Thoughts about itemsets and builddiversity

Grim Dawn Ideas and Feedback
1

We all love powerful sets. They are the sweet reward of our SoT- and Groveruns, they turn our characters into semigods, they open up build possibilities and ease the task to design new toons.

Nonetheless, the more i’ve played GD after AoM came out, the more i realized, that with the mythical sets and their very powerful special properties - like conversions, extra projectiles, weapondamage to skills aso asf - some of the creative freedom and creative thrill of theorycrafting, that GD had for me before AoM, dissappeared. Whilst it is certainly still possible to think out of the box and come up with something unusual, it has become much harder to make a great build that doesn’t have item support via sets and MIs.

For example one of my very first ideas when AoM came out, was a 2H Ritualist using Vitality based Savagery and Bone Harvest. It seemed very logical to combine the class with the best skill for 2h and the best vitresreduction with the new vitdamage class into a “tankandspank” 2H build. And yes, there are items, that seem ok for the idea, for example Wildblood Crusher as the weapon, Mythical Dread Armor of Azragor as the chest, the Bloodknight Pendant in the Amulet slot asf. But when you throw all these items together and look at the numbers in Grimtools, you realize, that you end up with very few + skills and a lot of “useless” remaining nonvitality damage and that you have some troubles to get sufficient OA and DA too. I’ve played the character up to 100, but it never felt quite good enough to put the last bit of effort into it, especially since it wasn’t clear to me, how i could actually improve it significantly. It simply was missing the itemsupport that there is for Bleed, Lightning and Physbased Savagery.

This experience has led me to believe, that maybe there should be rare affixes or rare itembases, that come with a buildenabling feature, wich is not tied to a specific skill. (For example nonphys conversion with randomly rolled damagetypes, so that you can get sth like aether to poison. Or maybe a procc, that gives a small amount of % weapon damage to your right mouse button skill. Stuff like that.) At first glance this might seem potentially op, because there is so much more RR for e.g. Poison than e.g. Aether, but keep in mind that you would still be lacking the support of items dedicated directly towards either your skill or your damagetype and that you would still need a ton of rares with very specific rolls to make a character without unique item support work. But at least you would have a nonzero chance, to create something good and worthwhile.

Since a new expansion is coming out next year, i wanted to use what seemed like the last appropriate moment to throw the idea up in the air.

2

I can say that while I do have a bunch of builds that wear 5+ MI’s and even some that wear a few epics, I agree with your point. The issue to me is a lot simpler: Non-set-non-weapon legendaries can be quite lacking and are too few in number.

At the same time this is not a simple thing to fix, and power-creep is inevitable. ARPG’s are a complex web and while it’s easy to point to something we may not like or just not find ideal, finding a solution that doesn’t fuck something else up can be quite difficult.

So take for example the desire to make singular legendaries more competitive with sets. Well since you cannot expect the hyper-synegery sets have when you’re going with non-set pieces, you have to pack a lot more power into the single item to compensate.

But then there’s the fact that all of our sets in GD do not take up the same slots. You have the 5 piece sets but also the 4 piece sets and whatnot. So when you pack that much power into a single-non-set legendary, it runs the risk of just being even better with an already existing set.

Personally I’m working with the playtesters to try to get all the remaining undertuned sets, class skills, and devotion options (there were only a few) up to par/cleanly viable before we tackle the problem you’re describing. It’s hard for me personally to think so much about a single legendary when some of the 5 piece sets that are so hard to complete are still not good or just underwhelming. (Infernal Knight, Dreeg’s set, to name a couple)

My hope is that after we get this done (we’re not far off I think) we can hopefully get the devs to focus post-release content updates on no more sets but instead more single powerful legendaries and fixing up the poor existing ones (Meat Shield, Everliving Grove gloves).

The OA/DA option is something we’re aware of too. The ideal solution here is probably a mixture of shoving some more around lesser used constellations and again, probably putting some more on non-set legendaries.

