I keep going through builds in forum and it seems like every one I look at, even the caster builds, are 100% physique stats. Is that a Grimtools bug or is that meta?
Certain builds can afford to put some points into Cunning (or even go all out Cunning) but for the vast majority of builds, they need the health and Defensive Ability that Physique provides for the higher difficulties so going all Physique is recommended for basically all builds.
That said though, I vaguely remember seeing one or two players who have been able to play in harsh environments such as Crucible pre-expansion with weird stuff like high Spirit but you have to be a hell of a lot more cautious and make good use of things like Mirror or Ereoctes 
The bonuses Spirit provide though are small so it is often ignored otherwise.
Edit: Forgot to mention though to not neglect gear requirements. Some builds still need points in Cunning/Spirit for Swords/Guns or Rings/Amulets/Medals/Tomes.
If you want to get far in Gladiator Crucible then yes most points will be in physique.
If you just want to beat all content in main game on ultimate then no you do not need to put all points into physique. As with all 3 stats you just need the amount you need to equip your gear.
Hell there’s been a few times I got into Ultimate Difficulty and I hadn’t spent a single attribute point.
Physique just is stronger point for point then the other 2 stats, so people use mostly physique.
Here’s a character of mine with High Spirit
I see, thanks guys! I did finally see a few that had some points elsewhere, but like you said it was usually like 6 in spirit or something just for using items.
I’m probably going to start a row here, and that certainly isn’t my intent, but doesn’t that image serve to prove the opposite? I see middle(ish) physique, low cunning and high spirit but still good OA, sufficient DA and Health? Accepting that this build might well get slaughtered at Glad 150+, that isn’t everyone’s end goal and subsequently shouldn’t be everyone’s primary driver. You allude to this yourself in relation to motivation, and yet there is still this undertone of physique is king. I’m genuinely concerned by this notion as it runs counter to my generalised experience of RPGs. I’m honestly looking to experienced players for a robust explanation of this precept.
It’s probably just me as I’m still wrapping my head around core concepts of this ARPG, but I think that what is referred to as meta for this game might better be described as normative.
The stats in the game primary serve the purpose of wielding gear. After that, you can up your OA+physical types of dmg, DA+HP, mana regen + magic types of dmg. Since most of that is fairly small in usefulness, people put it in the one spot with the most use. HP and DA. The char he showed didn’t need more HP and DA, so he chose to push his mana and magic damage up a bit, which may be the aspect that needed the most help.
So by that explanation, and thank you, it becomes normative I.e. simply what people choose to do. As you say, this char was deemed fit for purpose and allowed sfbistimg to utilise attribute points in another way.
The game guide provides ratios for attribute points; Spirit and Cunning clearly improve damage output, and while it is true that investment into the base mastery stat provides a given quantity of those attributes, if we are able to claim arguments along the lines of: greater health means greater survivabilty, then we can also make the corollary argument that: greater spirit equals greater damage for casters, and following from that: greater damage means a briefer period exposed to danger – by virtue of killing enemies faster – and thus also leads to greater survivability.
While that is a typical view point coming from other ARPG’s, the way things typically go, is if you can reach a certain threshold, you can pretty much tank anything, and only dodging a few boss mechanics. And for the most part, especially in the crucible, you have to tank with all characters. And most characters struggle to reach that point, so chose to all the points they can in physique.
Another key to the equation is what gear you have to give up to reach those DA/HP requirements. Most legendaries tend to favor offense, which is why you do see a lot of rares mixed in to cover those weaknesses. Physique also serves that purpose of covering the defenses that typically lack on the cool legendary drops.
Again I agree with you 100% you don’t need full physique unless you want to go far in Gladiator Crucible. But for main campaign you only need the amount you need to equip your gear. This is for all 3 stats, after that it’s up to you the individual to decide what you feel is best. Most people on here feel that physique is better point for point then the other 2.
I still mostly pump physique myself also, just because it can be hard to get decent base DA for all the %DA to matter.
Offensive ability is way easier to get and same with energy regen.
Health you get from physique is a wash to the the damage bonuses you get from the other 2 stats.
This is meta. Builds, that deal physical/trauma/bleed/pierce damage and can use crits well, can put some points into Cunning instead, to get more offence at the cost of defence.
All other uilds are literally pigeonholed into physique. Cunning is useless if your damage type isnt one of those 4 i mentioned above. Spirit is useless for anyone, even for caster.
This is one of the very few design decisions I don’t like in this game, out of my six characters I don’t think I’ve ever put a point into anything but physique. It sort of seems pointless to even have the attributes at this point.
Sure on my mid 40s sorceress right now I don’t have the spirit to use any offhands my level, but I just use a shield instead for now. Once I max arcanist mastery (I maxed demo first) and get some higher tier gear I’ll be fine. No point in putting anything into spirit now just to use some low off hands when it will just gimp me end game.
Exactly. I’m trying out a full spirit panetti’s mage hunter, but even then, I won’t have ANY level 94 gear I can wear. For most caster (Yes, Caster, robes and fancy hats) equipment, I barely need any spirit, but at least 20 levelups into physique. There are no caster pants, and the lightest require another 20 levelups into physique. Go figure.
With Diablo 2, I could skirt through with 5 hard points in strength, the rest into energy and vitality. Dexterity was not needed, energy was optional: If you had good gear, you didn’t use it. If you were untwinked, it was worth pumping it up to 70-80 with stat points. And this as a sorceress.
But then there was Energy Shield (not quite D1’s mana shield, but close), where having a high energy and high warmth was a great advantage to have, and of course Bowazons needed both Strength and Dexterity for their bows, plus more dexterity because their skills were bugged and didn’t multiply AR for their attacks.
Not a good system by any stretch, but certainly more diverse than what we have in GD now.
Well, in D2, almost all builds “dumped” all spare points into Vitality as well. Sorceress was rather an exception, and only because she could use mana instead of life.
All other attributes were used only to meet gear requirements, or reach block cap. Above those caps, investing into those was pointless. Well, maybe with an exception of Kick-based Assassin… though i’m not sure. For Bowasons, investing into str/dex above gear requirements was a total waste, imo!
Exactly: You have max block builds, max vit builds, and energy shield sorcs. That’s three different attribute spreads.
also: bowazons, non-mage ones, would go heavily into dex. 200-250. well above the requirements for the largest bows. (Shadow Bow is 188 dex, Grand Matron Bow is 152, Matriarchal Bow is 187. Magezons would gain more damage -> more mana leeched with dex. There were multiple bowazon schools, Vit based, Dex based, hybrids, you name them. some even used points in energy.
Dexterity was a huge damage AND AR boost for your average solo bow user.
Grim Dawn being Physique heavy is funny for me as I came into the game from Torchlight 2 and Vitality there is mostly useless (from what I remember, haven’t played for a few years now). It was only ever invested in on shield builds to cap block chance or other builds that made little to no use of Strength/Focus (such as Minion Bot Engineer).
Otherwise, the go-to defence was a socketable that gave “All Damage Taken is reduced by 5%” that capped out at 75%. Then there were abilities like Frost Phase or Ice Prison.
But I’m rambling, point is I guess is that ARPG metas can vary from game to game.
Oh, and here you have builds, that dump ~600 points into spirit to be able to use caster’s offhand… Does that actually mean increased variety? I dont think so… Ok, maybe D2 had a bit more variety, but lets be honest, both in GD and D2, most builds are pigeonholed into single attribute.
You may argue, that str/dex added some damage, but in fact, dmg gain was negligible, compared to advantage of having much higher HP pool. And if you needed mana for skills, you could get high enough manapool with items alone. Same in GD, you can get enough mana with items, and investing into spirit wont add much to your energy pool/regen anyway. And extra damage from spirit is too small compared to HP and DA from physique.
In properly balanced game, EVERY attribute should be worth maxing, at least for certain builds. In GD, spirit isnt worth maxing for any build, cunning is worth maxing only for very few specific builds (mostly, Blademasters), and for all the rest, the only viable attribute is physique.
Clearly, that’s not what i would like to see.
In Torchlight 2, Vitality provided miserable HP gain, sadly. That’s why its only use was increasing block chance. Funny enough, for my Berserker, i aimed to get as much HP pool on EVERY item i’ve got, because otherwise, he would be oneshotted. Even in this circumstances, i didnt invested into Vitality (above block cap), because HP pool difference was miserable, while investing into strength drastically improved DPS (and i mean it). Torchlight 2 was REALLY disguisting when it came to valuable stats on items. You needed only HP and main attributes, and sockets to spam “all damage taken reduced by 3-5%” socketables to get must-have 75% damage reduction (without which, you suffered from oneshots). All other stats (armor, hp regen, and so on) were nothing more than a “Noob Trap”.
not negligible: Bowazons get a hefty ED% from dexterity. 1% per dex point. They also don’t get any other off-weapon ED%. (And dex ED% stacks multiplicatively with weapon ED%, and they stack multiplicatively with Skill ED%) Sure a might merc gives it’s own ED% that reduces the relative value of extra dex, but then again, D2 bowazons had much better CC and pets than anything in GD. Decoy, Slow Missiles, Valk. And since speed was important, and more damage meant more speed, there were reasons to put extra points into dex as soon as a safe amount of life was reached.
Reading the game guide, and feel free to correct as I really would like this investigated and explained, I see the following:
99 attribute points to spend, assuming level 100.
All into Physique
1980 health
39.6 health regeneration per second
316.8 defensive ability
All into Cunning
324.72% increase to physical and pierce damage
364.32% increase to bleed and internal trauma damage
316.8 increase to offensive ability
All into Spirit
372.24% increase to magical damage
396% increase to damage over time
1584 increase to energy
scaling energy regeneration.
So if those values are correct (I’d be interested to know what happens to fractions with each single point increase), then their intrinsic value is given. And their extrinsic value is entirely dependent on player motivations. Considering the huge number of possibilities to equipment, component and augmentation layout, it’s surprising that there are so few builds that do anything other than stack into physique.
They all stack additively, actually. Same as in GD.
As i said, cunning is actually OK for builds, that deal physical/trauma/pierce/bleed damage. Builds, that do other damage types, wont benefit from damage bonus provided by cunning, so investing into cunning is pointless for them.
Now look at spirit. Energy bonus is almost useless, energy regeneration too (because if you need solid energy regen, you get it from devotions/items), damage increase isnt worth it. Now, considering that most caster build DESPERATELY lack HP pool and DA, it’s quite obvious which stat they should invest into (no, it isnt spirit).
Spirit is just too weak. Maybe, if damage bonus was 50-100% higher, it would be OK…
As for Physique - no matter what build you use, it always will be benefitial and provide very useful stats. Not to mention that almost all gear requires physique to wear it, and heavy armour pieces require almost all points invested into it…
Setting aside item attribute requirements, as they are what they are;
Cunning improves the probability of a critical hit and spells critically hit too so it certainly provides a benefit to spell casters – even if it’s not one that is so clearly obvious as direct physical damage. Cunning also improves offensive ability which in turn increases the probability to hit, a clear benefit to all and important to ranged characters.
With regard to spirit, the value given above currently represents 38% of my available pool of spirit. If someone were to suggest that I do without that I may suggest where they can alight. While it is true that sizeable amounts of energy regeneration might be obtained from constellations, components or augmentations, the intrinsic value is given and cannot be dismissed so easily. Neither can the benefits to DoT which would obviously be of use to dot builds – I’m uncertain as to whether constellation procs follow the player bonus damage calculations.
What a player needs is an extrinsic component and is in no way prescriptive.
In relation to damage bonuses, I look for item rolls that have the highest value and the highest value I have seen is around the value given above. Accepting that there are multiple sources of %damage increase available, this is just one more, but it might be the one that a particular build requires the most due to choices in other areas of the build. It’s an available asset to be selected if desired.
I certainly do not disagree that physique is of benefit to all, I merely suggest that both spirit and cunning are of benefit in builds also. The difficulty in obtaining solid DA values without high-end gear or components and augmentations is a testament to that. Similarly OA can be difficult to achieve without high-end gear or components and augments, and in a likewise fashion to physique and DA, cunning provides a bonus there.
Above all, what is desirable is determined by the player and it is with that in mind that a player should build. Arbitrary assertions will not benefit build variety.