Weapon Pool Skills (WPS) and Total Damage Modified (TDM)

Grim Dawn Ideas and Feedback
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61

It depends a lot on what the actual identity of the WPS is to be honest.

Execution’s identity is “Great honking damage” so it’s identity is lost if you gut its damage.

While something like Avalanche has the identity of “AoE ice spikes” which is retained irreverent of its damage output.

A lot of WPS have little identity besides just being damage amps for AA builds (Which is where the notion of talking about “AoE vs ST” WPS goes out the window, as very few WPS are actually about AoE and at best just cleave a couple of targets)

Though some do. Like Inq’s WPS. You have Fireball shot, Piercing Ice shot and Electroshotgun. Each one behaves uniquely and has different innate damage types.

Of course, in many cases identity is watered down by item modifiers… Both to WPS themselves, but also DAR’s that then transfer over to WPS (Such as the Cleave you can get on Onslaught or the pass through you can get on Onslaught)

Though, a lot of these modifiers exist because the existence of single WPS builds weren’t a thing. I.e. In lieu of being able to 100% proc on a WPS with piercethrough/cleave you instead get a modifer to your DAR to make all WPS piercethrough/cleave. Or you get modifiers to multiple WPS to give them the piercethrough/cleave they lacked.

Since having your AoE being entirely RNG based is and was awful (And with how skill point hungry AAWPS builds are you couldn’t really afford to pick up a dedicated AoE skill)

Theoretically, with the existence of more support for lower amounts of WPS through modifiers to proc chance (Not necessarily the ascendant bonuses, but just general item modifiers), balance could shift towards highlighting specific WPS’s unique aspects rather than having to modify everything into the same pierce + cleave function.

With the saved skill points for not having to sink into several WPS allowing you to pick up a dedicated AoE skill if your WPS of choice are ST ones.

62

It does to all single target WPS, and I gave the best exemple which is Execution

Not sure i get what you want exactly here

You can kinda do that with Onslaugh and use the charges on an AOE skill, although not sure it would be that great without any aoe WPS, the AOE skill would need to be somewhat on low cooldown to work decently

But the problem of saved skill points is not about putting them into another AOE skill, it’s getting more powercreep offensively and defensively, especially since we already get more power from potions modifiers + ascending gear.

63

It’s strong but not OP. As usual 2h builds get fucked by fumble twice as much as DW.

64

I only play legit, and I am currently running it. I don’t know how broken or not it is yet, as I am yet to grind the 100% upheavel chance, but I know one thing: it’s extremely expensive, and it costs an arm to get the triple-rare Bis gear and to roll the ascendancies. It will be a shame if the build gets nerfed, because it’s very expensive for legit play and I think if you grind that thing, you deserve to be op.

1 Like
65

Is it any trouble to have more than 100% (combined) chance of proccing WPSes?
I do believe, if I have .e.g 120% of all WPS to be used, their chance values are “reduced” by 20% each (not nominally, but technically) and I have 100% of using those WPS.

Or is it better to ommit / skip one of those WPS and redistribute skill points and reach 100% of WPS chance?

66

pool is weighted down to 100% proportionally, so if you have 3x 30%+ 2x 15% it’s just 3x 25% and 2x12.5%

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67

It depends. If some of your WPS are better than others then you don’t want to reduce the chance of getting the best ones to fire, which you would do if you reach >100% chance by increasing the chance of the less good ones. Conversely, increasing the chance of firing your best WPS is always beneficial, even if it pushes your total % above 100.

2 Likes
68

Let’s have an practic example [I am going to post the build later, if it succeeds in field testing]…
FeHun = definitely stays
MarAd = could go (highest chance)
ZolTe = could go (some chance, because of passthrough)
Uphe = could go (lowest chance, it covers the percentage, if one of ZolTe or MarAd is dropped)

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69

So, you have 121% combined chance, so the chance of each WPS is scaled down by 100/121. Ie:

FeHun: 48
MarAd: 19
ZolTe: 19
Uphe: 14

If your priority is to maximise your chance for FeHun it would be best to drop one of the others.

2 Likes
70

if you need aoe drop Markovian since it’s unmodified and has no passthrough or multi hit
If you don’t care about aoe you can just drop upheaval or zolhan
*edit, that’s a cadence build, def drop Markovian then

2 Likes
71

I think 100% WPS is strong, but the opportunity cost/trade-off is also very big.

We have 13 slots currently; 2 hands, 6 armor and 5 accessories. Builds running 100% of one WPS usually have ~50-60% chance before awakening bonus, so that’s 8-10 awakening slots needed to get to 100% WPS. That’s quite a lot you’re giving up. You can get 23% rr or 16% damage absorption with 7 slots, or 96% armor with just 6 slots. Even generic boni can give 2.4k flat hp for just 6 armor slots or 15% phys res for 5 accessory slots. Taking those into account, I think they’re not really out of line atm.

5 Likes
72

It depends upon the skill and build, some just need 2 ascended slots.
Outside of those, a fast 200%+ attacker even with 90% single WPS is going to use it a lot.

