Yep, have to say I'm really enjoying this - mechanically, it feels much better than PoE and it seems to have an endless array of customisation options. The Arcanist meteor spell is particular gratifying to land on a group and send the bodies ragdollig everywhere.
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darklite_xI'm not an r-tard...Registered Userregular
I need to give this another go so I can update the OP. I was hooked on Titan Quest but I gotta say this hasn't quite reeled me in the same way. I might just wait for the expected release of the complete game though, in February.
Steam ID: darklite_x Xbox Gamertag: Darklite 37 PSN:Rage_Kage_37 Battle.Net:darklite#2197
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The Escape Goatincorrigible ruminantthey/themRegistered Userregular
Oh, there is a thread for this! Been binging it a lot lately, a RL friend of a RL friend has been selling it to our friend group hard for months. Turns out he's actually one of like the biggest players in the Beta (his excessive playing and testing has gotten hundreds of changes into the game, including a total rework of the legendary items), so it's nice being able to pick his brain on this stuff. Especially since this is my first ARPG and I'm still trying to figure stuff out, but it's fun.
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surrealitychecklonely, but not unloveddreaming of faulty keys and latchesRegistered Userregular
I'm sure they keep on patching it and improving balance and so on, but I really wouldn't say it lacks polish right now. It's already far more polished than most games I play.
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The Escape Goatincorrigible ruminantthey/themRegistered Userregular
The main thing right now is they have SO MUCH INCORRECT PUNCTUATION.
The lack of semicolons on the devotion screen hurts my soul.
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darklite_xI'm not an r-tard...Registered Userregular
Have they announced an official release yet? Closest I can find is that they hope to have it out in February. I think I'll boot up the game this weekend and see if what's changed. If anyone has anything cool or interesting they'd like added to the OP shoot me a PM.
Steam ID: darklite_x Xbox Gamertag: Darklite 37 PSN:Rage_Kage_37 Battle.Net:darklite#2197
Have they announced an official release yet? Closest I can find is that they hope to have it out in February. I think I'll boot up the game this weekend and see if what's changed. If anyone has anything cool or interesting they'd like added to the OP shoot me a PM.
It is basically feature-complete at the moment. You can finish the story, kill the end boss and move on to the next difficulty level all the way to the end. They've added legendaries, the reputations work now, there's devotion altars to further specialize your character and so on. Lots of stuff in the last few patches.
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Dr. ChaosPost nuclear nuisanceRegistered Userregular
Finally got around to this and pretty awesome so far.
Kind of at a loss as to what classes I want to be rolling though. Picked Shaman and 2handed melee first and kind of tempted to go soldier aswell to complement it defensively/AOE but I like some of the buffs from pyro.
Thinking about building something that can run into the middle of a group and unleash fire damage from enemies coming into contact with me while letting off lightning aoe but going pyro seems like sort of a waste since I would be ignoring all the explosives and traps which don't seem too useful for a more defensive melee character.
I also loaded the game up yesterday, but rather than jump back into my old characters I just started a new Vet one.
I haven't tried out the Shaman yet. Haven't really even looked at their tree at all, tbh. I still am Demo 1st player. Something about the firearms that make me happy. Although, I haven't really found a good second class synergy yet.
One of the bad things about this is I generally am shit at my own theorycrafting, and since this is a relatively small (and unreleased) game there isn't much in terms of build breakdown info.
Still, every time I load up the game I play for like 2-4 hours and love it. I hope this game gets more attention, but with D3 and PoE dominating the market, I can understand if it stays under the radar.
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The Escape Goatincorrigible ruminantthey/themRegistered Userregular
Finally got around to this and pretty awesome so far.
Kind of at a loss as to what classes I want to be rolling though. Picked Shaman and 2handed melee first and kind of tempted to go soldier aswell to complement it defensively/AOE but I like some of the buffs from pyro.
Thinking about building something that can run into the middle of a group and unleash fire damage from enemies coming into contact with me while letting off lightning aoe but going pyro seems like sort of a waste since I would be ignoring all the explosives and traps which don't seem too useful for a more defensive melee character.
Pyro is a great choice if you primarily want more CC. Stun jacks is a nice little stun early on, flashbang is great for debuffing mobs so you're more survivable, and 1 point in canister bomb + 3 in the transmuter than makes it stun is one of the best CC abilities in the game. That said, melee Shamans do typically second-class Soldier.
I also loaded the game up yesterday, but rather than jump back into my old characters I just started a new Vet one.
I haven't tried out the Shaman yet. Haven't really even looked at their tree at all, tbh. I still am Demo 1st player. Something about the firearms that make me happy. Although, I haven't really found a good second class synergy yet.
One of the bad things about this is I generally am shit at my own theorycrafting, and since this is a relatively small (and unreleased) game there isn't much in terms of build breakdown info.
Still, every time I load up the game I play for like 2-4 hours and love it. I hope this game gets more attention, but with D3 and PoE dominating the market, I can understand if it stays under the radar.
Derp. You're right. Their forum is blocked at work (where I do most of my surfing. Ha), so I don't really go to it. My phone however...
Oh yeah, as far as second class for a Demo goes I think Arcanist is generally the way to go. More elemental damage, more fire damage, even more CC (flash freeze is craycray), and Maven's is the single most broken survivability skill in the game even after the nerf.
And stacking Offensive Ability is still one of the dominant strategies, so Inner Focus is one of the most important talents in the game for giving you % OA (Oleron's Rage also does this, which is why minmaxers always have either solly or arcanist as one of their classes).
Also, going back and forth between this and D3 reminds me of how you just FLY through the levels in D3. I'm curious what people's thought are in regards to leveling speed.
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Dr. ChaosPost nuclear nuisanceRegistered Userregular
Finally got around to this and pretty awesome so far.
Kind of at a loss as to what classes I want to be rolling though. Picked Shaman and 2handed melee first and kind of tempted to go soldier aswell to complement it defensively/AOE but I like some of the buffs from pyro.
Thinking about building something that can run into the middle of a group and unleash fire damage from enemies coming into contact with me while letting off lightning aoe but going pyro seems like sort of a waste since I would be ignoring all the explosives and traps which don't seem too useful for a more defensive melee character.
Pyro is a great choice if you primarily want more CC. Stun jacks is a nice little stun early on, flashbang is great for debuffing mobs so you're more survivable, and 1 point in canister bomb + 3 in the transmuter than makes it stun is one of the best CC abilities in the game. That said, melee Shamans do typically second-class Soldier.
Ultimately decided to go with Soldier as my secondary.
Abit boring but barreling into zombies with blitz is starting to make it feel worth it.
darklite_xI'm not an r-tard...Registered Userregular
Started working on a demo. I want to use guns and I feel like Demo is the best class for that. Unfortunately, from my (limited) experience, it seems like Demo is the only class for that. In order make guns your primary focus that is. I suppose it wouldn't normally be a problem, like how Titan Quest had a ranger as the bow class, but it seems like the Demo is a gunner only incidentally. I guess basically what I was hoping for was a more focused 'rifleman' type class. Game is DEFINITELY more polished than the last time I played though.
Steam ID: darklite_x Xbox Gamertag: Darklite 37 PSN:Rage_Kage_37 Battle.Net:darklite#2197
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The Escape Goatincorrigible ruminantthey/themRegistered Userregular
Started working on a demo. I want to use guns and I feel like Demo is the best class for that. Unfortunately, from my (limited) experience, it seems like Demo is the only class for that. In order make guns your primary focus that is. I suppose it wouldn't normally be a problem, like how Titan Quest had a ranger as the bow class, but it seems like the Demo is a gunner only incidentally. I guess basically what I was hoping for was a more focused 'rifleman' type class. Game is DEFINITELY more polished than the last time I played though.
Shaman can be good for 2 handed ranged, since some of its 2H transmuters work with both melee and ranged. If you want to do dual-wielding pistols tho, Demo is definitely the class best suited to that. Gunslinger Sorceress is one of the highest sheet-dps (ie not counting procs from things like devotion and spells from the hotbar) builds in the game.
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Dr. ChaosPost nuclear nuisanceRegistered Userregular
edited February 2016
Still having a blast with this. Really loving the gritty scrap medieval apocalypse feeling.
The great thing about this genre is that they always become more addictive the longer they go on.
The constant feeling of growing power and what not, never feels slow and I've been playing a lot of slower games lately so I've needed Grim Dawn.
darklite_xI'm not an r-tard...Registered Userregular
Created a giveaway in the OP, under the assumption that the final release is coming this month as speculated.
Steam ID: darklite_x Xbox Gamertag: Darklite 37 PSN:Rage_Kage_37 Battle.Net:darklite#2197
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darklite_xI'm not an r-tard...Registered Userregular
Gonna give this a bump for more people to get in on the giveaway (in OP). Standard rules apply, be a member of any of the PA steam groups I'm a member of (G&T being the main one) and have some actual forum posting history. Good luck.
Steam ID: darklite_x Xbox Gamertag: Darklite 37 PSN:Rage_Kage_37 Battle.Net:darklite#2197
Gonna give this a bump for more people to get in on the giveaway (in OP). Standard rules apply, be a member of any of the PA steam groups I'm a member of (G&T being the main one) and have some actual forum posting history. Good luck.
If you want more entries, you could post it in the G&T and/or SE++ steam threads. It's come up more than once in discussions but I'm sure people don't realize there it's a separate thread for the game.
EDIT: "It" being Grim Dawn and usually to pretty glowing recommendations and enthusiasm
I need to buy into this. Would Steam or direct from the dev be a better idea?
Most people I see pick it up on steam just for convenience. Up to you how much of a cut you want to send their way. Might also be able to get it from Humble on launch which is another good option for that.
I was having a grand time, then got a Devotion point, looked at that monstrosity of a screen, and noped out. Research later.
It's getting a big ol' rework in the next patch (which should be out in the next week or two? hopefully?) so might as well hold off on it for now. My best advice is think of all the stats you want for your build (health, certain damage types, offensive ability, shield block chance, resistances, etc) and just identify which constellations have the ones you want for a build. And then try and make a path through them with the whole affinity thing.
Any tips on basic theory crafting? I never really played TQ and the basic engine looks very different than the D2/PoE I'm used to.
Generally the best builds are high attack speed with lots of silly on-hit effects, but if you just keep stacking +damage on a spell you like to use you'll kill things pretty good.
If you want to survive at the highest difficulty you need tons of health and damage mitigation and resistance buffing, but if you take your time exploring like I do it'll be a long time before you take a character to Ultimate.
Also you generally wants at least one source of +% Offensive Ability and some flat OA (the flat usually comes from gear), it determines both your to-hit and your crit chance so it's often the most pertinent part of your DPS in most builds. Also spells can crit.often
I was having a grand time, then got a Devotion point, looked at that monstrosity of a screen, and noped out. Research later.
It's probably simpler than it looks at first, and it has some really fun abilities that are added to your normal attacks. My Nightblade summons shadow assassins and procs lifedrains on people hitting her. My "research" on the whole thing was mostly just going "oh, there's an assassin constellation and I'm an assassin, what do I need to get there?" and just went for it. Probably not the best but works well enough. I really like the system.
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surrealitychecklonely, but not unloveddreaming of faulty keys and latchesRegistered Userregular
the stuff to know about the system is mainly
offensive ability is good and applies to all damage types, including dots in next patch
weapons are beafsteak
skills can go over max with gear
auto attack changing skills like zolhans technique or feral hunger work with a left click skill, of which there are only 3 (cadence, fire strike, savagery)
but
cadence third hit special attack does not work with them because crate are cruel and unkind masters so bear that in mind
that shit works with ranged weapons but hits multiple target shit doesnt. actual radius aoe shit does (eg explosion in fire strike line)
look carefully at transmuters
some less good weapon choices have absurdly strong weapon-specific constellations to make up for it (eg kraken for 2 handed ranged)
you can mix damage types fairly easily in this
energy regen gear requires spirit, piercing weapons need cunning, high armour items and 2h weapons need physique
some monsters have specific element resistances but its fairly rare so its not a d2 hell situation, plus there are resistance debuffer skills
look carefully at devotion constellations that dont have proc skills on them, they often have op retarded unflagged bonuses (like -25% resistance on hit on snake)
proc skills can go on your procs. if you are an autoattacker you can have a full set of dual wielding procs, each having a chance to proc their own procs. proctastic. you can also have the base attack skill proccing too! PROCS FOR THE PROC GOD
the crafting system is derp but pay attention to it because u can get some stronk shit
reading shit gets you xp aww yee
dont worry too much about stat distribution, going a mix of physique + whatever your primary damage type is will probs be fine until you have a stronger feeling. best to keep 5 stat points in reserve if you have any doubts
every skill tree has op shit so its all good
shit like pets scale with your level as well as with levels in the pet skill, so 1 level in briarthorn whatever is often worth. most skills can either be one point wonders or investments, very few are useless with only one point.
memes
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Dr. ChaosPost nuclear nuisanceRegistered Userregular
I've just been smacking everything with primal strike.
I've become some demented mix between Thor and The Punisher.
How do the procs work? I notice on the dual wield line there are like three of them, and you have the take them all to get to the end. Can more than one proc at a time? If not how can you tell which has a priority? Is there an 8% chance your crappy lvl 1 proc goes off and screws you over?
Second if offensive ability% is so critical to every build...why does it not seem to exist all? Is it just only available to 1-2 classes, which are then just better than the others? Or is it a gear focused stat?
Also, how does dual wielding work? Do you attack simultaneously making it a DPS boost? Does it interact well with the default attack replacements?
Finally, it looks like every active skill level 's on a 2-5 second cooldown. Are there any spammable skills, or should I just look at them as utility?
Right now I'm thinking of doing a trickster for my first playthrough, but that might change depending on some of this.
JihadJesus on
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surrealitychecklonely, but not unloveddreaming of faulty keys and latchesRegistered Userregular
How do the procs work? I notice on the dual wield line there are like three of them, and you have the take them all to get to the end. Can more than one proc at a time? If not how can you tell which has a priority? Is there an 8% chance your crappy lvl 1 proc goes off and screws you over?
Second if offensive ability% is so critical to every build...why does it not seem to exist all? Is it just only available to 1-2 classes, which are then just better than the others? Or is it a gear focused stat?
Also, how does dual wielding work? Do you attack simultaneously making it a DPS boost? Does it interact well with the default attack replacements?
Finally, it looks like every active skill level 's on a 2-5 second cooldown. Are there any spammable skills, or should I just look at them as utility?
Right now I'm thinking of doing a trickster for my first playthrough, but that might change depending on some of this.
the procs replace your default attack when using a left click skill or autoattack
they cannot go off simultaneously, so you dont want to go over 100% chance to replace your autoattack (although its relatively hard to do that)
offensive ability is more crucial for crit based build (as it determines crit chance AND crit power), and there are lots of other builds where you will be stats you will want to prioritise more
dual wielding just gives you a 50% chance to do a double weapon attack, the dual wield procs add on to that and override once you get a higher chance. but dual wield procs tend to use both weapons for their % weapon damage calculations, so damage is not lost (soldier procs like zolhan only use mainhand weapon damage)
you can dual wield pistols if you find the right items also fyi, so you can plan for that
look at transmuters to make things spammable, eg the shaman lightning attack or the soldier shockwave transmuter. not all can be but a few can (and some transmuters put something on a cooldown and buff it, eg the occultist dreeg transmuter)
So just to make sure I've got it, let's say you played a dual wielding Trickster using savagery with Belgothian's Shears maxed out.
Half the time, you'd do a normal attack but with both weapons. 20% of the time, you'd use Belgothian's Shears. 30% of the time you'd actually use Savagery, which you used to trigger the attack in the first place.
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surrealitychecklonely, but not unloveddreaming of faulty keys and latchesRegistered Userregular
So just to make sure I've got it, let's say you played a dual wielding Trickster using savagery with Belgothian's Shears maxed out.
