Ok, I am saying that. Unfortunately the cost of supporting this playstyle with the upcoming changes we are making to the game makes that unfeasible.
I’m sorry this option will no longer be available in the future, but you can stick to v1.1.9.7 if you wish to play that way in the future. It is permanently available as a beta option on Steam. So continue to have fun in your own way, but in order to enjoy future changes we are making, that will no longer function.
Ok, after this discord post I’m now slightly worried that we are being little overhyped.
Hope I’m wrong.
Well, that post isn’t even including “10”. 
/10 char will be removed on the forums!
So what is the deal now with the auto toggle of skills?
Can you turn the off at start? Can the skill even be shown on the hot bar?
Guess there might be some edge cases where you might not want an auro toggled on automatically, maybe in some weird mod items.
Guess all question will be answered in the stream or later.
They way I would like to see the feature is that you have to actively choose a skill to be auto toggled on start. Maybe by ctrl or shift right clicking on it in the skill bar or skill tree. Probably bar because of item skils. Then you can remove it from the skill bar and forget about it. Similarly you could deactivate the auto toggle.
Basically how you can toggle auto attack skills in DotA 2.
Oh yeah, that’s how “maintance-mode” looks like for Grim Dawn? After it’s pretty much said / mentioned we’ll (only) get fixes and balancing patches, and than you drop this? Oh boy…
INB4 i go directly to these Change/Point of this qoute, i’m going more towards the debate over “one single playthrough”. I kinda feel already the angry “breath” of some people, because god forbid somebody says anything positive of the 3rd installement or even the newest 4th (and yes i recently started playing it and i kinda have a blast with it… it’s more of an abusive hate-love-relationship ship, because at one hand i really love gameplay, aesthetics, campaign and stuff, at the other hand i hate all the shitty monetization and online-only bullshit and some really not thought-through gamedesign-choices… i mean as example why was it possible for 3rd to have a functionality where you could hear audiologs again, a game from 2012 but the 4rd not? - but anyway that’s besides the point).
But one thing which i geniunly loved about D3 with their Updates/Expansion was, how they (in my opinion) tackled the outdated 3-playthrough-difficulty System and how they handled Campaign vs Adventure Mode. Well maybe it might only be me but, and i’ve to emphasize that this has absolutely nothing to do with how good or bad a Campaign is; but i find a Game which have also a huge appeal in terms of Gameplay, Longlivety and replaybility, it devalue’s a Campaign if you have to replay it so often. You don’t play them anymore because you geniunly “care” about the Campaign or the Story, but to alt a new character with a fresh build. Consider Grim Dawn having a total of 9 masteries, if you want to have ATLEAST one character per mastery you need to do 5 Characters (thanks to dual-mastery system) which means playing the campaign 15 Time Total. Considering watching your recent favorite movie 15 Times a Row, and tell me how long it would take for you the Movie to get old?
And that’s where D3 did come in. Adventure Mode, plus free selectable difficulty System(though i’ve to admit the whole you can turn it up to tormented xvi is way to much… a few difficultys like 3-4 is perfect) did give me a non-narrative driven, sandboxy way to level up my character, i’ve the whole world unlocked so i could do my own routes, not the fixed route which the campaign dictates to you, - you also had bounties and rifts etc. And if you were in the mood of campaign or specific missions, well you still could go to the campaign-mode - and even have a chapter select(and with that you basically could make your own “new game+”). For me personally one of the best iteration if it comes down to these specific thing.
Grim Dawn Forgotten Gods introduced Skip-Tokens and i really loved this decision, because it did brought it closer to what my ideal way is. You can skip to Ultimate, unlock whole map/portals on Normal/Vet and Elite, even got the mandatory attribute & skillpoints from it, you basically had an sandboxy adventure-mode. Still ideal way (for me) would’ve been a single-playthrough where Elite and Ultimate is threated more like a toggable difficulty like veteran, but i understand the point that it might be technical not possible, so it’s all good. (Maybe a skip-token for the Campaign (purely campaign - not maxlevel or such nonsense) of ultimate would be great, but doing a single playthrough instead of three is already pretty damn god. )
And this Update will even enhance that further, not only for People who strictly play Campaign and want to stick to one Difficulty and enjoy it to the end, also gives even more freedom to the ones (like me) who use skip merit and also might go back to difficulty, do a bit sandbox play and be pretty much able to grind to the endgame on this. And i don’t find it devalues any Difficulty at all, because Ultimate will be still the way to go, for the extra content, the higher challenge/testing your builds etc. So thanks for that Update!
This is one of these changes of an mechanic which are on a weird spot. Like Monster Hunter with their Cold/Hot drinks. It’s not mandatory enough to stir big drama, but for some people, especially purists and veterans, it was an nuance which added to their overall gameplay experience. Do enough of these small little changes and cuts, and it really can effect the overall gameplay experience.
I can see how some people might be bothered about it, for me personally this is really a nice change, because i also find the toggling buffs rather annoying than enhancing my experience.
Cool.
Oh this change made it finally through. In the forums there were alway the ones which complained about it. Again the same argument as above with the nuance. I can see why some people are not happy with this, because it did spice up a bit because you had to look out for your buffs and stuff, but for me personally not a big deal, rather welcome change.
In all honesty, for me right now the best addition in this update! Thank you Crate!
Also cool additions…
Yeah so just to keep things in perspective, I’m quite certain that the proposed changes to auras is a positive for almost all players. I don’t have the numbers. But I do have 1200h played and I’ve never once considered trying two exclusive skills at once. They’re called “exclusive”.
It does not involve any particular skill, or induce any particular feeling of reward, to have to switch to the second toolbar on every login or death and mash a bunch of buttons. And if you toggle them too quickly they might not all activate. It’s more of a nuisance than a feature.
Once auras are toggled you can basically ignore them except for two pretty rare scenarios. One is mobs that drain energy which can shut off the auras, which I usually notice after my resists are tanked and I usually die (i.e., a pretty annoying and fiddly way to die). Second is that some low level characters with energy issues and many passive auras can make the penalty to maximum energy relevant. But for me one ectoplasm in a ring slot usually fixes that.
Just wanted to add my comments for the all-seeing eye to see. 
And Zantai mentioned that auras will no longer consume energy, so both those problems go away anyway.
Nice! Now there’s no doubts it’s a new mastery. 10 masteries 45 combinations. New expansion pack with enough new acts to make a full playthrough and reach(or get close to 100) in just normal difficulty, basically making it modern. But all that coming after the 1.2 patch which is a preparation patch to complement all the scaling changes and other things. Mark my words 
its grim dawn 2 guys!
it would be amazing if we get somewhat closer waypoints to the dungeons. steps of torment for example is really far away
Wait: so are you saying “if you have two mutually exclusive skills, respec out of one” or “if you have two mutually exclusive skills, you will continue to be able to toggle them as needed but the game will default to one or the other”? If the former, that’s… dumb, and unnecessary, and please do not do that? If I have a toggleable skill that I only use in certain situations, that’s just a little complicated nuance to the gameplay of that build. Maybe that’s a super edge case and not something relevant to 99% of players, but please… for the love of god… in your quest to make the game more accessible do not remove our optionality. That is the worst way to makes games more accessible. “Our players are dumb, they’ll get confused and upset by fiddly skill exclusivity!” is a frankly insulting justification for stripping optionality. Optionality is… optional. If it’s too confusing or fiddly for some players, they simply won’t center their build around it. “If it’s needed for a Maximally Efficient Build they’ll be encouraged to engage with that fiddly system” sure, sure, except they can just play on normal to 100 now - they shouldn’t feel they need fiddly maximally efficient builds for anything.
If the latter, ignore me. That is the simple “have your cake and eat it too” solution. “The game chooses for you from now on, deal with it” is just… unnecessarily hostile to players though. So… y’know… maybe don’t do that?
(I edited out a bit about how removing reserve costs is just unnecessarily balance-shattering because honestly, whatever - I’d actually be interested in seeing how that changes the build space. You can shatter balance in whatever ways you want and build it up in a different form. That’s fine. But remove optionality for the sake of casual players at your own peril.)
