Taking a step back

Grim Dawn Public Test Discussion
1

And while I’m sure that can be taken as a comment on the upcoming patch, I’d like to actually instead take a step back to take a look at what made GD uniquely appealing, as I feel recent and upcoming changes have been steering away from that shine.

Up to 1.1.9.8, the game was essentially ‘solved’. While new patches shook up the balance (and generally buffed builds, whilst slapping down top performers), overall one could know beforehand whether a build would be successful or not. There were certain benchmarks to meet and that would see you through. The game was also incredibly forgiving unless you stepped into end game. Afterall, people have done Classless HC runs for the achievement, or mono mastery Ultimate Only Self Found challenge runs. The game was not, at any point, particularly hard, unless you wanted it to be.

In short, GD was brain over brawn.

It was also incredibly fairly balanced. It was - by far - the best hardcore experience, in part due to being a fully offline experience. No latency on pauses, no deaths due to disconnects. Incoming damage was entirely mitigatable.

With 1.2, that changed. All of a sudden, there was a new dodge or die mechanic introduced. When it was not sufficiently ‘die’ enough during playtesting, numbers were ramped up to - frankly - silly numbers. A 70% damage increase on a Celestial who already slaps you around for big damage numbers is not great. Especially not when some of those Sunders are much easier to dodge for some builds than others.
While individual Sunders might be avoidable, it made the margin for error that much smaller, particularly when multiple bosses are involved, such as in SR or Crucible.

While on Softcore a 80% success rate might be good enough, that does not fly on Hardcore. A 1 in 5 chance to die is just a dead build, simple as.

The upcoming changes seem to ramp up this mechanic even further, alongside dramatically lowering one of few defences left available to builds.

On 1.2.1 specifically

  • A flat removal of Phys Res in favour of armour also seems to hurt the wrong builds. While I understand the desire to move builds closer, most of the builds sporting high phys res also already have high armour. Especially with shields remaining a source of high phys res… coincidentally, the masteries best suited to using shields (OK & Soldier) also have high armour sets.

Losing 15% Phys res hurts far more on a 25% phys res build than a 70% one. I do not think the current approach is the right one. All resists are capped - cap Phys Res that much lower. Make it 40 or 50%. Alternatively, ramp up some of the worst performers, lift from them their 15% to 25%.

  • Ramping up Sunder more just moves the game further away from what made it so appealing previously. GD is unique in this design space - no other ARPG I’ve come across is this fair. I also do not desire a dodge or die mechanic in the gaming experience of GD, if I want that, I can seek it elsewhere such as in PoE or LE.

  • If players ignoring Sunder is a problem (which, frankly, I can understand), I do not think that making it even more of a one-shot mechanic is the correct way of solving it. I understand that seeing a build facetank Ravager for 40 seconds to kill it through being Sundered is undesirable. But that seems more of an issue with specific builds than a mechanical issue. Alternatively, if one insists on Sunder being part of the gaming experience, one could have Sunder as a stacking debuff in order to punish continued mispositioning.

  • Finally, for most of its history, GD has seen numerous buffs in its patch notes. This might be the first patch with almost solely nerfs. Notably, many of the things now geting hit with the nerf bat are items specifically buffed in previous patches, such as regeneration. Such a nerf fest seems counter productive to where the game has been heading over the past years and runs counter to the previously set expectations.

In closing, this entire patch seems like a(nother) step back for Hardcore and reads like a huge overreaction to the newly introduced Sunder mechanic being ignored by select builds.

My main concern is losing one of very few games offering such a varied and balanced hardcore experience. With GD drifting further towards a PoE experience, there is no other game to take its place.

8 Likes
2

this is why the change is confusing to me
1600 armour rating single digit phys res vs 3-5k armour rating now 25’ish phys res… one of these seems like it will take hell of a beating more than the other

2 Likes
3

Closing in on close to 5k hours here in the game, a bit more than half of them playing HC. I always thought that HC in Grim Dawn was extremely fair. If you died, it was because you made a mistake (and not some tiny foot-fault, a legitimate mistake) or your build was not good enough (insufficient DPS, sustain, or defensive layers). HC and SC play was also a bit of a continuum, versus being totally different games. Sure, you can push the envelope to an extreme level and try to get a record Ravager kill after dying 19 times just to show it can be done, but a lot of players don’t like dying on SC and incorporated defensive layers into their builds, they just went a bit higher on the DPS scale.

1.2 brought with it the sunder mechanic, which did push build construction a bit more towards prioritizing health and physical resistance. The evade was a great feature that did mitigate some of the impact of sunder. I continue to think that celestials being able to hit you for 72% more damage seemed excessive. Overall, however, I liked the challenge and thought 1.2 was a very solid patch. If sunder values were lower, I probably would have thought the patch was pretty much perfect. This is also coming from someone who has learned to anticipate and avoid most of the dangerous boss attacks. Aleks, for example, I actually think is an easier fight because the meteor is so obviously telegraphed.

Now it looks like we’re leaning further and further towards more 1-shot mechanics with sunder values getting even higher and physical resistance being nerfed significantly. I too question whether this is a good direction to go. The vast majority of builds aren’t ignoring sunder by celestials or sunder in SR65+, at least on HC. On SC, you can of course get away with anything you want while testing with no real consequences. That’s fine and there’s nothing wrong with playing the game that way if that’s what you like. Making the game with the fairest HC mode less HC friendly seems like a mistake.

There are sunder attacks that are easy to avoid and some that aren’t (including from enemies that hit you with a massive chunk of physical damage). There’s not really any adjustment to sunder values based on how easy they are to avoid, so even though Aleks may never sunder me, a bunch of other bosses will at some point (especially in crowded SR boss rooms).

I understand that sunder + evade reduced the ability to mindlessly facetank, which is a reasonable thing to want. I’m not sure what the nerf to phys res across the board is really accomplishing. If anything, looking at some initial numbers, it seems it will make tanks tankier versus squishier builds which are going to likely have lower armor.

1 Like
4

Except Sunder attacks don’t one-shot you? If you get hit by sunder, that is the time to back off.

2 Likes
5

I mean, we can say really nasty rapid-fire one-two punches (some of which look like a one-shot unless replaying the death at 25% speed) instead or refer to it as a debuff that enables far, far more things to one-shot you while active. I don’t think it really changes the issues a player would face, especially in something like a crowded SR boss room where there’s not exactly a lot of room to back off without pulling something else or with something like Ravager’s swipe attacks.

6

qft. i mean i have no skin in the game (softcore, hardly min-max, hardly do celestials/highish sr) but these suggestions make a hell of a lot more sense to me.

combat is chaotic, not exactly a turn-based affair. :stuck_out_tongue:

7

I find this to be an unreasonable suggestion whilst CC still exists in this game.

Several of the mobs applying Sunder have CC, such as Benn’Jahr or Moosilauke. While in and off themselves that might not be insurmountable, you will also find them accompanied by other, regular mobs, with CC - such as snares, traps, stuns. Or, in the Iron Maiden’s case, if you don’t dodge her Sunder charge, the stun ensures that her follow up hit will land.

8

Except Sunder attacks don’t one-shot you? If you get hit by sunder, that is the time to back off.

Zantarin’s Shotgun, Alek’s Meteor, Benn’jahr’s crystal explosion would like to disagree. They can definitely one-shot.
Moosilauke’s swipe in his first form also comes out hard-hitting and way fast. Ironically, that’s a main-campaign only issue, as his SR form doesn’t do that.

1 Like
9

That’s a technicality. if you are hit by Alex’s meteor in Crucible it’s GG and you know it. 2-shot technically though.

1 Like
10

But what if I want exactly this? Facetank without any thought, for couple of hours if needed? Sacrificing DPS, AoE output? Or otherwise - make a glass cannon for big numbers of damage (dealt… and taken :laughing:). Or something in the middle. Why implementing this “homogeneity”? :thinking:

Yeah, pretty nerf-heavy playtest. Too much sad stuff. Like this:

  • Crafted - Stoneplate Greaves: replaced % Physical Resist with 30 Defensive Ability
11

Then make Sunder apply 2-3 seconds AFTER being hit by such attacks, so we actually have time for some countermeasures. 3-2-1-BOOM, basically. Perhaps make it apply gradualy, from 0% to X% in Y seconds.

Clearly what those need is some Sleep res to be competitive =)

2 Likes
12

For a thread titled “taking a step back” a whole lot of people seem to have… not.

I’ve tested the changes on several different characters (7+) now and it’s not a big deal as far as my testing goes (hardcore, tested in SR 80 with no pharma). Also a lot of you need to remember this line:

That’s not how maths works. 70% going down to 55% is a 50% increase in damage taken, while 25% to 10% is only 20% more damage taken. The more you have, the stronger it is, so the more you have, the more you feel it’s loss.

2 Likes
13

i feel seen. :shushing_face:

stop making sense. i swear my brain got this initially and then immediately tossed the knowledge to the side: “lower numbers bad”.

14

I think the issue here is that phys res is often what is keeping you from being one-shot or one-two punched into a RIP. Like if we assume a 10k hit on each character and each character has 20k health (ignoring armor), going from 3k damage to 4.5k damage is a bigger relative change than going from 7.5k damage to 9k damage. It’s a bigger relative change from a much lower base, though. The character with less phys res, however, is in much more danger of actually being killed. The tank is slightly less safe, but it’s still a tank. The non-tank might as well be wearing tissue paper.

You’re also going to run into wrinkles with armor here. A lot of lower phys res builds also have low armor (there are some exceptions of course like Perdition), so it’s not just the relative change in phys res but also the lack of armor. It’s easier to deal with losing 15% phys res if you have a lot of armor to mop up the remaining damage.

Factoring in armor and looking at it from the perspective of “What’s the biggest hit I’m expecting to take,” life still seems scarier for the lower phys res character.

1 Like
15

This is all well and good, but completely ignores how monster damage was reduced in conjunction with player resists being reduced. If all we did was reduce % Physical Resist for players and left monster damage untouched, I can definitely see how this would feel like an outrageous nerf.

Is any of this based on actual gameplay or simply reading the patch notes? Are you find yourself dying constantly to trash packs and random one shots now?

6 Likes
16

I have to say I agree with a lot of what Villeynich said in the original post.

I’m not a build genius by any means that plays a lot of different class combinations, but what appeals to me about GD is the game mechanic complexity and trying to suss out 1-off builds that haven’t already been thoroughly and extensively vetted and documented here and then seeing how far they can push in SR.

With 1.2.1 my Sorcerer build has gone from 31% to 5% Physical Resist (unless keeping it on Benn’Jahr’s shoulderpads was an oversight, in which case I’d be at 0%). Similarly on my recent Battlemage build, I’ve gone from 30% to 4%. It’s a pretty shocking change, it doesn’t feel good.

As a late adopter to 1.2, I’m still adjusting to that so to be fair to the discussion I haven’t playtested the new changes, but I doubt my builds are going to feel more powerful or play better as a consequence, especially pushing in SR. For what it’s worth, I really dislike that.

I guess what bother me the most about the change is the rationale:

This change was made to narrow the gap between builds capable of stacking excessive amounts of % Physical Resist and those that struggled to get % Physical Resist in the first place.

Why not just cap Physical Resist lower? Wouldn’t that have been a lot less drastic and potentially upsetting to the vast majority of players invested in the status quo of what they farmed and built while still achieving the result you intended of “narrowing the [build] gap”?

