I’m finding the gamepad mostly more effective and smoother, for the many reasons @KevinC and others have posted, but for a skill like Devouring Swarm, the mouse is definitely better. Being able to line up the enemies by targeting one in the back is invaluable to make the most of the skill. I imagine there are other ranged (and “piercing”) skills for which mouse targeting is preferable.
I decided to try out your Trickster build also. I’m only level 11 so far, but I’m surprised at how effective Devouring Swarm is early on. I always kind of ignored that skill because it doesn’t scale up with your weapon, and therefore it should have great damage early, but really poor damage late in the game. But looking at your build, the key thing that will be really useful is the factor that devouring swarm will make enemies weaker to Vitality and Bleeding damage. So your build which concentrates so much on Vitality damage should kick ass in combination with Devouring Swarm even later in the game.
I was also tempted by it because of your use of the late Shaman skill tree. There’s lots of skills there that I’ve never used in this game. Like the two totems. If that healing totem really does help me survive when things get tough, that should be a great combination of defensive and offensive skills.
Agreed 100% KevinC. Early on, my only real criticism of Grim Dawn was the designer’s emphasis on character positioning.
Here’s a telegraphed enemy attack! Better move out of the way!
Here’s an area you have to walk through that will kill you. Better not let anything interrupt your movement!
Here’s a boss that’s going to throw things at you that you’d better dodge or you’ll die!
Here’s a million things happening on the screen to obstruct your view, better remember to keep moving and dodging while all that is happening!
I mean, what kind of sadistic designer thinks that I’m that good at instantly moving the mouse across the screen and never accidentally clicking on something I didn’t want to?
Overall, it didn’t hurt the game much because for some reason I don’t mind dying in this game.
But yeah, the more I play with the controller, the less these kinds of mistakes happen, and the more I’m able to successfully dodge moves and boss abilities.
With my Warlock I reached the Warden last night. And you know how the Warden does his multi-shot poison thing and his poison nova type spell. Both of those can be so deadly. But I dodge both pretty easily thanks to having much more control over my movement.
One question I have about your end-game totems: The Windigo totem increases Vitality damage in the area. And you’ve got the modifier on your Lightning Totem convert all the lightning damage to Vitality damage. Do you think the Windigo totem increases the Storm Totem’s vitality damage output?
Not that it needs to, since your Devouring swarm should reduce people’s Vitality Resist by a lot. But still. Inquiring minds want to know the synergy between these two totems.
Well, you’ve got a 5 second cooldown between casts, so there is plenty of actual time. I’ve never used it with a pet, although I think if you target his general vicinity it will have a pretty good chance of getting under him. It’s not necessarily always accurate, but the game is fairly fast paced so I usually don’t mind… I have not tried it with pets on an endgame build though. If you need precision in your casts (specific ground targeting locations or picking out enemys in a group) the controller will not be that easy to work with in comparison to a mouse.
That’s what I was scared of, I often cast two to three marks/seals before a pull. I want them in very specific spots.
Yeah, I mean, as much as I love it, the game was clearly not intended with the controller in mind and many skills perform differently. inventory, certain skills, and the map are all a bit harder to use with the controller.
that being said, if you are casting BEFORE a pull, I think you should be able to get them pretty much wehre you want. If you need to cast during a fight you’ve got less leeway on the exact positioning. Honestly, it may not be that much work. I’ve stopped using inquisitors seal, and haven’t used any of the damaging ground runes. If I put in a little bit of practice for a couple hours, I’d bet it gets pretty smooth to cast with a controller.
The totem buffs you, so if you are standing in the aura when you cast the other totem (if you’re set up for that), it will snapshot that damage. All dots etc work that way in GD, it’s all snapshots. If you have a buff, it won’t update something up or down, you always have to recast etc. Having high crit on dot builds is pretty important for that reason, as if the dot crits, all tics of that dot are crits.
Devouring Swarm is an amazing skill, it’s overpowered in the early game, and it never loses its usefulness, which is really as a debuff for your other real heavy hitter vitality skills. A storm totem converted to vitality, with a devouring swarm rolling, and you spamming phantasmal blades is ridiculous DPS.
I’ve got a lot of builds I really like, but I keep going back to that trickster, it just has such a great combination of abilities, and most of them can be used on the run. Great run speed, great dots, great burst damage, amazing healing, amazing regen, and not really stationary except for phantasmal blades. It’s easy to kill most stuff in the game with just the storm totem and devouring swarm.
Re Controllers - How do you guys sit with one? I’m in a recliner with my laptop, and its quite akward if I had to use a controller instead of mouse and keyboard?
I was more wondering if the two totems affect each other. You’ve converted all of Storm Totem’s lightning damage to Vitality damage. Windigo totem increases vitality damage. So does Windigo totem increase the Vitality damage of Storm Totem’s pulses of damage if they’re both in the same area?
In the same vein, when I finally get Death Ray (Albert’s Ray or whatever it’s called, with Tainted power), should I be looking for equipment that enhances my +%aether and +%lightning damage (which then gets converted into Vitality and Chaos damage by Tainted Power), or should I be looking for increases to+%Vitality and +%Chaos damage, Will those affect the Death Ray or not?
That’s what I was trying to convey about snapshot damage. Your character is the one doing the damage, even though the totem is delivering it, if that makes sense. Your character has to be standing in the aura of the Windigo totem when you cast the storm totem. I.E. If you cast your storm totem, and then run into the aura, it won’t update, conversely, if you cast your storm totem while you are in your wendigo aura, and then run out of the aura, the storm totem will get the boosted damage for the entirety of its summon.
All damage in this game is snapshotted at the time of casting. So if your character is in the right spot when you cast, that’s the trigger. Your other totem isn’t getting buffed, you are, if that makes sense.
I’ll go test all this out again against some target dummies when I get back in game, but I’m 99% sure this is the way it works for any kind of aura/damage in GD.
Multiple CTDs for me today. Very frustrating.
Are we all on Nvidia? (I am.) I wonder if it’s the game or a newer version of the drivers?
I’ve had no CTDs. I’m on ATI, and I never update my drivers unless all kinds of games start breaking. I used to be the opposite way, always updating to the latest drivers, until 2005, when ATI’s new drivers broke all kinds of older games from the late 90s/early 2000s, which were no longer updated. So from then on I applied this new opposite philosophy.
Woah, a use for the dummies! That finally explains their presence in the game. You just blew my mind. I just thought they were mildly amusing to try your powers against.
So yeah, definitely see if casting Windigo totem first increases the vitality damage on your storm totem or not.
Nvidia here, driver 388.00, GTX 760, no crashes whatsoever.
This is my Trickster at Lvl63
https://www.grimtools.com/calc/YZe1AvEZ
I have Savagery mapped to default attack, and Devouring Swarm to 2nd attack. It’s working pretty well so far for Veteran. I’ll probably have to tweak it for Elite.
The game is crazy sensitive to overclocked video cards. If you didn’t overclock yours then try slightly underclocking it for Grim Dawn.
I kept crashing until I remembered I had over clocked mine. Once I turned it back to stock, no more crashes. Never crashed in other games even overclocked, but eh, whatever.
This could be the problem. I have an Asus gaming laptop that was overclocked out of the box. I’ll check it out.
I’m using an Asus laptop not over clocked and had zero crashes.