73

If you need an exact ascended affix in 8-10 slots I think what you are mostly giving up is an epic fuckton of soul fragments. Assuming no GDStash.

74

Maybe I am “doing” it wrong, but “pre-ascended” build should have everything it needs, and use the Ascended bonuses for:

  • TO RAISE HEALTH POOL (X life, 400, mostly on the gear, on some gear it is 220 I believe…)
  • TO RAISE ATTACK SPEED (X% attack speed, 4% on weapons, +4% overmax, 4% attack speed on armor except belt and +5% attack speed on weapons, accessories and belts)
  • TO RAISE LIFE LEECH (X% ADCTH if the general number in game is 15% and less, if the ACDTH is on skill with no native weapon damage, like AAR, the situation is different)
  • (in very rare occasions, if desperate) TO RAISE A SPECIFIC RESIST (but as I said, if there is no other suitable solution).
1 Like
75

100% WPS isn’t really itself an issue. In fact, most builds would not waste (and specifically, GDStash) all their ascendant affixes to WPS chance if it was merely just 100% of a single WPS. There isn’t really such an inherent demand for say, having 100% Execution over say 25% Belgothian Shears, 25% Amarata’s Quick Cut, 25% Whirling Death, 25% Execution and freeing up all of your ascendant affixes. Builds only ever will do 100% WPS if there is some additional benefit to getting 100% to that skill (ie strong, build defining item modifiers to that WPS).

I also think in general we should have a different standard for evaluating builds that only function wtih 100% GDStash. These builds are pretty unrealistic gearing wise, and of course, you cannot level as these builds. If we min-maxed ascendant affixes on other builds, we’d similarly call that broken too. We just simply have the expectation that 100% WPS builds are going to be 100% GDStashed meanwhile all the other builds here are actively attempting to show realistic item setups and realistic ascendant affix bonuses. Let’s not normalize GDStash for balance purposes please.

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76

100% agree

77

Warning: In a mood today…

Yes and no.

100% WPS is an issue for two reasons:

  • There’s a ton of inherent efficiency behind achieving it, freeing up potentially dozens of skillpoints that often will make up far more than the opportunity cost of having a singular spread of Ascendant Affixes.
  • Ascendant Affixes shouldn’t be build-defining anyways. If 100% WPS came from a set or collection of base items, that would be less problematic and easier to tune. But the fact that any build under the sun can achieve near-100% WPS via Ascendant Affixes is too problematic and not what the system was designed for.

Yeah, welcome to the forum discussion for the last decade.

Call me nihilistic, but I think it’s naively optimistic to hope that GDStashed Ascendancy will not be the future. Not only has Pandora’s Box opened the floodgates of enabling this possibility in the first place, but most feedback I’ve seen on the Ascendancy system has been very negative. Players in my circles just don’t like the lack of player control over the rerolling of Ascendant Affixes.

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(Try as I might, I have not discovered how to force people to share their feedback here on the forums, so here we are.)

You can have whatever conversation you want about the "should"s and the “journey” and whatever. Ultimately GDStash is a shortcut for those that don’t enjoy the system and the more general displeasure that ferments over time, the more that shortcut will get used.

I tried voicing my concern for designing a system like this that would inevitably result in increased GDStash usage during testing. Z and other praets were not so moved by my concerns, effectively saying that GDStash is there for those that want it but the game’s systems will not be tailored to them. Alas, there has long been a disconnect between the intended gameplay of Grim Dawn and the practical end result. And when all the build designs that get shared on the forums are Ascended, there won’t be any other source of feedback for Crate to do anything with. They’ll only be able to operate with what they’ve got. But, this isn’t really the thread for that conversation.

Honestly, getting perfect Ascendant Bonuses is not that much of a grind. I’ve already done it legitimately across three characters now, and the expansion’s barely been out for a month. (None of these characters were started in testing) Fragments and Iron Bits are a grind, but not an overwhelming one. Sure, I’ve probably got more time to play than most, but Ascendancy was always targeted toward those willing to burn a lot of time on it. Point being, 99FM was more of a grind, and that’s one of the easier ones. :stuck_out_tongue:

But, looping back,

I think you’d be hard-pressed to find many other builds whose Ascendant Affixes make them as broken as 100% WPS enables. And that’s the whole point of this thread.

78

Hardly, in fact, currently they are the minority of the top crucible speedrunners and SR pushers. I think this is tunnel visioning way too hard on one mechanic. There are lots of other builds out there. They may not have, yes, build defining ascended affixes (albeit some actually do with normal items), but that’s because their build actually functions without them and are made leagues better by being able to just get a chunk of free stats on their ascended affixes. Consider that for all of the slots dedicated to getting this wps chance, I could easily get instead +200 OA and DA as just a baseline across all builds.

Every Possession wielding Occultist can get passive 53% damage absorb as just another example.

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79

Neither of these are stronger than 100% WPS.

And frankly I’m not even convinced %Absorption skill modifiers stack additively.

80

if possession mods was OP from giving 50% absorb (ecen assuming additive stack), why have we never thought of Possession/Menhir+Maiven as OP :sweat_smile: - “just” from being not additive? and it was slightly under 50%?