Cheesy 
Devs should make quest items difficulty bound
They probably canât due to engine limitations. Also, IIRC, many crafting mats are classified as quest items (aether crystal, ancient heart, etc) so making quest items difficulty bound might break the game if Crate doesnât do it carefully. I think itâs too much work for too little gain. I donât know anyone who uses that trick and I donât think itâs been brought up before.
Nice thread! 
Exactly. I find it incomprehensibly bizarre that people on this forum commonly recommend âto level a character to build X, do Y, then respec to X at max levelâ. That is completely, utterly, batshit insane! Iâve never seen that kind of approach suggested in any other game; not sure what it is about GD that makes people here think it makes any sense. If youâre planning a character to work a certain way, of course you level it that way too. And speaking from personal experience, dual-pistol gunslinger works very nicely as youâre demonstrating here.
Comments on the actual thread:
That implies that if you kill Log below 50 you wonât get a legendary, which is false. If you feel like grinding to 50 first, thatâs your call, it has no effect on whether you get a legendary. Iâve never reached 50 in Veteran, and have always gotten a legendary.
Second comment - it might be worth noting that you significantly under-invest in the mastery bars. As an experienced player, you can get away with that, but a common newbie mistake is doing exactly that and then wondering why they die all the time. Mentioning the usual rules of thumb, 2 points mastery bar 1 point to a skill every level below 50, and aiming for hit points > level*100, might help any actual new players who read this.
It makes sense, because it can be way way faster than leveling with the skill(s) you want to use end game. Sure itâs fun to do your whole play through as X char type, but when youâve leveled 50 characters you donât give a shit about anything except getting to the end as fast as possible 
Some people might find it fun to mix it up as they go along as well or try out all the skills if a mastery is new to them.
Donât think this is unique to gd either. Not a common thing by any means, but not unheard of either
Greeeeeeeeen
Yeah it makes sense. And I did (and adviced) the same thing many times. But it only applies to experienced players like you and me. I just wanted a change in pace, while also giving tips to new players who will want to level in a similar way as Iâm doing now.
Then clearly you have never played Diablo II where it is very common to level up paladins as Holy Fire zealots, Druids as Fire casters, Assassins as fire trappers, and so on. Sure, there is a slight technicality that in Diablo II, you get to max level (99) only after about 200-300 hours playing (whereas in GD its like 20h, GD is stupidly easy to level up in) but the general idea is that most chars/builds have a level up progress, and then at high enough level, you respec into the build you want to continue with. Nothing wrong with that, that is the whole point of having access to a spirit guide.
Correct. âInherited from the Diablo seriesâ explains some of the why, but not much - as you say, leveling is reasonably fast in this game no matter how you play. And the idea that new players should do this (as is often advised, see OFF + Fireblast so frequently suggested for leveling any Arcanist build) is completely bananas.
@Worblehat: It is counterintuitive to level a build differently from the way itâs ultimately meant to be played. AFAIK, the reasons for this are:
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You gain a lot more exp from killing trash mobs than you do from bosses. Mobs = Levels. Bosses = gear. This means AoE is more valuable than single target damage at the beginning.
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The resists enemies have tend to increase as the game increases in difficulty. This means that the pay off for stacking RR isnât as great at the start as it is towards the end.
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Skills which have a %weapon or %MH damage component arenât as effective early on because lower level weapons have less base damage. The reverse is true for spells which only deal flat damage (e.g. PRM).
P.S. Iâm loving the progress youâre making x1x1x1x2. Itâs definitely going to help many new players.
I agree with Worblehat on leveling builds, but donât feel as strongly about it.
Itâs disappointing to read about so many great builds on here that are not âviableâ to level up with.
So far Iâve mostly stuck to builds that allow you to progress into them the whole way from veteran to ultimate. Once Iâve reached 100 (only once so far) Iâll start looking for new stuff to try with the class depending on the gear I found.
As racking up playthroughs with new chars gets more and more tedious I find myself gravitating towards âeasyâ solutions to speed up the process.
So I guess it depends on what type of player you are but also largely on the time spent playing the game (plus gaming time available).
@x1x1x1x2 Great thread! Iâll definetly keep on reading and am very inclined to follow youâre build (even if itâs not the most efficient :p)
Why is it completely bananas? Because the leveling is so fast anyway? That doesenât mean there are âeasierâ leveling builds for beginners, especially those who are new to ARPGs. Builds that donât require as many active skills, have decent AoE and are gear independent. Many of the l33t builds depends on some or several skills or mods that are granted by pretty rare items. Therefore it makes perfectly sense, even in GD, to have a certain route to level up and get a feeling for the game, gearing up. And then at some point, respec. It is not bananas, it is surely indented by the devs aswell, otherwise we would not have spirit guides. Ah the good ol days of pre 1.13 patch in Diablo II, there were NO respecs there
So, make your own beginners play diary thingy.
Eventually, a full report on a build! The forum is so full of endgame builds (nothing wrong with that), we need more of such threads! Thumbs up for starting one!
Thereâs been others here and there. Writing build guides is a time-consuming task, even for the end-game build writers, so itâs not surprising the full leveling guides are sparse.
Our moderator, eisprenzessin, is prone to writing leveling type threads but unfortunately he usually only does that in the private tester forum as feedback to the devs during new builds and such.
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I actually have a serious n00b question regarding ranged characters in general, which answer I seem to have missed. What are the advantages and disadvantages of dual wielding vs. wielding a 2H weapon in these kind of builds?
I remember one about a HC totem warder before AoM. Partially inspired me to do this.
Unlike melee, dw ranged doesnât have exclusive class WPS (there are 2h exclusives like Valdun) so itâs more about the items themselves for me. Dagallon for dw has pass through while ulzuin/hellborne has huge burn dots. Desolator turns Bursting round to a shadow strike. Thatâs aside from the usual attack speed differential on dw and 2h.
Edit: Inquisitor WPS hit with both hands when using dw guns so your damage is effectively doubled, but 2h has higher weapon damage so the difference isnât really big.
2H also have crappy attack animations which result in DPS loss.
Attack speed is of paramount importance.
Are there attack speed breakpoint tables somewhere?
What IS a breakpoint table?
(Clearly I donât have the answer to your question. :p)
Nah, this gameâs an infant compared to Diablo where you came from. Attack speed benchmarks isnât very discussed here yet, as opposed to things like OA/DA and RR because (imo) the dw playerbase is bigger than 2h, and dw generally has a really easy time to reach 185+ AS. The 2h rise is relatively recent and thatâs where attack speed discussions matter.
So the âawfulâ attack animation of 2H ranged weapons is âjustâ inferred to by experience of players? Then what can be said about attack speed break-even for 2H vs. DW? e.g. at what attack speed is 2H ranged attack equally fast as DW?
Also you might have a feeling for which builds and mastery/class combos works better with 2H vs DW (my n00b-ish feeling is that shaman could be decent with 2H considering the passive 2H skills shaman has in its arsenal)
Considering all the tools already available for GD, it might not take long until there are breakpoint tables.
I apologize if this is the wrong place for this discussion, I am just eager to learn about GD mechanics