Given how i managed to get some caster characters to Ultimate AOM with level 75 gear without dying once (well, besides a bullshit Ekket’Zul oneshot for my BWC Sorcerer), specially how the damage scaling was rather out of wack during that time, I say your statement is really over exaggerated.
It’s specially much easier now that Ultimate AOM was nerfed.
I mean, I don’t really need to argue against blanket falsities. I’d love to see or try whichever characters you claim can’t get through Ultimate A5/6. As Norzan said, I took several solo self-found chars through pre-nerf Ultimate without significant issue. Now it’s even easier.
Would you say that an average player can take any build without fatal flaws (for example no defensive skills/constellations) through Ultimate, using only self-found (self-found with that character, not from a farming collection of all the great legendaries…) gear? I am really curious.
When I started playing Grim Dawn I didn’t know crap about the engine. I chose 2 masteries which seemed cool to me (Witch Hunter which is still my main today) and played and played and learned new stuff everyday. I beat Loghorrean on Ultimate with freaking caster armor on a melee build. The only wall I hit was when fighting Nemesis. Couldn’t beat any of them back then because I oversaw 2 important stats on my char: Offensive and defensive abilities. After I did some tinkering with the char and raised those both along with HP, damage modifiers and attack speed, I didn’t have problems with Nemesis anymore. After that I did more tinkering and found a way to also further reduce the mobs resistances to my attacks. And that’s pretty much it. All you need to consider is Offensive ability, Defensive ability,HP and then the rest: resist reduction, damage modifiers, attack speed. Any combination between 2 masteries is ultimate viable. You just need to put some balance into itemization, skills and devotions. Cheers!
Are you seriously asking for a character to work in Ultimate with no defensive skills of any kind (not outright stated but heavily implied)? Ultimate, the highest difficulty in the game, the difficulty that enemies hit the hardest and you want to beat it with no defensive skills? I haven’t played a single game in my life so far where i could beat the highest difficulty with no defensive skills, even just minor ones.
I’m just going to pick this one item. I kind of agree that it is annoying to track so many resists. I would be happy to see it simplified, although I would not hold my breath for it. I doubt it’ll ever happen.
That said, augments and components were designed to help out a lot. There is enough diversity that you can work around your gear options a lot easier than you may realize.
Sorry, this was not very clear, I am afraid. I was just pointing out, by example, what I would take as a fatally flawed build. Of course I do not expect to get through Ultimate without any defensive skills or constellations.
There are too many “hard cap” in the game.
You want 80% resist, enough OA to crit nemesis consistently, enough DA to not be crit.
Whathever your char, It is mandatory to have these stats if you dont want to get instagibbed by boss or nemesis.
A 200 OA/200 DA gain is like night and day.
OA, DA and resist are too important compared to other stats because of the way damage and hit chance are calculated. The formula should be tuned to be “softer”, more forgiving.
I think this would improve gear and build diversity. I dont even look at gear without DA/OA
If you re-read what you wrote and bring it together with the prerequisite of playing with self-found gear maybe you see that it might not be that easy to achieve such a balance.
I have never managed to get to 2.5K DA or OA on any of my characters, even those that were able to finish the game on Ultimate. Also I often have to decide between health and resists on items. Unless you are really lucky the rares you find often lack all but one or two vital stats. Maybe you are farming in Crucible in between? shrug
I don’t think it’s so much about the hit vs crit vs miss issue. Perhaps the crit bonus damage % should be toned down on mobs.
Itemization. The game is too focused on hyper-specialized max-level item sets, rather than procedurally generated loot or unique items that support character concepts rather than one or two specific skills. Also good luck getting defensive stats on anything that isn’t designed for physical/trauma-based sword and board Soldier builds.
I nevet do crucible. What I said there was with found/crafted gear in the base game. This is not single playet Diablo 2 where you needed to sell your soul to the devil for a unique item which was level 25 or so. In this game items actually drop. Farm treasure troves in mountain deeps and hargate’s lab (they are the easiest to find) kill heroes/bosses you’ll find on the forum a good fafming path for those. There’s the blacksmith ,there are faction gear and recipes. There are so many things to pick from without too much trouble.(unless you want best in slot items which aren’t required for beating ultimate)
The number one problem I have with Grim Dawn is rare affixes, particularly with monster infrequents. I should not have to try 1000+ times to get the roll I need. The game becomes a chore long before I can find an item legitimately. I would like a way to selectively reroll affixes.
So you are farming a good deal. I never do, so far. It is just not my way of playing GD. That is why I was proposing to have a crafting mechanism for improving the stats of rare gear (e.g. Hellgate London style, if someone still remembers that one).
And please do not worry - I am able to finish Ultimate with some of my builds. However, there are others which are great fun to play for some time, but they fizzle out with lack of HP, resists, damage, etc., due to not finding sufficient upgrades in time. Where my proposal would come in.
For my personal taste the game is almost perfect. I like theorycrafting a lot and the class/devotion system gives you almost infinite possibilites and a lot of room for personalization. OFC not all options are equally strong, but im very convinced that as long as a build works and it’s fun to play (and reflects the player playstyle) it’s fine even if is not OP or meta.
I have to add that i like a lot the lore of the game and the general atmosphere, as well as the graphic concept of most monsters (im a big fan of H.P. Lovecraft and everything that regards Chthonians here is a big fat homage - i mean, Grava is basically the Great Cthulhu lol).
The things i dislike in the game are all very specific and mostly regard the unbalancement of a single item or skill or mob/boss. Lately i was very pissed off by the crazy difficulty in dropping level 94 O.S. from anasteria, which btw i wasn’t still able to obtain.
But since the game in his complex works very well, those are all issues easily fixable. Since the game was released, as a matter of fact, tons of similar issues have been fixed, one step at the time.
I don’t consider myself a fanboy, just a player which personal taste coincide well with most of the features of this game.
My least favorite has to be the proc-centric design.
Devotion and item procs became so important in this game compare to other ARPGs where procs are just nice to have. In GD, procs are so powerful that you stack them offensively and defensively no matter what.
Stack enough defensive procs the character becomes immortal.
Stack enough offensive procs that simple default attacks can triigger series of firework effects lighting up the whole screen.
Not a fan of this passive proc-centric playstyle.
Meteor Mines is still hilarious, though, isn’t it?
I was about to post this 
On some heroes your main attack you invested 30-40 skill pointsd eals only a small portion of your total damage. Effects flying around everywhere. Your damage becomes one constant stream of mush.
I went to kill Zarthuzellan, threw all my cooldown attacks on him, repositioned and tried to attack him with my main attack skill. Couldn’t tell where he was amidst all the effects.
so many worthless affixes
ugly old UI
so many spell animations are too slow
spirit/cunning should do more
pets
overtuned mobs
One thing I’d improve on Grim Dawn: The Facetanking meta.
The game is too reliant on making a tanky character, who can take enough blows, or regain/leech back enough HP while attacking. This ends up promoting every build to have X-amount of DA, armor, and resistances. This is also likely why every build ends up getting ADCTH, or rolling Soldier as a secondary class. This is compounded by the fact that players don’t have many good options for CC/Mobility. Most ARPGs would allow squishy characters to be viable, by allowing teleports/vaults to move around, or CC mechanics to keep mobs in place. GD sort of has CC except it doesn’t really work for bosses. Diminished returns I can understand to prevent CC abuse, but not working at all is silly. For mobility skills we have stuff like Blitz/Shadow Strike, but those only work when targeting an enemy.
Even shooter and caster types, end up playing melee for a good amount of their fights. Ranged also ends up being inferior, when the melee character has similar, if not higher damage, and better survivability.
Is there a point to a ranged character if they don’t stay at range anyway? It’s like using a cannon at point-blank range.
I think this is why most builds end up playing the same at the end. You can pick how you want to deal damage, what procs you want, and whatnot, but you must be capable of facetanking to some degree to be viable. Only good exception we has so far to this are DoT builds, but they’re designed not to engage at range. It’s moreso apply your DoT then run away, to apply DoT to something else. This is likely why Forcewave Tactician is so good right now, you get both DoTs and Tankiness.
Granted, Crate has their own philosophy in designing their own game. I also think game is too far out at this point to change Melee vs Ranged balance.
However, that’s what I’d improve with Grim Dawn.