Bowblade seeking replacement for Grim Focus

NoticeMeArkay · April 25

Bowblade since 2019 seeking a fitting replacement for Grim Focus.
The permanent glow adds more frustration than benefits to my daily business but for now I feel forced to slot it in order to keep the damage up.
Scrolling through my skillbook doesn't show me any fitting replacement that offers the same or a similar amount of spell and weapon power which is sadly crucial to my weapon choice.

Has anybody figured out a build that focuses on bows (Both Bars) for PvE that doesn't require the very skill that rendered my purchased weapon pack (Gloambound) useless?
I can live without the useful emergency heal but I can't stand the friggin glow so any suggestion is welcome, honestly.

Thanks in advance.

Necrotech_Master · April 25

i dont think theres another skill that provides you 300 weapon and spell dmg for just slotting it on either bar

what kind of pve were you focusing on? for most overland and even normal dungeons, i would say its not really needed and you could use whatever your comfortable with

if your going for harder content, then its really hard to give up that passive 300 weapon and spell dmg even if you dont use the actual bow proc

NoticeMeArkay · April 25

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

i dont think theres another skill that provides you 300 weapon and spell dmg for just slotting it on either bar

what kind of pve were you focusing on? for most overland and even normal dungeons, i would say its not really needed and you could use whatever your comfortable with

if your going for harder content, then its really hard to give up that passive 300 weapon and spell dmg even if you dont use the actual bow proc

Yeah, that's the issue I'm dealing with sadly. I do HM/Trifectas etc. in dlc dungeons and do trials occasionally.
So I require the damage. But I cannot stand the red glow, it put me off the game for 3 months. Now I came back (Got banned 2 weeks, lol) and find myself staring at the same abomination again.

I am already debating if I should farm transmute crystals and check on a set combo that fills out the blanks better. Like perhaps witch knight and one other. Sorry, I'm really behind on everything, I never found myself trying to avoid a core essential.

Necrotech_Master · April 25

the only thing i can think of which might be somewhat compareable is using a masters bow on the back bar

that gives around 365 weapon and spell dmg against targets afflicted with poison arrow and morphs, and since a NB is primarily single target it might be a good way to make use of it since you can back bar the set and still get the bonus

poison arrow is a 20 sec dot, so it lasts good bit too, poison injection has the execute scaling on the dot, so it adds a nice dot, but if your doing bow/bow you most likely would want to use the morph that grants the weapon/spell dmg buffs instead of trying to rely on power extraction, unless you intend to be in melee range

it would also still allow you to have 5-5-2 setup on your front bar if your using a monster and 2 5pc sets

Araneae6537 · April 25

Switch to Arcanist for PvE DPS and use your Nightblade as a tank or healer. I’m doing both and I rather like running an NB tank, although I’ve not done so in challenging content yet (just finished leveling S&B and other relevant skills) but others certainly do.

NoticeMeArkay · May 1

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

the only thing i can think of which might be somewhat compareable is using a masters bow on the back bar

that gives around 365 weapon and spell dmg against targets afflicted with poison arrow and morphs, and since a NB is primarily single target it might be a good way to make use of it since you can back bar the set and still get the bonus

poison arrow is a 20 sec dot, so it lasts good bit too, poison injection has the execute scaling on the dot, so it adds a nice dot, but if your doing bow/bow you most likely would want to use the morph that grants the weapon/spell dmg buffs instead of trying to rely on power extraction, unless you intend to be in melee range

it would also still allow you to have 5-5-2 setup on your front bar if your using a monster and 2 5pc sets

Thanks a lot for the suggestion and sorry for the late reply. Somehow the forums didn't notify me that you commented once more. - I'll give it a try, mayhaps it will fix things for me.

CameraBeardThePirate · May 1

Grim Focus is one of the strongest abilities in the game. It has the highest damage coefficient of any single target burst ability, and provides insane passive stats just for having it slotted.

I really think you need to take a look at why you're playing this game if you A) want to do HMs and Trifectas, and B ) are bothered enough by a cosmetic effect that you'll purposefully nerf yourself (by a lot). Those two things are kind of at odds.

If you're really at the point where a minor glow effect is causing you to restructure (and nerf) a build, you should probably just play a different class.

I mean honestly, the rest of nightblade's abilities have a similar red glow. Wild to me that you'd consider dropping one of the best abilities in the game (and still want to be able to do HMs and Trifectas) just because you look a little different out of combat.

NoticeMeArkay · May 1

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

Grim Focus is one of the strongest abilities in the game. It has the highest damage coefficient of any single target burst ability, and provides insane passive stats just for having it slotted.

I really think you need to take a look at why you're playing this game if you A) want to do HMs and Trifectas, and B ) are bothered enough by a cosmetic effect that you'll purposefully nerf yourself (by a lot). Those two things are kind of at odds.

If you're really at the point where a minor glow effect is causing you to restructure (and nerf) a build, you should probably just play a different class.

I mean honestly, the rest of nightblade's abilities have a similar red glow. Wild to me that you'd consider dropping one of the best abilities in the game (and still want to be able to do HMs and Trifectas) just because you look a little different out of combat.

1) The other abilities of the nightblade never have been permanently glowing in my face and obstructing other ingame features I've additionally paid for in- and outside of DLC purchases.

