Character development question

Grim Dawn Gameplay Discussion
1

I’ve been following project for quite some time, and recently I decided to pick it up because it reached full release stage and overall reviews are mostly positive.

I’m not sure if that’s the wrong game for me or I just don’t understand mechanics too well yet, but what I see here is kinda lacking by huge margin. I’ll try to explain:
ARPG isn’t my main genre, but I have played enough of them, starting from Diablo 1 to D3, Torchlight, Sacred and some more. In GD I picked Occultist as my first toon, and it is really underwhelming. I’m at level 20 now, and things not looking good… It’s the first ARPG in my experience where classes have so small skill selection. There are tons of passives and insane skill caps (12/16) considering level cap is 85 currently with 223 points total. There are also hybrids which should save this situation, but they don’t, because of how Mastery points take away from this. So my main beef is with brutal lack of skill diversity both in raw quantity and in disability to have more because of limited skill points from current level cap.

From my observations, it looks like game seriously benefits from maxed skills with passives, which means in early stages you will basically have 1-2 active (effective) skills tops and heavily relying on auto-attack along with those few skills. At level 20 I have Sigil of Consumption and Blood Pox as active skills, also I have Solael’s Witchfire which is constantly on and lvl 1 Raven with Hell Hound, which are gimped and are rather for scenery than combat atm. So basically for next 20 levels or so I’ll be just maxing those skills with their passives and not much else, right? I surely can pick few more for test drive later, but I will still be using upgraded ones for combat mainly to be effective, but either way, that will be like 4-6 skills total (with 3-4 active). By looking over other classes, there might be more diversity, but it’s still all looks pretty much like this to me.

Hybrids could save the day, but the problem is the same, you gotta sink even more skills for Mastery, and focus on 1 or 2 skills from alt tree, while your main tree will be stripped even more.

Do I understand it the wrong way, or is it as bad as it looks?

I mean, I like a lot of things in GD as art style, music, general mood, crafting, idea of freedom in character development and hybrids. It doesn’t have brutal hand holding and limitations on every corner like in Diablo 3, has good old class system and not clusterf*** of skills and item utilities as Path of Exile, but at the same time in its current state it feels so lacking, really hope I’m wrong though…

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2

You understand it correctly, but few of us consider it ‘bad’. You pick one or two main skills which you max and you max their modifiers. Then you pick some standalone supplementary skills/buffs/passives. You do this between your two mastery selections, of which it is highly advisable you choose two masteries and don’t pure-class, as you’ll be severely lacking on stats if you do.

Here’s my Sigilist Conjurer build, for instance.

It isn’t really a bad thing to have so few points to invest, because it keeps different builds from having too much overlap.

3

I usually pick a secondary mastery early on. So what if you have to invest in the mastery bar, it is a decent investment (stats) and you will do it eventually anyway, so it might as well be now.

I invest close to 2 of the 3 points into the mastery bar and still have enough points left over for skills. By the time I am level 50, at least 80 points are in the mastery, frequently 90. It is not as important to max skills early as you seem to think, esp most passive ones.

4

At low to mid levels, one point or a few points in a skill are fine. You don’t need to max anything right away. Also, feel free to throw a few points into a new skill, and if you don’t like the way it plays, respec back out.

If you feel like your choices are too limited, it’s only because you’ve done it to yourself.

5

You are correct, there’s a serious lack of skill points in Grim Dawn, meaning you have to be very, very picky. And you get to juggle a bazillion resists on top of that, making the whole experience a min-maxing game.
Some (many?) are fine with the above, but I remember actually making a thread a while ago where I predicted more casual players will just consider GD a no-go.
Now don’t get me wrong, I got my money’s worth and it’s good to have some game where I can sink just 30 minutes if that’s all I can spare (as opposed to MMOs), but I feel there are opportunities lost here.

6

there are enough skill points in the levels he is at, I would have liked to stay at 3 points per level past 50 though, that gives you enough points. As it stands, I cannot max everything I want to, but given we get an expansion and another 10 levels / 20 points, that probably is enough to get very close to it.

I don’t think a casual player has any problems with it either, casual does not equal stupid (wasting many points on bad skills), and even if it did, I’d rather not get 50 more points to compensate for stupid builds…

7

Huh, I see… Well, I guess I’ll play a little more and shelve this game until some new content is out to see if situation changes.
It’s understandable that most players are fine with current system, but it’s really weird for me as ARPG, like a huge potential wasted or something…

8

I’ve personally have never had an issue running through the game with multiple passives and actives from two different masteries on all difficulties. But I guess it depends on how you build your character

9

I’m still not sure what the issue is. Each class combination has between 13 and 19 different active skills available, plus activatable abilities on equipment and components, plus a huge variety of procs and passive buffs on class skills, equipment, components, augments, and celestial abilities.

If you’re unhappy that you’re forced to use just 2 or 3 of those per character, you aren’t. Some people like LMB builds where one attack provides almost all of your DPS. Other people like piano builds where you have to actively use 8-10 different skills for full effectiveness. Both styles are viable and strong.

If you’re looking for a WoW / EQ2 style character model where you have 10 hotbars full of clickies, you’re in the wrong genre. Sorry. But if you’re just looking for an option that lets you use 6-7 skills instead of 1-2, you haven’t looked hard enough.

10

You could always use this mod: http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/showthread.php?t=38052

As a warning, it makes Veteran really easy.

11

No, I’m not looking for multiple hotbar builds, but I can’t really imagine even viable 6-8 active skill build right now, can you um, link for example efficient Warlock build which utilize that many skills or any other “piano” hybrids at all?

Funny thing, I’m actually not big fan of full hotbar builds and in most ARPGs I was trying to utilize less actives and push towards passives with 3-4 actives tops, but what I see in GD just made me sad…

Considering feedback I get here, seems hybrid rather is a must to be effective, which is also weird. Hybrid is great feature, but forcefully making Pures less viable by cutting stats is insane. Looks like Mastery system needs some serious revamp…

12

I don’t know about Warlocks, but here’s a full-hotbar + 4 buffs (on the other hotbar) DW Spellbreaker:

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13

You don’t wanna see my trickster’s skill bar…

14

My caster’s hotbar always ended up like this:

That’s a Pyromancer (Demolitionist + Occultist), but you can build a similar Warlock around AAR (Albrecht’s Aether Ray) and with a nice 9 active skills…

“Piano”? No, I feel more like playing DDR (Dance Dance Revolution)…

15

We need a new contest: Who’s skillbar is bigger?

16

Not of they do what they did in TQ:IT and raise the maximum level on skills. I think 16 is high enough, I can only hope Crate doesn’t disagree.

17

And dont forget that a lot of equipment have both active and passive skills on them. As well as several components. Oh, and all the celestial powers from the constellations.
You could for example go crazy with a mad proc guy making skills and spells fly all over the place.

18

The Barbarian in Diablo II had more weapon-to-face skills in a single skill tree out of three, than exists in the entire game of Grim Dawn.

Grim Dawn is a great game, but skillwise it’s extremely limited. Mostly you hit stuff and fireworks go off around you from procs, procs and more procs, without actually having any control.

19

You know, in Titan Quest, you had an abundance of skill points. But it hardly helped to achieve diversity, or using multiple skills. Instead, players maxed both masteries, even if they dont needed high-tier skills from one of them. Players also maxed all non-junk passives, and STILL used 1-2 main skills. And many builds were similar, because abundance of skill points lead no poor variety.

When players lacks skill points, and game is desighned around that, much higher build diverasity can be achieved. And if you need more skillpoints that game has to offer, there are items with skill point bonuses on them!

Yes, Crate probably made too many different damage types, and too many resists as well. But i assure you, it’s very possible to cap out them all in endgame (except physical, and it’s intended, and game is balanced around that). Furthermore, you shouldnt totally rely upon maxed resists, cause some enemies can reduce them, and over-capping doesnt help against many of those!

20

Well, the philosophy is also a little different. Skill in D2 were independent (they gained some synergy eventually). Whereas GD (and TQ before it) were meant to have a few skills, but skills you can augment in different ways.
TQ nailed the balance just fine, but I know for a fact I’m never going to try half the skills in GD simply because I won’t be playing that many variants of the same class. Some think this is good because it promotes choice. I only get a feeling of constantly scraping by instead.