KickStarter Grim Dawn

[Lacrymas]

Blood Pact is an aura that gives Flat Vitality damage, which applies to all your Weapon Damage based skills along with the universal %Vitality Damage. Drain Essence and Wendigo alone won't be enough to cover the massive amounts of damage from numerous sources you'll be getting on higher crucible, especially when you're actually forced to kite.

Though it doesn't show with the build I linked, I used Flame Torrent because you'll mostly be standing when killing stuff. Twin Fangs and Flame Torrent are both Weapon Damage procs, both of them use the extra Vitality Damage and Aether Damage bonuses (Flat and %) and the Life Leech you have from all your stuff + auras.

Ah, I didn't know this. Interesting. So, you are saying it's worth taking Blood Pact instead of Grasping Vines?

 

[Emmanuel2]

Ah, I didn't know this. Interesting. So, you are saying it's worth taking Blood Pact instead of Grasping Vines?

It depends on what you're building. I like it since it basically adds more on top of the WD procs.

If you're not really going for Weapon Damage procs or have other important skills to invest the points in, then no since IMHO Vines start shining when at high skill levels but falls off a bit when against bosses general (bad against bosses with skills like blitz/shadowstrike/closers or just fast since they tend to shrug off all slow effects).

 

[Lacrymas]

I'm going for the build I linked you. This one -> http://www.grimtools.com/calc/m23XQj4V

 

[Emmanuel2]

I'm going for the build I linked you. This one -> http://www.grimtools.com/calc/m23XQj4V

Investing a little wouldn't hurt actually. It adds a bit more use for the Totem than just healing you/doing a little bit of damage.

Taking out points out of Entangling vines and Grasping Vines (for that sweet spot of 30% attack and 69% movement slow), taking three points out of Wendigo totem and you get a vitality boost almost similar to your relic. I would do this since I virtually lose nothing except for some heals.

 

[Shadenuat]

When does Foul Eruption lower resistances work?
And it's lower health
...just how does it work really

I assume that enemy dies > closer enemy gets all the damage & lower resists. Which makes it a poor way of applying -%resists really, and useless against bosses.
Which is why Decay seems like a better upgrade because of it's -%damage for anyone standing on it. Ill Omen has another -25% so if it stacks seems like a good way of keeping your pets alive.

I've gotten one shot more than once in the expansion, have since used the potion and respecced all into physique and hasn't happened since - but the new areas are definitely a lot harder than the base game.

Just like in TQ the further you progress the more difficult it becomes regardless of actual difficulty. So whoever said Elite is more difficult couldn't be more wrong. It's not hard to enter Elite with all resists +20 topped unlike playing through Vet with low resists.
I mean, unless you like really know what you are doing, some builds feel like too much pain for most people on Veteran but can become possible when you hit level 50ish (pure melees).

In Malmouth they added my favorite type of enemy from TQ and action rpgs - the melee one that takes half a screen but can pass through any doorway and climb any ladder and HASTE and 2-shots you. Two of them even have achivos - Down the Mountain ,

and "Knock Knock"

Final boss was easier than those guys.




Necro trick:
max Ill Omen
Bind Will of Rattosh or whatever powerful ticking shit to it
find closest enemy
whisper "Bysmiel pads her chest"
after ensuing hysteria on the map, collect loot.

As for sad stuff, I don't feel like they nailed Raise the Dead devotion yet... after all that time( should have just made them bindable to aura and proc every few secs or every time aura procs.

 

[Lacrymas]

Now that I secured the rift at the outskirts of Malmouth - meh, the new chtonic beings are pretty generic. The new bug ones look like Duriel from D2, while the new demons look like... demons. They are starting to look like a grab-bag mixture of ideas, rather than a coherent race/beings. The new aetherials are cool, though.

 

[Shadenuat]

Wait for Fleshworks level
Read some notes, listen to soundtrack
Zoom in
Scream uncontrollably

 

[Gentle Player]

I am at awe how game can at the same time nail things like levels atmosphere and monsters, yet fail miserably at player's own skills. Many monster skills look better than your skills.

