Decade of Grim Dawn: My Hopes for the Game My Kids Might Play

Grim Dawn Ideas and Feedback
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I’ve played this game for about 10 years since the beta test. Here are my wishes for Grim Dawn — the kind of game I hope my sons will get to enjoy one day.
Disclaimer: These are only my personal opinions, no extra argument attached.

  1. More mobility skills.
    Over the past few years, additions such as evade mechanics and medal augments have greatly boosted mobility for many characters, which I consider an excellent change. That said, it also introduces massive performance variance between builds in actual combat. Plenty of builds have solid damage and fun skill kits, yet their low movement speed kills my motivation to play them.

Here is my thinking: a build’s flexibility heavily hinges on how many mobility skills it has. Many top‑performing Shattered Realm builds run roughly four mobility abilities, letting them quickly reposition onto priority targets or escape dangerous crowded encounters. This adds a great layer of skillful gameplay to Grim Dawn. Therefore I suggest adding mobility options to masteries that currently lack them:
(1) Demolitionist, Thermite Mine: drop the mine and leap backward 10 meters
(2) Occultist, Blood of Dreeg: teleport to a targeted location, 15 meters
(3) Arcanist, Mirror of Ereoctes: teleport to a targeted location, 15 meters, possibly with reduced cooldown and duration
(4) Shaman, Wendigo Totem: jump to a targeted location, 15 meters
(5) Inquisitor, Inquisitor Seal: jump to a targeted location, 15 meters
(6) Necromancer, Mark of Torment: leap backward 10 meters

  1. Larger skill radii
    Having played many ARPGs across the years, I’ve found bigger area ranges feel far more satisfying. It would be wonderful to see some existing skills get expanded radii in the future. Especially when visual effects stack poorly, it would reduce the hassle of guessing where my skill area actually lands.
    (1) Demolitionist, Thermite Mine: 6‑meter radius. That way I no longer need to guess whether I placed the mine correctly.
    (2) Occultist, Curse of Frailty: 20‑meter radius. Alternatively, turn it into two invincible summoned applicators, so I can free up one hotkey.
    (3) Shaman, Wendigo Totem: 20‑meter radius
    (4) Inquisitor, Inquisitor Seal: 20‑meter radius
    (5) Necromancer, Mark of Torment: automatically re‑mark a new enemy once the marked target dies, for the full remaining duration. This would let me keep consistent damage mitigation while using the skill.
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While I appreciate the sentiment of wanting the game to feel fluid for future generations, these changes would completely homogenize masteries and ruin Grim Dawn’s core identity.

Having weaknesses—like Arcanist/Inquisitor having to stand ground or manage positioning without free teleports on core buffs—is what makes build design interesting. We already have the Evade skill and medal augments post-1.2. Giving Inquisitor Seal or Wendigo Totem a 20m radius defeats the entire trade-off of playing stationary totem/seal setups.

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we used to have a movement skill on weapon component, this got removed/moved/changed with the release of FG to place them on medal augs (universally unused)

i’m not against more movement options (even if i stopped using 4+ movent skills myself now despite using them before), components could be a universal option.
Part of the issue with adding to existing skill, you’re changing existing skills, and it’s gonna impact things differently for different people and not be a net benefit to all. Two easy examples of that is 1-3-6, “these have bad scenarios”, if you’re disengaging on thermite mines, you’re detracting from every melee or facetank build ever that needs RR. Likewise reducing utilization potential for an absorb buff by not using it to push through (besides potentially breaking the distance and cancelling it i suppose).

So it has to be done very carefully if it all like that, and it might be simpler to just add the option elsewhere, than changing something that either might cross conflict with builds or simply change what people are used to with an existing skill Movement skills, can we get more - #13 by Gnomish_Inquisition. (besides OFF, screw that thing, turn it into a teleport :sweat_smile:)
There will always be build disparity in some way or another, probably can’t really be helped in some simple fashion.

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