way too long and requires purple nodes.
Exactly what mad_lee said:

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FYI it is possible to take Ultos, Tempest, and Spear at the same time when playing an Elementalist. Agonizing Flames can eliminate the need for Elemental Storm. When FG is released, there will be extra movement skills and Demo will get a buff, which makes Elementalist somewhat more tolerable to play. :stuck_out_tongue:

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Add Purple +1 to Targo the Builder’s Completion Bonus and make it equal to other constellations. Earning 1 is too unfair for consumption points.

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The main problem with T2 is they mostly only give 1-2 extra color points (compare to T1 3-6 points) and their procs are quite mediocre.:mad:

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I’m aware this is a T2 thread but I will just write some devotion stuff in general since personally I feel we’re not going to see a T2 revolution anytime soon. The devotion system was sort of balanced the way it is.

The problem with tempest is that it requires purple. If you change that to green or red suddenly lots of people would play around with it. Unfortunately the developers are reluctant to change affinity requirements because some people would have characters devotion setup broken by it or something.

But really all Tempest needs is an affinity requirement change.

Vulture could use its %cunning bonus changed to spirit or physique. Vulture is also a place where a small amount of slow resist would be cool.

Tsunami, despite its buff has issues because cold builds have to proc Ultos, Murmur, Elemental Storm, Amatok, Leviathan, Dying God. Like always at least 4 of those. So changing it to an “on being hit” proc would help it out a good deal. If that’s not enough then changing its affinity reward from 5-6 would be interesting, open new paths, and not break anyone’s characters.

Also if none of that is okay, then at least Tsunami could use a good resist node like imp has. I REALLY think Tsunami should proc on being hit PLUS have some handful of slow resistance. This would make it more appealing to melee and fit into more builds.

Tree of life is still weak. Even if you doubled the healing/second it probably wouldn’t see use. 5% damage absorption on the proc and buffing its nodes could eventually make it more interesting I guess.

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Assassin is one of the best T2s. I’m surprised it’s even mentioned in this thread. Tempest is fine. It’s not a generic lightning devo like Ultos. It’s for electrocute focused casters and does it’s job as demonstrated by John_Smith’s 5:40 in 7.1 on his Wind Devil vindicator. IMO, it shouldn’t be meddled with. The choice between Spear and Tempest is good and so what most ppl choose Spear? Maybe a better affinity bonus, yeah, but making it cheaper might not be the best idea.

Scales, Wendigo and Affliction, however, could be completely removed from the map and hardly anyone would notice… If changing affinities is too much of a hassle, they should receive substantial buffs to both the nodes and the procs.

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I dont think Tempest need any affinities changes. Its good as it is, ppl take it. Vulture is placed in tight cluster. If you need red, you pick Ghoul, Bat, Fiend, Viper... tadam, you dont need red anymore. Heck, you pick them even if you don`t need red at all. Not sure how we can help this conselation, outside of dumping in a lot of secondary resistances.
Tsunami. Lets see what ppl pick in blues:
1)Sailor guile 100% out of 100% picks.
2)EEl 100% out of 100% picks
3)Solemn watcher 100% out of 100% picks.

There is simply no room for Tsunami, its not as good as Fiend, not as usefull as Bat. 5 wasted points for underwhelming proc. Switching activation to on hit would just make it worse.

Tree of life :smiley: More like tree of energy regen . Nodes are pathetic. Proc is horribly outdated. Common, buff it to usability. 10% health on tree branches. At least 500 health regen worth of regen on conselation nodes. For the love of god, reduce CD to at least 8 seconds, it also a good idea to reduce these CD on every healing conselations, cause right now they are so far behind ADCTH its not even funny.

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+1 for Buffing Tree of Energy Regen :stuck_out_tongue: