The nerf to the flat damage node of the Crab constellation outright killed half my builds. KILLED I say. Half. My. Builds.
Thanks banana-man. :rolleyes:
Poopy posting and mock sensationalism aside, the combination of the following 3 realities is a little annoying:
Good RR is mandatory for any build. This is a truism of Grim Dawn and has been since before full initial release.
Stacking a significant amount of RR for all 3 elements is a challenge in devotions. Ultos/viper alone really isn’t enough, Attak Seru and Blind Sage don’t have elemental RR on them, and trying to stack Widow + Solaels Witchblade + Murmur + Rhowans Crown in a build while maintaining half-decent defensive stats is a significant effort.
Buffing “elemental” without making fire/cold/lightning a stronger overall damage source seems like a really difficult balancing act. All 3 of these damage types individually feel like they’re in a fairly decent place to me personally, but trying to stack all of them together at the same time results - somewhat paradoxically - in a damage loss the vast majority of the time due to %damage bonuses and the aforementioned RR struggle.
I’m not going to pretend that I know the “fix” here to make Elemental more interesting and actually as strong as the sum of its individual parts. But I would like to at least raise the subject for (hopefully civil) discussion in selfish hopes that my Discord Cadence Battlemage might become a tier 0 SR farming build
Having Attak Seru’s Surge waves have ele RR debuff would pretty much do the trick. Perhaps even elemental and aether RR, and we can finally nerf the overtuned Widow devotion to go with it. This also gives Aether builds a degree of “Dang, I gotta choose now” because there is no way to get Attak Seru and Hourglass, so no CD resettery cheese for Spellbinders if they want their best devotions.
Honestly, all the T2 stacking RR devotions could probably afford to be nerfed to 25% or so, as Aether and chaos RR is more common than it used to be, and lightning has always had weirdly good RR access when the only spot anywhere in the game where it might be relevant to have that much RR is if they were wanting Mogdrogen farming.
It was too good a trolling opportunity not to do sorry about your headache, boss man…
But again. To actually try and turn this thread into something constructive, can we focus on the specific case of Discord - the strange Cadence transmuter that was almost changed to be solely lightning damage until a massive community uproar reverted that decision - for a moment? Elemental Cadence is a pretty neat idea that’s been utterly left in the dust since…well, honestly, since it was introduced.
There’s the aforementioned devotion issues in stacking enough RR. The only sources of overall elemental RR in the heavens are Viper and Rhowan’s Crown, both of which are fantastic but 32 flat and 20 “% reduced target’s resistance” isn’t anywhere near enough to carry a build by itself of course. You can either continue to stack Widow + Witchblade + Murmur to round out the set of elemental RR or you can accept it’s a lost cause and just build for Sage + Seru…So it’s time to look at masteries instead for our RR needs!
With the awesome recent buff to thermite mines there’s now 4 ways to reduce enemy RR in various masteries: Mines, CoF, Wind Devils, and Aura of Censure. If you go Commando for mines, Fire Strike has vastly more gear support and you can go pure fire damage instead, so we’ll call that a non-option for the sake of argument here. There are, to be fair, a pair ofneat weapons that make an elemental melee Witchblade, Warder, or Tactician a potential option. But a big problem emerges when trying to search for what armor sets to use with these neat weapons.
There are exactly 0 item sets that boost both Cadence and elemental damage. Want elemental? Cool go check out the caster-oriented sets of Iskandra and Invoker. Both even have more RR on them…buuuuut the RR from Iskandra doesn’t stack with Rhowan’s Crown and both of them require you to use a caster offhand which isn’t exactly conducive to Cadence. There is always the super cool Runebinder set and it gives RR too…buuuuut with all 5 pieces (which you need for that RR bonus) now you have a nifty new LMB attack anyways so you don’t need your pathetically underleveled Cadence anyways. There are of course sets for physical/IT and pierce/physical Cadence that can get you to the promised land of 26/16 cadence for massively damaging attacks…buuuuut then your elemental damage modifier is going to be hot garbage and you’re not getting any of that sweet sweet RR from gear.
It just seems like a silly number of hoops to jump through for the grand end prize of “doing worse damage than a pure cold/fire/lightning focused build” at the end of the day. Which is a shame since Discord is a neat unique transmuter that IMHO should be opening up interesting potential designs rather than languishing and apparently forgotten.
One of the advantages of general elemental vs the individual types is that you don’t need as much RR because you’re using 3 different damage types that are all resisted separately. No enemy (save celestials) is heavily resistant to all 3, so you can kill pretty much everything fine with a more moderate amount. Sure, more is better, but you don’t need it as desperately as single day type builds. If your elemental build is struggling, availability of RR is unlikely the reason why.
For all the freedom GD gives in regard to character-building, there are mechanics that will limit the effectiveness of some concepts. RR is one, but you can also add OA and DA, armor, health, CC resist, you name it.
What I’m trying to say is : Discord Cadence Battlemage has a low ceiling due to RR. If you want to build a Discord Cadence build, go Shaman, Demolitionist, or Inquisitor. Battlemage don’t really shine with Elemental damage., despite IEE and Discord. Go either Physical (Beronath reforged, Spellscourge) or Aether (Krieg).
I know it because my first level 100 is a Battlemage, I built her for Elemental when I didn’t know anything about the game, and soon enough I realized adding Aether made her so much more powerful, so she became Elemental/Aether…But now, I’ve switched to full Aether Krieg, and it is night and day. Sometimes, as you learn what are the important mechanics in the endgame, you have to let go of a concept if it’s not supported.
Now, I just want to signal that I was able to clear SR 25 with this weird Elemental/Aether Battlemage. Which means, I was able to get all the skills and attribute points, and ultimately “finish” the build. It was just impossible to reach SR50. Aether Krieg did clear SR50 (painfully, but still).
But yeah, the higher the difficulty, the fewer builds will be able to clear it. Elemental is an interesting damage type. But you have to realize that it’s an inherently STRONGER damage type, because, in regard to the basic design of the game, it will never be totally countered by any resist an enemy has. Now, the thing is, at higher levels, against the toughest ennemies (Celestial, cough cough), since they have high resist everywhere, this inherent advantage of Elemental is negated (still partially remains for Nemesis).
The fact that it took AoM with the introduction of the Inquisitor, and a recent patch for Demo to have more Elmental RR in the game is a testament of this : elemental damage had to be supported in new ways, and sure you can say “hey, why not buff the historic combination? Battlemage Discord!”. Well, only the devs have the answer, but I suspect it has to do with allowing their ressources between all masteries, and not being able to fully support any combination.
So, to sum it up…want to go Elemental damage? Forget Devotions for -% RR, you’ll find it in Masteries. And there you have quite a few combinations that could work. Maybe not top-tier, but quite decent, if you manage your expectations.
What are you talking about? You got well over a 100 elemental rr on a purifier or deceiver. Plus mods. Plus extra single dmg type. Zantai actually has to READ all this… Have mercy…
It is for Battlemage. Elemental seems synergetic at fist, with Discord Cadence and IEE. But it is a dead-end because of lack of -% RR : both masteries lack it, it’s absent (or rather, divided) in Devotions, and absent from gear (understandably so, would be super strong).
Let’s just say that Elemental Battlemage is a noob-trap, I think that’s how we can sum the OP’s post. I’ll repeat my advice : switch to Physical or Aether, they’re much much more supported.
Respectfully disagree. Fire, Cold, Lightning are hella strong on their own. Putting together tri-elemental build is not easy and it’s not supposed to be since it would be game breaking. However if you manage to put together tri-elemental build it’s going to be very strong.
These are some builds that I put together and that had Elemental damage: Malakor’s Tactician - was insane pre-Malakor nerf, but still very very strong, Runibinder Crossbow auto-attacking Deceiver. - not easy to gear but insane damage, could also be a Tactician and still dealls tonns of DPS. And finally, Nex and Ortus Spellbreaker (was nerfed into obvlivion) with both Fire and Cold devotion paths (that I stole from jabrixone), was hitting like a truck too.
All in all these kind of threads might steal Z. attention from the type of damages that have real problems, sorry, Mournslayer.
Guys, it’s over-generalization from the OP. Elemental damage is fine. Elemental Battlemage however is a bad idea. It should be a Battlemage thread, not an Elemental one.
Guys. Not to threadjack, but I literally just wrote an essay detailing the flaws of acid damage in the hopes that it’ll get buffed, can we please set this topic aside for another day?
Now, while I agree that elemental battlemage is in a rough place as it lacks in terms of RR, but when your suggestion for my question of “how do we make the Discord transmuter of Cadence more compelling” is “switch to phys or aether instead lul” you’re absolutely proving my point that it’s a badly-supported transmuter.
I love my aether battlemages, but before the Krieg set was introduced aether bama was similarly struggling along. It’d be nice to toss Elemental bama some love as well via a dedicated item set.
So there’s a lot to unpack here. First, I agree the Malakor Tactician build was utterly bonkers and is still good. That’s the only of the 3 builds you’ve posted using Discord however…
I’m not sure if I agree with the assertion that “a good tri elemental build is going to be very strong” even with the copious amounts of RR found in the masteries these days with Censure and the latest Thermite Mines buff. And, as I stated in the OP, I absolutely agree there’s a delicate balancing act to be found in keeping elemental well-positioned compared to its individual components.
Finally, all of these threads arguing about “which damage type most OP” are pretty stupid imho, which I posted the joking start of the OP here in the first place
EDIT:
Please inform me of these mystical Purifier and Deceiver builds that are using Cadence, for I’d love to know how that’s possible.
:D,I doubt is better than elemental deciever.Inquisitor with censure,combustion with Bargol weapon or Malakor opens possibilities for number of ele builds.Without Inq is tougher,still termite mines support it as well,so enough classes can be used.
Jokes are good and all unless you realize that Z. is in no joking mood and half of the builds you loved are nerfed into the ground. Maybe post it in a different section, it’s a real effort to communicate something to Z., but sometimes it works. If we dilute Ideas and Feedback with threads like this he will start thinking every serious thread is a joke and will start reducing CDR on Star Pact by 2% every patch.
sorry about your headache, boss man…