Half the time, you'd do a normal attack but with both weapons. 20% of the time, you'd use Belgothian's Shears. 30% of the time you'd actually use Savagery, which you used to trigger the attack in the first place.
savagery is applied to everything
because its basically just bonus damage and effects on the attack itself, its like the "input weapon damage" for the other procs. the only exception to this for left click skills is cadence which is stupid
surrealitycheck on
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The Escape Goatincorrigible ruminantthey/themRegistered Userregular
Okay so hold on, those skill attack procs (shears, whirling death, quick cut, executioner, markovian/zoltan's in soldier, etc) work on their own little system called the Weapon Proc System (WPS), or weapon proc skills or something like that.
It's not actually percentages, but weights--say each A below represents 10 weights (for future reference, lowercase letters mean 5 weights), where A means you perform a regular attack.
AAAAAAAAAA
Whenever you attack, it grabs one of the weights out of the pool to determine what your attack is. In this case, you'll always get a basic attack. Say you get Markhovian Advantage to a level where it has a 20% chance to proc; this will replace 20 of the basic attack weights with Markhovian weights (M):
MMAAAAAAAA
And if you attack and pull an M out of that pull, you'll get the proc attack.
Now, dual weilding is its own sort of WPS--say you just have dual blades leveled and use the basic attack, it will look like this, with L being attacking with your left weapon, R being attack with your right, and B being attacking with both weapons:
LLLlRRRrBBB (it's something like a 35/35/30 split, but I'm not sure on the exact numbers)
Attacking with your left or right means you only get the damage and hit effects of the weapon you hit with, and landing with both gets the damage and effects of both.
Now say you have Shears (S), Quick Cut (Q), Whirling Blades (W), and Execution (E) all leveled to their 20% proc rate:
SSQQWWEEBB (I believe it takes out all the left/right attacks before taking out both attacks, not 100% on that tho)
As it pulls one of those out, only one can proc on any given attack. This also means that leveling other WPS skills won't lower your chance to pull execution, because it doesn't reduce the proportional amount of weights it has to the overall number of weights--it's going to be 20 of the 100 weights either way.
UNLESS you go over 100 weights (which you can do). So if you have all 4 Nightblade WPSs maxed out, and both Soldier WPSs maxed out (Markovian's M, Zoltan's will be Z), it will look like this:
SSQQWWEEMMmZZz
For a total of 130 weights. As you can see, you will no longer do any sort of normal attack if your WPS weights reach 100 or over, as they're all replaced. But all weights will be added, going over 100, and it still just pulls one out--this does lower your chance to get any individual skill to proc, because instead of the listed 20% on execution that was intended to be 20/100 weights, but now it's down to 20/130, or about 15%
That's the detail I needed. Sounds like a dual wield Savagery Trickster will be my first build, then.
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The Escape Goatincorrigible ruminantthey/themRegistered Userregular
Oh right, and for spammable spells each class has their options for that, either changing a cooldown spell to a no cooldown spell, and some spells with inherently no cooldown (that can be changed to HAVE a cooldown if you don't want to spam it).
Soldier's Forcewave can be teched to have no cooldown, Blade Arc doesn't have a cooldown by default and is great for waveclear but lacks in single-target deeps.
Shaman's Primal Strike can be teched to have no cooldown, and Devouring Swarm doesn't have a cooldown but I'm not sure how strong that is going into the lategame.
Nightblades have probably the best spam skill in the game in Phantasmal Blades; was the top build in the previous patch and is still pretty good. And with the right high-level gear can get Shadow Strike to no cooldown through sheer amounts of cooldown reduction. That's a silly build, but fun.
Demolitionist's Stun Jacks can be teched to have no cooldown, and that's a definitely workable build. Turn screenshake on with that build to see probably the silliest thing GD can produce. Blackwater Cocktail is also spammable, but it's one of the weaker skills in the game--it'll only really get you through the second difficulty and it struggles against bosses, but it's actually ludicrously good at clearing mobs.
Arcanist's Panneti's Replicating Missile and Calidor's Tempest are both specifically designed to be your primary mode of attack, and so have no cooldown. But gotta get dat energy regen to sustain them.
Occultist's Eye of Dreeg is basically Replicating Missile but with poison damage, so yeah.