It's very hit and miss. The feeling of some of the skills is excellent, I'd go as far saying the best in the genre. The heavy thuds of a Devastation, or a Meteor, and the ground scorched with aetherfire. The crisp burning effects when a mob is disintegrated by the Aether Ray (shame that the spell is rubbish). The Dreeg eyes swirling about and splashing into a foetid pool of acid. Melee is also very satisfying. Then you have spells like Bloody Pox - there's barely anything there, it seems like a placeholder. If it weren't for Fevered Rage I wouldn't even know that I had casted the damn thing. I was also disappointed with Drain Essence. Perhaps I'm going deaf, but I could barely hear the thing.

 

[bozia2012]

Casuals.

 

[Shadenuat]

Wait if Vitality Decay is same to Vitality damage as burn or frostburn is to fire and cold, why is it necromancer skills do aether damage following it with vitality decay. Should't it be Vitality & Decay with Transmute skills into Aether? If that's a DoT based off main damage... urh, nevermind

 

[Sykar]

Casuals.

With pleasure.

 

[Chaotic_Heretic]

Ok fuck the deathknight; there is clearly not much devotion and equips with synergy.
Will do the death knight in main campaign though.

Here is the warder i am going to start on crucible.

http://www.grimtools.com/calc/YVWPgj7Z

(EDIT: Sacrificed a bit of OA and burst potential for more facetanking potential)

EDIT 2: Balde arc version with revamped devotions
http://www.grimtools.com/calc/r2ByqODN

Decent HP (but not max possible), solid resists, obscenely high OA and quite a bit of life leech with twin fangs, feral hunger, blade arc mod and wendigo totem blood pact.

Blitz for mobility, Warcry for debuff and resistance reduction, spam blade arc as much as possible; Otherwise use savegry for default weapon attacks and let the glorious weapon pool skills proc. Devotions focused around physical / bleed resist reduction, some weapon procs and defensive stuff like turtle/wayward soul.

Devotion and Equipment could sue a lot of optimization

But good fucking luck to me to get them equips

 

[Great Deceiver]

I've just made it past the sewers in Malmouth and I'm not sure that I enjoy the expansion all that much so far. The enemy designs are uninspired and there seems to be less detail in locations, it feels more generic in some way. I'm sure I'm burning out on my build though, playing a pure summon cabalist is quite boring. That, and I've played a lot this week - maybe I need a break.

 

[4249]

I'm finding the expac pretty boring. Just wide corridors after wide corridors with not much to do with them. Getting to Malmouth almost made me quit already, but I was hopeful after seeing that Malmouth contains multiple districts, but they're gated in a completely linear way so far.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

Yeah, sadly the one initial promise that the GD devs have consistently failed to deliver on is that of non-linearity.

I mean, I get it: it's an ARPG. How the fuck do you make an ARPG non-linear without completely borking its itemization and trivializing its difficulty? I don't know.
Neither do the GD devs though apparently, and that's a shame.

 

[4249]

My biggest gripe is that they've chosen to have the 3-difficulty Diablo cargo-cult AND just pack that linear content on top of the fuckton of old linear content. And it's the same thing that made Titan Quest such a chore at times. Makes me lose the last bits of faith I had in Crate

 

[Sykar]

Yeah, sadly the one initial promise that the GD devs have consistently failed to deliver on is that of non-linearity.

I mean, I get it: it's an ARPG. How the fuck do you make an ARPG non-linear without completely borking its itemization and trivializing its difficulty? I don't know.
Neither do the GD devs though apparently, and that's a shame.

I prefer a classic approach over a most likely to fail "novelty" approach. And yeah open world in this type of game is not very feasible. It is barely feasible in MMOs already and the vast majority of them suck hard so why would it be better here?

My biggest gripe is that they've chosen to have the 3-difficulty Diablo cargo-cult AND just pack that linear content on top of the fuckton of old linear content. And it's the same thing that made Titan Quest such a chore at times. Makes me lose the last bits of faith I had in Crate

Faith in what exactly?

And non-linearity, really? How many games do pull that off well anyway? Many of the most praised games on the RPGcodex like Planescape were strictly linear story wise with relatively small areas to explore.

