They are my goal posts since I am here stating LE’s approach is superior because of the flexibility it offers your build. I didn’t really move them either, that list was the first thing I said that GD lacked in its customization options for skills. The joy of LE’s build options is making your Wind Devil do stuff it doesn’t remotely do normally, not in adding more Lightning damage to it.
that’s where actual build choice comes in, sacrifice X for Y, not a generic incremental stat upgrade because you didn’t have enough skill points, that you then try to make up for on generic +skills anyway
same type of customization just handled different and with differing amounts, guessing because of design choices
what you are requesting is not build depth, just more skills, simple as that, GD could do that pretty easily, devs just chose the current amount forwahtever reason
if you focus on quantity, sure LE has “moar”; but it does not = depth or superior customization options (imo), it’s just quantity, maybe even quantity over quality because of the upgrade inflation on top, but that’s ofc somewhat subjective either way
doesn’t change asking for A, getting A, then demanding B and not accepting A if B isn’t delivered too now, is kinda “silly”…
Well you’ll just have to take my word on that then. It’s amazing. It’s the reason that I have 5 Liches in Last Epoch, many sharing the same skills, and yet they play completely differently.
i have more than 5 blademasters, sharing same skills, they all play totally different too 
- i’ve just now, after 5 years, reached a point where i’ve started to consider diving into the mods, that’s how long and how much variation GD provided me, running the “same” classes and skills or even builds multiple times
1 Like
I have a Blademaster @ level 85, one of my favourite classes. Could you link me at least 2 of these build that use the same skills yet play completely differently?
For the record my BM plays like this…
Pneumatic
Shadow Strike into group.
Ring of Steel to stun everything
Blade Burst to buff myself (repeat every 4 secs)
Spam Cadence until I need to rebuff → kill all
Teleport with Glyph (or SS if it’s off cooldown) to next group.
But I have a poison Dervish that plays more or less the same and I’d like some variation between the two.
Which made me think. Because you pick 2 masteries in GD, a lot of classses actually play the same because they have the same dominant mastery and only differ in the secondary mastery. So the build diversity is lower that it may first appear.
(gdstashed) meme ss/blitz hybrid thingy Blademaster, Level 100 (GD 1.1.9.6) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator
my all time favourite [1.1.7.2] The Melee King - maximum damage DW pierce Cadence Blademaster (sub 5 min Crucible, SR75-76)
dual wield blade arc, doesn’t really feel the same as melee aa+wps like belgo and cadence (probably for obvious reasons of 1h blade arc) Blademaster, Level 100 (GD 1.1.9.6) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator
aand i had a real shadow striker somewhere (noctirns) that i can’t seem to find - plays differently from the first meme, not weaving cadence/blitz/ring of steel the same
like this, but “worse”/blademaster [1.1.9.5] Noctirn Infiltrator - DW Pierce Shadow Strike. SR 85 / Ravager of Minds
make an acid EoR dervish with potential acid SS filler via dunefiend set,
make a weird “not reaper/not trickster” phantasmal blades dervish,
make a ranged ABB dervish
puer eor dervish as fire dmg
If you think those 3 BM builds play significantly differently, then Last Epoch will seriously blow your mind. That’s really the best recommendation I can give. My 5 Liches are much more diverse; they feel like 5 different classes.
I have a fire EoR Templar that I think would play more or less the same.
trust me, they do
and again, LE might have more effects, but it also has a lot of bloat, which skews the so called diversity, you need to keep in mind GD combines a lot of those skills, so shadow strike is already multiple layers of LE skills/creation in it’s own
vary it up as a focus or filler, and they do play differently with how much you’re zippin around,
doesn’t really, that’s where the beauty of the SS filler comes in
SS in, dot sht up, movement skill out, use EoR for support dmg or heal if you don’t wanna just kite things and let poison handle stuff
Isn’t last epoch not even out yet ?
what the hell
Heh. Just found myself on the wrong end of this horrible mechanic. My Archon is all-in on player-scaled pets and specifically Storm Totem. I got a lovely offhand that adds +1 Totem and reduces cooldown. It absolutely completes the build. However I found a MUCH better (legendary) offhand but it lacks +1 Totem. I feel stuck with the old item now. This mechanic is nasty. If this was LE, I’d be able to just craft +1 Totem and cooldown onto the new item. 
this is gonna sound possibly silly, “are you sure it’s actually better”
being legendary doesn’t necessarily mean “better”, it depends on overall stats and build ofc
and many builds uses those non legendaries with skill mods, like +1 summon etc, because they turn out to be better for X specific build, and can get a ton of stats
anyway, that’s part of build sacrifice, you pick one for the other depending on your likes or needs, here you just get to do it on a single item, instead of needing to spend a quarter of your skill points for it
curious on this, since it sounds different than what we talked about earlier - assuming this doesn’t pertain to the skill system at least
1 Like
In terms of building, I feel GD is far better and has more options than LE but that is to be expected as it is still incomplete and has plenty of stuff being added in and reworked. Same for itemization, though crafting is better in LE.
That’s what item skill modifiers do in Grim Dawn
1 Like
I will try to explain. The crafting in LE is very deterministic. It works as follows:
-
Every item can have up to 4 affixes. (2 primary (usually offensive) and 2 secondary (usually defensive)). These affixes can have up to 5 tiers (levels basically). E.g. Fire Damage affix might give +10% Fire damage per tier.