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surrealitychecklonely, but not unloveddreaming of faulty keys and latchesRegistered Userregular
oh super improtant thing if u go dot build:
your weapon damage percentage multiplies weapon-applied dots. so if u are doing a 200% weapon damage attack, your dots are applied at 200% strength (plus other mods). if ur using eye of dreeg, it does a small amount of weapon damage - any dots on your weapon will be applied, albeit weakly. note that the devotion damage over time passives apply to your weapon, and thus u can get some sneaky usage out of dem
Posts
still lackin polish etc
I'm sure they keep on patching it and improving balance and so on, but I really wouldn't say it lacks polish right now. It's already far more polished than most games I play.
The lack of semicolons on the devotion screen hurts my soul.
It is basically feature-complete at the moment. You can finish the story, kill the end boss and move on to the next difficulty level all the way to the end. They've added legendaries, the reputations work now, there's devotion altars to further specialize your character and so on. Lots of stuff in the last few patches.
Kind of at a loss as to what classes I want to be rolling though. Picked Shaman and 2handed melee first and kind of tempted to go soldier aswell to complement it defensively/AOE but I like some of the buffs from pyro.
Thinking about building something that can run into the middle of a group and unleash fire damage from enemies coming into contact with me while letting off lightning aoe but going pyro seems like sort of a waste since I would be ignoring all the explosives and traps which don't seem too useful for a more defensive melee character.
I haven't tried out the Shaman yet. Haven't really even looked at their tree at all, tbh. I still am Demo 1st player. Something about the firearms that make me happy. Although, I haven't really found a good second class synergy yet.
One of the bad things about this is I generally am shit at my own theorycrafting, and since this is a relatively small (and unreleased) game there isn't much in terms of build breakdown info.
Still, every time I load up the game I play for like 2-4 hours and love it. I hope this game gets more attention, but with D3 and PoE dominating the market, I can understand if it stays under the radar.
Pyro is a great choice if you primarily want more CC. Stun jacks is a nice little stun early on, flashbang is great for debuffing mobs so you're more survivable, and 1 point in canister bomb + 3 in the transmuter than makes it stun is one of the best CC abilities in the game. That said, melee Shamans do typically second-class Soldier.
There's plenty of activity and build discussion on their forums.
http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=17
Oh yeah, as far as second class for a Demo goes I think Arcanist is generally the way to go. More elemental damage, more fire damage, even more CC (flash freeze is craycray), and Maven's is the single most broken survivability skill in the game even after the nerf.
And stacking Offensive Ability is still one of the dominant strategies, so Inner Focus is one of the most important talents in the game for giving you % OA (Oleron's Rage also does this, which is why minmaxers always have either solly or arcanist as one of their classes).
Abit boring but barreling into zombies with blitz is starting to make it feel worth it.
Shaman can be good for 2 handed ranged, since some of its 2H transmuters work with both melee and ranged. If you want to do dual-wielding pistols tho, Demo is definitely the class best suited to that. Gunslinger Sorceress is one of the highest sheet-dps (ie not counting procs from things like devotion and spells from the hotbar) builds in the game.
The great thing about this genre is that they always become more addictive the longer they go on.
The constant feeling of growing power and what not, never feels slow and I've been playing a lot of slower games lately so I've needed Grim Dawn.
If you want more entries, you could post it in the G&T and/or SE++ steam threads. It's come up more than once in discussions but I'm sure people don't realize there it's a separate thread for the game.
EDIT: "It" being Grim Dawn and usually to pretty glowing recommendations and enthusiasm
SteamID: edgruberman GOG Galaxy: EdGruberman
Those goblin mages are more of a nuisance than the hardest hitting goliath. Luckily it's pretty easy to see them cowering in the back.
Most people I see pick it up on steam just for convenience. Up to you how much of a cut you want to send their way. Might also be able to get it from Humble on launch which is another good option for that.
It's getting a big ol' rework in the next patch (which should be out in the next week or two? hopefully?) so might as well hold off on it for now. My best advice is think of all the stats you want for your build (health, certain damage types, offensive ability, shield block chance, resistances, etc) and just identify which constellations have the ones you want for a build. And then try and make a path through them with the whole affinity thing.
