Thinking of actually reviving my last HC char because this is actually pissing me off insanely

Grim Dawn Gameplay Discussion
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So what happened? Well I was playing in a party of 3, we were farming dungeons, and I was playing this partially Octavius build with insane DoT strength and duration buffs.

F****n reflect hero mob appears, and of course I went in extra hard like I always do because when those f*****s reflect me I could just always lifesteal back on trash around and outheal my own DoT applied on me.

Not this time around, it seems this DoT got even stronger than anytime before because MP buffs to mobs or something and my healthbar started dropping insanely, I never ever seen my healthbar drop so fast and just kept droppin, nothing could stop it. All of my heals were on CD and those 2 guys were actually more of a hindrance in this case. Actually I canā€™t really blame them cause they didnā€™t know, but if they wouldnā€™t come in in the last second or so and melted the screen Iā€™m sure I would of lived because I would just lifesteal the rest of the screen like I always did in SP.

Those 2 guys actually killed me or at least contributed to my death at least 50% by clearing the entire screen so fast and there was nothing to leech from anymore. Another funny thing where I wasnā€™t fast enough lol cause I wasnā€™t used to playing MP, when you panic press ESC nothing happens, you cannot really pause the game, I tried pausing the game after seeing thereā€™s no saving me anymore just to figure out that I canā€™t and I was totally shocked and after that it was just too late, my toon actually killed herself.

Any other HC players here with deaths that theyā€™re totally mad about and shouldnā€™t really happen?

I never did this before and Iā€™ve been playing HC for quite some time, but this time Iā€™m seriously considering reviving using GD stash (even though I gotta admit that I donā€™t really like the program and Iā€™m not using it otherwise, Iā€™ve never revived any of my dead chars before and I had plenty of them die).

This is mostly SP game and I thought to never ā€œcheatā€ in it, and I definitely get the sentiment of why even play HC if itā€™s just SC with some kind of added burden and you can just revive your char after death.

I totally agree, and one could say that you can always rationalize your deaths and revive afterwards. But certain situations can be just so incredibly stupid that Iā€™m just not able to put up with them and this is one of them.

It is perhaps similar than I donā€™t know not noticing that youā€™re standing in some kind of a ground effect and dying because of that. I donā€™t know, I love playing HC and I cannot even imagine not playing HC anymore, but on the other hand HC gives me great pain sometimes. ITā€™s a love - hate relationship sometimes, you can have it both.

It is particularily painful that there are a shitload of stuff that you die from if not paying great great attention, just like this time. Even if you have great resists, great DA, OA, great armor, great killsped, great everything, the game just finds a way to still kill you with your own damage.

I just cannot put up with that, just canā€™t.

F**k it, if warden Krieg can have 2 lives, Karozz can have 2 lives, and even some hero mobs come back after youā€™ve killed them once Iā€™m allowing myself 2 lives also! Especially in this fā€™d up situation. :slight_smile:

2

I understand it feels bad but do you mind sharing your build (grimtools)?
I also play HC! :slight_smile:

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1.) If you play hc and die, you are dead. Shit happens. If you revive your character, why play hardcore? :rolleyes:

2.) Fuck it, please. DonĀ“t write f**k, weĀ“re still reading it as fuck, so just donĀ“t.

3.) If you wanna revive your hc char, like the filthy cheater you are, just do it. No one cares. :stuck_out_tongue:

1 Like
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https://www.grimtools.com/calc/dVbJpYEV

Another small rant I have to make if weā€™re already talking about reflect. Why is the game designed so that it is completely impossible to make a viable reflect character, reflection is just a completely useless mechanic for pretty much any build. This is due to monsters huge HP to DMG ration where they have those crazy ammounts of HP to relatively small dmg in comparison.

On player characters it is totally opposite, we usually have relatively huge dmg in relation to insanely small HP bar compared to monsters and bosses. I know that some bosses have like millions of HP, which just sounds retarded. Ok I understand they gotta compensate for the huge ammount of dmg that the player can usually dish out, but this reflect against IT builds is just insanely unfair.

Iā€™m not dying against some type of trash mob when I can clear most bosses, nemesis on ult with little to no issues. And my build is not even finalized.

All of this due to the fact that you can hardly (never) have so many phys and IT resists as you can for other dmg types.

I always hated the reflect bs, I think this is the cheapest trick possible when it comes to arpgā€™s in general. Ok certain bosses debuffing and shotguning isnā€™t enough apparently, so weā€™ll make those guys reflect everything you do back to you and weā€™re gonna punish IT builds extra hard becauseā€¦well I honestly donā€™t have no idea why.