2) I'm not throwing away a character I've been playing since 2019.
I enjoy the character I created, I enjoy the class I originally picked. I am happy that I managed to reach a level of capability ingame that allowed me to play the character I played for years to bring into more difficult content.

However, the glow is neither minor nor is my playstyle in need of an overhaul. My build is and that's what I made this thread for. If you do not know which exact issues Grim Focus causes, there's a thread about it. I don't want to elaborate about it here, I'm looking for build ideas.

RaidingTraiding · May 2

They actually cut down a lot on the glow already. Before there would be a red aura around your character, in a conical shape with green dots/effects in addition to the red weapon glow. Now there is only the red weapon glow. There also may have been additional effects from the minor berserk it gave. If you didn't notice it before that just says you had very low uptime on that buff and are only noticing it now because the game perma buffs it for you. Honestly this is a pretty minor gripe and it's something that adds to the aesthetic of the class. Also keep in mind there would be a handful of people that would complain if it was taken out. If something that minor bothers you then just don't slot it, most content in the game can be completed without it. If you are using a double bow build that also tells me you are not doing very hard content that requires you to be optimized to the point where you need to have that skill slotted to be able to complete it.

You are also not going to find a skill anywhere near that powerful and overloaded. It's stronger than any NB ultimate in terms of damage and very easy to get full stacks, and now you don't even have to worry about casting it to keep the buff up! If anything probably just put another dot in it's place if you're looking to swap it out.

NoticeMeArkay · May 2

Is it possible to ask for build ideas without people trying to make unbased assumptions about my capabilities in terms of ingame content?

This thread isn't meant to discuss wether or not I'm allowed to feel annoyed by a visual bug or not. Nor is it's function to invite people to make wrong assumptions that are in no way aligned with my trial achievements.

So, if anybody would like to chime in with possible ideas for builds and not derail this thread, please be my guest.

DrNukenstein · May 2

You could use DW to make up for the lack of weapon damage from grim focus. You could then use hard hitting skills like surprise attack/concealed weapon and incap instead of weak ranged skills to make up for the lack of high damage skills.

MudcrabAttack · May 2

If your brain is hard wired to hit the assassins will button after 5 light attacks you could replace it with something else that deals decent damage over 5 - 6 seconds, like acid spray for AOE, barbed trap could also be cast more frequently

Or if it’s just filling an empty skill slot with something else, there are lots of options.

Passive buffs come from fighters guild or assassin skills, just slotting one on the front bar in place of merciless resolve can keep up some of the damage without ever needing to use it. Nightblade has crit buffs from mirage for defense and reapers mark (for major berserk after killing the target, best pre-debuff for trash pulls).

fighters guild adds 3% weapon damage just for slotting circle of projection for healing, or expert hunter for major savagery

damage over time options include:
Darkshade, twisting path, debilitate, Scalding Rune, razor caltrops, degeneration for major brutality,

Scribing will add skills that give minor heroism for more death stroke casts, up-front damage + damage over time, maybe fire or bleed status.

RaidingTraiding · May 3

NoticeMeArkay wrote: »

Is it possible to ask for build ideas without people trying to make unbased assumptions about my capabilities in terms of ingame content?

This thread isn't meant to discuss wether or not I'm allowed to feel annoyed by a visual bug or not. Nor is it's function to invite people to make wrong assumptions that are in no way aligned with my trial achievements.

So, if anybody would like to chime in with possible ideas for builds and not derail this thread, please be my guest.

If you want a more straightforward answer then I wouldn't even mention the glow bothers you, people are just responding to what you typed. Also it would help to know what other skills you're using and what you've tried, even gear might help, and are you always playing outside of melee range but close enough to get ground dots on enemies for skills like twisting path?

I second master's bow. Like it was mentioned before, it will give you that extra bit of weapon/spell damage you lose by dropping grim focus. If you're using double bow perhaps you could run BRP bow on the other bar, that will give you an extra dot to your scattershot. I like to think of bow proc as a delayed burst skill (even though it's not timed it usually takes the same amount of time to build stacks if you light attack weave) in a pve rotation, sort of like warden beetles, and crystal frags, just a high burst non-spammable skill. For nightblade, I don't think there is another skill that behaves like a delayed burst, the same with bow.

Like others have said, as far as passive damage goes, you could slot a fighters guild skill, you could slot camo hunter if you don't have major berserk (you can also slot cloak now for this but camo hunter will give you extra weapon/spell damage from FG passive), if you don't have another assassination skill for the crit damage bonus from hemmorhage I would suggest slotting something like impale so you could get a ranged execute which would compliment your ranged play style.

NoticeMeArkay · May 3

RaidingTraiding wrote: »

If you want a more straightforward answer then I wouldn't even mention the glow bothers you, people are just responding to what you typed.

I wanted to skip the whole "Wait, why wouldn't you want to slot the strongest spell for your exact choice of weaponry and the class in general?" part to not derail the thread. Worked out great. - Thanks for chiming in on lending some of your ideas by the way.

Zodiarkslayer · May 5

Maybe the answer is to use other cosmetics or styles on the weapon, so that the glow is less annoying. I am no expert, but I am a Main NB too and I have Bow frontbar.

I find the glow is less pronounced on the backbar with my fire staff. I think I use psijjic style? And it is coloured Black and Red, so the contrast between the glow and the weapon colour is minimal.