Why not make CC work on bosses?

Grim Dawn Gameplay Discussion
1

I’m sure this was discussed a plethora of times, but still I don;t understand what’s the reason of this design choice.

The only times I really want to use CC (stun, petrify, freeze, slow, confuse, etc) is when fighting the tough guys, AKA: bosses, celestials, gods, etc.

However, CC doesn’t work on them.

Maybe the reason is, that if it did work, then people would abuse it and just CC all the time, I understand that. But a simple solution would be to make it so it dimishing returns.

That means, first time you CC an enemy, it takes full duration, second time less, and so on and on until hes immune to it, with a cooldown of course.

That works just fine in D3 for example, which had the same issue at the beginning.

Make some bosses to ignore certain types of CC would be OK, but not all, like I don’t know, make Ravager immune to petrify, that’s cool.

Anyway, I’m talking about this since there is a patch coming, and maybe there is a chance of people chiming in and proposing ideas or whatnot.

My 2 cents.

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2

Well Zantai have said many times that if CC works against bosses, it will become not crowd control but boss control. So doubt any amount of topics will convince him to change it.

Plus there are few ways to CC on boss. There was posted build that stacks slow to infinity. Mageslayer have freeze RR, Rimetongue trap RR. OFF is particularly delightful freezing the entire screen. So CC are fun, even if they don’t work on bosses :slightly_smiling_face:

3

Right, but still doesn’t address the solution to the problem.

Even though there are differences, the solution D3 found for that in theory should work also for GD.

Would like to know if there is a reason why it can’t be implemented in the same way.

4

This is true. Freeze used to work on Bosses better than it does now (when used in tandem with Freeze RR) and was pretty OP. So Bosses got higher values on Freeze resistance to compensate. Take a look at this video to really see what I mean.

Is this really as simple as you say? How sharp should CC lose it’s effects and how quickly? Should it apply to every Boss or should select ones have higher or lower values? How long would it take to go through and test it out to make sure CC can’t be exploited again?

Making CC effect Bosses this far into the game’s life would be difficult to realise and hard to balance properly given the numerous changes made to it previously. And really, some of us would rather that time in development go towards new content/areas, balance updates for existing items, more lore etc.

5

It’s just a game design decision. You could make CC work against bosses but it would require to rebalance all sources of CC in the game. Eye of Korvaak would perma-control if it could have just a brief duration on the boss.

Timer-based system idk, was discussed a few times here. In the end the answer is the same - it’s a game design decision.

6

This change indeed would take a lot of effort at this point - basically total balance overhaul.

However there could be another change, not as hard to implement and actually fitting the design decision: make the “crowd” mean something in endgame. You know, so the crowd control thing would be smth worth considering to invest into.

There are so many monsters with so many unique abilities in GD. But they are nothing compared to bosses. It’s the first aRPG i played where everything but a small portion of the toughest bosses is referred as trash by the endgame oriented community.

7

Well, like I said previously, you only really want CC on things that might kill you. I couldn’t care less about CC’ing enemies that I can oneshot anyway, I only want to CC something that might oneshot me.

About Korvaak, it just would be a terrible devotion for CC’ing bosses probably, which is just fine, don’t use that for bosses if you want to use CC :).

9

well I got curious and had a quick look at several bosses cc resists and none of them had a cc resist below 75, and also all the nemesis’s except mooske have identical cc resists ( 90 slow, 120 sleep, 500 disruption and 138 for everything else if your curious (mooske’s difference is 500 freeze resist))

my personal thoughts on the matter is that only celestials should be immune to cc and every other boss should be somewhat vulnerable to at least one cc (as in you hit them with that cc and it defiantly did something if only briefly)

10

I agree, it would greatly improve bosses fights experience.

11

It’s possible to CC bosses. You just need a dedicated set like rimetongue which valinov loves for that very reason

12

Greatly improve them how, by making the boss just sit around as a punching bag? The argument for skillful timings of CC flies out the window when most given builds are applying multiple CC effects each second due to various rider effects on skills and items. The sort of sweeping changes that would be needed for anything remotely resembling proper tuning simply won’t happen outside of a modder implementing it.

13

Look how it works here:

There is a resistant CC diminishing return for all types of CC. So you can’t perma stun (usually) a boss.

14

Diminishing returns really don’t matter in this game because you can kill Nemeses in less than 10 seconds. So you can literally make a Nemesis do nothing for a whole fight (or really CC them when they are about to use their strongest attacks) and just kill them easily. So really it’s a mechanic ripe for abuse and an huge headache to balance.

15

Spare me the textbook quotes, I know very well how diminishing returns on CC functions and how a game needs to be structured in order to properly interact with such a mechanic.

If you were to allow bosses to be subject to CC the diminishing returns would either invalidate CC because there are numerous CC effects on a given build that the player has zero control over, or you push builds further down the “best status condition is dead” DPS black hole because there’s suddenly a blanket time frame where you get to freely whack the boss and your durability isn’t checked.

Glance at a typical nightblade build. Shadow Strike carries a stun and a sleep effect, hits twice with each of those when dual wielding. Belgo shears adds another two stuns if it procs. A transmuted RoS carries a stun and a freeze. Blade Burst has a freeze. Veil of Shadows has a slow effect it constantly applies. Expecting a player to be able to control the timing on such effects is a dreamlike fantasy. 5+ cc effects will be dumped in the first second of contact. Now either this burns through all your chances due to diminishing return scaling or it yields a period of time where bosses simply can’t act due to the onslaught of multiple CC effects each second. There would need to be a total overhaul of every last CC source (and probably mob ttk) to have hopes of a chance at implementing diminishing returns that are relevant and don’t make glass dps builds even more favorable choices.

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16

You can’t just copy/paste how CC works in one game over to another. Diablo and Grim Dawn despite being ARPGs have several differences to each other.

17

I never said that GD and D3 are identical games thugs you can implement the same mechanic. Nor I said the change is a breeze to develop.

All I said with certainty was, if the only thing you want to CC are the things dangerous to you, and those you can’t because the game doesn’t allow you to, then CC is useless.

Once you acknowledge that as a design problem, then we can move on with the talk.

I got a feeling that many here are in the “it would be too hard to change ergo it’s OK how it is right now” bandwagon.

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy GD how it is and bosses fights are fun enough, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be improved and it doesn’t mean how CC works is far from ideal.

18

No, it´s not. CC is very useful for a big part of the game. Leveling, heroes, spawning enemies at Bosses, etc.

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19

The complaints about Arcane and healer heroes become more and more funny when people still don’t realize CC shuts them down.

1 Like
20

For a long, long time I used most of the CC Xervous mentioned with my Trickster. Plus Grasping/Entangling Vines which made Malmouth a cakewalk and still helps a lot in SR and my Epic Gloves with Knockdown.

21

I also would like to have mind control :slight_smile: