Thoughts on Underperforming Skills, Gear, and the 1.3 Patch Notes

Grim Dawn Public Test Discussion
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Just wanted to drop some of my personal thoughts and feedback (maybe a little bit of a rant, tbh) on the current state of the game and the recent 1.3 patch notes. Most of this applies to 1.2.1.6 as well.

Normally, I’d record a video to back all this up, but I do not have enough time and energy. So, here’s a quick text breakdown based on my own extensive testing of what feels kinda weak right now.

Soldier

  • 2H Forcewave is seriously lagging behind the 1H version, especially with how crazy the Octavius set is. It’d be awesome to see some RAtA added to 2H Forcewave. Soldier is the OG retaliation mastery, but it honestly lacks the skills/modifiers to fully push that playstyle.

Demolitionist

  • Stun Jacks really needs some love. It’s basically forgotten at this point. Only a couple of sets like Light’s Guardian and Harra’s support it, and they aren’t even that strong. Plus, relying on specific green MIs just to get life steal feels bad.
  • Demo has huge base physical damage and nodes like Temper, but absolutely ZERO physical RR. So, everyone just converts the physical damage to elemental or whatever instead of actually playing a phys Demo. Kinda misses the mark, since Demo totally has the vibe of a heavy physical mastery.

Occultist

  • Sigil of Consumption’s single-target damage is kinda meh. Even with the lower cooldown, I’d honestly prefer casting one really strong, high-DPS Sigil rather than having to spam and stack a bunch of them.
  • Bloody Pox should probably just stick to being a utility/debuff skill rather than getting pure damage modifiers. We’re never really going to use it as a core DPS skill anyway.
  • Doom Bolt radius should definitely scale with skill level.

Nightblade

  • Nightblade is in a great spot rn, but I’d love to see some RAtA builds for it (other than the usual Dreegal’anore stuff) just to mix things up.

Arcanist

  • Olexra’s Flash Freeze is mechanically weird. Since it only applies RR when enemies are actually frozen, it’s basically useless against endgame bosses. Super fun concept, but practically garbage for endgame, tbh.
  • Callidor’s Tempest numbers are just too low. The last real buff it got was in 1.1.9.8. Compared to the massive buffs other skills got after 1.2, CT just feels weak now.

Shaman

  • Devouring Swarm’s RR is super clunky. Almost every other mastery gets these nice, big circular AoE debuffs, while Shaman is stuck with a narrow straight line. It feels awful to use. Plus, 5 seconds duration at level 16? Come on. Compare that to a 0-CD Curse of Frailty giving you 12 seconds in a huge AoE at level 10.

Inquisitor

  • Locking Aura of Censure to elemental RR really hurts build diversity. Because it holds the RR, it loses out on other damage stats. If I want to play an elemental Inq + Oathkeeper/Shaman, my exclusive aura is 100% locked. It’d be way better if the RR was moved to Death Sentence or Seal.
  • Speaking of the 1.3 patch notes… damage reduction got buffed across the board, but Censure? Nothing. Makes the skill feel even more useless. Also, Aspect of the Guardian got a phys res buff, but Aura of Conviction got completely ignored. Very fun.
  • Runes of Hagarrad / Kalastor builds eat up way too many skill points and have zero sustain. Even with all the gear modifiers, the playstyle feels surprisingly weak rn.

Necromancer

  • Ill Omen’s main job is damage reduction, but you have to actually target an enemy. Ravenous Earth does the same job but way better in an AoE. Are we seriously supposed to use Ill Omen as a main DPS skill?

Oathkeeper

  • Aegis of Menhir has a mountain of modifier gear, but it never reaches the top tiers. The CD version isn’t any better than other CD skills, and the spam version via the Conduit nerfs your damage into the ground.
  • Judgment is just a bad skill, honestly. It’s sitting in the same trash tier as OFF and Blade Trap. Heart of Wrath gives RAtA, but it only ticks once every 5 seconds instead of every second. Nobody is going to use that as a core retaliation skill. Aside from pulling aggro, it’s a waste of skill points.