-
If you disenchant any item (which you can do on the move) you have a chance to get shards corresponding to one or more of the affixes that item had (higher affix tiers = more shards). Some affixes are common, some are very rare etc. This means every item is potentially valuable, even blues (2 affixes) from a disenchant point of view.
-
These shards go straight to your bank and are shared by all your toons. Any shard can then be applied to any other item, and will add 1 tier of that affix to the new item (or increase the tier if the new item had that affix already).
-
The only non-deterministic thing in this is the amount of “forging points” on the item that get used during the craft (this is the RNG part but it can be mitigated with a glyph (a glyph is a crafting modifier item; there are tons of them that do different things to affect your craft)).
-
This all means that the definition of a good base item to craft with is one which has as many affixes of types that you actually want, and as few affixes that you do not want, plus as many forging points as possible.
Even then, this all just scratches the surface. Crafting can be modified in many ways with glyphs including removal of affixes, chance to lock an affix and create a new affix slot (hence you can have more than 4 affixes on items), chance to score a crafting crit (the craft uses zero forge points) and on and on and on and on.
One of the really nice things you can do is convert a 4 affix rare into a Legendary, IF that rare has the same base item type and sufficient “legendary potential” points. This creates a new copy of that Legendary, but it also inherits some of the affixes on the rare that crafted it, making it an uber-Legendary perfect for your build.
Since one of the affixes in the game is going to be “+1 skill point for skill X”, this is basically how you’d get +1 Storm Totem onto a Legendary.
Crafting in LE is a game all of its own and is very very satisfying. Best crafting system I’ve ever encountered, by far.
2 Likes
so basically, breaking it down/simplifying it a bit,
you can can remove affixes from item A, with a bit of RNG, and then slap them on another item B ?
but in terms of the GD modifiers vs LE skill system, that’s still just base on a generic +skill that then needs to be spent in the nodes (which was only an “issue” to begin with because of the bloated generic nodes to begin with starving you of points)
the swapping affix part i’ve been sorta chewing over since it’s been mentioned/requested before for GD, some people don’t like they roll a rare item with super affix, but they want that affix on another rare instead
so that sounds cool, obviously another potential nightmare balance-wise but would def help with rare farming in GD. But probably would also have made crafting much more interesting than the base system if more variations like that could have been tossed in (think few people would disagree crafting in GD is very basic 
)
so that’s def a neat aspect LE included, before even diving into the other variations it also includes, like affix legendary upgrades etc
1 Like
The +1 skill point shards typically modify the way the skill works too; or at least buff it in some way, over and above giving the extra skill point(s). They are pretty rare.
tbh, I have never felt the skill trees to be bloated nor of being starved of points. Of course you always want more points. But when you are sitting thinking about a build and evolving it as you level, and messing with options, the skill trees feel more like multiple opportunities and difficult choices rather than bloat. They immediately evoke the desire to experiment with builds.
what i mean by bloat is all the generic passive upgrade nodes, that leads to the cool effects
i hate generic nodes like that, more so when you’re then forced to point them to unlock further nodes, which is then just another annoying 10% passive
when i was messing around with LE skill trees it kept hindering getting to the effects i wanted, because i had to spend so many points in those “useless” nodes, so it just bloats the skill point budget, for what’s essentially just more 10% dmg or reduced mana cost or other generic uninteresting stats - actually reminded me of WoW skill nodes for a second
like imagine how bad it would be in GD if you were forced to point consecutive nodes in skills where you didn’t want or need them, or worse needed to invest a minimum pts in the passives to even get to unlock the next node. Would have been so egregious in GDs skill tree if it used that approach i think
so the +1 skill on item, just serves to then push you through that bloat, that they created in the first place, is what i mean; if they hadn’t forced you to spend 8 points in generic passives to begin with we didn’t need to be so horny for that extra +1 to unlock more (and i get that you said it brings extra along usually)
I usually find these “bloat” nodes you mention on the way to more key nodes will compliment the key node or can be made to.
No skill tree can be viewed in isolation either; there is a lot of interaction between them for some classes’ skills.
ofc it does, that’s the point of them it’s still an “upgrade” compared to 0
but it also doesnt’ change that it’s still the most basic of generic forms, which imo is boring, and when you’re then forced to point them, and point them to X degree on top, then it becomes bloat, when it could just have been integrated
need to spend 5pts just to reach something nice, generic sad upgrades, worse is it forces me to spend 2 in one generic before i can even spend 3 in the other generic
here it forces me to spend 6 on still the same sad generic old timey booster concept
this is bloat, this is the parts i don’t like, these types of upgrades are boring, and worse when forced - obviously this isn’t specific to LE, their skill tree is just based on this concept too
so when a skill tree is intentionally bloated like that, i don’t get excited about wanting->needing a +1 skill on an item to unlock more, just because they forced me to waste that precious point earlier (yes i remember you said it brings more usually)
but that’s what i meant by bloat if it helps clarify
and again it’s not unique to LE, it’s sorta a common OG approach to upgrades, obviously not even devoid in GD trees, but to a lesser extend and more optional
1 Like