Turrion's (spam) BWC - too strong?

Grim Dawn Ideas and Feedback
1

I meant to make this thread last week, but thought it would be better to wait until Grimtools was back up.

As the title says, I’m wondering whether retal-to-attack spam Blackwater Cocktail with Turrion’s Reprisal is too strong. After @adoomgod asked about it on discord, I realized it had been a long time since I tried spam BWC anyway, so I was testing it with a Shieldbreaker in campaign Ultimate and I noticed the damage seemed quite high, it killed Cronley before he could raise his damage shield, it was melting Nemeses with ease, and it dropped Mad Queen before it needed an energy potion (and it has energy issues).

I don’t play Crucible myself, but adoomgod took it for a spin in Crucible. While he agreed damage was high, it did start dying after wave 150 (I assume he was in Gladiator). However, I would point out here that I pretty much just slapped this together, the build is by no means optimized for Crucible (or even fully optimized at all) at this point. Doesn’t have much armor or physical resistance, for example.

In SR, I was able to get to SR 50 without much trouble, even with unfavorable mutators (and picking fights with nemeses in non boss chunks). Around that point it started to run into trouble on boss shards, however. This could have simply been boss combinations that are bad for the build (or my piloting skills, lol). And remember, the build is not really optimized at this point.

Another thing to consider, I don’t think any other mastery combination would be this strong with the retal to attack setup. OK gets retaliation, shield boosts, resist reduction, fire scaling, and a critical damage boost.

To make an “apples to apples” comparison, I tried a Shieldbreaker setup with standard fire scaling and Zarthuzellan’s offhand. While damage is comparable, it is definitely more squishy. Also tried a Sorcerer setup with lightning retal, didn’t test this one as much, it seems even more squishy but damage seems good. To make Sorcerer work, it would probably need some kind of CDR abuse shennanigans.

Links to the different builds:
Retal to attack Shieldbreaker: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/O2G7Joq2
Standard fire scaling Shieldbreaker: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/lNk89k62
Lightning retal to attack Sorcerer: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/xZypk70V

Actual saves, if you want to save some time:
Retal to attack Shieldbreaker: _Turrion SB.zip (457.3 KB)
Standard fire scaling Shieldbreaker: _BWC SB SS.zip (289.0 KB)
Lightning retal to attack Sorcerer (ignore the name, it’s a respec): _Chaos Tosser.zip (290.9 KB)

2

Still sounds like you haven’t taken it out to dinner yet.

3

That’s why I’m posting this thread in the public forum, to get more opinions. I’m not saying it needs a nerf, necessarily. And as I said, only the Shieldbreaker version looks like it will be that strong.

4

In the previous patch it was originally 25% RatA I believe. At this point in time it was pretty broken.
The build you linked is a poor example because you didn’t invest at all in BWC.
It’s exactly like my crappy Commando.
https://www.grimtools.com/calc/d2j8EWxZ

What’s worse, you somehow ended up with NO BURN RETALIATION on a Shieldbreaker (I don’t know how you can even manage that, I know your’re going for flat fire damage but you kind of need a combination of both). Well you said it wasn’t optimised so let’s not get into things further.

My meme Retaliation Grenadier (for comparisons sake) looked like this
https://www.grimtools.com/calc/a2dYOAQV
With all debuffs it can hit 600K-700K Grenado’s and apply a 230K DoT.

I think you can build around Turrion with Infernal Knight’s set with heavy investment into BWC and maybe a demo conduit. But I can only see a Shieldbreaker working with this setup. All the other combinations will lack the damage output. BWC when maxed already melts things btw. Do I think it will be too strong endgame? …… Probably not. I think the devs got it at just the right level at 16% RatA.

5

You don’t invest in the base skill because pretty much all of the damage comes from retaliation. So putting points in the base skill hardly increases your damage and really only make it worse by increasing the energy cost of the skill.

The only reason to put points in it is to increase the reduced offensive ability. I do have to question no Flashbang and no maxed Flame Touched in the OP’s Shieldbreaker retal to attack.

6

I’m not sure 16% is enough to build in that fashion. I tried to do both on my Grenadier and that build has 50% retaliation added to attack. Of course we’re talking about spam BWC here. The hardest part is managing that energy cost.

7

It seems to be the same concept as Retal DE: stack a bunch of retal and have it pass through a skill that can be spammed. In this case, it’s heavy stacking of spam BWC.

