Allow me to correct this… you swing around NE’s cold effect and apply cc, than you miss your FH because of the cc => leech dips, than you desperately run after confused mobs, hoping like your life would depend on it, to clap that upheaval.
I rest my case.
Edit: and because of the extremely chaotic ways mobs behave, ping ponging around, there’s a big chance you might miss your upheaval (not counting it might get eaten by terrain).
Isn’t upheaval an independent proc anyway and not a attack damage multiplier like regular WPS. Why not just have it proc alongside regular WPS since it doesn’t interact with them.
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The way to device that formula would be the following:
- The hit checks for crit and stores the % of this check as X
- If the hit is a crit, Upheaval is proced
- If the hit is not a crit, it’s then checked for WPS hits where every paper chance for WPS - Y - is substituted with Y / (1 - X)
This will basically mean that Upheaval takes priority over other WPS but also acts as a part of WPS pool with its chance being equal to character’s crit. So both Upheaval stays intact and WPS aren’t hindered.
But i assume you can’t make this two step check in the game.
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That’s very interesting indeed. Although, is it not possible to ignore priority altogether to proc other WPS, or it will make things simply overpowered doing so?
What if upheaval does the thing but WPS are hindered, hmh…
Though I haven’t checked the code, the checks definitely run and have to run in the opposite order. First the game determines which attack is being used (WPS or no) to see how many targets it needs to check chance to hit/crit against, then it calculates if the attack is a hit/crit. The only way you could slot Upheaval proc chance into that sequence would be to make it independent of crit, i.e. a WPS, or to somehow slap it on all attacks, WPS or no. Pretty sure Z would be strongly against the latter, seeing as passthrough Upheaval was an issue in the past.
(also if your above sequence were somehow to be implemented, it would mean that WPS on an Upheaval build could never crit, cause Upheaval would overwrite them)
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I am like thinking it should work like this:
if it’s a hit:
chance of usual weapon pool skills checks happen
…AND if it’s also crit:
burst that upheaval too in there somewhere while not interupting the previous basic hit procs.
even if the trigger and conversions interaction isn’t like normal wps it’s still dmg wise seemingly acting like a normal wps and multiplying DAR/total WD (so upheaval is benefitting from sav wd and might of the bear TDM etc)
this becomes super noticeable if you do a simple 200 wd on upheaval but have modded like 1000wd on sav, each upheaval hit doubles the regular dmg as usual wps would, and somehow applies it to the secondary effect without being completely separate (dmg modifiers) , even if secondary conversion rules apply like usual secondary effect wise 
modified stats: 100% charge scaling(all ranks), 500%wd sav, 100% Might of the Bear, 200%wd upheaval, no native sav/upheaval flats, no dots
Marcus is correct, iirc he was the one that told me to recheck last when i thought the same as you, and with crit devo on Upheaval any non wps sav crit would trigger Ultos regardless if the “upheavel” dmg actually also critted.
Guessing it’s part of that there wonky “every hit is an upheaval hit” for devo, regardless of the actual dmg crit on secondary effect/main upheaval hit is sav, so is a crit, and the secondary explosion is just separate hit for potential additional proc too
Like firestrike and explosive strike merged together i suppose we could say “2 hits in1”.
edit. pic added Baboo556
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How about this
- Upheaval is a WPS with a dynamic proc chance equal to the crit chance you had against the last enemy you hit
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I’m gonna go against the grain here - upheaval is conceptually the most interesting here GD, turning it into wps is just bad design.
The only reason it sucks ass so much is that the numbers on it are attrocious. Double the flat, increase %wd part, make radius scale with levelsand add extra %crit damage on top and you have a very functional skill. It’s purely a numerical issue.
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This I can get behind.
At the end of the day the main issue is simply that you don’t get much out of building around current Upheaval. The initial concept of your build being purely focused around one strong WPS is not bad (although game could be better at explaining how Upheaval functions).
It’s absolutely not. The skill is not accesible to 99% of 2H Shamans in endgame. When was the last time you played Blazerush or Veilkeeper? You get absolutely obliterated in melee range because you have strings of regular AA slow single target attacks. If 2H AA builds had access to sustain in this game while just mashing your bare AA, it could work.
I just played Harbinger Conjurer rebranded into Upheaval and the tank felt like it droped 1 point in both categories. At the beginning of our testing i played Avenger with Upheaval focus, it was even worse. What happens to all other builds that don’t have this level of defence, everybody knows.
This I would agree with. Weirdass skills or conversions that turn character building into a puzzle are fun. Figuring out how to cover your AoE while Upheaveal is not on, with stuff like Tempest or Ultos etc. is a neat little mental exercise.
But in practice I don’t think this is something we can just average out like “if other solid builds output X amount of AoE damage over the span of 10 s, then we need to crank Upheaval so that it achieves this X amount of damage over the limited number of procs it gets in those 10 s”. Because you still end up with these massive valleys. If at something ridiculous like 4.5k OA we’re only getting 34 % crit chance, then we’ve built to this absurd number only for the main skill that we’re building around to still do absolutely nothing 2/3s of the time. If we’re to sacrifice basically all non-proc AoE AND stack enormous amounts of OA, which comes at a cost as well, we should be getting a little more payoff than an exclusive pseudo WPS with 33 % proc rate. Nowhere else do you have to put in this much, sacrifice on so many aspects, to get such inconsistent payoff. Even if you primarily build around stacking one specific WPS, you have none of the other hassle to go with it (crit chance, no other interfering WPS). And we’ll soon have ways to increase WPS proc rates in FoA. That will leave Upheaval an even more unappealing option than it was before. This is the perfect time to have a look at it, before FoA yeets it further into obscurity.
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Blazerush and Veilkeeper can both stack a ton several tons of regen, and especially the latter can be made obscenely tanky. Being able to deal enough dmg when opting for high regen is just a numbers issue, though. For Blazerush especially it’s also hard to get enough % fire dmg because of the lack of gear support for fire shaman.
+1
In the endgame, upheaval’s aoe always felt very underwhelming.
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If the radius for EoR gets an increase, please give the same treatment to Yugol’s relic. Much appreciated.
And still die in 30-31.
Almost everything can be just a numbers issue if you keep buffing smth over and over and over and over until it surpasses the inherent disadvantages. But that’s just gross design. Because when some other changes come into play, that will affect 2H builds (and they are coming), this will be a hot mess to balance.
Every time Upheaval topic is brought up, there’s a handful of people praising this neat, unique, cool design that nobody can touch like it’s a part of unesco heritage. But where are all the Upheaval builds? I like 2H gameplay. I played all builds that support the skill in the last 2 patches, some with different variations. All of them feel bad to play.
that’s not it, or atleast it’s not what i see here, nor is it how i think
it’s simply because it’s different
If you turn it into a wps it’s not gonna add anything other than some generic dmg to a bunch of builds, it’s not gonna create anything new/different unique
While it might not feel like it’s working, be it numbers game or effect being off, being forced into a specific build or consideration is a type of variety
The second you turn it into a generic wps it’s become a nobrain 1pointer/reach x% pool, like anything else, and then the only build debate is going to be frame timings as with the others.
It wont create new builds or really change anything “significant existing” ,other than boost some already regular wps builds (which also could be boosted by other means anyways/back to numbers game)
For me/i think the way to look at it is with the same inspiration ala the big Conduit debate with March of the Memes, stuff that was exciting and different, and not just another RR addition or useless OFF roll.
We got spam aegis and aether PB out of it, which “feels” different, also even if aether PB doesnt’ exactly force you into the exact same extreme build considerations, sans targeting exploit it now makes you think a bit more about how you cast your knives.
Upheaval being different is what makes it “cool”, we can argue cool isn’t “working” in the way build optimization is desired or how metrics/balancing is measured, but, imo, the solution isn’t to take a birthday cake and put it in a blender and make porridge, but figure out how to make it satisfactory to serve.
There’s been several suggestions, some probably outright “impossible” mechanically/“engine” wise, but turning it into generic wps is probably a lesser overall nice one, because it removes something “different”/strips an element of variety.
It’s not that it can’t be touched because it’s unesco heritage, but the game shouldn’t get less special stuff but more; make cool work.
a Unesco rock could be used as tourist attraction and be more exciting than paved square of asphalt for parking cars - even if sometimes a parking lot is lil qol.
*kinda funny side mention
since comparison, because likewise i don’t really think OFF mechanic itself perhaps should be changed, but other stuff, so it can be more comfortably utilized
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Well, again a wall of fancy words with no builds in sight. Do you all stand around like 10 food critics marveling at this “birthday cake”, but never taste it? Do we want an art gallery unit or a skill that actually works in a lot of builds, provides actual variety of competitive 2H builds instead of having 2 types of disability category builds - 2H WPS Shamans and Upheaval Shamans - that feel bad to play?
Sigh…
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Like, give me an example of a build that is capable and reliable honest to god Upheaval build that doesn’t fold to SR packs, and “if only it had more dmg on it, if only the numbers were higher, it would become a very good build”.
“any upheaval build” 
the issue is again, they’re just not satisfactory to you guys
but you see others here with suggestions to improve
I liked valinovs upheaval of balance since backwhen and thought it was a shame it was outright killed with passthrough death, i don’t need it to be a top 20 or even top 50 contender
I’m fine with Veilkeeper, and like others have mentioned am a bit puzzled with the squish mentions; because i don’t feel the same, but i’m also well aware of you guys more stringent requirement and more, rough, piloting approaches.
i had these which i enjoyed plenty post 1.2 Druid, Level 100 (GD 1.2.1.6) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator , Ritualist, Level 100 (GD 1.2.1.6) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator , and they dont feel like they need more chonk to me (not trying to tank 4 bosses in boss room) and sure on a technical level taking 3-4x regular wps makes aether rit stronger it’s also no more inspired, - but druid wont reach max wps anyway