URGENT ! Important message to all theorycrafters !

No flat fire damage will hurt indeed, you’re right. Why is phys/fire conversion a bitch ? there’s something specific to that conversion ?

I think you miss the point that most people don’t care whether a build can do Crucible or not. I certainly don’t. I get that a lot of people do think Crucible is the ultimate test, but for me personally so long as I make it to end of Legendary - no matter what gear I end up with - then the build’s worked for me.

Considering most players never get past Normal before moving on to another game using Crucible as the meta doesn’t really mean much except for those few players who want to make it to Ultimate. And there are plenty of those who’ve made builds that did that without ever touching Crucible.

If you can make any build work in the main campaign with faction gear then I’d say the devs have done a good job because you shouldn’t need to mini-max/BiS a build to be able to finish the game. If you can do it with a mix of uniques/faction/whatever else you find along the way then even better. Not everyone wants to farm for stuff. I use whatever I find/buy or have in the transfer stash that works for that particular build.

It’ll be interesting to see if this obsession with the Crucible lasts once the Shattered Realm becomes available or whether that will become the new meta for those who need such things.

In Crucible you can use blessings and stuff, and it looks so silly to play too.
Crucible is like a separate game for me.
I think it has very little to do with “saltyness” but rather lack of interest.

I think “anyone” can make a good cruci build with GDstash. It also boils down to pilot skills.
Just pick a set and work from there. It is not like posting a build on this forum means that someone was the first one to have done that build… like octavius tactican… wohoa now that is revolutionary…

I also think that “cruci is the standard” has become so, at least partially, unconsciously. It is everyones “fault” so to say.

Why don’t you do a couple of these budget/beginner build guides then? :slight_smile: That would be really nice for the community.
Looking forward to your faction warlock that facetanks Grava and Gargabol and eat Aleksander meteors for breakfast.

I have explored valdun tactician too. I’d say that nidalla belt + guardian’s gaze and/or flame torrent devo is somewhat necessary for supplemental damage. But still, the culprit is the lack of good devo procs. I think cadence build will always need a couple of powerful proc to support the AoE.

BTW guys, acid Dervish should be top tier… :smiley:

Sent from my Redmi Note 3 using Tapatalk

Agreed. However, when talking about what builds are good and great there should be a standard on what’s good else we’ll end up with people saying Saboteur is OP when it’s not. If the discussed ranged pierce builds are good in campaign then great. But then someone needs to step up and say it’s good in campaign since everyone talking about it says it sucks. Including Belzzz, who AFAIK, doesn’t play cruci.

It’ll be interesting to see if this obsession with the Crucible lasts once the Shattered Realm becomes available or whether that will become the new meta for those who need such things.

Pretty sure people will move onto realms. Whether it will become the meta or not remains to be seen. I think this will revolve around how efficient realms farming will be as opposed to cruci. But builds centered around going through the deepest realm floors will definitely be a separate category.

I just hope realms will not receive the same amount of hate as cruci. IIRC cruci gets a lot of undeserved hate due to it not being part of the main game. But if realms also gets that much hate then I won’t even know what to say when that time comes. Will certainly play both cruci and realms when FG drops tho. Test where a build does better and tweak it to be more suitable for the other.

Even without new items you can already make a top tier acid dervish :stuck_out_tongue:

@x1x1x1x2: yes, acid meteors ftw! would be cool if the color changed accordingly, but that’s just wishful thinking, i guess

Oh boy, talk about a pet peeve of mine.

I’ll say it again - Crate is doing a fantastic job when it comes to content, gameplay mechanics and overall visual presentation of the game. Grim Dawn is nearly perfect in that regard, if you ask me.

What I think is missing is some focus on the visual details. Like the change in colors when you have fully converted damage. Especially when they do it for one item (Farath’s Cube), but not others. I understand that it’s a lot of work, and I know that it makes no sense to ask for them to do it, but it doesn’t mean that it stopped bothering me.

I just hope that Grim Dawn 2, if they make it, will have some kind of programming solution for this issue.

EDIT: another thing, about that pierce gun (Oathbearer, right?). Am I wrong in thinking that it would actually fit really good in a dw Purifier even without Inquisitor procs? Equip two of them, max Fire strike line, max Word of Pain line, max Aura of Conviction and Ranged Expertise, max the modifier on Inq Seal that gives flat pierce and flat Elemental. Suddenly you have pierce res reduction from Word of Pain, huge amount of flat pierce on guns (from various pierce and elemental bonuses), and given that you convert all elemental to pierce, Word of Pain now does pierce damage simultaneously with reducing pierce res in a huge radius.

Something like this (just the skills, without gear or devotions): https://www.grimtools.com/calc/4VxgWnv2

I don’t think it’s because Crucible isn’t part of the main game. More that builds are judged on it while most people don’t even play it. While I tried Crucible when it was first out and tested it and SR during the various testing phases I will play neither outside of testing because they’re just not my thing. I find them boring, repetitive and uninteresting. I don’t hate them, but I simply ignore their existence as far as the game goes.

It’s cool that they work really well though

I agree with that except the part about “lack of interest”. I said it many times: personally I don’t like playing Crucible. Yet people perceive my forum personna as some kind of hardcore Crucible herald, lol. That’s not true, if anything, I am a herald of well oiled and super efficient and fun builds, it’s just happened that in Ashes of Malmout Crucible is the only real way to take one’s build to the max and then some.

Nope, not true, mate. It takes some creativity, some understanding of game basics but most of all it takes time - because best builds are made through endless trial and error.

Even if you take “simple” builds, like Octavius Tactician or Beronath Death Knight or Deathmarked Nightblade whatever there is still a lot of room for maximising efficiency with creative Devotion maps, augments/resists/stat distribution. And again, it takes time to find an optimal setup.

I still try to have fun in Grim Dawn (although it became very hard after I made like ~10 builds) and making beginner’s builds is absolutely no fun at all for me. I mean, making top-tier min-maxed builds is also not all fun, because testing everything and then writing a guide and answering endless (usually same) questions is bit of a chore.

Also, there is no such thing as “Warlock”, don’t be ridiculous.

All true and everyone can play GD the way they want to. But for me, figuring out how to make a strong and creative build is what makes this game fun. I love playing great powerful builds, it is the ultimate reward for all the endless hours you put into repetitive gameplay of ARPGs (and for a lot of players, let’s be honest, most ARPG players want their characters to feel like gods that slice thru content like hot knife thru butter).

Somehow people don’t see that Shattered Realm is just another Crucible-sque challenge with ever increasing dificulty that will first and foremost punish poorly assembled builds.

Builds meta will change but it’s not going to be all sunshine and rainbows and communism for every faction gear build, no. It’s still going to be top min-maxed builds, probably made by same builders, just builds are going to be bit different.

What bothers me is that I think that Crucible, hate it or not, opened up a door for a lot of different builds and playstyles. But Shattered Realm will probably narrow down the amount of “meta builds” to ones that are tanky enough/have enough resists overcaps/damage mitigation mechanics, etc.

Getting that set is 80% done, then it is just a matter of tweeking it for the most part. And for most people, I think the lack of interest is just that last part - spending 10 hours to make it perform 10% faster.

Well you did say “any class combo” and Warlock is an option :wink:

Let’s do this then, you make the builds, I testplay them and write the guides. I am a teacher by profession so I kinda “enjoy” writing and explaining the same things over and over again :wink: Just PM me the builds at any time!

(I kinda always have this budget/basic approach to all ARPGs since I want builds to be played by as many as possible and also teach players stuff along the way and also encouraging people to take the next step. Most ppl do not even play ultimate or crucible so for me it is an important part of my “community service” to provide such builds and guides)

100% agree:

  1. Yes, that’s why I quit playing DIII, PoE and the late Marvel Heroes.
  2. I’d love something like: “if conversion to X-damage > 75%, then apply X-color”. (I would even play unoptimised builds just to reach that color threshold :stuck_out_tongue: )
  3. I’d wish there was a way to switch off/hide helm and shoulders. But that’s a Fashion Dawn topic.

Well, that part is not entirely true. Making build 10% or 5% faster is important, but main thing is making the build work. By “work” I mean being able to conquer certain content without resorting to “cheese” mechanics or chugging potions like a mad man or endless kiting just to kill one boss in 30 minutes.

And judging from a lot of posts on these forums players that reach end-game and acquire end-game sets struggle with end-game content quite a lot because they can’t find or don’t want to put enough time to find a right distribution of skill points/devotions/maps to make builds work.

You keep saying this word and I still don’t understand what it means, “warlock”. Is that some kind of meal that Ulgrim cooks, because I am not super good with game’s lore.

If you are not a good pilot and you don’t play Crucible you are not gonna enjoy testing them :slight_smile: And I kind enjoy writing stuff myself. But I might use your help when FG comes, who knows.

5-10% faster may or may not be important, for 99% of all the players I think it is not important.

Beginners are not good pilots either so “easy to play” should be some kind of criteria for budget builds.

I have a list of like 8 such faction and affix-less MI builds that I need to tweek when FG is out :stuck_out_tongue: So if you want something to start with, I can give you want I have already.

Oh well, guess green meteors are something for the modders to do. Btw, it seems to me that the devs left a big door open to people trying to mod the game (for whatever reasons they may have ;)), so from a point on it may be more effective to have these demands in that specific section of the forum. Gotta say, those guys don’t disappoint.

On the topic of Cruci as a staple for builds… it is what it is. I avoided playing it for years and just started recently. It’s kinda fun, frustrating, challenging at the same time. Overall, not a loss for me. And, even though you can, with enough patience, work your way trough ultimate even with faction gear, i’d at the very least concede that - for now - there is no better grounds to test the limit of things outside Crucible. Otherwise, how can you tell if, let’s say, itemization for ranged piercing is lacking or not? Is that only up to the devs or game testers? How else, if main campaign is doable with soiled trousers, can you see the difference? Granted, this can be noticed, but how much?
Not to take sides, as i’d rather just do campaign if the loot was as consistent. Guess that’s part of the issue with Cruci. It was made to be a loot heaven, and thus builds that can farm it efficiently were born.

Nah, man, thanks but no thanks, I rarely work on other people’s stuff in Grim Dawn and as I said, unfortunately, I have no interest in making beginner’s builds.

This man gets it, good post

Btw, I will make a S&B Warlord; this will be my first toon. And I will call it “the Fire Wall ®” (registered trademark) :rolleyes:

You do know that rogue dungeons, Nemeses and other optional stuff exist? You are not gonna do these with faction items, or at least nowhere as well as much better geared characters. I swear when some people talk about the main campaign they seem to only talk about the main story. Main Campaign can easily tell you when something is underpowered or overpowered.

Your character doing the main story is the most basic stuff it can do. Doing the optional stuff is an entirely different matter.

Also, Crucible is missing the Ancient Grove enemies, enemies like Garbagol. How is it the ultimate test of a build if it’s missing essential enemies?

Gargabol and Ancient Grove can be done with faction gear, dude. Sometimes when I read your posts I wonder if we are playing the same game. Ancient Grove is nothing like Crucible Gladiator 150-170. Yes, Manticore Deathstalker, Snakey boss and Gargabol can be good tests to see the build’s worth but in the end they are just single bosses and can be easily defeated.

Full facetanking Gargabol kill timer as well as ability to kill Deathstalker in full facetank mode can be a good indicators of build’s power, but thing is, you can adjust to those single bosses with overcapping certain resists and using certain tactics, Crucible does require most builds be more well-rounded.

If anything, I would say Lokarr and Grava’Thul (as well as Mad Queen full facetank timer) are good Main Campaign indicators of build’s power, but roguelikes and other bosses/nemeses - not so much.

On a random note it looks like Dammitt slightly goofed on his update. While the gear, new constellations, and updates to old class skills have not gone in, take a peak at Targo’s Hammer. Looks like the tooltips for existing constellation skills got updated. (I am not masochistic enough to check all the nodes to see if updates were made there as well).

Sadly my initial dreams of a memetastic pet retaliation build have been dealt a heavy blow since it looks like only Hammer and Trample procs got the +retaliation damage added treatment and none of the on attack skills that can be assigned to pets.

Don’t mean to disagree on the Gargabol thing, at lest, but i don’t see how adding the one boss missing in Cruci will change the whole thing :undecided:
Sure, his second phase is a pain, but so is Kuba/Grava/Alex etc.

Ok, as usually, we get agitated about things and sometimes go overboard just to prove a point. I went soiled trousers logic for the heck of it. :rolleyes:
But i still think that Cruci provides the best environment so far to test the limits (and some subtle lacks) of a build. Roguelikes, as tough as they may be, usually provide a more streamlined range of enemies (excluding the variety in Ancient grove, yes).

Some may like Cruci, some not, but it’s a reality we can’t deny. It may not be as relevant come SR, but than again there’s no way of telling. What i think this whole, everlasting dispute boils down to is people needing to acknowledge eachother’s efforts. People that pour a lot of effort into making a viable Cruci build will feel irritated when others go: oh, i don’t play that thing anyway, why bother me with it? without giving those guys their dues, because its no cake to fine tune a toon for it. And some of the Cruci guys may sometimes seem to deride main campaign as a cake by comparison. I don’t think they mean it like that. But yeah, that’s where things got, whole lotta underlying tension :frowning:

Hope that FG will somehow close this rift. Besides, spirits will just get more and more agitated until the release, so it will undoubtedly do some good