Focus on one damage type they said...

[inkbiegel]

It will be fun they said...

Overaged memes aside, wtf is up with these extremely resistant enemies in Ultimate?
I'm a lightning warder and some enemies just refuse to take any noticeable damage.
The Herald of Destruction is just... no. Beat him once on Veteran and it literally took 20 minutes.

Now I'm in Malmouth and some of the mini bosses just take almost no damage. Sometimes even the Myrmidons.. I have a little reduced resistances but I find it hard to stack. Is that really the only way?

[powbam]

Personally, I'd take what hardcore min-maxers say with a grain of salt most times. They mean well I guess, but they become hyper-focused in their quest for efficiency. As for your issue tho, in Ultimate - "Resistance reduction (rr)" is a thing you will want to become acquainted with if you haven't yet..
https://forums.crateentertainment.com/t/malawiglenn-s-guide-on-game-mechanics-for-beginners/84347

Originally posted by inkbiegel:

Is that really the only way?

It is pretty central to mastering Ultimate+.

[Bleh]

That's why most builds aim to get at least 90 RR, and usually more. Lightning has access to 63% reduced from devotions alone. Raging tempest gives another 35%, even if you don't take it past 12 points. That's 98% reduced before you even start with gear.
That said, I just ran into a elite that just wasn't dying to my firestorm, and after about a minute, I was like, I know that this thing is gonna drop an item with a heap of fire res. Sure enough, it dropped some helm with 90+ fire res and another 25% elemental res.
All I could do was laugh at the accuracy of my prediction.
The item was still vendor trash btw.
Edit: the Myrmidons have some damage reduction bubble iirc, that lasts for a few seconds. Once that wears off they die really quickly.

[SchnitzelTruck]

Doesn't matter if you focus on one or more damage types as most end game bosses have high resist to all damage types anyway. Resist reduction is king .

[Gamma Zark]

Originally posted by Gir:

That's why most builds aim to get at least 90 RR, and usually more. Lightning has access to 63% reduced from devotions alone.

What are the devotions for lightning? I can't seem to find them through the search function.

[Gamma Zark]

Originally posted by powbam:

Personally, I'd take what hardcore min-maxers say with a grain of salt most times. They mean well I guess, but they become hyper-focused in their quest for efficiency. As for your issue tho, in Ultimate - "Resistance reduction (rr)" is a thing you will want to become acquainted with if you haven't yet..
https://forums.crateentertainment.com/t/malawiglenn-s-guide-on-game-mechanics-for-beginners/84347

Originally posted by inkbiegel:

Is that really the only way?

It is pretty central to mastering Ultimate+.

Thank you, I have been playing this game for years and I didn't even realize the mechanics were deeper than I thought, Even with just now using Dust devil with raging tempest my dps is already spiked through the roof.

[powbam]

Originally posted by Confusing Zark:

Originally posted by powbam:

Personally, I'd take what hardcore min-maxers say with a grain of salt most times. They mean well I guess, but they become hyper-focused in their quest for efficiency. As for your issue tho, in Ultimate - "Resistance reduction (rr)" is a thing you will want to become acquainted with if you haven't yet..
https://forums.crateentertainment.com/t/malawiglenn-s-guide-on-game-mechanics-for-beginners/84347


It is pretty central to mastering Ultimate+.

Thank you, I have been playing this game for years and I didn't even realize the mechanics were deeper than I thought, Even with just now using Dust devil with raging tempest my dps is already spiked through the roof.

Np.. trust me I've been at it a while too and I don't know how all the mechanics work either. Mostly because I don't bother to get all crazy with it, needing to know exactly how every little bit works etc. I just go with the flow and if I need to know something I know where to find the information ;)

[The_Mess]

Originally posted by inkbiegel:

It will be fun they said...

Overaged memes aside, wtf is up with these extremely resistant enemies in Ultimate?
I'm a lightning warder and some enemies just refuse to take any noticeable damage.
The Herald of Destruction is just... no. Beat him once on Veteran and it literally took 20 minutes.

Now I'm in Malmouth and some of the mini bosses just take almost no damage. Sometimes even the Myrmidons.. I have a little reduced resistances but I find it hard to stack. Is that really the only way?

Well this is why I ether stack the fluff out of resistance reduction or go with 1 main damage type + a secondary that is easy to synergise with. Fortunately devotions provide some decent RR, but not enough for Ultimate unless you're geared up.

[andrew.thiele]

With Resist Reduction (RR) in general you want to build up as much -#% RR (worded as "-35% [insert damage type] Resistance) as you can as this type stacks. Then you'd like at least one source of #% RR (worded as "20% Reduced target's [insert damage type] Resistances) and at least one source of Flat RR (worded as "32 Reduced target's [insert damage type] for X seconds) because neither of these types of RR stack.

As a Warder build that does Lightning damage you have these devotions available to you for RR:

• Widow with it's Arcane Bomb proc that lowers enemies lightning resist up to -35%.
  
