[The Crucible] Perceived shift in difficulty - especially Crowd Control against players

[Superfluff]

Converted phys does is not checked by armor

It is known and was discussed

Sweet testing though

[grey-maybe]

glad that developers are aware.
the question is: is it a hole in a game engine or a direct decision?
and how did it affected physical gear and conversions in general?

[malawiglenn]

glad that developers are aware.
the question is: is it a hole in a game engine or a direct decision?
and how did it affected physical gear and conversions in general?

You need to read this thread in more detail

The interaction between armor and physical damage works exactly as it was coded to work, thus it is not a bug. There was simply no point in ripping out an entire system and rewriting it when the game was balanced around this behavior.

[grey-maybe]

so we are fine with the inequality between converted phys and normal phys?
and won’t do anything about it?

[Boromonokli]

Except that vendor in Port Valbury duplicating, there must be a portal to hell at those world coordinates.

One solution is to make it a feature via a lore note.

Yeah, but it makes one-handed and dual wielding physical builds less than desirable.

Do I misremember that there was a time when DW was the only viable form of melee, sword and board too slow, 2h too inconsistent?

Are Pets balanced around this too?
Because I don’t think anyone had been able to make a physical pet build comparable in strength to other damage types. And I very much assume that the armor & phys dmg interaction is the core of the problem.

I don’t know. But I do know that when I finally managed to convert the remainder of physical damage to elemental via bysmiel’s butterknife (mindweaver) on skeletons my killing speed skyrocketed.

[medea_fleecestealer]

At this late stage of the game’s development, no.

[mad_lee]

Having been hanging around the forums and playing since around B13 I’d actually argue, at least from what I review in build threads, that we’ve gotten drastically worse instead better. All I see in every “best ever” style build thread is poorly documented anecdotal evidence and cherry picked speed runs. I haven’t seen a detailed numbers breakdown in years explaining why gear piece X is more useful than Y, or why what appears to be a 5% difference somehow makes the build (because it almost certainly doesn’t). From an in-depth math and related mechanics breakdown standpoint, these forums are a disaster compared to most other major arpgs (@malawiglenn and @tqFan excluded off the top of my head). Maybe it all happens on the russian discord and never sees the light of day, but from what gets posted here, it looks like a series of poorly controlled experiments producing sometimes brilliant, sometimes questionable takeaways. Compounding that is then the audacity, in the lack of any of this hard data, to claim across the board understanding of what is best in almost every other build and feedback thread that pops up. I don’t think anyone is discrediting the time spent playing and intuitive understanding that comes from that, but ultimately the game boils down to numbers at the end of the day and that side of the discussion has been absent for a long time.

I sometimes test builds for days before posting them. That’s already a lot of time spent on a hobby. Writing a huge write-up about why “a” is better than “b” is something that I have no time no desire to do. There is also no use breaking down same mechanics over and over again. If you want to ask me about some of the decisions I made when creating my builds, you can do that and I will gladly answer. But ain’t nobody doing encyclopedia write-ups anymore.

Another thing that I find funny and sweet about those build guides from vanilla is that a lot of those builds were far from optimized despite huge number break-down etc. Simply because there was no need to test them against super harsh endgame (which didn’t exist back then), so a lot of things worked.

Do I misremember that there was a time when DW was the only viable form of melee, sword and board too slow, 2h too inconsistent?

How the turn tables! Two-handed physical melee meta is much stronger than dw and s&b one (the latter is almost forgotten, lol), although it’s carried solely by Blade Arc.

[malawiglenn]

You’re producing tirades against players of a game, no, a genre you seem to have zero idea about…

I know you miss that dude with the sacred strike CT spellbinder

Is BA “melee” though?

Melee (game terminology)

[Ceno]

Example: Cadence has a hidden cooldown. A preat just reported it today.

Yeesh, does no one make bug reporting threads or cite their sources anymore?

Nobody had known about it, nobody really knows how it functions.

I’m interested in the thread/report because I’m pretty sure I reported on this in 2018.

[Willnoword]

so we are fine with the inequality between converted phys and normal phys?
and won’t do anything about it?