Generally the best builds are high attack speed with lots of silly on-hit effects, but if you just keep stacking +damage on a spell you like to use you'll kill things pretty good.
If you want to survive at the highest difficulty you need tons of health and damage mitigation and resistance buffing, but if you take your time exploring like I do it'll be a long time before you take a character to Ultimate.
Also you generally wants at least one source of +% Offensive Ability and some flat OA (the flat usually comes from gear), it determines both your to-hit and your crit chance so it's often the most pertinent part of your DPS in most builds. Also spells can crit.often
It's probably simpler than it looks at first, and it has some really fun abilities that are added to your normal attacks. My Nightblade summons shadow assassins and procs lifedrains on people hitting her. My "research" on the whole thing was mostly just going "oh, there's an assassin constellation and I'm an assassin, what do I need to get there?" and just went for it. Probably not the best but works well enough. I really like the system.
offensive ability is good and applies to all damage types, including dots in next patch
weapons are beafsteak
skills can go over max with gear
auto attack changing skills like zolhans technique or feral hunger work with a left click skill, of which there are only 3 (cadence, fire strike, savagery)
but
cadence third hit special attack does not work with them because crate are cruel and unkind masters so bear that in mind
that shit works with ranged weapons but hits multiple target shit doesnt. actual radius aoe shit does (eg explosion in fire strike line)
look carefully at transmuters
some less good weapon choices have absurdly strong weapon-specific constellations to make up for it (eg kraken for 2 handed ranged)
you can mix damage types fairly easily in this
energy regen gear requires spirit, piercing weapons need cunning, high armour items and 2h weapons need physique
some monsters have specific element resistances but its fairly rare so its not a d2 hell situation, plus there are resistance debuffer skills
look carefully at devotion constellations that dont have proc skills on them, they often have op retarded unflagged bonuses (like -25% resistance on hit on snake)
proc skills can go on your procs. if you are an autoattacker you can have a full set of dual wielding procs, each having a chance to proc their own procs. proctastic. you can also have the base attack skill proccing too! PROCS FOR THE PROC GOD
the crafting system is derp but pay attention to it because u can get some stronk shit
reading shit gets you xp aww yee
dont worry too much about stat distribution, going a mix of physique + whatever your primary damage type is will probs be fine until you have a stronger feeling. best to keep 5 stat points in reserve if you have any doubts
every skill tree has op shit so its all good
shit like pets scale with your level as well as with levels in the pet skill, so 1 level in briarthorn whatever is often worth. most skills can either be one point wonders or investments, very few are useless with only one point.
memes
I've become some demented mix between Thor and The Punisher.
How do the procs work? I notice on the dual wield line there are like three of them, and you have the take them all to get to the end. Can more than one proc at a time? If not how can you tell which has a priority? Is there an 8% chance your crappy lvl 1 proc goes off and screws you over?
Second if offensive ability% is so critical to every build...why does it not seem to exist all? Is it just only available to 1-2 classes, which are then just better than the others? Or is it a gear focused stat?
Also, how does dual wielding work? Do you attack simultaneously making it a DPS boost? Does it interact well with the default attack replacements?
Finally, it looks like every active skill level 's on a 2-5 second cooldown. Are there any spammable skills, or should I just look at them as utility?
Right now I'm thinking of doing a trickster for my first playthrough, but that might change depending on some of this.
the procs replace your default attack when using a left click skill or autoattack
they cannot go off simultaneously, so you dont want to go over 100% chance to replace your autoattack (although its relatively hard to do that)
offensive ability is more crucial for crit based build (as it determines crit chance AND crit power), and there are lots of other builds where you will be stats you will want to prioritise more
dual wielding just gives you a 50% chance to do a double weapon attack, the dual wield procs add on to that and override once you get a higher chance. but dual wield procs tend to use both weapons for their % weapon damage calculations, so damage is not lost (soldier procs like zolhan only use mainhand weapon damage)
you can dual wield pistols if you find the right items also fyi, so you can plan for that
look at transmuters to make things spammable, eg the shaman lightning attack or the soldier shockwave transmuter. not all can be but a few can (and some transmuters put something on a cooldown and buff it, eg the occultist dreeg transmuter)
Half the time, you'd do a normal attack but with both weapons. 20% of the time, you'd use Belgothian's Shears. 30% of the time you'd actually use Savagery, which you used to trigger the attack in the first place.
