You’ll be surprised at how effective it can be. On my Purifier (Inquisitor + Demo), it’s one of the most damaging builds I’ve built. DPS in that case comes from Attack Speed. Attack speed, attack speed, attack speed. Then you hold the trigger down, and not only do you fire freaking fast, you fire so often that your chances of getting criticals more often go up just through sheer numbers for how much you’re firing.
Okay. I can see that. This is only my second char so I’ll be experimenting. Thanks.
Man, the difference in the relative power of leveling skills is pretty silly. I’ve been on a rush the last couple of weeks leveling a bunch of different specs, just trying to get a feel for what skills are effective for each class. Given that you aren’t really leveling a “spec” per se, it’s handy to know what skills are great for leveling. The ease of respec means you can cherry pick leveling spells, and then switch to an “end game” build once you get there, I like that.
I love that I can level say…a soldier/shaman combo with an entirely different spec than I’m going to end up with.
Notable standouts for me so far for leveling are: Devouring Swarm (I’m a sucker for any dots), Primal Strike (especially ridiculous with a ranged weapon), Word Of Pain. In general, I don’t like “turret” builds, and being able to stay on the move while your damage is still happening just seems to be such a huge advantage, especially against bosses. I’m still in search of the ultimate dot build, so much fun.
dual pistols with purifier is what i am running now. It’s insanely high damage and completely melts groups. it just takes the right skillset.
One frustrating thing is the epics that drop have so much higher requirements. What is the point of dropping an epic item that needs level 22 when I am 16. I want that item now or very soonish not in 6 levels.
Still enjoying the game loads, too The Warden now.
Ranged dps has to be lower than melee dps because of: The range. When you aren’t taking damage in return it’s a lot safer and an equal dps to melee would be unbalanced. I would think this would be self-evident.
I didn’t like staying on the move last year playing this game, because moving with the mouse means more click click clicking on the mouse, and I hated that. I hate having to click so much, but it’s a necessary evil in an ARPG, so I just tried to minimize it as much as I could so that my clicking hand wouldn’t get as tired after long play-sessions.
But I agree I love staying on the move now that I’m playing with a controller. It’s just involves moving a thumbstick to move, not more clicking, so I love it.
Yeah, the gamepad movement is superior even beyond the QoL of having to click much less. If I move the stick to the right, the game clearly knows I’m moving towards the right. If I click to the right, the game has to determine if I’m telling it to attack a monster, open a crate. walk to that spot, or if I click on some rubble or something impassable in the heat of the battle, try to figure out a way to pathfind around the obstacle which sometimes leads to more frantic clicking to correct it, since my squishy mage is derping right into a pit of lava on the ground.
No such ambiguity here. If I am moving the thumbstick it’s for one thing and one thing only: move in this direction. If I want to bash something over the head, I press X.
Also, it’s amazing how much more obvious the telegraphs are and how much more natural dodging feels with a gamepad. With the typical KB/M control scheme, say I’m trying to shoot fireballs at a big scary enemy in the top right of my screen, while I’m running away towards the bottom left of my screen. To shoot a fireball, I have to move the mouse all the way to the top right and click a few times. But in order to run, the mouse cursor has to traverse the entire screen to tell my guy to start running away again. That might not sound like much (how long does it take a mouse cursor to move across the screen?), but when you factor in having to somewhat accurately aim the mouse for attacks and moves, those fractions of seconds really add up. With a gamepad, I just face the monster, hit X, and shift the thumbstick slightly. It feels so much better.
I’m so glad that a crunchy PC ARPG really took the time to develop a solid gamepad control scheme. As I’ve probably mentioned a dozen times in this thread (sorry), it’s been one of my biggest gripes with the genre… and this is coming from a gamer who wouldn’t be caught dead using a gamepad versus a mouse in the vast majority of games.
Didn’t Blizzard redesign Diablo 3 mechanics to work with a gamepad? I’m not referring just to obvious UI changes. I think they tweaked enemies, camera and other stuff.
Wonder how Crate got around that.
By just throwing up their hands and say use a mouse for the inventory.