Welcome to Grim Dawn . Inequality, exceptions from rules and many hidden mechanics. But it stays a solid game though. Just “do the best you can with what you have got”.

[Evil_Baka]

so we are fine with the inequality between converted phys and normal phys?
and won’t do anything about it?

Read what Zantai said again carefully:

The interaction between armor and physical damage works exactly as it was coded to work, thus it is not a bug. There was simply no point in ripping out an entire system and rewriting it when the game was balanced around this behavior.

---

Physical damage as a whole and builds that use it have had their numbers tweaked for years up until now in various ways so that they work in some capacity. Just about every gear piece, devotion, skill and so on that features Physical damage, at some point will have been tested and had their numbers revised so that the big picture builds centred around a collection of those fit in with the rest despite the things Physical damage has to deal with.

“Fixing” the known issues with it throws all of that out the window and necessitates that gets done again just so we’re back to square one where Physical damage “works” but in a different way to now - this late on in the game’s lifecycle, it’s frankly not worth devoting that amount of time to doing. This goes for enemy Physical damage and player defense against it as well by the way - it’s not something that can be done simply or quickly.

[Shadowpast]

I can’t or don’t have the background to comment on the any changes (imagined or otherwise) in CR as I can’t standing fighting in a box.

Let’s look at this so called cadence bug just noted and place the CR in the same context:

Is it possible, unless checked prior to Z’s post, that there is something occurring in the background that is causing Mad_Lee’s issues?

I am not backing his complaint in that something is wrong. I can’t prove or disprove. I side with the fact that people are finding a part of the game they love seemingly having been altered. That ruins fun. I used the same rationale in arguing against SR changes (outside of the time penalty).

I gotta say though Z has no reason to deceive the community so if it is checked and found to be nil, case closed or as he said…class over was it.

Crowd control in this game is rough. I won’t step foot inside SR without 80% trap res which means you are like stuck taking Magi Boots for non phys, playing Nightblade, inquisitor, arcanist or running a devotion with enough up time or trap res nodes otherwise someone will root you and one crack your ass back to some prehistoric age with the right mutators.

Being a jerk here and I know this comment won’t get any traction but I still always wanted to say it. My character is not a “crowd”. So why I am cc’d. Dumb right? I know.

I wish there was some way without having to take the same devotions and other stuff just to survive in there.

I feel where Lee is coming from. Instead of just outright flaming him or others, just take a second to check the back end. If nothing is wrong well…

I haven’t played in a long while because I am just tired of how certain things are now in game. I vented my frustrations over more options for conversion rings or better drop % for magi or craftable rings with conversion, camera pulling, boss rooms in SR, etc.

But those are my problems in which I felt no need to further argue them and just let the thread be. Not everyone will have the same issues, however that is not to say they are wrong…

[ASYLUM101]

It’s been known for years, since the mod tools were available. Pretty sure that was earlier than 2018

[Zantai]

In regards to the “mysterious” Cadence cooldown, it is a very straightforward mechanic implemented to avoid issues with WPS skills that hit multiple times. I vaguely recall that there may also have been issues with passthrough projectiles on ranged weapons and Cadence, but it’s been I somewhere around 4-5 years when this mechanic was introduced…

In any case, the internal cooldown is a fraction of a second to prevent multiple charges of Cadence to build. Before the cooldown existed, Amarasta’s Quick cut could, for example, proc Cadence incredibly often.

You may occasionally run into this cooldown at extremely high attack speeds, but it’s going to have little to no impact over time.

[Boromonokli]

Before the cooldown existed, Amarasta’s Quick cut could, for example, proc Cadence incredibly often.

And to think 4-5 years ago we still had Amarasta’s Slow Cut instead of Amarasta’s Quick Cut…

[Norzan]

Remove the cooldown, please. Pierce Cadence Blademaster is poop and needs a buff.

[Boromonokli]

I second that. Or make it exposed to modding/DBR so we can mod it out and make hilarious Path of Exile style killing montages.

[Maska322]

There is path of exile mod already. Removes caps and cooldowns

[Knife]

Jesus. That must be ridiculous.