 

[Shadenuat]

It wouldn't have mattered if Malmouth actually looked like a real city with secrets quests, npcs and things to oggle at all around, but it's first level (slums) is thematically repeated throughout 40% of expansion. Swamps, witches and cannibals were WAY cooler.

 

[4249]

My biggest gripe is that they've chosen to have the 3-difficulty Diablo cargo-cult AND just pack that linear content on top of the fuckton of old linear content. And it's the same thing that made Titan Quest such a chore at times. Makes me lose the last bits of faith I had in Crate

Faith in what exactly?

That they could learn from the mistakes of TQ and not just stack more of the same ad nauseum. I thought that the base game already overstayed it's welcome for a single difficulty with a lot of unfinished-feeling areas, so just adding another slab of 10 or something hours of very similar content and two masteries that also add nothing too interesting on top of that tells me not to expect much from them in the future either.

 

[Sykar]

Which areas are "unfinished"?

 

[4249]

To be honest nothing they added to the game after the Warden felt very coherent to me. Worst ones for me are the whole Twin Falls to Homestead part and from Darkvale to Loghorrean. I'd gladly just fucking fix the bridge and cut out content that's only purpose seems to be to add harpies, trolls and some cave dwellers to the game. I'm still wondering what's the point of Crumbling Watch as well.

 

[Lacrymas]

Yeap, the areas in the base game do feel unfinished and incoherent. That's because the maps have nothing to see in them, like I said a few pages ago. They feel randomly generated while they aren't and maybe I won't continue my playthrough after finishing Malmouth, at least not immediately. I just don't feel like going through the empty, boring spaces again. I hope they continue adding window dressing to the game.

 

[Zakhad]

I can see the point about insufficient window-dressing, but I actually really like some of the stuff in those areas, like the Mountain Deeps. I liked the variety in between Twin falls and Homestead, Act 1 is very same-y.

 

[Lacrymas]

Everything is same-y, that's the problem. Once you've seen one area you've seen them all, all they offer is a palette swap. GD doesn't manage to use its own setting very well, defaulting to swamps, open fields, medieval ruins, caves and forests. The interesting stuff feels unfinished, like the Necropolis and the Void. Once you've been into one Void map, you've been to them all, literally. It needs more stuff to make the areas stand out and not be so drab and pointless.

 

[Sykar]

I do not see them like that at all. I like the levels for the most part. I am not a big fan of the Asterkarn mountains but otherwise I am fine with the environments.
I also do not see how they are "empty" especially when you compare them to the competition like PoE and D3.

Everything is same-y, that's the problem. Once you've seen one area you've seen them all, all they offer is a palette swap. GD doesn't manage to use its own setting very well, defaulting to swamps, open fields, medieval ruins, caves and forests. The interesting stuff feels unfinished, like the Necropolis and the Void. Once you've been into one Void map, you've been to them all, literally. It needs more stuff to make the areas stand out and not be so drab and pointless.

How is that any different from other games of that type if you view it in such an extreme?
D1? 4 times the same randomized dungeons with different palettes alongside a randomized selection of side quests. 6 times with the expansion.
D2? The same as in D1 except the boss maps being the same all the time and no randomized side quests.
PoE? The same as GD the campaign having fixed maps as well and mapping in endgame reuses the same maps over and over.
D3? The same as GD except for minor inconsequential variations of the maps during campaign and rifts just reuse the same maps over and over.
Want me to continue? I could also make comparisons to Torchlight 1+2 and Restricted Area (vomit) if you like.

Also how is everything samey? The ruins of Burrwitch sure look a lot different than the Arkovian Undercity, Askartan mountains, or the Necropolis. The new areas are also different compared to the old ones.
In fact Burrwitch village or Darkvale village have many details you never see in other games like in D2 or PoE.

So what is your point? Does GD lack a desert area that badly? Because that is basically the only type of map it is lacking compared to TL, PoE and D2/D3.
I cannot agree on any point. Nothing feels "unfinished" to me. In fact it is more elaborate and detailed than any other game of its kind.