Okay, I admit it. I hate it when games make you do things you can’t undo or are extremely difficult to undo. I hated that initially you couldn’t change your DII build. I hated that it is an extreme pain to change your PoE build. I don’t know about GWII cause I hated that game. I loved that you could change everything in GWI. I played that game for 5 years. Coincidence? I think not.
Which brings us to Grim Dawn and it’s attribute points. I really don’t know why game developers make it that you can’t change things. I could speculate, but that’s all it would be. So, instead of being stuck with a distribution you don’t like, or like me, saving tons of points until endgame so you can use the gear you want while still min-maxing, how about the following:
Each time you put a point in a particular mastery, depending on the play style for that class, you get so many points in each attribute. So if you choose more offensive caster classes you get more spirit, more melee classes you get more cunning, more tanky classes you get more physique.
Each time you pick a skill in a particular mastery you also get a so many points in each attribute. This can be different than the points you get for mastery.
If you modify your build, you would of course change the corresponding attribute points.
Gear requirements would probably have to be reworked to some extent, but that shouldn’t be too difficult.
This would allow you to try out more builds without having to remake the same character, which for me would add to long-term playability.
I don’t have as big a problem with being unable to change mastery points. This can be left as is or modified as well.
I know there is some downside to this. You might want to make more of a glass-cannon type character, but compensate for their basic low life but adding physique. But this same thing could be accomplished simply by adding a few more defensive skills.
Of course, you could simply keep the current system, but allow players to reset their attribute points by using some potion like you can do in FF XIV. If you didn’t want to make this too easy, you could make the potion somewhat difficult to get, or maybe make it available only once you reach level 85. In any case, for me, more flexibility in a game of this type means more playability and more long-term enjoyment.
I don’t dig what you are proposing for a change because it would take a lot of player choice out. No picking a mage with either high life or high damage or a happy medium. I would prefer a respeccing option. Currently it is a bummer that an early mistake can haunt you or even a late game item change can be tricky.
I personally think offensive and defensive value needs to be a bit more spread around the stats than just the fact that Physique is triple-downed on durability.
Physique should increase physical damage, Hp, and HP regen, Cunning should increase Piercing, Bleeding, OA, and DA, and Spirit should increase energy, E-regen, Magical damage, AND grant %all resistance. Perhaps for every 100 spirit you gain 2% to all of your resistance attributes. Makes aiming for like 1500 spirit grant you a natural 30% resistances, making the pressure to max out your resistances a LOT less, and means you could afford to maybe take full offensive gear almost.
Um, you do realise that’s pretty much the way the mastery bar works don’t you? Every time you put a point into one all the attributes go up by a certain amount, depending on that mastery. Play around with grimcalc.com and you’ll see for example that a Soldier gets mostly Physique, then Cunning, then Spirit while an Occultist mostly Spirit, then Cunning, then Physique.
there already exist enough flexibility to alter your character. The key parts are constellations (your able to respec for a fee) and skill points (your able to respec for a fee).
TBH stat points are pretty small as they don’t add up a huge part of your overall health/damage/defence etc… They are basically just there for gear requirements and most people don’t spend a few points just in case requirements change. The main issue is there really is no reason to spec into anything else but physique since its clearly the best choice.
The only thing that is an issue is permanent mastery point placement, but tbh most of the time your going to dump 50 points into both classes unless your very specialized in which you already have a build planned out and won’t be worrying about needing to respec. Using the grimcalc really helps as well to plan out your builds.
The only real change, and its a still a big big one, to the attribute system I’d like to see is less reason to not go 100% Physique on every character and every build. There’s just no reason to invest in Cunning or Spirit beyond gear requirements. Hmm I can get much needed HP, DA, AND the ability to wear the strongest armor in the game (which requires tons of Phys) all in one stat while the other 2 attributes maybe add 1 or 2 dps per +1 increase, big whoop. The main problem is that cunning/spirit have diminishing returns per point (since they add a % of base damage) as you get more of them whereas physique is always a flat amount of HP so my 100th point in physique is just as valuable as my 1st. The choice isn’t even in the same zip code right now and is a huge glaring mistake to me for a released game to have.