i wanna try the game now when it’s on sale but i wanna know how steep learning curve is. i really liked poe but it was a bit too much. i want to play a game, not alt tab every few minutes to check recipes on net.
i played d3 too and i did find it too shallow with just few viable builds. so something in between would be great.
The building tree in GD is very much in between. What you may find difficult is choosing what you like to play as in the game. Learning the game takes time, but you wont notice what you don’t know that easely.
I personally played one character without looking up anything, and it went fine as i had to be creative later and fletch out what i can do to make my character work. I did not go tanky at all, because i only choose 1 stat the whole way through the game 
(The only thing you should be varry about is putting skill points into stats and the class unlock bar as you can’t change or refund such points later. This does not count for skills and devotion points)
There is a learning curve, dmg conversion, resists, offensive ability etc… The good thing is once you grasp the basics of game mechanics you start to have fun trying builds. Also keep in mind that poe and d3 are games made with multiplayer in mind this one is basically single player.
I’ve spent quite a bit of time playing both games. I agree that POE is a difficult game to learn and I also spent a lot of time on websites, rather than in-game.
Grim Dawn doesn’t have that same learning requirements as POE to get up and running with a decent character. But, Grim Dawn does have a set of layers to itemization and skills that take time to understand.
Essentially, getting started and through normal / veteran difficulty (even elite) is relatively simple in Grim Dawn. But, to really master the game takes a fair amount of time and in-game experience (and some reading to really understand some of the finer points concerning offensive ability, defensive ability, critical hits, and a few other issues).
To be honest, i didn’t find the learning curve of Poe this steep, what really annoyed me was the over emphasis on trade : 3rd party programs, price knowing, bartering with ppl all to be an arpg gollum and stash your shiny orbs
Part of the learning curve for POE has to do with learning how specific bosses fight. Blood rain in the second phase of the Dominus fight is not intuitive, for example, and new players probably routinely get wrecked there. Plus, many bosses in POE are located in small spaces and surrounded by visual shitstorms that you need to learn to manage / see through to win the fight. You have less “What just happened?” moments in boss fights in Grim Dawn (except Nemesis bosses, but by that time hopefully players have a sense of how to play their characters).
Then you have all the unusual interactions between gems in POE, which offers it’s own category of complexity.
Lab has its own thing going, as well, and has its own learning curve.
Plus divination cards, plus essences, plus jewels, plus strongboxes, plus how to use Atlas of Worlds and how to sustain maps, plus the soon-to-be-live Pantheon system, plus exiles, plus Nemesis rares, plus Beyond, plus bloodlines, plus the abundance of one-shot deaths, plus Talismans, plus Masters, …
PS: The emphasis on trading in POE is disappointing in my view, as well.
Yes, GD is less complicated than PoE for the most part. It’s complex enough. The only thing that really takes awhile to sink in is the Devotion map, since it’s basically the same thing as PoE’s passive map (but way more awesome). Skill trees are straightforward and stats make sense. Experimenting with skills you haven’t tried yet and discovering synergies between abilities is an absolute blast.
Itemization is very well done and the complexity there is “just right”. GD doesn’t have PoE’s bullshit gear padding AKA “you need to reforge this 1000x until you get the perfect color & link arrangement for your build’s materia” AKA “we took the materia system from FF7 and fucked it up somehow”.
GD excels in substantial character building and itemization, without being so complex that you can’t wrap your head around building a character.
I think that PoE’s skill tree and ascendancy classes are easy to understand with a little bit of time, but there are way too many fucking skill gems. In theory having all of these support gem effects sounds cool because there’s a ton of potential for build variety, but they overdid that shit and I lost interest quickly.
it is much less complicated and way more fun (only hard thing is choosing what u want in a dang huge constellation tree)
yeah they overdid many aspects of the game imo. i was forced to blindly follow the build i found on forums since you couldn’t respec and i was totally lost outside of that build. i have no doubt it’s extremely fun when you get the hang of everything but i just don’t have that much time to invest in research.
also, as i understand in gd you get to choose 2 classes, 1 at the beginning and 1 later. what i wanna know is can you potentially fuck up if you choose combination of classes that don’t work or can you make something viable out of every combination?
You can… Though I’d advise AGAINST Druid, Arcanist/Shaman. Or Shaman/Arcanist, however you want to look at it.
It’s the only one, so far, that really just isn’t all that great. There’s not a huge use for it, because unfortunately, Shaman only really offers Lightning Damage, Vitality Damage, Savagery, and Mogdrogen’s Pact. The rest fits with that. Arcanist has SOME synergy with the Lightning Damage, in Trozan’s Sky Shards… But they’d rather be using Star Pact than Stormcaller’s, as the TSS gear supports that much better. It’s not that Druid is inherently BAD, just that there’s currently no real reason to USE it.
My trozan druid is doing fine actually
You can… Though I’d advise AGAINST Druid, Arcanist/Shaman. Or Shaman/Arcanist, however you want to look at it.
I disagree. I have 85 Druid with Trozan set. The class is very nice. Good damage and crowd control
You bring down the sky! What could you ask more?
This guy gets it.
I DID specifically say there’s a TSS Druid build. I did also say, which is quite true, that the gear supports Star Pact over Stormcaller’s… By a LOT. Hence why not all TSS characters are Druids.