Controller? Get off my lawn. :)
Seriously though. How do you efficiently place any skills that require you to designate a location on a map like the Inquistor seal or the triggered artifacts? I just can’t see how that would be efficient. In GD milliseconds can matter :)
Right there with ya. All this gamepad talk is making my stomach hurt…
Again, keep in mind that this is coming from someone who loathes gamepads for most things. I have a hard time not using a KB/M due to lack of precision.
That being said, I’m using a build that should be pretty bad on gamepad: I rely heavily on Sigil of Consumption and Blackwater Cocktail. Both are AE skills that have cooldowns and thus need to be positioned fairly well. I was pretty confident that this would be one build I’d fall back to keyboard and mouse, but as of L52, that hasn’t happened yet.
It’s not 100% perfect, but Grim Dawn does a surprisingly good job of figuring out where you’re aiming, and it will indicate it with a red arrow above the presumed target. If there isn’t a target, it seems to place my sigil in front of me and the distance feels like it’s based on how far I’m pushing the stick in a particular direction. It’s kind of hard to describe, but I’ve got a pretty good “feel” for it.
It’s not 100%. Sometimes I’m moving quickly so that right as I’m casting my Sigil, the target is shifted to another nearby target. As you say, milliseconds can matter, but that’s where the gamepad shines. No, really! You are constantly saving fractions of seconds by controlling your movement and attacks separately. It feels very different, because I have so much more time being able to watch enemies, see their telegraphs, and get out of the way of various attacks. My survivability has taken a surprising jump since switching, which I did not expect at all.
To kind of restate my previous example, say I’m using KB/M and I’m shooting at a rock golem guy on the far side of the screen, so I’m hovering my mouse over him. He throws a boulder at me, so I have to move the mouse over the entire length of the screen, click somewhere else, and hope that it pathfinds in a way I expect. Usually this results in my getting hit by the boulder AOE and I end up stunned. Meanwhile that same situation with the gamepad, I’m not watching my mouse cursor. I’m holding down the right trigger to attack. I see the golem wind up to throw, so I just nudge the left stick a bit. I step out of the way and immediately go back to attacking while the boulder is in the air and it smashes into the ground where I was standing.
It’s definitely not perfectly accurate, like I said. It’s still easily worth it though, IMO. And if you have an attack oriented build, whether melee or ranged? It’s extra awesome.
Any suggestions on making picking up loot better with the controller?
What kind of issues are you having looting? I tend to use the item filter (little icon to the left of the hotbar) to clear out most of the loot, so it’s just a matter of hitting “A” while standing near the items that remain (right now, that’s Green and above, but later I’ll filter it to Blue). It hasn’t seemed any more cumbersome than the mouse to me (now selling and comparing items is a different matter, I use the mouse for that).
Didn’t know about that option. Thanks!
I’m not sure why I bounced off this game so many times, but now I absolutely love it. I have un-installed and re-installed this game probably…4 or 5 times, but this time it really clicked.
Ok, now that I have that out of the way, I need to geek out about my trickster for a minute…here’s a screenshot of the pertinent skills…
Still playing around with this, if you have any ideas let me know! Working on devotions now.
Here’s a grimcalc quicky build link. Trickster
Cheers!
How did you level that Trickster?
Started with shaman and maxed devouring swarm, then did all the nightblade stuff, then back to shaman for end stuffs. Devouring swarm is easy mode early on. Also, because devouring swarm is so low in the tree, you get to nightblade stuff very early on…like by the time you hit 10 you can actually start putting points into nightblade I think. I rushed to pneumatic burst once I hit 10, because I wanted the run speed and the heal over time.
The other thing that isn’t reflected in that screenshot, is how much heal over time stacking you have between those two classes, you can get pretty silly health regen going. The real meat of that build is Phantasmal Blades with the vitality damage mod, coupled with devouring swarm which debuffs stuff for vitality damage. Both of those are super low in the tree skills, so you can pretty much play the build right from the start.
I started a new char shaman/nightblade. Thanks for the suggestion.