This isn’t a problem you’re going to solve with a broadbrush solution though. The most likely thing is to try to reach out to other community members (as you are but I mean rally the troops) and suggest specific changes to items.

It will be a longer process but will create a better diversity of options in the long run. Ofc there will always be a best option, but hopefully in the future we can make sets slightly less of a part of that.

The other side is we don’t want to then overshadow sets, because sets are cool and people like them. To GD’s credit unlike D3 sets or often smaller. A lot of mainstream D3 sets are 6 slots, with most of the set’s power packed into its final bonus. In GD the biggest sets are 5 pieces and sometimes their power is packed into the penultimate bonus, allowing you to swap a piece out where you see fit.

The game would need more legendary shoulders/gloves/torso/head pieces primarily. And many boots need tuning up.

I really think it’s a mixture of the literal number of set items vs. non set items at high levels + a lot of the non set items being too weak to compete with the set slots.

And frankly, while sets may force our hands a bit, the reality is there are a huge diversity of builds that compete relatively well in performance. Crate just sort of went above and beyond with sets and sort of made a set for almost every single skill in the game. And this is what happens when you do so.

3

Hi Doom,

thx a lot for your reply. I’m glad to hear that there is awareness for the issue, and i’m sure the devs and you guys will figure out a good solution. I’m more or less agreeing with all of your points. If there is going to be more buildenabling stuff outside of sets (be it as legendary, MI or randomized rare) i’ll be very happy. Raw power for the sets, conversion and skillenhancing properties as standalone, that would be my motto. (Slatharr’s crest e.g. is great, because it packs all the good stuff in one slot and then you can build around it).

On a sidenote - i really liked the unique design in the old days of PoE, when uniques gave you something very special and buildenabling, but also had a severe downside you had to compensate somehow. (Unfortunately at some point they started to create more and more Uniques, wich are just BiS statbombs, sigh.) I understand oc that this approach wont work with the entirely different class and itemsystem in GD, but i think, the general concept to seperate the buildenabling stuff from the stuff that simply gives you a lot of dps or a lot of survivability is worth noting.

Btw, any news on the cornucopia front? I’ve been so soaked up by the last two PoE leagues, that i didn’t follow the recent developments in the GD universe as closely as i used to.

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I can’t actually speak for the devs so I don’t know how much time they’d really want to invest in something like this where nothing is really broken. And I think you might have slightly misunderstood my point. I said putting that much power in a single non-set legendary as to tempt you not to complete or use a set is DANGEROUS. Generally such an item can just be so good that it makes some other set or partial set even better. When I think what you and I really have in mind is the hope that some builds that don’t use any set pieces or just 1 or two pieces can become more viable.

So how do you do this without making an OP legendary? Well generally you just make a few set-like items but don’t actually make them part of a set. Imagine taking any set and dividing its set bonuses over all its set pieces. Some of those pieces might become OP but you get the idea, that’s basically what it takes to make non-set items compete with set items.

The reason why sets are good is because it constrains the power to multiple pieces. However yes, I still would like to see non-set legendaries be more competitive if possible.

I think the solution is what you said though, conversion + skill enhancement more on stand-alones. But you still might need 2 or 3 pieces that look like they kind of belong together but can kind of stand apart in order for it to truly work well I think. Like imagine a stand-alone legendary that converts forcewave to vitality and is good for the cooldown version of forcewave (maybe adds another 2 seconds to its cooldown and adds more damage modified) and then a separate set item that is for vitality cadence. They don’t directly go together, but because they both convert a soldier skill to vitality and cadence can auto while you cast FW off cooldown, that sort of thing can work if there’s enough other gear support as well. It’s difficult is my point. But hey, if Crate doesn’t add a bunch of non-set legendaries/MI’s that can fill that role, some of us will I guess.

As for items with trade-offs, they take a lot of thought for a single item. Players in general just don’t psychologically like negatives. And so the positive must be good enough to off-set it, and with how complex GD is it can be hard to find the balance without making it underpowered or overpowered. But it’s another kind of item I’d like to see explored more.

