I am new to the game. I have been playing for about 6 weeks. I am curious … is it better to max out skills or spread a few points around everywhere? I tend to be a completion-ist and want to max out a skill before I add 1 or 2 points here and there for different skills.
Some skill you max out (your most damaging one for example), others you just put 1-few points. There’s even a term “one point wonder”. Also depends on whether you have “+skills in X”. If for example you have +3 Soldier then obviously you put at least 1p in many skills (mostly passives and auras) to benefit from that.
It would be best if you just create Grim Tools link with your character and have it checked whether the points have been spent optimally.
Welcome to the forum!
Before answering your question, I’d like to recommend this build calculator
https://www.grimtools.com/calc/
as a resource that will allow you to freely fiddle with skill point planning (and other things, if you wish).
To answer your question, I’d say that broadly speaking, there are three ways to invest in a skill:
- max it out as much as possible. When every point is really impactful, this is what you want to do (for example, if the skill is your main damage skill)
- invest just a single point. Sometimes just having a skill or effect is more important than investing some extra points trying to pump up the numbers on the skill. A good example of this is the Blade Spirit skill for Nightblade, where if you’re not heavily investing in the skill for damage (and maybe your build isn’t even set up to support the damage types output by the Blade Spirits!), you still want to take one point in the skill to have the Blade Spirits around because they are super good at proccing whatever devotion you choose to bind to them. Another reason you might want to invest one point in a skill is that you might have gear that gives skill point bonuses to that skill. In extreme cases, a one point investment might get you from +0 in the skill to something like +7 with those bonuses, which is often pretty great value for your investment.
- invest just enough points in a skill to hit a key numerical break-point. Continuing with our Nightblade example, take a look at the Pneumatic Burst skill. (You can do this in the build calculator posted above if you’d like.) Every point from 1/12 to 6/12 gives you at least +1% bonus to total speed, but the additional point to get to 7/12 does not. After that, 8/12, 9/12, and 10/12 each give you +1% total speed, but 11/12 again gives you no bonus to total speed, and actually after 10/12, you only get total speed bonuses on every even level up up to the max of 22/12. (With the assistance of skill point bonuses from gear, skills can go up to 10 points beyond their listed denominator value, so _/12 skills go up to 22/12, for example. To view this in the build calculator, you can either equip gear with the necessary skill point bonuses or click on the settings wheel and then click “Ignore skill mastery limits” in the corresponding drop-down menu to enable you to invest in skills beyond the limits imposed by the game.) So 6/12 and 10/12 are viewed as break-points for the Pneumatic Burst skill— you get relatively good returns up to the break-point, but there is some kind of drop-off in returns after that point. So it might be that your Nightblade wants to pump the skill up to 6/12, invest elsewhere for a while, and then return to the skill to bring it up to 10/12.
I think that as general advice, as you’re leveling, it’s good to start by focusing on one or two core skills that you invest significantly into, take one-pointers in some other skills along the way (generally in things that offer some broad utility; one point in a skill primarily meant as a damage dealer won’t be doing you much good), and don’t worry too much about your choices, since the cost of re-speccing in Grim Dawn is pretty low anyway. Also keep in mind that pumping up your mastery bar isn’t an inherently bad thing— not only are you opening up skills further down the bar, you’re getting some extra stat bonuses along the way.
If you want a more detailed sketch of example skill point choices, particularly as you level, I highly recommend this playlist put together by @RektbyProtoss.
I also think the videos there do a nice job of broadly illustrating some of the paradigms to follow in skill point investment in general. That being said, if you’re super into experimenting and finding things out on your own, then you may not want to view something with that level of detail.
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I prefer to either max out or atleast put in a decent amount of points in a skill before touching the mastery bar or other skills. Having 1 point in every skill for example will do you no good.
However as said by @tqFan, if you have +X skills to a mastery, it can be worth it. Just don’t expect to find items that have such bonuses early on if you are playing self-found.
And as others have said, feel free to upload your save and have others do the work for you 
When you level your priority is to max one or two main attacking skills first and progress down your mastery bar for extra stats and chance to unlock early exclusive skill. In the meantime you can put 1 point in useful passive skills, for example Demo’s Flame Touched or Vindictive Flame.
So unwritten rule, put 1 point in passive skills/heals but don’t spread yourself thin around 5 or 6 offensive skills for 1 point.
Late game you have gear with many +class bonuses, there are skills that are useful for 1 point, since for single invested point you can have skill at level 5 or more. Also some skills have brake points until they stop scaling well. For example one skill can give you 3% health every level until 12/12 and past that only 1% health, so you shouldn’t points past that period.
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I dont know if anyone mentioned, either, that you can respec the points you invest for extremely low cost to resources, so its a forgiving experience, in the event you invested points somewhere you dont want them anymore, just pull those points out of those places and put them somewhere else.