This is one of the mechanics I just cannot live with, sorry.

5

reflect and retal builds arenā€™t allowed to exist because they require 0 player input.

6

I recently started playing HC, got my char to 100 and right now, Iā€™m somewhere in the jungle between the Coven and Barrowholm on ultimate. The only reason I left SC was to get the achievements of HC. My lifeā€™s actually actionpacked enough, so I donā€™t need the extra tension in a game. Therefore I save my char after each playing session so I donā€™t have to go through all the heart attack moments again. Didnā€™t have to resurrect him yet tho and I think I only had to save-exit once. :stuck_out_tongue:

7

I cannot exactly agree. First of all letā€™s look at diablo style arpgā€™s first. It is a fact that those types of games were never designed with player ability being the most important thing. We have a bunch of competitive grade games built for that purpose and trust me I know because for a long time Iā€™ve been mostly a fighting game player. And Iā€™d say that FG (not talking bout forgotten gods lol) is actually the furthest away from arpgā€™s that you can get, a massive competence is required in FG genre to actually achieve something and make yourself a better player.

In arpgā€™s it is completely the other way around, thatā€™s also the reason why they even enable hardcore mode in the first place! Imagine HC mode in a competitive grade game, you loose one match and you arenā€™t allowed to play the game any more or at least with a certain character. It would be impossible even for the best players in the world. The fact is the gameplay itself of pointing and clicking is extremely basic, you could even say dumbed down. This is on the other hand balanced by character building and gearing (grind), which accounts to at least 90% of your success in an arpg. Ok you can make an argument that there is some little ammounts of skill involved (especially piloting tips for crucible and stuff like that). But still if we compare that to some type of a competitive grade game this required skillset is extremely basic and extremely limited. In arpgā€™s your character is everything and your ability to make a good build is everything, end of story.

So if we understand this logic and how many hours of grind is actually required to make a good build (contrary to hours of grind to aquire certain player based skills in competitive games) and the skill ceiling is relatively low it is only logical that the player is revarded with something else for his time investment. The player is rewarded with a very powerful character that can clear most if not all of the game content with relative ease. And this is exactly as it should be in this type of games.

I was never the one to advocate nerfs and whatnot in primarily single player based games. If you have the ability to make a powerful build, which you are not using to unfairly beat your human opponents with, whatā€™s the problem?

If youā€™re a able to play passively with that build whatā€™s the problem, if you want to play passive why not be able to play passive? The player should be able to choose how he wants to play. I could make a pretty passive pet build for example, why donā€™t I make it? Because I donā€™t like that playstyle, and if someone likes it, why not allow him to play this way?

Another argument, if the devs indeed donā€™t support the creation and usage of passive builds, then why are pet builds still in the game and very viable too? (contrary to retal and especially reflect being almost useless) Yea I know youā€™ll probably say that pet builds still require a bit more player input which is true to some extentā€¦but! At the same time with minimal more player input pet builds have those crazy clearspeeds, map exploration, etc. Those things wouldnā€™t be possible on a retalition/reflect build even if things worked properly to make those builds viable too.

And also, if a mob can kill me very ā€œproperlyā€ with his reflect in seconds (under certain circumstances), why cannot I kill him with mine in minutes or more (even if I dedicate hours upon hours to make a dedicated reflect build)?

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The main problem I can see is you do not reduce the reflected damage!

Solemn Watcher (20% reflected damage reduction) constellation would help!
Owl also has 15%.
After those if you feel like you need more there is the Titan Plating component that have 15%ā€¦ but that component can be harder to put into a build sometimes.
Ghoulish Hunger (ghoul constellation) proc also gives you lifesteal AND physical resist when it trigger! Tortoise constellation can be helpfull too.

The Inquisitor Sceal is supposed to help too, make sure youā€™re standing winthin it to receive less damage. Currently you have yours at 12, and you could have it at 14 with your current gear!

More HP would help too, for exemple I tend to generally prefer Seal of Ancestry over Seal of Annhilation in HC.

Hope it helps :slight_smile:

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Thx actually yea I guess I did overlook this stat a bit and itā€™s a shame. Funny enough this is not by any means my finalized build, I was using this one for farming and I guess it just wasnā€™t up to par in some aspects. It seems that reflected dmg reduction is another one of very important defensive stats which got overlooked by most of my builds thus far.

Meh another problem is that I just cannot bring myself to play a character that has died anymore, even if I revive her I find myself loosing all the interest so I guess Iā€™ll be forced to just let this one go again.