As for Cornucopia it’s on hiatus until Crate is officially done developing the game all together. Ceno and I felt we took it too far last time and that trying to incorporate attribute changes was a mistake. And working on a rebalancing mod but then going backwards to try and incorporate Crate’s patches was a pain in the ass that ended up always undoing a lot of our work since where possible we want to take their changes.

However I just started picking up on my own mod which will take one of Cornucopia’s end goals and do it immediately.

http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/showthread.php?t=79573

The idea is to make bosses more interesting, and when that’s done then make them each rewarding (this is where non-set legendaries/MI’s will get introduced in abundance), make crafting less of a pain and a bit cheaper, and make multiplayer less of a joke. The scope of things it’ll affect my broaden out if people start requesting more.

5

As tweedledee said about PoE, I think the sets need to either come with a reasonable downside, or they alter builds in a way that makes them unique, not just a big DPS/toughness boost with a bonus skill.

I.e. like the mechanics in PoE passive tree like Chaos Inoculation (health is 1 but Chaos immunity granted), or no health regen but extra life leech, etc.

GD could do many things there with the sets: i.e. Aether becomes DoT, all DoT dealt instantly but XX% damage reduced, double projectile but 40% less damage, PRM shoots all directions, but range is reduced to X, Shadow Strike fires Ring Of Steel at the destination, but has extra cooldown, etc…

It creates unique builds that also change the playstyle and cause the player to decide what is important…

6

Some of these would require more programming, for a single item, for just a team of 12 people working on the game (of which I don’t think all do programming).

Don’t get me wrong though. It is my fucking modding wet dream for one of their final post-release updates being tons more templates/types of skill modifiers being added to the game.

I’ve considered bribing them.

7

I know with Forgotten Gods coming out we’re likely to get another 20 to 30 new affixes but I actually don’t want any more. It’s hard enough to legitimately find what you’re after. If you make a build enabling affix this will just make matters worse for non-GD-stash players.

Build enabling MI’s already exist but I would like to see more of these with slightly more competitive rolls and have them be easier to drop (screw you Ikrix!). Existing MI’s certainly need to be fine-tuned. We have some really solid MI’s and some really ok-ish MI’s and some really funny looking MI’s that you would probably never touch.

Lastly I don’t agree that Flat damage should be converted to DoT. The only DoT that I wish to see conversion for is Bleeding. Eg Bleeding damage converted to [insert DoT here]. The alternative is to just make bleeding be the DoT of Pierce as has been suggested in the past.

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@ Gumshoe:
As unlikely as it is, that we see things like that, i love your suggestions. Would be sooo cooooool :cry:.

@ DuckKing:
Cluttering the affix pool certainly is a downside to a solution with rares, but that would be a price i’m willing to pay. But i’m not opposed to a solution via legendaries or MIs either. I just want to get some of my ideas to work :D. I never meant to say anything about flat to dot conversion though. The “poison” in the example should have been “acid”. My mistake.

@ Doom:
I fully understand your concerns regarding balance and overall powerlevel. One possibility to kinda circumvent the issue could be to use a highly contested slot (helmets come to mind). A completely different approach would be to limit “buildenabler-items” to just the buildenabling property and maybe one or two other mods, and use a slot, that is contested very little by sets / “power-items” (e.g. boots). (Just brainstorming ideas here.)
The bigger practical difficulties probably will arise, when it comes to designing/buffing the “supporter-items”. First of all you need to identify, what people likely will use in conjuction with a certain buildenabler, and then you need to figure out, what would be an appropriate helpful change to the supporting item, that doesn’t break it in other setups. (+x-skill is prolly the safest bet here.)
I definitely see, that it’s a f*ton of work, if somebody really wants to adress this mess systematically :cry:.
Anyway - gl with your mod, it sounds great. I will definitely check it out at some point.