Critical Strikes

  • Crate keeps hammering crit damage in 1.3, including devotions, and I think it’s the wrong move. High crit builds get their massive multipliers from exclusive auras (like Divine Mandate) and skill nodes (like DEE’s Terrifying Gaze giving 50-65% alone). Nerfing a devotion that gives like 10% crit damage doesn’t stop the OP builds, it just punishes the weaker builds that are desperately trying to get enough crit to even function.

Equipment

  • Grasp of Unchained Might giving Pierce-to-Phys conversion for Aura of Conviction makes zero sense.
  • Band of the Eternal Haunt is barely used by Elemental builds, but flat RR is huge for Pierce Inquisitors. It’d be great if this ring added flat Pierce damage to actually fit the builds that want to use it.
  • Conduit of Whispers prefixes give fun niche modifiers, but they really should add +2 or +3 to the specific mutated skill. These niche builds struggle hard with getting enough skill points, and this would help them actually compete.
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This isn’t how the devs do balancing.

Also, Band of the Eternal Haunt is not an elemental ring, it’s cold/aether one.

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It is eternal band sry, my bad.
I just feedback the imbalance points in my perspective.

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Devs want Grimtools build links, not “x skill is bad because reasons”.

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  1. Forcewave
    2hand physical forcewave:

1-hand physical forcewave:

2-hand firewave:

In one word, 1-hand wave has dominate performance than 2-hand, blitz to a nemesis, attack 1 or 2 hits, force wave, then nemesis will die. Sometimes you will finish the boss level less than 20s, time for 2-hand wave will be much longer.

  1. Stun jacks
    light stun:

aether stun:

Ice stun with Harra, I think it is weaker, and long time no see any stun jacks in top20s.

Lack of life steal is another porb. we must use Korvaak’s storm-blade, Ulraprax’s stings, Scion of celestial protents to get life steel. This also limits the gear selection.

And I haven’t seen any build with cd stun jacks, all choose 0-cd style.

  1. Phy for Demolitionist
    Most skills for demolitionist have phy damage, including Fire strike, Canister Bomb, Stun jacks, Grenado, Mortar trap, and Temper offers phy damage and %phy damage.

The problem is, how many phy build with demolitionist? I haven’t see any, and I tried to use Adversary but it played bad.

  1. Sigil of Consumption
    vitality with 0.4s cd before:

when its cd was 0.4s, it is just an average build with some advantage in killing super boss, and now its cd is 0.7-0.8s, only 70% dps compared with before.

  1. Doom Bolt
    Increasing its radius via level will have better aoe power. Or it will be fun to add some mod, to have extra hits.

  2. Olexra’s Flash Freeze
    Almost everyone forgets this skill. NO MORE WORDS.

7.Callidor’s Tempest
We make a comparison.
With no mod, and full skill level.
Callidor, 466-604 point dmg, 340 dot/s, 145% weapon dmg
Blade arc, 244 phy dmg, 870 dot/s and 250% weapon dmg, with extra 50% crit dmg

fire callidor:

aether callidor:

In fact, their dps cannot reach 250,000, a very low number for as build. And generally, we have to use Devastation for more dmg. Notice that arcanist has no -x% RR, its performance in sr is not good enough.

  1. Others
    Other complain about Devouring Swarm, Runes of Hagarrad / Kalastor, Ill Omen’s etc are very common, I think text description carries more weight than links comparison.
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You made laugh so hard.

All the love.

Id like to see this kind of diversity. Would enable many fun builds.

I think cdr wise its fine. Id like to see more possibilities of cdr sigils for damage types like aether, chaos, fire, lightning doesnt exist, maybe even some support for phys/pierce. I think the cdr nerf was warranted but i agree damage on the skill needs a bump.

Its already there and you’ll never be able to use it as a dps skill, not even if you double its damage, simply because of its nature.

+1 to this. Said it before, especially because the skill is a projectile + a nova, and its prone to miss because of terrain and impaired aim.

More or less. Melees are suffering currently for all the reasons mentioned in the specific topic about them.

Needs a total rework tbh.

Nothing really special about it. I strongly believe inferno should add both radius and crit damage to it.