But thx for your input, I will definitely be looking out for that reflect reduction in my upcoming builds! It can get so goddamn hard to pay attention to everything that might kill you in ultimateā€¦

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Youā€™re welcome!

I just wanna add that for other damage type (beside internal trauma damage),
Overcapping your resist and having an higher resist cap (Avenger of Cairn or all Conduits Amulets) helps against reflect.

An higher resist cap means that you can have over 80%. For exemple Avenger of Cairn give +4% to all resist cap and another 4% for aether resist. It means that all your resist will go as high as 84% resistances (88% with aether). With all conduits amulets itā€™s 3% so all your resistances can go as high as 83%. Overcapping your resistances is good all the time against resist reduction your character might have from ennemies. Itā€™s good so you do not take sudden burst damage from them but also agasint reflect since if your resistance (of your damage type since vs reflect) is lower then you receive more damage!

If you can, eventually as you get better gear you can try to aim for 30-40 overcapped resist. That said for some builds its easier than others! For bleeding (unless itā€™s your damage type i guess) and piercing, not having overcapped resist isnā€™t as bad (Forgotten Gods expansion might change that!)ā€¦ for other resistances it depends what you fight and your own damage type :slight_smile:

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Interesting. You havenā€™t been following Oathkeeper news any have ya? Retal is getting a shot in the arm with FG.

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If you want to restore your char then do it. Itā€™s a single player game and if it means you keep having fun then so be it. Donā€™t worry about being ā€˜True Hardcoreā€™ if it means ultimately you donā€™t want to play.

Half the people who will give you advice probably GDStash some/all of their characters anyway shrug

Have fun!

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Another option is to be cautious and bind a lvl 1 skill that you donā€™t use much to Ulo devotion power to dispel reflect. Usually you can see the reflect animation or read the hero name before reflecting high dot upon yourself and dispel the hero.

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I already know those things but thanks anyway. For me the biggest problem is getting greedy eventually, and eventually when I farm for a certain item after a certain time that I canā€™t get it I usually get greedy and start being a bit reckless. Also what I did not know about Octavius set is that it is probably the best way to get yourself killed with reflect with no reflect reduction. I just found a thread from cca. 1 year ago when somebody was writing exactly about that. But I guess after that I will be looking to at least get about 20% (or more) reflect reduction on all characters. I already knew about overcapping and how important it is. Thatā€™s why I always checked monster database before harder fights and used an appropriate potion if needed (like vitality and posion against Zantarin for example). It can get very hard to get all of your resistances to 80% and over on ultimate with all the reduction you get. Itā€™s also hard balancing between offense and defense and easy to get greedy. Because we all know that overcapping certain resists can cost some dmg/OA/etc.

15

Then it completely defeats the purpose of playing HC.

If you end up dying again in the future, youā€™ll just rez him again so reallyā€¦thereā€™s not a point.

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At what point does it break from being a retaliation build that kills stuff by getting attacked to being a build that is simply using retal stats as another source of flat damage going into its skills? I find it hard to call the latter a retal build as the term has come to be defined. Itā€™s more to say that retal stats will have an application that makes them more worthy of note.

17

Agree, I actually revived her but was frustrated, so I went on to eat Zantarinā€™s life reduction shotgun, just to make sure if that thing can still one-shot. It definitely does, oneshot drop dead lol, even with 50% overcapped vitality. Making another char already :slight_smile:

Agree.

18

You still have to build up your retaliation sources and make it a strong focus of your build to make a significant impact. Enough that you could be considered a retaliation build.

Indeed. I never cared about retaliation builds before. Total snoozefest. Oathkeeper changes that.

19

Heh.

IT dot reflect needs those reflect reduction nodes for safety simply because it is pretty hard to cap phys resist and it bypasses armor. Especially with extended duration.

I started with a burn pyro that had huge duration and even with +% items (over 80, etc) that could be pretty hairy in some reflect situations. As soon as blast shield went on CD, that burn was very noticeable and kept going forever! If this had been IT, Iā€™d have been dead many times.

Re: HC. Well, you can just say the char is now a softcore character and convert the save to SC(rename file? or swap directory maybe?). Itā€™s not like there are leagues distinguishing each and it would be a personal call just as any mod is a personal call.

20

against reflect mob/bosses:
try to have a spare weapon that is weaker than your main weapon (and make sure your defenses are strong enough to counter the damage from that spare weapon and your skill damages).

and watch your health bar closely, donā€™t get greedy, use your healing skills/life leech at the right time.

i donā€™t know what to say about reviving you lost hc character though. hopefully youā€™ll fare better against reflect type enemies next time.