savagery is applied to everything
because its basically just bonus damage and effects on the attack itself, its like the "input weapon damage" for the other procs. the only exception to this for left click skills is cadence which is stupid
It's not actually percentages, but weights--say each A below represents 10 weights (for future reference, lowercase letters mean 5 weights), where A means you perform a regular attack.
AAAAAAAAAA
Whenever you attack, it grabs one of the weights out of the pool to determine what your attack is. In this case, you'll always get a basic attack. Say you get Markhovian Advantage to a level where it has a 20% chance to proc; this will replace 20 of the basic attack weights with Markhovian weights (M):
MMAAAAAAAA
And if you attack and pull an M out of that pull, you'll get the proc attack.
Now, dual weilding is its own sort of WPS--say you just have dual blades leveled and use the basic attack, it will look like this, with L being attacking with your left weapon, R being attack with your right, and B being attacking with both weapons:
LLLlRRRrBBB (it's something like a 35/35/30 split, but I'm not sure on the exact numbers)
Attacking with your left or right means you only get the damage and hit effects of the weapon you hit with, and landing with both gets the damage and effects of both.
Now say you have Shears (S), Quick Cut (Q), Whirling Blades (W), and Execution (E) all leveled to their 20% proc rate:
SSQQWWEEBB (I believe it takes out all the left/right attacks before taking out both attacks, not 100% on that tho)
As it pulls one of those out, only one can proc on any given attack. This also means that leveling other WPS skills won't lower your chance to pull execution, because it doesn't reduce the proportional amount of weights it has to the overall number of weights--it's going to be 20 of the 100 weights either way.
UNLESS you go over 100 weights (which you can do). So if you have all 4 Nightblade WPSs maxed out, and both Soldier WPSs maxed out (Markovian's M, Zoltan's will be Z), it will look like this:
SSQQWWEEMMmZZz
For a total of 130 weights. As you can see, you will no longer do any sort of normal attack if your WPS weights reach 100 or over, as they're all replaced. But all weights will be added, going over 100, and it still just pulls one out--this does lower your chance to get any individual skill to proc, because instead of the listed 20% on execution that was intended to be 20/100 weights, but now it's down to 20/130, or about 15%
Soldier's Forcewave can be teched to have no cooldown, Blade Arc doesn't have a cooldown by default and is great for waveclear but lacks in single-target deeps.
Shaman's Primal Strike can be teched to have no cooldown, and Devouring Swarm doesn't have a cooldown but I'm not sure how strong that is going into the lategame.
Nightblades have probably the best spam skill in the game in Phantasmal Blades; was the top build in the previous patch and is still pretty good. And with the right high-level gear can get Shadow Strike to no cooldown through sheer amounts of cooldown reduction. That's a silly build, but fun.
Demolitionist's Stun Jacks can be teched to have no cooldown, and that's a definitely workable build. Turn screenshake on with that build to see probably the silliest thing GD can produce. Blackwater Cocktail is also spammable, but it's one of the weaker skills in the game--it'll only really get you through the second difficulty and it struggles against bosses, but it's actually ludicrously good at clearing mobs.
Arcanist's Panneti's Replicating Missile and Calidor's Tempest are both specifically designed to be your primary mode of attack, and so have no cooldown. But gotta get dat energy regen to sustain them.
Occultist's Eye of Dreeg is basically Replicating Missile but with poison damage, so yeah.
your weapon damage percentage multiplies weapon-applied dots. so if u are doing a 200% weapon damage attack, your dots are applied at 200% strength (plus other mods). if ur using eye of dreeg, it does a small amount of weapon damage - any dots on your weapon will be applied, albeit weakly. note that the devotion damage over time passives apply to your weapon, and thus u can get some sneaky usage out of dem