I don’t see anything in the patch notes, but after the last patch, my graphics are a lot crisper. Not sure if I had something set funny before and the patch reset it or something changed, but the game looks a lot better for me.
I cannot beat Commander Lucius on Elite. I can survive by just running back and forth, but every time I try to do damage I get caught in his attack and die. My aether resistance is maxed out as well.
I am finding myself way too squishy lately. I am 74 and 75 is an equipment upgrade level, but I don’t have much in my stash to look forward to upgrading to. My build is based around standing in my seal and shooting, but I just can’t sit still long enough to make the seal that helpful. I am dying a lot lately, starting to think my build is broken…
Just beat Elite Logorrhean with my cabalist. Tough fight because the boss has a massive HP pool and the giant stable of pets isn’t great for single target burst damage. Died 2 or 3 times but got it done.
The Cabalist now has 9 skeletons, blight fiend, Revenant of Og’Napesh (from an offhand), Nemesis manticore (from a relic), raven, and hellhound. I also have a ring that occasionally summons a little rifthound, and just got a last-tier Necromancer spell (Reap Soul, I think?) that attacks enemy mobs while also summoning a 10-second wraith. Oh yeah, my legendary gloves also summon little ghosts off X% of kills.
It’s quite the little army. I’ve always enjoyed summoning as many minions as a game will let me get away with.
I reached this fight last night, but then paused the game and went to bed. I got up this morning and started the fight.
My Aether resist is also maxed at 80, didn’t help. Got killed by him right away. Like you said, it’s possible to stay alive and avoid his fire, since there’s a huge pile of dead bodies and bones in the middle of the room. The question is how do you hit him without being hit yourself. I immediately dropped the idea of staying in the seal of inquisition. I lay the fire and cold runes down for him to walk over but they didn’t do much. I lay Thermite mines down for him to walk over, but usually he walked over them too quickly to take much damage. And if he ever hit me, I was dead.
So then I went into full avoidance mode. I went in there and kept the pile of bones and bodies between us. I kept laying down mines. When he would walk over a mine, I would circle around the other side of the pile of bones so that he would have to stay on the Thermite mines to shoot at me, or he would have to walk over them again.
It only took about 30 seconds, and he was down using this technique.
Now, I know you’re an Inquisitor, but what’s your other class? Mine is Demolitionist, so I was able to use the Termite Mines. Do you have something like that, which you can lay down while you avoid his fire?
I was trying full avoidance and trying to get him walk over my fire rune, which is almost maxed out, but it just wasn’t doing much damage. I am inquisitor/arcanist, but just the slow rune (or whatever it is called) and pets from the arcanist side. I guess I just need to try and be patient and let the pet/fire rune do damage. I wonder if he has high fire resistance? My character is so fire focused, that could be my downfall. Anyway, I was losing my patience last night, which just made everything worse, so I will have to try again later.
I keep thinking of making a sword and board tank type of character. Retaliation and buff based. No idea if that would work or even what classes to use. Soldier and ??? The inquisitor’s seal might be great for that because he would be able to sit in it really use it to his benefit, but I am not sure anything else from the inquisitor’s skill tree would be useful.
So no one else notice a graphic change? I wonder if it was on my end then?
What I did notice is that I was going through all my older characters to drop all their Blue and Purple equipment into the stash that sometimes sends items to the Item Assistant, and sometimes doesn’t.
And I noticed that with all my melee characters, I’ve got the camera zoomed way in. And you can see so much more detail in the game. I definitely would prefer to play this way from an aesthetic point of view. And I noticed how crisp and detailed the game was when zoomed in. But I can’t remember if it was always like this or not. I’ve been playing the Necromancer and Purifier for so long now, and both characters are best played with the camera zoomed way out so that I have a better view of distant enemies so that I can shoot them or watch my minions go at them. I’d forgotten about the zoomed in view.
One warning on this: Retaliation only works on melee attacks, not ranged. I had a character that focused very heavily on retaliation damage and it was awesome… until I ran into a ranged boss. Then it was just a slow grind of whittling him down. Part of that is my fault in that I focused SO MUCH on retaliation, but I didn’t understand the mechanics of it at first. So just make sure that you diversify a bit.
For me, I think I went with a Warder (Solder + Shaman). The whole Aura line of the shaman is just insanely good anyway, but Oak Skin buffs all retaliation damage.
Occultist could also be another nice fit for Blood of Dreeg. That’s a really nice heal along with a hefty boost to Offensive Ability, resists, and of course Acid retaliation. The Perdition set has some nice acid retaliation on it as well, IIRC.
I’ve also never made a sword and board character in this game yet. I’ve got a lot of nice shields building up, ready to go for such a character. I’m not sure I like the idea of retaliation all that much though. Still, that seems to be the only way such a character makes sense.
I wonder if a gun and shield character makes sense? After all I found a round shield that adds +1 to all inquisitor skills, so clearly the designers of that shield thought that made sense. I’ll have to think about that one.
“Grabbing a shield is one of the better things you can do if you’re in need of defenses, and this game is highly skewed towards needing defenses. generally what you wanna do is go resists & hp > DA & armor > OA > resist reduction > flat damage > +damage%” (quoting from another forum).