So you can have a bunch of active BWC stacking damage upon each other and it basically becomes 16% retal times whatever amount of BWC are active at the moment.

8

The base skill increases duration which should result more retal damage tics per throw unless I am mistaken?

9

True, but the duration scales rather poorly and becomes worse after rank 16. You can still put points in it for that, increased radius and reduced offensive ability but heavy investment on the base skill still doesn’t pay off very much in the end.

10

This is how I’ve approached it as well.

It would seem that way but in practice I don’t remember seeing notable differences on my version between 6/12 to BWC (1 point + 5 via skill bonuses) and bumping it up to 12/12 so I’d rather keep the energy cost low on a build that’s already pretty energy hungry and dedicate the points elsewhere.

12% was what the original value was for the Retaliation added to attack to BWC modifier. When I tested a character with it, I thought the spam version was too strong and gave feedback for it and in a subsequent patch (around the time Retaliation specs such as Warlord were being nerfed), it got lowered as well to 8%. However, the nerf meant non-spam Retal BWC (like Belzzzz’s Grenadier) got hit harder and he gave feedback sometime after stating that his build’s performance dropped more than he’d liked. So, I guess after some time had passed, the value got bumped up to it’s original 12%, and now 16%.

That said though, I really do have to question the point of taking High Potency on Retaliation BWC as if you don’t have a suitably high % Fire damage bonus, I feel like you’d get more mileage out of other cooldown-based skills like going heavy on Shattering Blast Grenado (alongside Ulzuin’s Chosen for resets) or Vire’s Cascade for examples.

11

Yes, the build does also benefit somewhat from the non-retal too though. The % scaling is a bit higher than the retal% but I don’t know how significant of a contribution this could be.

Well making a build around turion shield is naturally maximised by using spam bwc for more retal tics. Balancing for both styles may well require some kind of retal modifier on the transmuter like other skills received.

12

Yeah, I didn’t get around to testing it before the change, so I don’t have that experience to compare it to, unfortunately.

Would like to point out to others that the point of the thread is whether the retaliation to attack on the shield is too much, not to critique a build I clearly stated in the OP was just slapped together. If I wanted build advice, I would post in the appropriate section. In fact, part of the point is that it is not optimized, but still feels very strong. (no offense taken here, just trying to keep the thread on track)

13

I am confused by this thread. Build is untested against endgame content, moreover, you are claiming it actually dies there a lot. How is that “too strong” or even just “strong”? Are you asking for nerfs to something that hasn’t even been really tested yet?

2 Likes
14

I agree. Very often build looks stronger/weaker on paper than in reality is.

I am yet to see many Demo based retal hybrid builds. This build looks interesting, but is it good, who knows.

15

I don’t think so. In theory at least. The retal to attack is too small. 16% compared to DEs 24%. And DE isn’t that good anymore. There are 3 main ways you might wanna build it - lightning which retal doesn’t have any devotion support; fire which can go hybrid but it will surely be weaker than non retal variants due to hybrids being low in both %fire and %retal values; and lastly physical which will never be as good as stuff like DE or even FoI. I don’t think BWC can get the same amount of ticks per second as DE and FoI unless maxed cast speed. Also DE and FoI have better sustain through lifesteal. So, no.

16

Maybe I should have worded the OP differently, obviously people are getting the wrong idea. I’m not saying it is too strong, I’m asking for more opinions on it since I don’t play Crucible. It has only been tested there by one person at this point, that is hardly enough of a sample size to call for nerfs. I would have thought the question mark in the thread title made it clear I was asking a question, not making a statement.

17

As Norzan pointed out in his second post in the thread, the reason this is so strong is that each BWC lasts for 6 seconds (with Herald of Blazing Ends). You aren’t just getting the ticks from one instance of the skill, like you would with DE or FoI. You’re stacking up 18+ of them, assuming you can spam it for the full 6 seconds.

The lack of sustain is a good point, and something that should be considered when balancing this.

18

The title of the thread and the first post look like you are pre-emptively calling for Retal BWC nerfs, that’s all I am saying. In my opinion, it’s a bit it’s unwarranted. If you meant to ask other players if it’s really strong or not, maybe classes and skills or gameplay discussion are better places for such thread. Idk.

19

So you missed the question mark in the title. :thinking:

3 Likes
20

One missed comma in the value lead to financial crash for Tokyo’s stock exchange in the past :wink: