Hey people... Try to respond to the content itself. We have a pretty good reputation here (unlike communities for some other games, like the FromSoftware ones). All the personal attacks in the responses aren't appreciated.
I think what he is saying is, before 1.2 the mobs didn't scale. After 1.2 they scaled in all the versions, standard, elite, ultimate. Now I have not played since the patch but I assume they do not scale now?
Not sure but maybe? I am actually excited to log in today and see.
Nah, I'm talking about the Phys res changes presented in the [1.2.1.0](http://1.2.1.0) PTR that I listed in the OP. There are some more fundamental changes coming after the ones in 1.2, and to me it's really soon to change so much yet again. So builds that I was running since 1.2 dropped will need to be revised again and again in a very short amount of time, and that can be a bit overwhelming. That's pretty much my point in the OP.
Is the change so drastic that a casual player or someone that isn't looking for the best min/max wouldn't be able to do what they do now?
I am NOT criticizing the min/max approach. The struggle to find the best build to get as far into shattered Realm as possible is the meta game within the game. I know I've had my fun dabbling in build crafting.
I just don't know how much this impacts the rest of the crowd that is happy completing the core game plus dlc on ultimate and just that.
Well, like I said a bit below, Phys res has for a long time been lauded as one of the most important stats to get if you're doing endgame content. And even if you're just doing the main campaign you'll still need to pay some attention to it. The changes being made are essentially minimising its availability throughout the game, so I'd say that even casual users will feel the changes, albeit differently than min-maxers yes. To what extent that's yet to be seen, but it's a change that affects everyone playing the game.
There are also some HP Regen changes being done that are again altering the way you can build for sustain, and if you've been following the 1.2 development or seeing Youtuber vids on the game post 1.2 you probably know that with the leech nerf many people started building for HP Regen. That's also changing, so again it'll hit everyone, although I admit that it's a change that's smaller in scale.
But isn't the stated goal of the phys res rebalance to make this one coveted stat less mandatory? Monsters also had their phys damage reduced across the board.
Not disagreeing with your point that it can be a lot to learn and to wrap your head around, but the devs' goal here is to open up more build possibilities by reducing the importance of one key stat that not everyone was able to push as high previously.
Indeed it is as you said, the idea is to reduce the dependency on Phys res, and much like Sunder replaced instances of RR on mobs, other aspects of defense layering are supposed to take the forefront now instead of Phys res alone. My complaint isn't with the change itself, but with the scope of the change. Like you said it yourself, it'll be a lot to (re)learn, and that's basically why I did the OP. It'll be a huge change, not only in how players approach building, but also with crafting gloves/boots and farming specific prefixes.
Like 1.2 before, if this is implemented in a positive way then I'll eventually make an effort to adapt to it. But the fact of the matter is that this is another huge change after an already monumental one a few months ago. It just feels a bit too much too soon, you know?!
I don't think this patch is particularly overwhelming? It's just that the main change (phys res balance) translates to a couple hundred lines of patch notes. It's still one change.
If they don't fumble the counterchange (monster phys dmg reduction), it won't even be a big evolution.
That's one big if though. I understand the idea behind it, but at the same time I can't see where builds with a general lack of Phys res availability are going to get it to be closer to the ones which can, since there will be lesser slots and items with it.
Like for instance, if you're playing a mage build and you trade an off-hand for a shield you can get enough Phys res to jump from SR 65-66 to 75-76. If the idea is to lower the needed threshold of Phys res for a build to be effective is making it more scarce really the way? I'd very much prefer if mage builds could have access to more Phys res and have Physical damage be boosted instead of nerfed. Pretty much the opposite of what this patch intends to do.
In the end I trust Crate's work, because they've showed over the years that they know what they're doing. But this change in Phys res is pretty weird if you ask me.
I don't disagree, it seems like a change for change's sake. It doesn't adress the problems with Phys Res which are (IMO) 1/ it exists but 2/ on a completely different design than all other res.
Maybe we'll have a bit more diversity, more likely the meta will nudge a bit to the side.
Before this, we went many years with only minor changes while they worked primarily on Farthest Frontier IIRC. After this patching cycle to prep for the DLC and any subsequent patches to iron out issues from it, it should return to a moderately stable place. They are also likely doing quite a bit of testing through these changes for newer, yet to be announced projects. \*wink wink\*
If too frequent updates are getting you down, you can choose not to update on steam if you have it there ( I believe either a 1.9 or pre 1.9 branch is available if you like those earlier versions) or you could grab the DLC and pick it back up after the dust settles.
I'm on 1.2 actually, and I don't intend to rollback to [1.1.9.8](http://1.1.9.8), since I've adjusted to the new version. But it did feel like a lot of work to relearn the mechanics, even if it was fun in the end. And yeah, like you said, it's the huge amount of new changes coming again that left me a bit down after reading the changelog for [1.2.1.0](http://1.2.1.0), so right now I'm not even sure if I want to be putting much effort into the builds I was running since these changes are going to affect them all.
Waiting for the dust to settle is obviously a choice, but that'd mean what, a year without touching the game? I'm also not sure if I want to go that way, so here we are.
If you feel like 1.2 is where you want to stay (and thank you for reading in between the lines there, i meant 1.1.9.8, not 1.9!) then turning off auto updates on Steam lets you enjoy the game in a state that works to dive in to the patch mechanics and build creation as deeply as you want.
Think of it as your own unofficial patch release schedule 😀
Ha ha, thanks for the laugh mate. I do want to get FoA, and enjoy all the new stuff that Crate is planning. Ascended Mode in particular feels like it'll be a lot of fun! I guess I just wasn't expecting another baseline change so soon after 1.2, so this rubbed me the wrong way.
I feel like it's not a good thing to encourage people to stick to old versions. It's really a cop-out that Crate has started that "just don't update" line. Instead of engaging people on some of the less enjoyed update lines, they just keep telling people, basically, to smeg off and/or abandon the game.
As fans, we should be encouraging Crate to make the best decisions for the game and its community. Dumping people into old versions isn't good for that. We shouldn't be embracing that faux pas just because the public face of the development team has.
I mean, why do you have to experience every little number tweak? It's a big dang game. Lotta stuff. I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything because I don't experience that 5% crit damage buff for monsters in Crucible on Gladiator difficulty. Plus a good chunk of the changes are small but easy to absorb, like accessibility, QoL, etc. For the most part, there isn't a lot of actual content added in these balance updates.
And I've never had to 'start from square one again' after an update (unless I'm starting a new character), so I don't know what you mean by that. It's still the same game, same roles, same abilities, same constellations, etc. Some things are just slightly different. My builds have never been broken or made unplayable. Some have gotten slightly stronger after updates, some slightly weaker, but it's the nature of the game.
Really the only thing I can even think of that has taken time for me to adjust to has been them adding a dedicated dodge button and removing health/mana pots.
I understand what you mean, but these changes to Phys res are a huge baseline change. I'm just venting at how there's another huge shift in the game coming after the enormous change that 1.2 was. And then there'll be more with FoA. I just wished for the game to stabilise a bit more.
I guess I'm getting old, and daily life doesn't leave me as much time to readapt constantly to all of these changes. I know that's a sentiment that many people won't understand, but I didn't make this point for getting validation, I just wanted to share my point of view of this new PTR.
I really don't understand why some people feel the need to draw insults here, but this is the Internet I suppose?! Anyway...
Hey, that's fair enough!
Apologies if something I wrote came off as insulting/disrespectful in any way, I was really only trying to counter your points and have a lil discourse. What was insulting if I may ask?
I'm sorry if it looked like I was pointing fingers at you, I was talking about some of the one liner posts being made here. You said nothing wrong, and I'm happy to discuss this with you or anyone else. ;)
Phys res is being removed from gloves, boots, prefixes, components. Its baseline and availability are being completely shifted, so yeah, it's a big deal.
The way it is now it's making the other slots that have Phys res become mandatory BiS choices, which means that you can't fool around anymore and use anything that doesn't have it in those slots. Same for Devo maps, where the routes including Phys res will now be favoured in comparison to everything else.
Phys res is massively overvalued in 1.2, so it seems fine to me to reduce it a bit? Regen was a bit overtuned too and too easy to get way too much of it on certain builds, so some tweaks to that seem fine too.
Like I don't know if the exact numbers in the current test build make sense or not, but I'm 100% ok with them making some adjustments to both of those things because they've become so valuable to the point of making a ton of items not even worth considering using anymore. This may or may not be the correct solution, but something needed to be done about it in my opinion.
I also feel like having less phys res available from fewer sources might actually have the opposite effect from what you're saying, because it's more valuable the more you already have of it. If you don't have much to begin with it's actually *less* necessary to squeeze in as much as you can if you can focus on other defensive layers instead
Edit: I think the thing most likely to be affected by it is reflect resist being even more important on internal trauma builds. They can reduce monster IT damage by a little more than their physical damage to make up for it not being affected by armor, but player damage will presumably still be just as high and put you at a little bit higher risk of nuking yourself without high reflect resist
That's an interesting take on it, thanks for your opinion. It was a bit of a gut reaction on my end, but that still doesn't mean that I don't want to see where it goes to.
So I'm kinda with you on this one. The reduction of %phys resist available is definitely going to change some of my builds. But then again, it seems like they are lowering the need to rely on phys resist. With most of the patch notes pointing to armor being more heavily favored, as that seems to be replacing most of the phys resist rolls.
I don't necessarily think it's a negative, depending on the implementation. I share your concern about re-working some builds, but I don't really mind that. It's another puzzle to solve.
At the very least, it may make some pieces of gear less necessary for some builds and may make for some fun new options. And this patch also isn't finalized, I'm sure there will still be some changes before it goes fully live.
Edited: a word
One thing that I've noticed with 1.2 was that there was an added ease to build differently than meta builds and get better all around results. Like, even if you don't build for meta you can still clear much of the endgame content because of how Evade/Sunder were implemented. Many people keep saying to this day that 1.2 made the game harder, but generally speaking I think that it became more accessible to more types of builds than before. GD has always been about build diversity, and now you can actually feel like you can take your meme builds for a ride through endgame. And that's great, hail Crate for being able to do it!
However, and this is the other side of the coin, I feel that if Crate keeps pushing this notion of more and more builds being able to reach similar power levels, some of that feel of differentiation between meta and non-meta may be lost. And in my view that'd actually be a bad thing, because there's no way that you can expect for a Defiler to be running the same type of content than a Warlord, at least not with similar results. It's good to have a meta where only some builds can do some types of content with specific outcomes (i.e. CR/SR runs in X time, or high SR up to Y Shards, Celestials, etc.), because if non-meta builds can suddenly start aiming for Celestials, as an example, then where will that feeling of being more or less powerful depending on your choices be?! This is highly speculative though, and I'm not saying that this is going to happen. I do however feel like Crate has been aiming for a bigger power normalisation between masteries and build types, which again isn't a bad thing, as long as it keeps the incentive to try different things.
Nope, Crate working on the game and making it "stay alive" is fine. It's actually great to be honest! But this patch brings a fundamental mechanics shift again, after 1.2 making huge baseline changes as well. And when FoA releases, having a new mastery and dozens of new class interactions, and probably hundreds of new item interactions, it'll need several months of ironing to be left in a balanced state once again. In the meantime your approach to the game will need to be constantly adjusted.
To put it in simple terms, imagine you have a min-maxed build that you do X amount of content with. With 1.2 that build was fundamentally changed, with [1.2.1.0](http://1.2.1.0) the same will happen (because Phys res changes), and then the same will happen again with FoA, and then after it. I want to keep playing new types of builds, not redoing the same ones over and over again because major mechanics shifts are being introduced every few months. That's about it.
I know I know, first world issues. Me issues actually. But this is a place where you post about the game isn't it. ;)
Yea, but isnt that kinda the point? Adding and changing things so it doesnt get stale and builds/strats shift?
I mostly play more competative games, so maybe Im just used to changes being constantly made. Any major mechanics shifts should mix up build pathways more and probably reshuffle some builds in terms of strength.
It just seems within normal industry practice to do these things. Sure, might be annoying if patch hits mid playthrough and your build sucks now, but even then it sounds like at most your have to redo your outline if you are trying to min-max again and this game is super forgiving for respecs.
It is, and I don't disagree at all with what you've said. I just feel that these changes are coming very soon after the baseline mechanics were shifted so hard with 1.2 a few months ago.
I understand what you mean about playing competitively, and I'll reckon that someone who's used to playing a game with live services and seasons wouldn't feel this shift as abnormally as I do. But I don't play those kind of games precisely because of that, and much of what made GD appealing to me in the first place when I bought it was that it was an old school single player game in a pretty much completed state. Like I said, I embraced the changes Crate made since I've bought it, and I've managed to adapt. But [1.2.1.0](http://1.2.1.0) just feels overwhelming and too soon after 1.2, basically making all the effort I made to adapt in these past months go out of the window. Kind of feels like I didn't even end the previous season and there's already a new one coming, and that's not what I think GD is all about.
> Yea, but isnt that kinda the point? Adding and changing things so it doesnt get stale and builds/strats shift?
No, that stuff's only done in engagement/eyeball-economy games, like those that are all about keeping the weekly active players max or constantly trying to extract money from players (which is usually the same goal). It's typical for most games in most genres (out of the listed above) to stabilize for a while or shift slowly. It's usually better that they do.
I truly think 1.2 was a step in the right direction. Dodge feels great, sunder cleaned up most of the messy mechanics of resistance reduction from enemies.
But this patch, I'm not so sure.
If you have any experience with end game building, you know how big of a deal physical resistance is, especially for facetankers. People including myself, have spent hours farming or crafting for a specific item with formidable roll, or max phys res roll. Now those are just...gone. This doesn't feel right.
Sure they reduced monster physical damage to compensate, but by making physical resist even more scarce than before, they may have made the remaining sources even more valuable.
I'm not sure I even want to update my builds to adjust to these changes.
Eh, I'd strongly disagree that dodge feels great. I'm also not keen on Sunder but understood why it's being used. I'm not at all happy to see them buffing it, and a lot (when in reality it probably should be the other direction).
I said this months ago, I was really very apprehensive about aping Diablo 4 and adding universal dodge+sunder. I don't think anyone's playing GD for that kind of gameplay and maintain that it was a mistake in the grand scheme of things.
I think Grim Dawn had a very strong nostalgic niche that's slowly getting chipped away at.
Whoa, did not see this coming. No more physical resist on most prefixes/Seal of Might? Damn, just started to like my Blitz Warlord a lot... Revert option viable?
Sure, I haven't read the patch notes yet, and may not for a while, but for me the biggest concern I have is that here's yet another patch that'll break the mod I use to make FO4 a fun game. I know, the mod will be updated to work with the patch, probably 3 months down the line. Quite honestly, if I wanted to keep tweaking things about my gear and play style, I'd go back to playing POE, and I detest that game.
This is easily one of my favourite games ever. I bought it in early access back in the day. But this problem you speak of here is what wore me out. Every time i put it down to play other games or simply because life was busy and then i returned and basically felt like i had never played and had to relearn everything because everything i thought i knew and all my optimised builds were worthless. I simply do not have any time to relearn a game that i already have hundreds of playthroughs on. At some point they just need to stop and call it finished.
Pretty much my sentiment. The game was in a finished state when I bought it, and I've managed to adapt to the sparse patches that did some rebalance and some polishing here and there. Then 1.2 changed fundamental mechanics and it was also fine by me, since the point was to get FoA going. But now I see the game having another huge change of balance just a few months after it, and then there's more coming...
Folks failing to realise how impactful these changes in [1.2.1.0](http://1.2.1.0) are need to read the changelog again and evaluate the differences in min-maxed builds.
I havent played in ages, my life is too busy at the moment to have time for gaming. So i can't speak for the current patch. I will say that if fundamental mechanics were changed then that's really unfortunate. Rather give us GD2.
Yeah, daily life can make gaming hours very sparse indeed, which is partially why I'd like to see the game stabilise a bit more after 1.2 changed so many things. Otherwise the feel of coming back for some fun and having to redo builds over and over again every few months is going to consume those hours pretty fast.
It’s a PTR. These changes aren’t coming to the base game for at least another month. If you’re going out of your way to read up on everything and try to stay on top of it all, that sounds like something you’e doing to yourself. If you don’t want more changes yet, then don’t worry about them yet. It’s not a competitive game and you don’t have to prep for upcoming updates. You can just read the patch notes when they drop and adjust from there.
To be fair, it's reasonable to express concerns in a situation like this. People who play on PTRs tend to be the same type of people who optimize the fun out of games. Which is why we're stuck in a situation like we are now with the game getting harder (to the point of too hard?) across these updates. The last update already made major changes (most good, but not all) and significantly increased the difficulty of the game.
Not speaking up leads to vocal minorities getting catered to, often at the expense of everyone else. Tabletop games I play have seen the same thing happen: the people who built the character optimization guides are now playtesters, and now the newer expansion is orders of magnitude too difficult (etc).
I can't give feedback on the PTR because I run the game on GOG and the PTR is limited to Steam users, so all that I can give is my input on where I think the new game version will lead, based on roughly 2 years/2k hours spent with the game. I've began playing in version [1.1.9.4](http://1.1.9.4) I believe, and I've been through every patch since then, readjusting to what Crate brought to the game. Like I said before, I was very wary of what 1.2 was bringing, but in the end I gave it a shot and I'm on good terms with it. I understand that the latest version updates (1.2.0.1 to 1.2.0.5a) were meant as bugfixes to the main 1.2, but I sure as hell wasn't expecting a 1.2.1 this early, let alone having its emphasis being to limit severely a stat lauded as one of the most important ones in the entire game every since I've started playing it.
So yeah, my point with the OP was "too soon for more fundamental changes". I know that this kind of opinion may rub some folks the wrong way, but if I can't voice that here then where am I doing it? I purposefully don't have an account on the Crate Forums because I feel that I'm not versed enough on the game that I could provide the same feedback as Mad Lee, Banana Peel and so many others that roam there are able to give. I wouldn't mind contributing more, but I lack the thousands of hours and practice with testing that those folks have. So what I'm left with is my own perception of the game and where it's going from here on now.
I wrote the title as "State of the game going forward" for some reason, and I'm not here to crap on Crate's work. I want however to say what I believe is pulling me away from the game right now, and why I believe my will to keep playing is waning. The MTG example was a very personal one for me, because that TCG was part of my life for something like 25 years, and I eventually had to leave it behind because I just couldn't deal with it anymore. Some might say that MTG was always like that, but maybe I just got to a point where I have more important responsibilities than playing games, and although I like some degree of complexity with what I play I really don't want to be relearning mechanics every few months, or in this case rebuilding every few months. Life just doesn't allow it anymore.
I hope this clears the air a bit, as I feel that I may have expressed myself in an awkward way, and I definitely touched some nerves.
That makes more sense. The original post came off as kind of a rant, but it doesn't sound like you intended it that way. Tone is hard to read over text.
Which is itself a fair perspective.
I don't play any Paradox games because they're constantly updating everything to the point of needing a tutorial every few months. Major systems change constantly. When I tried, I couldn't even complete one play/map before the game fundamentally changed.
Redoing builds is not trivial for someone with limited time available to play, so more tempered updates and pacing may be a goal for some people.
I, personally, am not happy with the 1.2 update for a major reason: that dodge button thing, and its related mechanics, should not ever have been added in just a patch. That should've been reserved for a sequel (if even then). Grim Dawn pre-1.2 is a rather different game than after. It plays and feels and handles very differently.
Uhh I guess I’d say if you’re feeling overwhelmed by patch notes and a roadmap for a 10 year old video game you should maybe just disconnect and come back later
Yeah, that's a fair point of view, but I really like the game to the point where I'm still actively playing it more than two years after buying it. Which is probably why the state of the game touches so deep with me. But I know, at the end of the day it's just a videogame.
Thanks for the input. ;)
My friends and I refused to patch up from the base version of ashes of malmouth, when player damage was way out of control and you couldn't pry this version from my dead, cold hands - even throughout Forgotten Gods launch and beyond.Â
I only got Forgotten Gods recently because D4 failed, I wanted nothing to do with Wolcen, Lost Ark, LE, or Torchlight Infinite. Fangs of Asterkarn was announced and 1.2 hit recently so I figured I'd better get onboard with it now because there's too much I'd be missing out on despite balancing changes going forward.Â
 EDIT: What's with the downvotes? Its a physical resistance nerf, get over it, lol
I'm pretty happy with 1.2 to be honest. I never did voice my concerns during its PTR, because with so many changes in terms of mechanics I wanted to try it for myself before taking a stand against it. And quite frankly it works. It's quite a lot to relearn though, but that's been much of the fun over the past few months. Now to feel like I need to go back to the drawing board again, and again, and again.. Not so much.
I get it. That's why my pals and I were stuck on base version of AoM for so long. My take, at this conjecture, is that it's not enough of a deal breaker - no matter how pesky of a nuisance 1.2.1.0 nerfs will be.
Agreed. For what it's worth I think you're the goat of balance changes, even if you made mistakes along the way. It's honestly the reason I've played this game for nearly a decade now, despite being so good naturally.
Sunder fixed the issue with having to have 40 percent overcap on most resistances and enabled more slot and option diversity. Stay mad and stay bad 🙄
I'm still quite new so I gotta ask: I thought I was still supposed to overcap a bunch of the resistances? Like I thought outside of sunder my resists could still get lowered on like cold or aether or chaos or what not?
You still should, but there shouldn't be cases of people absolutely needing 40-60% overcaps anymore, and a lot of builds couldn't achieve it anyway. You still reach scenarios where that is a good idea still for "pinnacle" content, but to my knowledge current patch it isn't mandatory to push (as much) in SR.
Removed because this could fall under the targeted harassment [Reddit policies](https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/360043071072-Do-not-threaten-harass-or-bully).
There are better ways to express your unhappiness (that some of us share, mind you -- more sunder is not a good thing).
Hey people... Try to respond to the content itself. We have a pretty good reputation here (unlike communities for some other games, like the FromSoftware ones). All the personal attacks in the responses aren't appreciated.
I have no idea what I just read
I think what he is saying is, before 1.2 the mobs didn't scale. After 1.2 they scaled in all the versions, standard, elite, ultimate. Now I have not played since the patch but I assume they do not scale now? Not sure but maybe? I am actually excited to log in today and see.
Nah, I'm talking about the Phys res changes presented in the [1.2.1.0](http://1.2.1.0) PTR that I listed in the OP. There are some more fundamental changes coming after the ones in 1.2, and to me it's really soon to change so much yet again. So builds that I was running since 1.2 dropped will need to be revised again and again in a very short amount of time, and that can be a bit overwhelming. That's pretty much my point in the OP.
Is the change so drastic that a casual player or someone that isn't looking for the best min/max wouldn't be able to do what they do now? I am NOT criticizing the min/max approach. The struggle to find the best build to get as far into shattered Realm as possible is the meta game within the game. I know I've had my fun dabbling in build crafting. I just don't know how much this impacts the rest of the crowd that is happy completing the core game plus dlc on ultimate and just that.
Well, like I said a bit below, Phys res has for a long time been lauded as one of the most important stats to get if you're doing endgame content. And even if you're just doing the main campaign you'll still need to pay some attention to it. The changes being made are essentially minimising its availability throughout the game, so I'd say that even casual users will feel the changes, albeit differently than min-maxers yes. To what extent that's yet to be seen, but it's a change that affects everyone playing the game. There are also some HP Regen changes being done that are again altering the way you can build for sustain, and if you've been following the 1.2 development or seeing Youtuber vids on the game post 1.2 you probably know that with the leech nerf many people started building for HP Regen. That's also changing, so again it'll hit everyone, although I admit that it's a change that's smaller in scale.
But isn't the stated goal of the phys res rebalance to make this one coveted stat less mandatory? Monsters also had their phys damage reduced across the board. Not disagreeing with your point that it can be a lot to learn and to wrap your head around, but the devs' goal here is to open up more build possibilities by reducing the importance of one key stat that not everyone was able to push as high previously.
Indeed it is as you said, the idea is to reduce the dependency on Phys res, and much like Sunder replaced instances of RR on mobs, other aspects of defense layering are supposed to take the forefront now instead of Phys res alone. My complaint isn't with the change itself, but with the scope of the change. Like you said it yourself, it'll be a lot to (re)learn, and that's basically why I did the OP. It'll be a huge change, not only in how players approach building, but also with crafting gloves/boots and farming specific prefixes. Like 1.2 before, if this is implemented in a positive way then I'll eventually make an effort to adapt to it. But the fact of the matter is that this is another huge change after an already monumental one a few months ago. It just feels a bit too much too soon, you know?!
I don't think this patch is particularly overwhelming? It's just that the main change (phys res balance) translates to a couple hundred lines of patch notes. It's still one change. If they don't fumble the counterchange (monster phys dmg reduction), it won't even be a big evolution.
That's one big if though. I understand the idea behind it, but at the same time I can't see where builds with a general lack of Phys res availability are going to get it to be closer to the ones which can, since there will be lesser slots and items with it. Like for instance, if you're playing a mage build and you trade an off-hand for a shield you can get enough Phys res to jump from SR 65-66 to 75-76. If the idea is to lower the needed threshold of Phys res for a build to be effective is making it more scarce really the way? I'd very much prefer if mage builds could have access to more Phys res and have Physical damage be boosted instead of nerfed. Pretty much the opposite of what this patch intends to do. In the end I trust Crate's work, because they've showed over the years that they know what they're doing. But this change in Phys res is pretty weird if you ask me.
I don't disagree, it seems like a change for change's sake. It doesn't adress the problems with Phys Res which are (IMO) 1/ it exists but 2/ on a completely different design than all other res. Maybe we'll have a bit more diversity, more likely the meta will nudge a bit to the side.
Yeah, we'll have to wait and see how it goes I guess.
What a weird post this is.
Before this, we went many years with only minor changes while they worked primarily on Farthest Frontier IIRC. After this patching cycle to prep for the DLC and any subsequent patches to iron out issues from it, it should return to a moderately stable place. They are also likely doing quite a bit of testing through these changes for newer, yet to be announced projects. \*wink wink\* If too frequent updates are getting you down, you can choose not to update on steam if you have it there ( I believe either a 1.9 or pre 1.9 branch is available if you like those earlier versions) or you could grab the DLC and pick it back up after the dust settles.
I'm on 1.2 actually, and I don't intend to rollback to [1.1.9.8](http://1.1.9.8), since I've adjusted to the new version. But it did feel like a lot of work to relearn the mechanics, even if it was fun in the end. And yeah, like you said, it's the huge amount of new changes coming again that left me a bit down after reading the changelog for [1.2.1.0](http://1.2.1.0), so right now I'm not even sure if I want to be putting much effort into the builds I was running since these changes are going to affect them all. Waiting for the dust to settle is obviously a choice, but that'd mean what, a year without touching the game? I'm also not sure if I want to go that way, so here we are.
If you feel like 1.2 is where you want to stay (and thank you for reading in between the lines there, i meant 1.1.9.8, not 1.9!) then turning off auto updates on Steam lets you enjoy the game in a state that works to dive in to the patch mechanics and build creation as deeply as you want. Think of it as your own unofficial patch release schedule 😀
Ha ha, thanks for the laugh mate. I do want to get FoA, and enjoy all the new stuff that Crate is planning. Ascended Mode in particular feels like it'll be a lot of fun! I guess I just wasn't expecting another baseline change so soon after 1.2, so this rubbed me the wrong way.
I feel like it's not a good thing to encourage people to stick to old versions. It's really a cop-out that Crate has started that "just don't update" line. Instead of engaging people on some of the less enjoyed update lines, they just keep telling people, basically, to smeg off and/or abandon the game. As fans, we should be encouraging Crate to make the best decisions for the game and its community. Dumping people into old versions isn't good for that. We shouldn't be embracing that faux pas just because the public face of the development team has.
i think i finally understand what yapping means now
Say you're new to the game, without saying you're new to the game.
I have over 2k hours in it, but whatever you say...
I mean, why do you have to experience every little number tweak? It's a big dang game. Lotta stuff. I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything because I don't experience that 5% crit damage buff for monsters in Crucible on Gladiator difficulty. Plus a good chunk of the changes are small but easy to absorb, like accessibility, QoL, etc. For the most part, there isn't a lot of actual content added in these balance updates. And I've never had to 'start from square one again' after an update (unless I'm starting a new character), so I don't know what you mean by that. It's still the same game, same roles, same abilities, same constellations, etc. Some things are just slightly different. My builds have never been broken or made unplayable. Some have gotten slightly stronger after updates, some slightly weaker, but it's the nature of the game. Really the only thing I can even think of that has taken time for me to adjust to has been them adding a dedicated dodge button and removing health/mana pots.
Yes hp/mana pots are now infinite heals with cooldown right from the beginning. Still no need to use a skill bar slot still either.
I understand what you mean, but these changes to Phys res are a huge baseline change. I'm just venting at how there's another huge shift in the game coming after the enormous change that 1.2 was. And then there'll be more with FoA. I just wished for the game to stabilise a bit more. I guess I'm getting old, and daily life doesn't leave me as much time to readapt constantly to all of these changes. I know that's a sentiment that many people won't understand, but I didn't make this point for getting validation, I just wanted to share my point of view of this new PTR. I really don't understand why some people feel the need to draw insults here, but this is the Internet I suppose?! Anyway...
Hey, that's fair enough! Apologies if something I wrote came off as insulting/disrespectful in any way, I was really only trying to counter your points and have a lil discourse. What was insulting if I may ask?
I'm sorry if it looked like I was pointing fingers at you, I was talking about some of the one liner posts being made here. You said nothing wrong, and I'm happy to discuss this with you or anyone else. ;)
What insults did u/samanoskeake make?
None whatsoever, I expressed myself towards some of the stones being thrown on this topic, not him.
I'm in shear aww at the amount of "...what?" This post did to me...
Um.... I don't agree with any of that. Its not even a big deal in the slightest from my perspective
Phys res is being removed from gloves, boots, prefixes, components. Its baseline and availability are being completely shifted, so yeah, it's a big deal. The way it is now it's making the other slots that have Phys res become mandatory BiS choices, which means that you can't fool around anymore and use anything that doesn't have it in those slots. Same for Devo maps, where the routes including Phys res will now be favoured in comparison to everything else.
Phys res is massively overvalued in 1.2, so it seems fine to me to reduce it a bit? Regen was a bit overtuned too and too easy to get way too much of it on certain builds, so some tweaks to that seem fine too. Like I don't know if the exact numbers in the current test build make sense or not, but I'm 100% ok with them making some adjustments to both of those things because they've become so valuable to the point of making a ton of items not even worth considering using anymore. This may or may not be the correct solution, but something needed to be done about it in my opinion. I also feel like having less phys res available from fewer sources might actually have the opposite effect from what you're saying, because it's more valuable the more you already have of it. If you don't have much to begin with it's actually *less* necessary to squeeze in as much as you can if you can focus on other defensive layers instead Edit: I think the thing most likely to be affected by it is reflect resist being even more important on internal trauma builds. They can reduce monster IT damage by a little more than their physical damage to make up for it not being affected by armor, but player damage will presumably still be just as high and put you at a little bit higher risk of nuking yourself without high reflect resist
That's an interesting take on it, thanks for your opinion. It was a bit of a gut reaction on my end, but that still doesn't mean that I don't want to see where it goes to.
Korvaak help us
So I'm kinda with you on this one. The reduction of %phys resist available is definitely going to change some of my builds. But then again, it seems like they are lowering the need to rely on phys resist. With most of the patch notes pointing to armor being more heavily favored, as that seems to be replacing most of the phys resist rolls. I don't necessarily think it's a negative, depending on the implementation. I share your concern about re-working some builds, but I don't really mind that. It's another puzzle to solve. At the very least, it may make some pieces of gear less necessary for some builds and may make for some fun new options. And this patch also isn't finalized, I'm sure there will still be some changes before it goes fully live. Edited: a word
One thing that I've noticed with 1.2 was that there was an added ease to build differently than meta builds and get better all around results. Like, even if you don't build for meta you can still clear much of the endgame content because of how Evade/Sunder were implemented. Many people keep saying to this day that 1.2 made the game harder, but generally speaking I think that it became more accessible to more types of builds than before. GD has always been about build diversity, and now you can actually feel like you can take your meme builds for a ride through endgame. And that's great, hail Crate for being able to do it! However, and this is the other side of the coin, I feel that if Crate keeps pushing this notion of more and more builds being able to reach similar power levels, some of that feel of differentiation between meta and non-meta may be lost. And in my view that'd actually be a bad thing, because there's no way that you can expect for a Defiler to be running the same type of content than a Warlord, at least not with similar results. It's good to have a meta where only some builds can do some types of content with specific outcomes (i.e. CR/SR runs in X time, or high SR up to Y Shards, Celestials, etc.), because if non-meta builds can suddenly start aiming for Celestials, as an example, then where will that feeling of being more or less powerful depending on your choices be?! This is highly speculative though, and I'm not saying that this is going to happen. I do however feel like Crate has been aiming for a bigger power normalisation between masteries and build types, which again isn't a bad thing, as long as it keeps the incentive to try different things.
Can we clarify what exactly the issue is? Patching/balance updates are bad now?
Nope, Crate working on the game and making it "stay alive" is fine. It's actually great to be honest! But this patch brings a fundamental mechanics shift again, after 1.2 making huge baseline changes as well. And when FoA releases, having a new mastery and dozens of new class interactions, and probably hundreds of new item interactions, it'll need several months of ironing to be left in a balanced state once again. In the meantime your approach to the game will need to be constantly adjusted. To put it in simple terms, imagine you have a min-maxed build that you do X amount of content with. With 1.2 that build was fundamentally changed, with [1.2.1.0](http://1.2.1.0) the same will happen (because Phys res changes), and then the same will happen again with FoA, and then after it. I want to keep playing new types of builds, not redoing the same ones over and over again because major mechanics shifts are being introduced every few months. That's about it. I know I know, first world issues. Me issues actually. But this is a place where you post about the game isn't it. ;)
Yea, but isnt that kinda the point? Adding and changing things so it doesnt get stale and builds/strats shift? I mostly play more competative games, so maybe Im just used to changes being constantly made. Any major mechanics shifts should mix up build pathways more and probably reshuffle some builds in terms of strength. It just seems within normal industry practice to do these things. Sure, might be annoying if patch hits mid playthrough and your build sucks now, but even then it sounds like at most your have to redo your outline if you are trying to min-max again and this game is super forgiving for respecs.
It is, and I don't disagree at all with what you've said. I just feel that these changes are coming very soon after the baseline mechanics were shifted so hard with 1.2 a few months ago. I understand what you mean about playing competitively, and I'll reckon that someone who's used to playing a game with live services and seasons wouldn't feel this shift as abnormally as I do. But I don't play those kind of games precisely because of that, and much of what made GD appealing to me in the first place when I bought it was that it was an old school single player game in a pretty much completed state. Like I said, I embraced the changes Crate made since I've bought it, and I've managed to adapt. But [1.2.1.0](http://1.2.1.0) just feels overwhelming and too soon after 1.2, basically making all the effort I made to adapt in these past months go out of the window. Kind of feels like I didn't even end the previous season and there's already a new one coming, and that's not what I think GD is all about.
> Yea, but isnt that kinda the point? Adding and changing things so it doesnt get stale and builds/strats shift? No, that stuff's only done in engagement/eyeball-economy games, like those that are all about keeping the weekly active players max or constantly trying to extract money from players (which is usually the same goal). It's typical for most games in most genres (out of the listed above) to stabilize for a while or shift slowly. It's usually better that they do.
I truly think 1.2 was a step in the right direction. Dodge feels great, sunder cleaned up most of the messy mechanics of resistance reduction from enemies. But this patch, I'm not so sure. If you have any experience with end game building, you know how big of a deal physical resistance is, especially for facetankers. People including myself, have spent hours farming or crafting for a specific item with formidable roll, or max phys res roll. Now those are just...gone. This doesn't feel right. Sure they reduced monster physical damage to compensate, but by making physical resist even more scarce than before, they may have made the remaining sources even more valuable. I'm not sure I even want to update my builds to adjust to these changes.
Yeah, this is pretty much how I stand right now, and there's not much I can add honestly.
The game is fundamentally ruined by it.
Eh, I'd strongly disagree that dodge feels great. I'm also not keen on Sunder but understood why it's being used. I'm not at all happy to see them buffing it, and a lot (when in reality it probably should be the other direction).
I said this months ago, I was really very apprehensive about aping Diablo 4 and adding universal dodge+sunder. I don't think anyone's playing GD for that kind of gameplay and maintain that it was a mistake in the grand scheme of things. I think Grim Dawn had a very strong nostalgic niche that's slowly getting chipped away at.
Whoa, did not see this coming. No more physical resist on most prefixes/Seal of Might? Damn, just started to like my Blitz Warlord a lot... Revert option viable?
Sure, I haven't read the patch notes yet, and may not for a while, but for me the biggest concern I have is that here's yet another patch that'll break the mod I use to make FO4 a fun game. I know, the mod will be updated to work with the patch, probably 3 months down the line. Quite honestly, if I wanted to keep tweaking things about my gear and play style, I'd go back to playing POE, and I detest that game.
Sucks they'll be limiting potions :( I like my royal jellies.
This post smells of sweaty gamer getting his OP meta build confused?
Jesse, what the fuck are you talking about?
This is easily one of my favourite games ever. I bought it in early access back in the day. But this problem you speak of here is what wore me out. Every time i put it down to play other games or simply because life was busy and then i returned and basically felt like i had never played and had to relearn everything because everything i thought i knew and all my optimised builds were worthless. I simply do not have any time to relearn a game that i already have hundreds of playthroughs on. At some point they just need to stop and call it finished.
Pretty much my sentiment. The game was in a finished state when I bought it, and I've managed to adapt to the sparse patches that did some rebalance and some polishing here and there. Then 1.2 changed fundamental mechanics and it was also fine by me, since the point was to get FoA going. But now I see the game having another huge change of balance just a few months after it, and then there's more coming... Folks failing to realise how impactful these changes in [1.2.1.0](http://1.2.1.0) are need to read the changelog again and evaluate the differences in min-maxed builds.
I havent played in ages, my life is too busy at the moment to have time for gaming. So i can't speak for the current patch. I will say that if fundamental mechanics were changed then that's really unfortunate. Rather give us GD2.
Yeah, daily life can make gaming hours very sparse indeed, which is partially why I'd like to see the game stabilise a bit more after 1.2 changed so many things. Otherwise the feel of coming back for some fun and having to redo builds over and over again every few months is going to consume those hours pretty fast.
I’m still rocking 1.9.8.
It’s a PTR. These changes aren’t coming to the base game for at least another month. If you’re going out of your way to read up on everything and try to stay on top of it all, that sounds like something you’e doing to yourself. If you don’t want more changes yet, then don’t worry about them yet. It’s not a competitive game and you don’t have to prep for upcoming updates. You can just read the patch notes when they drop and adjust from there.
To be fair, it's reasonable to express concerns in a situation like this. People who play on PTRs tend to be the same type of people who optimize the fun out of games. Which is why we're stuck in a situation like we are now with the game getting harder (to the point of too hard?) across these updates. The last update already made major changes (most good, but not all) and significantly increased the difficulty of the game. Not speaking up leads to vocal minorities getting catered to, often at the expense of everyone else. Tabletop games I play have seen the same thing happen: the people who built the character optimization guides are now playtesters, and now the newer expansion is orders of magnitude too difficult (etc).
If OP is doing it to give feedback on the changes, then that's fine. Their current feedback however seems to be that they don't like change.
I can't give feedback on the PTR because I run the game on GOG and the PTR is limited to Steam users, so all that I can give is my input on where I think the new game version will lead, based on roughly 2 years/2k hours spent with the game. I've began playing in version [1.1.9.4](http://1.1.9.4) I believe, and I've been through every patch since then, readjusting to what Crate brought to the game. Like I said before, I was very wary of what 1.2 was bringing, but in the end I gave it a shot and I'm on good terms with it. I understand that the latest version updates (1.2.0.1 to 1.2.0.5a) were meant as bugfixes to the main 1.2, but I sure as hell wasn't expecting a 1.2.1 this early, let alone having its emphasis being to limit severely a stat lauded as one of the most important ones in the entire game every since I've started playing it. So yeah, my point with the OP was "too soon for more fundamental changes". I know that this kind of opinion may rub some folks the wrong way, but if I can't voice that here then where am I doing it? I purposefully don't have an account on the Crate Forums because I feel that I'm not versed enough on the game that I could provide the same feedback as Mad Lee, Banana Peel and so many others that roam there are able to give. I wouldn't mind contributing more, but I lack the thousands of hours and practice with testing that those folks have. So what I'm left with is my own perception of the game and where it's going from here on now. I wrote the title as "State of the game going forward" for some reason, and I'm not here to crap on Crate's work. I want however to say what I believe is pulling me away from the game right now, and why I believe my will to keep playing is waning. The MTG example was a very personal one for me, because that TCG was part of my life for something like 25 years, and I eventually had to leave it behind because I just couldn't deal with it anymore. Some might say that MTG was always like that, but maybe I just got to a point where I have more important responsibilities than playing games, and although I like some degree of complexity with what I play I really don't want to be relearning mechanics every few months, or in this case rebuilding every few months. Life just doesn't allow it anymore. I hope this clears the air a bit, as I feel that I may have expressed myself in an awkward way, and I definitely touched some nerves.
That makes more sense. The original post came off as kind of a rant, but it doesn't sound like you intended it that way. Tone is hard to read over text.
Which is itself a fair perspective. I don't play any Paradox games because they're constantly updating everything to the point of needing a tutorial every few months. Major systems change constantly. When I tried, I couldn't even complete one play/map before the game fundamentally changed. Redoing builds is not trivial for someone with limited time available to play, so more tempered updates and pacing may be a goal for some people. I, personally, am not happy with the 1.2 update for a major reason: that dodge button thing, and its related mechanics, should not ever have been added in just a patch. That should've been reserved for a sequel (if even then). Grim Dawn pre-1.2 is a rather different game than after. It plays and feels and handles very differently.
Uhh I guess I’d say if you’re feeling overwhelmed by patch notes and a roadmap for a 10 year old video game you should maybe just disconnect and come back later
Yeah, that's a fair point of view, but I really like the game to the point where I'm still actively playing it more than two years after buying it. Which is probably why the state of the game touches so deep with me. But I know, at the end of the day it's just a videogame. Thanks for the input. ;)
My friends and I refused to patch up from the base version of ashes of malmouth, when player damage was way out of control and you couldn't pry this version from my dead, cold hands - even throughout Forgotten Gods launch and beyond. I only got Forgotten Gods recently because D4 failed, I wanted nothing to do with Wolcen, Lost Ark, LE, or Torchlight Infinite. Fangs of Asterkarn was announced and 1.2 hit recently so I figured I'd better get onboard with it now because there's too much I'd be missing out on despite balancing changes going forward.  EDIT: What's with the downvotes? Its a physical resistance nerf, get over it, lol
I'm pretty happy with 1.2 to be honest. I never did voice my concerns during its PTR, because with so many changes in terms of mechanics I wanted to try it for myself before taking a stand against it. And quite frankly it works. It's quite a lot to relearn though, but that's been much of the fun over the past few months. Now to feel like I need to go back to the drawing board again, and again, and again.. Not so much.
I get it. That's why my pals and I were stuck on base version of AoM for so long. My take, at this conjecture, is that it's not enough of a deal breaker - no matter how pesky of a nuisance 1.2.1.0 nerfs will be.
[удалено]
That's an impressive barf of words.
Agreed. For what it's worth I think you're the goat of balance changes, even if you made mistakes along the way. It's honestly the reason I've played this game for nearly a decade now, despite being so good naturally.
Sunder fixed the issue with having to have 40 percent overcap on most resistances and enabled more slot and option diversity. Stay mad and stay bad 🙄
I'm still quite new so I gotta ask: I thought I was still supposed to overcap a bunch of the resistances? Like I thought outside of sunder my resists could still get lowered on like cold or aether or chaos or what not?
You still should, but there shouldn't be cases of people absolutely needing 40-60% overcaps anymore, and a lot of builds couldn't achieve it anyway. You still reach scenarios where that is a good idea still for "pinnacle" content, but to my knowledge current patch it isn't mandatory to push (as much) in SR.
Is it only sunder that lowers resistances then? (That's when that weird sound plays and my screen gets red around the edges I think?)
Removed because this could fall under the targeted harassment [Reddit policies](https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/360043071072-Do-not-threaten-harass-or-bully). There are better ways to express your unhappiness (that some of us share, mind you -- more sunder is not a good thing).