So… basically “lol don’t buy our next expansion/game then”. Okay. Noted.
it’s a free update, so will be applied no matter what you do - aside from staying on beta branch
and while i agree it does remove an aspect of build freedom/optionality as you call it, i don’t agree with the other reasons you mentioned.
It’s not done/an “accepted collateral dmg” to shove players into minmaxing, nor because the system is confusing/it’s “too deep for casul players minds” to play with 2 exlusives
the above case where someone was using both oleron and bulwark is a good showing: it’s simply not necessary from neither a casul or minmax or even fun aspect to actually use both those buffs; since bulwark doesn’t really provide you good enough benefits to only utilize on weapon swap vs oleron: you might as well have Oleron on all the time
^that’s not my point of doing so to make it less confusing for players, or because it’s better minmax wise, or impacts fun (since buffs are passives it does not impact your fun factor other than the mental note of knowing you switched buff),
meanwhile bulwark/most exclusives aren’t that special they become build defining or “make it or break it” on ex weapon swap, meaning swapping buffs during weapon swap again have minimal actual impact on your gameplay, minmax aside, and is again just another mental satisfaction factor
sry for ending up making a wall trying to explain why i think the points aren’t applicable
*this is not me agreeing with the notion of double exclusive buff builds being impossible now = good,
it’s just me pointing out that so far, as i see it, is the only actual reasoning to disagree with it boils down to “full” build freedom (which is sorta rudimentary), and not so much the other stuff
I don’t think it’s trying to force people into min/max, I think it’s trying to avoid a situation where someone looks online for a build with a playstyle they’ll enjoy, and finds a fun looking top-rated build that has two exclusive toggles (as I think I did, many moons ago - I’m like 95% sure I’ve had one character where the top rated build for that class had this feature in it… a purifier maybe? idk) and gets frustrated with that being super fiddly.
But I should have scrolled up and read Zantai’s poasts. Pretty much everything I said has already been addressed, and I am a brainlet. Oh well. I’ll see how 1.2 plays and if I hate it I’ll just stick with the Beta branch of the current version. If they release any more paid content, I just won’t be able to buy it in that case. Their loss.
As I said when this came up earlier, this is a necessary change for the features we are working on as we usher in the next era of Grim Dawn in v1.2.
I completely understand that this will affect some players negatively, and that is unfortunate. This is the balancing act we have to play as developers. A very niche playstyle is not going to be supported going forward in order for us to keep improving the game in the way we perceive serves the playerbase most.
In hindsight, we should have restricted exclusive skills to 1 per character in the first place, but that was a different era with far more limited resources and hindsight is always 20/20. With v1.2, a character will not be able to put points into more than one of these abilities.
If there is a strong sentiment regarding this change, we will be happy to make v1.1.9.8 available as a branch of the game so anyone that finds playing without v1.2 changes enjoyable will be able to do so until the end of time. To us, the wealth of improvements we are bringing to the game will make v1.2 worth playing for everyone, even if every single bullet point is not to their liking, but that is ultimately a decision everybody makes for themselves.
no offence, but i don’t buy this
“top rated”, if it was Reddit homebrew upvotes or "someone that shall not be mentioned"SEO, or YT clickbait title sure
but otherwise i don’t see it, it’s 10-12pts, and the effects of exclusives are pretty limited, ex being the absorb on Bulwark (imo) is often overrated defensively
and if it was a purifier the choices would be phys res vs DR+RR, and i just don’t see a use-case where that would be effective enough to come from an actual toprated build
i might be wrong, but i personally don’t see how flipping between rr+15%dr vs 12% phys res would be build defining enough for that
*i also see Z chimed in with the dev reasoning behind v1.2 exclusive changes
Yeah, feel free to not buy it: I’m 100% going off half-remembered stuff from a couple years ago. I don’t mess with reddit, so it definitely wasn’t from there, but it might have been my own half-assed homebrew build and not a player-rated one that I found googling (hence the “95% sure” - I’m open to everything I’ve said being totally baseless tbh).
