Beginner's build help - passives?

Grim Dawn Gameplay Discussion
1

Hello,
I’ve recently hit 100 with my first character, and I found myself wondering about the ways I could adjust my build. What I play is sword+shield Soldier+Oathkeeper leaning heavily towards fire damage.
(In case you want to know my current built, link here. Again, a fresh 100 so there’s a lot of low-level stuff there. I still have to finish Ultimate (and get the remaining skill points from quests).

Anyway, what my main question is: is it worth giving at least some points to all the class passives, or just select the few best fitting the build? During leveling, I tended to give 1-2 points into all and stick to items that gave +1 to all class skills, which seemed like a lot of value.

And, as the last skill in Soldier tree I’m using is the 40-point tier, is it good idea to give the mastery points to 50 for passive stat bonuses, or just spread them across skills I use the most?

And, finally, I’ve noticed that, since level ~90, I drain energy like a sponge, to the point I sometimes have to use energy potions pretty much as they’re ready - any idea if there’s something I’m doing wrong?

Thanks.

2

To improve your character at the moment you need to focus more on 1-2 skills you like, target farm / buy items boosting them

You also need to focus on a damage type and have almost all of them with appropriate %damage bonus (for fire %Fire %Elemental %All damage are appropriate)

Here’s a list of items with modifers to every skill https://www.grimtools.com/db/items/skill-modifiers

Look at @Nery Beginner Physical Forcewave Warlord as an example how it’s done: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/q2MoAk1Z
from this topic ⚔ Nery's beginner build collection

To solve energy issues you could use specific components or devotions.

For example you could decide to focus more on Fire Aegis of Menhir and target farm Shield with - skill recharge to the skill. Or maybe some items to Vire’s Might or Judgement Fire / Physical Forcewave Cadence /Righteous Fervor with Default attack procs Eye of Reckoning etc.

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Thanks for the answer, I’ll have a look and trim the amount of excess skills (both passive and active).

5

This build looks like your character (there’s GrimTools in the video description) but it’s Physical.

It’s not like you cannot play multiple skills in Grim Dawn. Quite contrary. Many builds have lots of skills. But they should naturally emerge from the set / build / lots of +skills or be used mostly as debuffs / devotions proccers. At the point where you are, without endgame gear, it’s best to focus to maximize the dps. The other thing is if you like your playstyle, you may choose not to focus on efficiency and being optimal, because it can sometimes kill the joy of the game and experimentation or limit your creativity.

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Well, GD can get to a high amount of skills, and the fact many devotion abilities require an active skill led me to get many of them. I guess I’ll have to look at devotion as well, see if I can shift some of it to passives, and drop one or two active skills. Maybe move everything to fire damage to not split it too much…