When I think ranged, I think escape skills, plenty of ways to kill targets before they got close, and pets that keep enemies off of you.
Grim dawn has none of that for the gun classes.
I fight a boss and it will get aggro’d by my pet, but when that pet inevitably dies, the boss aggros me and never stops, forcing me to run around in a circle turning around every 5 seconds to hit it once, which slows down the fight down to about 30% speed.
How are you suppose to use guns in this game? Everything is very geared towards melee builds, Gun classes don’t even come with pets, so that implies you can somehow play without them.
Can someone who knows better enlighten me on what I’m missing here if anything?
If you intend to simply complete the campaign, then there are quite a few builds out there that will allow you to do it with guns. If you want to go further and access endgame content, I am afraid guns are simply not a thing anymore, as they received no love from the devs on FG.
I suggest you check the archives of build compendiums, you will find some builds that still work (again, provided you stick to easy stuff). Currently, the balance of the game is such that only S&B builds will get the most out of the game. Devs listen to the community though, so if you are patient, chances are some balancing will come.
In diablo 2, the skill “summon decoy” was dope. You could cast a static summon clone of yourself to draw aggro from mobs while you stood in safe haven and just fired at them. Plus you could also hire and gear up a pretty tanky mercenary and also get the skill summon Valkyrie.
In Grim Dawn, ranged builds do not have this kind of defensive layer
If you want a top-tier build, then hybrids are not for you.
It’s possible to use pets with guns. In fact ranged can be very efficient/safe for summoning pets such as the Primal Instinct pet.
But there are some compromises:
If you want your pets to be durable and/or have strong attacks, much of the gear and devotions basically need to focus on the pets.
If you want your pets to pull most of the aggro, you may have to temper your damage and/or have pets with the create threat(or whatever the name) ability.
At this point you are more-or-less a weak pet build with strong fire support. These compromises result in less character damage and likely less pet damage too, as not every item/component will be pet-focused. GD min/max is mostly achieved through maximum focus a few skills/damage types.
The upside of pets is that they usually end up with large general % damage bonuses, and as such it’s easier to mix and match damage types. (Again, min-max would focus on one or two damage types).
But it is something different and does allow for more variety in playstyle.
That said, there are player-scaled pets, some of which can be ~ immortal, that can sometimes be used to block passages/walkways and provide “cover” in this sense. Player-scaled pets don’t use pet bonuses at all and allow for more item/devotions focus on the character damage.
Interesting how both guns in your example cater to soldiers.
Edit: Ranged attack builds are kinda inferior to melee builds in this game due having both lowers defenses and lower dps but still requiring a similar level defenses as melee builds. This is due how difficult it is to stay out of melee range vs high movement speed enemies like Kuba or multiple strong enemies like you face in crucible and SR. It does not help that all bosses and Nemesis are immune to cc of all kind and that many can move just as fast or faster then your character can.
It gets even better in D3 where you can have immortal mercenaries. As long as you knew how to position yourself, the merc could tank the boss while you unload from relative safety for the duration of the fight.
Note “boss” not “bosses”. The fact you’re facing several bosses in an SR/Crucible boss room makes it that much harder to dodge/stutterstep as is usually done for ranged builds. Since there’s just so much more stuff to dodge.
Maybe the devs could tone down the number of bosses while increasing their monster level? After all, quality over quantity.
In the base game the answer is you tank the damage the same way everyone else does, sometimes you can just stand there and shoot with bosses in melee range and better defenses let you do this more often.
In the early game you’ll do so much damage most things won’t even make it to melee range and bosses will be almost dead by the time they get there, you just gotta build right. Later on you’ll have to kite like everyone else, even shield users will have to kite when the damage reaches high enough levels and having all your attacks be ranged makes life easier when kiting.
Also you can use a shield and a pistol, theres a Stronghold build on here somewhere that can facetank most stuff.
Edit: Oh and the new medal augments have several disengage style abilities available.
Okay I’ve seen a lot of talk about pet builds, but it’s not what I’l looking for.
I want ways to stay out of melee and continuously fire on my target instead the move up, shoot, repeat tactic.
If that’s not possible then I’ll give up on guns-only builds, because the move shoot repeat is extremely annoying to me.
Well, my runebinder mage-hunter just sits there and pelting everything with runic bolts. I don’t have soldier as a class nor am I squishy, Killing every nemesis with ease and facetanking Lokarr, so I believe your character needs more tuning
Read what he says: he wants to say out of melee range, aka shoot while moving.
That is not a power issue but a gameplay one. Successful ranged attack builds in Grim Dawn are just melee builds with some extra flavor.
Pretty much yeah. Even if you have skills to root mobs in place, those skills don’t work on bosses anyway. But still, I understood OPs point as gun/crossbow chars are weaker than melee and someone else told Ceno that he only gave examples of soldier class using ranged weapons. I gave him another example.Cheers!
Took you guys 15 years to figure it out 