When I read Enigma, I think Dota 2 and blackholes.
Actually, you can up to 75ish. Largely dependent on the kind of caster you are though.
I find it really annoying that you are more or less forced to play melee with guns when you want to max your DPS. Even the Valdun set, which says something about him being a Sharpshooter, has a Shotgun skill as a completion bonus, so you just have another melee that happens to be able to kite when needed.
Yeah one is you can’t stutterstep effectively in a room choke full of bosses, other is the short range of RR auras (AoC, Spectral Wrath) forces you to stand close to max DPS.
This kills the enjoyment of ranged builds for me (if it doesn’t kill it, you probably haven’t played a “real” ranged build). Guess I will stick to melee, or look to other aRPG for ranged.
You actually can with mobility runes.
IMO, if you can stutter step in crucible, you can pretty much stutter step anywhere.
EDIT: But I understand if this manner of gameplay isn’t for everyone. I personally find the need to focus and pilot well to be exciting.
2nd EDIT:
I miss the max decoy and valkyrie playstyle as much as anyone, but I’ve come to accept that Grim Dawn just doesn’t work that way. And I’ve found that once I made my peace with that I can still have a lot of fun with guns in this game.
I’ve been told it’s always going to be annoying to use no matter what, but I’ll give those guides a read and see if it helps any, thanks for the info.
Honestly… I never played any Diablo game or any ARPG before Grim Dawn, I’m coming from the MOBA genre, where Marksmen fight at their maximum range. I have no problem with kiting, I just don’t like having to “facetank” when wielding a gun.
It’s annoying if you hate active gameplay, it’s fun if you don’t.
I like active gameplay, so I find it very engaging. 
Mobility runes have definitely made this a lot better, praise the devs.
Which manner of gameplay are you talking about? Because the focus/good piloting you need to stutterstep well is what I’m looking for in a ranged build.
First off, I know I am not the best pilot in the GD community.
Just want to put it out there because I keep finding myself repeating, ‘read my guide’ like some narcissist when I’m really just trying to help.
Take a look at the links I sent OP. Maybe it’ll help.
EDIT: What might help also is to learn how to stay at the periphery of mobs. Basically move back if they start flanking you. If you aren’t surrounded, you’re only taking damage from one direction - ergo, you take less damage.
Positioning is vitally important to the success of ranged toons/casters.
You can also let yourself get cornered so that you can’t be attacked from behind, and blink/charge to the periphery of the mob to pre-emptively avoid damage.
You should also set up attacks. What I mean by this is throw things like BWC, thermite mines, etc. at a spot you want to lure your target to, and then attack continuously as they walk through literal fire and death.
^This can only be done with the forced attack function. It’s super useful.
^It’s really all in my crucible guide.
The problem with ranged builds is not so different than the one for 2H (so you can imagine it’s significantly worse for 2H ranged): the game does not currently have the mechanics to make them shine.
Bosses deal a lot of damage and are fast enough so you can hardly kite and you have to be able to take a lot of punishment. No matter how good you are at piloting, you WILL end up at melee range with bosses that will tear you in half in 2 quick hits.
BUT it does not mean there is no hope.
First, I understand it is cool to have super fast bosses, as it gives a proper sense of danger. Now if the only way to cope with these is to have a build that is melee friendly, tyen it defeats completely the purpose of having super fast bosses. So either slowing them down significantly or giving tools to slow them down would be a good start.
Similarly, giving 2H a way to tank them would be nice (why not a passive chance of stun on all melee 2H for instance?).
D3 is a smoking pile of garbage topped with dead boar’s puke. The endgame is a power creep, it ends up being a simple math war. Don’t touch anything, just buff up numbers. So I am not saying to copy that “game”. BUT it does 1 thing right that GD can’t: it offers playstyles that all compete at a similar level. You can argue some sets (and therefore builds) are better than others, but unless you want to push the limit an extra bit, you will not notice it much (plus, with “balance” patches, the king sets change all the time). But if you want to play ranged, you can play ranged. Want to play 2H? Play a 2H. Glass cannon caster? Go for it. So why D3 can and GD can’t?
Mechanics. Slow down the sprinters or give builds the possibility to do so. Gives more mobility, more CC etc. And pump up damage from ranged weapons and skills (especially 2H ranged that can’t have a shield).
Typically, while rebalancing EoR, it should be easy to add a passive bonus to 2H (I mean, this skill screams 2H… D2 lovers with me on that one), such as LL, stun, shield, whatever!
Long story short, yes it is possible to balance the game to accomodate more varied playstyles, including ranged. But it is not here yet. One way or another, currently it is all about being able to take a lot of punishment in melee.
Um…have you seen the sheer firepower of purifiers?
The point with ranged builds isn’t to out-tank your enemy. It’s to outdps them.
EDIT: Great example - https://www.grimtools.com/calc/RZR03Yv2
Survivability, therefore, comes from positioning and circuit breakers. It doesn’t come from letting enemies hit you.
Tbh, I am not sure how you can outdps is SR75+ some bosses like Kuba before he gets to melee and melts your face in one hit with this build… Right now there is no way to deal enough dps in the game to outright kill everything before anything can reach you. And ranged should not play like this anyway, ranged is not just high dps, it is mobility and CC. Otherwise it becomes even more of a borefest than S&B piano facetank.
Again, SR is NOT the universal benchmark of what makes a build GOOD. Just like how 6min crucible clears aren’t the sole definition of a top tier build.
People seriously need to understand this.
At that level, kiters and S&B builds rule supreme.
It’s like saying this:
I think we are simply not talking about the same thing. My whole point was to ask for the game to be balanced to allow for other builds than S&B to “reign supreme”. How would that hurt the game? Sometimes simple tweaks are enough, sometimes you have to change some mechanics, which is a lot more difficult (as it means you have to anticipate everything the change would mean). I believe slowing down some big baddies (even if it means giving them ways to be a threat from range), adding passive stuns to 2H etc. are small tweaks that still require testing but eventually are implementable.
Don’t get me wrong, the game is fantastic, but it does not mean it can’t get even better. And making more playstyles than S&B able to tackle the whole content of GD is a simple way to make it better. Fact is, if you can clear SR75+, then you can clear pretty much everything else in the game, which defeats your example and illustration.
That’s again demonstrably false. I have 2 kiters who can clear 75, and both of them can’t kill callagdra.
However, I do understand your point. I.e. slow down baddies to give range builds an even playing field.
Personally, I don’t think that’s the best solution. I personally do think that it’s fair for ranged builds to fall-off in the deep shards faster than other characters because a deep shard run is an endurance race, not a sprint.
I also acknowledge that this limits build diversity at that level (a thing I agree with), and that this isn’t a very popular opinion.
EDIT: What I DON’T think is fair is how S&B builds can have such amazing crucible clear times without any real danger. At least for kiters, a huge determining factor behind their successful crucible runs can be attributed to piloting skills.
When some part of the game content is accessible to only one or two playstyles, it is not a very balanced ARPG if you ask me.
Only in that domain though…Could all builds run D3’s greater rifts?
Wait what? Anyone can kill Calandara, you just need to blink out of her blink attack and run out of sand attack. Its relatively easy, just boring AF.
Aslo you can lure her to town, the guards would kill her.