• Next, there are two devotions that do % RR. These are the Viper devotion (requires weapon damage on the attack to apply) which offers 20% RR. The second devotion of the same type is Ultos, Shepard of the Storms with its Hand of Ultos proc that offers the same 20% RR. Even though these two don't stack, you'll often see a lot of devotion layouts for Lightning builds take both, but that's mostly because Viper is also good to have to get other devotions, and it has nice stats as well as not requiring an On Crit attack.
  
• Lastly, there are two more devotions that do Flat RR. The first is Rhowan's Crown with the Elemental Storm proc that deals up to 32 Flat RR. The second is from the Revenant devotion whose Raise the Dead proc has skeletons deal up to 25 Flat RR.

Now Shaman has Wind Devil with the Raging Tempest offering -35% RR at lvl 12 and even higher as you overcap the skill.

Technically, Soldier also has a Flat RR for Lightning with War Cry's Terrify that gives up to 10 Flat RR for all resistances. The devotions that do Flat RR are more appealing, in my opinion.

But again, stack sources of -#% RR as much as you can, and get one source of #% RR and Flat RR (if you can).

Lastly, there are items...which there are plenty of so I'll just leave you with the RR calculation if you want to go that deep into its mechanic:

https://forums.crateentertainment.com/t/actual-resist-reduction-formula/47174

[Bleh]

Originally posted by Confusing Zark:

Originally posted by Gir:

That's why most builds aim to get at least 90 RR, and usually more. Lightning has access to 63% reduced from devotions alone.

What are the devotions for lightning? I can't seem to find them through the search function.

Widow and Rowan's Crown.

[Faust Wither]

my attack deal a misc damage (vitality, elemental, aether, physical), but some of my skill can do 50k by just investing 3 point.

[RodHull]

Originally posted by powbam:

Personally, I'd take what hardcore min-maxers say with a grain of salt most times. They mean well I guess, but they become hyper-focused in their quest for efficiency. As for your issue tho, in Ultimate - "Resistance reduction (rr)" is a thing you will want to become acquainted with if you haven't yet..
https://forums.crateentertainment.com/t/malawiglenn-s-guide-on-game-mechanics-for-beginners/84347

Originally posted by inkbiegel:

Is that really the only way?

It is pretty central to mastering Ultimate+.

Its not so much they are wrong they just forget other people dont have access to skads of GDstashed gear to make uber builds on a whim :)

The core premise holds up though that one uber focused damage type is better than sharing it about. You just need a detailed and thorough understanding of later game mechanics like how resistances, mitigation and so forth work otherwise you end up with a build that usually hits a roadblock somewhere cause it simply cannot beat something.

That said there are some enemies which are just straight up a pita for some builds and not for others, myrmidons are one of those imo

[inkbiegel]

wow that is a lot of great information, thanks guys.
seems like I'll have to rethink my devotions to stack more resistance reduction.
Turtle Shell is probably not that usefull anymore now that I hit 100.

It's starting to feel more and more like a puzzle game to me. Still loving it but it sometimes sucks the fun out of finding a sweet new piece of gear if it doesn't have the same resistances as what you're replacing. So many things to think of, probably more so because I'm basically facetanking,

[sarcastic_godot]

Originally posted by inkbiegel:

[...]It's starting to feel more and more like a puzzle game to me.[...]

But it is!

Grim Dawn definitely is a game for the Tinkerer-type gamer, which is one of the reasons I love it.

[Mochan]

Focusing on one damage type is still the best way to go IMO. You will come across a few resistant enemies but you can still kill them, especially if you have RR.

Besides, most of the time, your focused one-element damage will still be at least the same or even greater than a dual-non-focused damage on the same enemy. That's because damage focusing increases your damage tenfold.

I would rather have a Storm Totem dealing 16k damage than a Storm Totem and a Wendigo Totem dealing 4k each. And that is seriously what happens when you don't focus on one element and one skill. Even if the enemy is 100% damage resistant you will usually have around 50% RR without really trying (and can easily go to 100% or more with items) and that means you are still doing 8k damage as opposed to doing just 4k damage.

[Takeda]

Originally posted by Mochan:

Focusing on one damage type is still the best way to go IMO. You will come across a few resistant enemies but you can still kill them, especially if you have RR.

Besides, most of the time, your focused one-element damage will still be at least the same or even greater than a dual-non-focused damage on the same enemy. That's because damage focusing increases your damage tenfold.

I would rather have a Storm Totem dealing 16k damage than a Storm Totem and a Wendigo Totem dealing 4k each. And that is seriously what happens when you don't focus on one element and one skill. Even if the enemy is 100% damage resistant you will usually have around 50% RR without really trying (and can easily go to 100% or more with items) and that means you are still doing 8k damage as opposed to doing just 4k damage.

And as someone noted earlier, that's assuming the boss you face isn't multi-resistant trimming 75% of damage off both totems so you're actually only doing 1k each.