Ultimate mode is tuned such that it pushes out a lot of builds and caters to a select a few lucky enough for gear and build options that accommodate the crazy defensive requirement to survive it and still kill things. I find it disappointing.
What’s most obnoxious is that regardless of a build is intended to face tank or not, the priority for attribute points and augment/components never changes. Gearing is a task of finding as much resistances as you can without sacrificing too much damage, and all augments and components go towards capping those resistances with as little overflow as possible. Lastly, any attribute points not required for gear go right into physique, and god help any build that doesn’t have 10k health by 85. I find the Ultimate mode game extremely stale for this reason.
Ranged builds hold very little advantage for being ranged. What I mean by this is that there’s no safety in being at range, and therefore there’s no room to focus more on damage and rely on kiting. I think monsters in general close distance too fast for any kiting build that isn’t reliant on chilling targets. Even dropping a Curse of Frailty barely buys more time mostly due to the range cutoff on ranged spells and attacks; you still have to be relatively close to hit targets with most ranged attacks. My successful ranged builds gear, augment/component, and distribute attribute points with the same priorities as my face tanking builds; deviating from the defensive focus results in being btfo by any enemy in Ultimate mode.
I really feel that the damage output in Ultimate mode is scaled way too high. A build with all resistance maxed out and a handful of physical resistance stacked up from various sources will still get their health chunked down 4k-5k in single hit; which puts the extreme emphasis on pumping Physique for a sufficient health buffer to catch up with leeching or healing.
The problem bleeds into Devotion choices as well. Devotion trees focused around more health, resistances, reduced CC duration and defensive skills stand head and shoulders above anything offensive.
Final Boss:
I’ll end by trashing the final boss room specifically, because nothing else in the game better demonstrates how the PvE massively limits build viability. The final boss exists in a tiny room, this tiny room has environmental damage, the boss spawns dozens of adds into this cramped space throughout the fight, and damage circles spawn all over the floor to top it all off. Where is the advantage of ranged builds over face tanking in this encounter?
I hope someone on the developer end plans to change something.
I completely disagree about having to go defensive in devotions. I have several builds who can facetank nearly everything with nearly all the devotions being offensive.
First off I’ll be completely honest that I’ve never played Ultimate, so this is just based on various posts and comments.
The biggest problem with Ultimate and balance is a combination of only a very small amount of players even reach Ultimate (1.something % iirc) and the feedback ranges from views like yours to “Oh my god this it too easy make it harder”
So from what I can see Crate have a problem of a mode that hardly anyone plays and of those that play and post there’s no common ground as to what’s too hard / too easy.
Only 3.4% of Steam players have gotten the achievement “Saviour of Cairn”. Including GOG players, it would probably be a bit higher but yeah, the amount is small.
Like most games into action, such as shooters, shoot’em ups, beat’em ups, survival horrors etc with a campaign, an adventure mode, the last levels of the game are supposed to be very hard. Plus this also fits with the game universe, which is supposed to be some kind of last hope for mankind to survive in a world where everything else has failed and what remains is wrecked or corrupted by forces beyond your imagination.
Think about it: Grim Dawn.
Now I approve your point about ranged builds. I have tried to make this point several times but you will quickly discover the massive fear for change here and the rejection for difference. You shall not question the game mechanics here. It is go-tank-or-die. That’s the way it is. If you have a problem with this, then you are the problem.
Sure such game could benefit a lot from giving the option to the player to trade RPG skills like resistances for action game skills like dodging, positioning and accuracy, but this is just not how it works. You have to max all your resistances, that is the core objective of the game. You won’t be able to achieve anything else as long as you won’t have achieved this first. The game is just too quick and too messy to let one rely on things like APM, reflexes and accuracy. Not because you decide to go ranged means that you will be able to apply those skills that you used to have on that shooter game you used to play. I have tried it several times with various builds, it just does not work. You can try to dodge as much as you want, you will still get hit. So go tank or shut up.
That’s good to hear and better than I thought, plus as you say that’s those that have beaten Ultimate so there’s got to be a few % more that reach Ultimate and not complete it
I make a lot of casual builds so I feel Ultimate can be beat by pretty much anything as long as you understand the mechanics of the game. My advice would be to make a DoT build if you’re struggling. They are by far the easiest.
Your perception of “ranged” builds is a bit jaded. You can’t expect to kite and shoot every enemy in the game. You need support skills which immobilise, slow, stun etc. You still need damage negating skills as well. Playing ranged admittedly gives you little to no advantage.
I think people forget to judge the game based on one build relative to another.
If I were to evaluate ultimate based on my Warder or Trickster, then it’s far too easy, omg where is ultimate+, gg cake walk endgame.
However, if I judge it based on my Battlemage, then it’s super well executed, perfect balance of damage and bulk on the enemies, gg well done Crate.
If I judge it based on my Sorceror or Pyro, then ultimate is way too hard, omg how did they expect anyone to clear this, nerf everything, it’s all artificial difficulty.
My aim was to evaluate Ultimate mode with one strategy relative to another, because I think that’s where the problems exist. I don’t mind that a harder mode forces players out of glass cannon builds, but the current gap between full fledged tanky and moderately bulky but focused on damage is a swirling abyss with seemingly no middle ground. It’s just icing on the cake that a few class combos severely outperform the rest.
The way i see it, it’s nigh impossible to have a perfect balance of difficulty for all builds or at least have a middle ground for everybody.
If you reduce the damage of Ultimate, you are just making the tanky builds even more unkillable, making people lean even more towards them. If you make it harder, squishy builds will have an even harder time.
There’s far too many factors to take into account. The best Crate can do is make it as much balanced as possible, but some builds will always struggle more than others.
It’s not entirely accurate. Steam achievements are very often bugged for people; for instance, I’ve 100%'d Shadow of Mordor, but I’m only at 51% of the achievements. :rolleyes:
I’d take Steam achievements as a rough ballpark for player estimates, with probably as much as a 5-10% error rate.
I’ve beaten the game on a pile of characters, including a warlock that I had so little clue as to what I was doing that I dumped half my points into spirit, went for torch/abomination for devotions, and didn’t take Mirror or Nullification at all. I also basically walked through the game on a PRM druid just for laughs because PRM is kinda fun but only gets to “functional enough” if you totally spec for it. So these complaints of the game being too hard just mystify me, because I’ve never seen these alleged “dozens of adds” on Loggy, I’ve only gotten punked by random yellows in areas where there’s a ton of ground damage (which I agree needs to get fixed; aetherfire on the ground that is can’t be aether resisted is fucking dumb), and most fights that people complain about that aren’t Log can be solved by just moving away and drinking a potion mid-fight.
I really have to wonder wtf you people are doing that can’t beat ultimate. I don’t mean that in the “git gud scrub” way, I mean it in a genuine “where are your skill/devotion points allocated, what gear are you wearing, what buttons are you pushing in combat and how often” way. Because this game is beatable in tons of different build formats, but only if you know what you’re doing with it.
Seriously yes and thats one of the reasons I nearly exclusively play melee characters in Grim Dawn. I dont think devs will ever change the boss mechanics, but hoping is allowed of course
had you written this 12 months ago, I would have agreed, by now it really is pretty simple to survive in Ultimate, you definitely can find a good balance between offense and defense instead of going all defense, squeeze in as much (or rather little) offense as you can without getting killed constantly
Gearing is a task of finding as much resistances as you can without sacrificing too much damage, and all augments and components go towards capping those resistances with as little overflow as possible.
this is always true, regardless of how difficult Ultimate actually is - unless you make it easier than Normal