I’m with OP in that I too thought 1.1.9.8 was a pretty good “finished” game, not that I’ve been here for all the changes. But I also liked what you guys did with 1.2, not only is the evade mechanic pretty cool, but it’s great how GD still gets attention and investment years later. That said, 1.2.1 doesn’t feel like a change that any of the players are asking for. Mostly the opposite.

Speculating now, but this feels more like an update driven internally perhaps to make it easier to attempt to balance the new FoA content with existing build diversity. I’ll wait to see how things shakeout as others playtest the changes as I’m only reacting to the changelog which obviously isn’t ideal feedback. (31%–> 5% though… :unamused:).

At least you have people invested and caring about these matters to come out of the woodwork to make comments about a mostly offline game.

1 Like
17

Weird how the people that don’t actually playtest the changes (you know, all of them together, at the same time, interacting) are also the ones that telepathically know the minds and oh also speak for the vast majority of players too.

1 Like
18

That’s fair. It’s a logical fallacy anyway to assume and argue one’s opinions/criticisms is shared by a majority opinion so definitely not adding anything to my argument, my bad.

That said, it’s interesting how neither you nor anyone else (Z) cared to address the actual meat of my criticism. To repeat: why take such a heavy-handed approach in reworking a long-evolved and accepted game mechanic and resultant itemization when a simpler, much less dramatic fix could meet the stated intent of the change? Lowering the physical resistance cap.

The way I’ve been using the variety of physical resistance items/components/devotions was in attempts to create endgame viable builds that wouldn’t otherwise be tanky (melee casters). Instead, by eliminating the diversity of PR items and pathways and leaving only a few ways to get it, I read that this change as it stands results in more importance on the fewer items and pathways PR still exists on which makes perfect sense. As a result you end up with less build diversity, at least when it comes to viable min/maxed endgame and boss content as the optimal itemization path is reduced to the items still with PR.

In other words, the message becomes to stick with the “obvious” itemization paths and sets. So less choice and build individuation, again, in the context of SR climbing and boss fights which is what I care about.

I don’t see this as a positive change especially given the only builds I’ve been playing are probably no longer viable the way I want to play them without drastic re-itemization in which case they’d probably resemble what amounts to more of a “cookie-cutter” build.

19

i asked this earlier, and was given the same answer (as in the past): it just shifts the goalpost and introduces a(nother) new “this is what we get/aim for” - which is true, and we can easily see this on ex attack speed/cast speed builds/other scenarios
^additionally, without also then still removing bunch of phys res, it just means some builds get a freebie replacement while still being capped; can now swap any surplus phys res into other stuff

i’m still curious about, having looked at a couple builds, is why not just remove phys res outright.
Currently there is still a huge discrepancy among some builds, where you have single digit phys res, or 30+ phys res,
so the impact might be less because of reduced enemy phys dmg, but the build/stat discrepancy still exists, and potentially very wide from one build to another.

1 Like
20

Thanks - yeah that all makes sense.

That could be a viable approach, but as a core mechanic and key part of many/most builds you’d be talking about reworking and re-balancing everything at that point, no? Rather than an evolution or relatively minor iteration of previous versions, you’d basically be forking GD, perhaps to a larger degree than what 1.2 was to 1.1.9.8.

So the build discrepancy hasn’t gone away, nor has the importance of having PR as the mechanic still exists, the changes have just resulted in placing greater importance on the now fewer ways to acquire it.

Still given the rework (time/$) involved in removing a core mechanic as you suggested, that might not be the best approach (it could be, just not an easy solution). However, the heavy-handed approach of PR removal from items/components/devotions doesn’t feel right either. Why not just focus on tweaking the numbers (down) for skills and items in which devs felt they resulted in excess build discrepancy? In other words, an evolution respecting existing mechanics and itemization rather than what appears more like a fork.

Then again I suppose you could say that’s what they did, and the result is that some builds that relied on these “non-standard” pathways to build reasonable PR get to be the sacrificial lambs. So right back to where you started above with shifting goalposts “this is what we get/aim for” - PR changes just place more importance on sets and “standardized” ways to get it.