It’s important to get out of the Diablo 3 mindset of ++++damage at every opportunity.
Also put ALL points into physique, regardless of class, at least until Ultimate!!!
At least for my ranged dual pistol wielder, it is very advantageous to get more damage, more critical hit chances through Cunning/higher OA. The faster the enemy goes down, the less chances that he’ll get to me, right? At least that’s the way it’s been in the main campaign so far, through the start of Act 4 elite. The Crucible is a different situation though, I will admit. It’s hard not to let the enemy get to you there, since it’s a small arena. More defense, more HP, higher DA and armor through more Physique would help me in the Crucible.
I am not an expert so it may vary for some builds:
However the New Player Knowledge Compendium from Grim Dawn forums states under Game Mechanics: Classes, Attributes and Skill Points:
“You can refer to build guides for attribute allocation but the general rule is: enough Spirit and Cunning to wear your end game gear at max level, the rest in Physique.”
So I have followed those rules but if you are going for high crit then I guess more cunning could be useful there.
Also there is an attribute reset potion early in the expansion you can get so if you are surviving ok with most points in cunning then I would stick with it and just use the potion if you find you are having to kite everything.
You won’t be able to use a lot of mastery-oriented equipment without appropriate point spending. Don’t see how you’d make it to Ultimate without that gear.
The only time I’ve really regretted putting points elsewhere than physique is with my pure Nightblade, who has very high cunning but is super squishy. She still made it to Ultimate, though died a lot along the way.
I’m not a theorycrafter, though. I just play by feel.
My Arcanist (with a Trozan’s Sky Shard/Devastation/Albrecht’s Aether Ray build) continues to do well. To my surprise I was able to kill Ultimate Kilrian, boss of the Arkovian Undercity, without dying. I’ve had to invest heavily in Spirit on this toon, however, beyond gear necessity, because mana regen is pretty key for this build.
Meanwhile, my Cabalist ticked off the ‘Pet Hoarder’ achievement – have 18 pets summoned at one time!
Purifier is 79 now, nearing the end of Act IV on Elite. I’ve had the same equipment throughout Elite difficulty, and it has worked well for me.
I just took a break from Act IV and went back to do the Steps of Torment behind the Skeleton Key door again.
Again I got to the end, against the ghostly guy carrying the Scythe. This time I lay down all my moves, including mines, and he still got to me and killed me in a couple of swipes. I’m still not sure how I’m dying so fast. What exactly is he doing to me, I wonder? Just plain physical damage with the scythe? In which case maybe the key is just to try to keep my distance. But then, it looks like he can teleport straight to me, so that might be difficult.
EDIT: Looks like it’s this guy:
I don’t get it. None of the abilities listed should be getting me from 5k+ health to zero so fast. Maybe he attacks multiple times in a really short span.
Last night I went past the end of the Necropolis, built the bridge there to go through the chasm. I grabbed the shrine and I used my last Skeleton key to go through the gate there for the first time.
For the most part, I was having an easy time of it. It’s amazing how vast this area is. I didn’t use any kind of system like the right hand rule or left hand rule because I didn’t realize until a few minutes in that I was in some kind of maze. Sometimes I went up, sometimes down. Sometimes I went left, sometimes right. I never looked back because I never came to a dead end. Just more and more and more forks in the road. That’s pretty amazing. I wonder how gigantic this place is?
Eventually I got to a point where I made a mistake and got trapped between two starred bosses and couldn’t back up and was pinned in one spot. I died.
I love how each of these skeleton key dungeons so far are so different from one another.
By the way, early on in Elite difficulty, I’d already reached max status on both Beasts (Despised, I think?) and Homestead (Revered?). That makes sense, because Homestead faction gains status when you kill beasts.
Throughout Elite difficulty, I’ve been getting closer and closer to the same status on other factions, but I’m not quite there yet.
I never did meet a Nemesis in Elite difficulty though. I guess the chances of that must be pretty low, which is a shame. I was mildly curious just because of the name. What would a Nemesis be like? I guess maybe I’ll find out in Act 5 or 6, or in Ultimate difficulty, if I make it that far.
As for the benefits of being Revered status at Homestead, that was pretty neat. You get access to these augments that can go on any of your armor, not just your weapons and amulets and rings. The homestead augment gave me a chance to get more fire resist and pierce resist. I didn’t need either of those though, since they were already maxed. Maybe if Homestead is still the only faction I’ve maxed by the end of Elite difficulty, I’ll see what my resists are on Ultimate, and decide if I want that augmentation.
If I remember correctly each one only has one or two areas that they will show up in. With my other character I think I met both of the ones I found on Ultimate. I beat one (the beast one I think), but I got one of them in Conflagration,that was too difficult. I couldn’t even beat him by constantly running away. Unfortunately they aren’t that cool or anything, just super hard bosses.
Level 38, spenting my single skeleton key and fighting the “level 5 boss”… he’s at 20% and then he kills me with his stupid freeze->stealth->“hit very hard” ability :(
Now I need to find out how to get materials for a new key so I can kill him again.
Had to alt-f4 to avoid getting a permanent stain on my paperdoll.
This will not stand, time to level up and kill him… unless he levels up with me, always a few levels above.