While i believe the RR values make up for the constant casting, i do agree that its AoE is awkward. Should be something something 60-90 degree cone and higher range.

Hell no.

They are both fine.

RoH yes, RoK no. Sustain is a matter of how you use the available bells and whistles.

Omen reaches higher dr% values and its less skill point hungry than RE will ever be. I do agree that i’d like for it to not require a target.

While i agree that cooldown versions have too much cooldown, even despite reprisal buff, i totally disagree about spam conduit nerfing its damage to the ground. Rta spam aegis and voidsoul are very good. Generally i’d like to see the base cd of the skill reduced by 0.3-0.5 and the radius on both base and avenging shield scaling with rank to a higher value than it currently is.

Judgment is underwhelming indeed. Should have built in wd% in the base skill, blade trap however is a great utility skill for the right builds. Regarding HoW im pretty sure it ticks per second durring its uptime.

Most of those builds sacrifice a lot of potential to reach the necessary OA for that built in crit damage to work. Builds that dont have crit damage at all, most likely dont need it. Take venomblade dervish as an example.

Big yes.

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And how does your comment contributes to increasing the build diversity and fixing the awkward aspects in the game? Kappa

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Agree. It should also break down doors and scale duration by rank

Agree as well. And might i add Inquisitor Seal needs an increase radius

OFF would need a major, major rework to make it more viable.

I was thinking the skill has to get rid of the freeze, but keep slow enemies movement instead while applying RR similar to war cry somewhat without interruption

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Both Demo and Shaman need phys RR.

Otherwise I agree with all your points in the OP.

Aura of Censure is to me the worst exclusive skill. I hate to play elemental Inquisitor due to it.

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RoH is okey. RoK need more mod, Runebinder is a good set.

Omen require less skiil point, it’s great, but it spreads slowly. RE is more effective.

I think Aegis now is 7/10, just not good enough, and we already have many builds. Voidsoul set mod got a nerf in recent update. And 0cd Conduit is underwhelming in this version, need more buff as well.

If only consider SR30-31, getting 3500+OA is not a hard task for most builds, one attack suffix offers 150-200 OA in total. But the ways of getting more crit dmg is limited.

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OK, I feel like I can agree with most of what you said. The idea of controlling monsters sounds really cool, and I’d love to experience it in the actual game.

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How does yours?

At least they are providing guidance on giving useful feedback.

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that makes no sense/unsure if we play different :thinking:
RE is completely limited to projetile impact, and does not spread, Omen spreads in a “huge” aoe radius every 0.7?seconds iirc, which is also faster than RE projectile burps of 0.8

as a side note, Omen no longer strictly requires a target, or atleast not in the same way pox does, so you don’t have to directly hit an enemy with it, but it ofc needs an enemy to initiate the effect.

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You should search this forum to seenhow much feedback i provided. Im not even gonna start this with you.

Cheers.

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Not really, it can still zoom through SR30-31 with some adjustments, hell, full lightning retal means you don’t need to add another skill for damage from my messing around. But yeah, otherwise the spamulet’s nerfs have hit it too hard and so even Pierce spam AoM is now pretty meh on it’s own unless you exploit crits.

And CD AoM has always meant to be a nuke/crowd controller, not a main damage/sustain skill. Though I will say it’s hard to add in a main attack skill with the lack of points most AoM focused gear has for other skills.

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Make sence, both nice skills then.

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The spam conduit has been nerfed too hard. For CD Aegis, it often requires extra leech sources, which makes the build quite a struggle to put together

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I know it’s been brought up before but physical -RR to thermite mines makes sense and it fits thematically. Heat from the mines softens armor and all that. Would open up some physical Commando & Shieldbreaker builds, among others.

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RR is one thing but also gear that helps convert to physical, cause currently most gear for demo skills converts that phys away so you’re starved for usable skill modifiers. Phys RR wouldn’t be an absolute necessity if we at least could get the flat going. Here’s hoping FoA focuses in on that, cause we’ve already seen a preview of an item that tries to push physical EoR Shieldbreaker.

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I agree, some of the very top Physical builds perform without any -rr% from masteries, you need strong mods on supporting items with conversions and flat cd reductions etc.

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