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.
“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).
that i can definitely see/have no trouble getting behind,
having done so myself with blademaster on both Oleron and bulwark some time ago, when i too overrated the defensive properties of swapping to shield when struggling in crucible
as i said, on a “technicality” level i’m onboard, “anything” that restricts build freedom, which is part of what sets GD so much apart, i don’t agree with on principle/initial stance.
But the way exclusives work i also don’t tihnk it’s that detrimental, since as i mentioned my perspective is they are pretty limited in build role, regardless if we go from minmax or to not confuse/“bait” beginners into switching or fun aspect(since most are largely just a bunch of passive stats)
so overall this change doesn’t upset me that much, because the impact would be minimal outside mental satisfaction in the degree of lost build freedom
like, imagined “for class parity sake”; devs restricted movement skills to 1 per char, now that would impact build, fun and actual gameplay
whether i get a bit more dmg or phys res or absorb vs %dmg/crit on an exclusive swap, probably not so much
When years ago I chose GD rather than PoE, this was one of GD’s selling points: it was mostly finished. I thought it would only be getting small updates to fix a few things, but generally remain the same game I bought. These “v1.2” and “10” begin to look like a new product, which I’m not sure I picked back then.
Will some toggle skills still reserve some spirit? I think that’s cool thematically. Also will see animations like for possession after starting the game or will it be lost?
I presume there’s no way to make an aura stay active between games, and that’s why they’re being turned into passives? I have gamer’s OCD and I really like to keep my buffs color coordinated. If I can’t turn them on in the correct order, it’s gonna eat at me a little. Are the auras even gonna appear as buffs? Other passives, like Phantasmal Armor do not appear.
if Possession animation isn’t removed/changed it would just be a nerf to Occultist builds using Possession when getting nullified, because it has slow af cast taking longer time than other skills/“holding you up” on delay
