New ARPG player reporting in

Off Topic Introduce Yourself
1

Hello everybody,

I am not only new to the game but also new to the ARPG genre and I am feeling a bit overwhelmed right now with all the stuff that’s going on in this game, but I am sorting through all the information I can find! Been having quite a blast just making random builds on the grimtools calculator until I settled on vindicator. and I must say that I am absolutely loving the class design choices in this game. I am currently playing a pistol dual wielding Vindicator on veteran mode and having a lot of fun. Level 25 so far so good.
It’s been difficult to find any hard information on classes. since everybody is playing something different (which I absolutely love about the game!) but if anybody could direct me to a generalized breakdown of classes that isn’t build specific that would be greatly appreciated.

2

Hello and welcome! Grim Dawn is a good pick for a first ARPG, even though it is one of the more complicated ARPGs

What do you want to know about the classes? (or Masteries as they are called in GD)

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Oh right yeah masteries, I am used to WoW and other MMO type lingo.

Well it is kinda difficult for me as a new player to create an overview of how the masteries work on their own and how/where there is synergy between them and how they can work together. So far I’ve really only been able to find information about each dual mastery (such as vindicator, not really shaman and inquisitor on their own) in forms of very build specific guides, but nothing that sort of breaks the mastery skills down on their own and how they can work in tandem with other masteries. As an example how Necromancer and soldier fits together or how nightblade and occultist works together - in a general sense not some super specific fully theorycrafted and fully optimized end-game build - I kinda want to use the information to make my own thing you know. That’s what drew me to this game.

My current Vindicator is using Savagery and those 3 fire/cold/lightning passives which seems to be working fairly well so far. Don’t know how well wind devil and storm totem fits, or if I should go for the runes in Inquisitor… Kinda working my way towards an elemental build I guess fire/cold/lightning. Not even sure how I should be leveling this, straight to 50 for exclusive aura? Or just pick the skills I want on the way to 50 mastery. Also I have been looking at a lot of those very specific builds and a lot of their point placements is really confusing to me, because it seems so random. “a little here, a little there, gear gives me a little bit extra here and a ton more to that”… I kinda don’t get it hahah.

4

Generally the class synergies work around the offensive and defensive, and you can either build around a common damage type or two (I.e. Lightning / fire, or just Elemental) or use one mastery to fill gaps in the other (defensive skills/debuffs).

The easiest approach I find is:
Pick the skill you want to focus on
Figure out the other skills that have the same damage type (keep it focussed though, too many skills too early is a common pitfall…)
Look at supporting skills/defense you like/need (skills that provide resist reduction for your damage type are very important - look for devotions that provide this too)
For gear, prioritise resistances before damage. Physical resistance is very helpful too, don’t underestimate it just because it’s values are lower…
use at least one scaled hide component to boost armour absorbtion

Have fun. You won’t get the build right first time (or quite a few times!), but you’ll get through ok and Grim Dawn gets more rewarding the more you learn and understand it.

Create some alts and work on a couple of ideas in rotation. This helps you learn more mechanics and also allows more reuse of gear :slight_smile:

5

Yeah that’s what I am trying to do on my Vindicator, I am leveling up those 3 passive proc abilities in inquisitor with savagery in shaman. The word of renewal, and mogdrogens pact seems to have some pretty nifty synergy there. If it works like I assume it does, idk.

The easiest approach I find is:
Pick the skill you want to focus on
Figure out the other skills that have the same damage type
Look at supporting skills/defense you like/need
For gear, prioritise resistances before damage. Physical resistance is very helpful too, don’t underestimate it just because it’s values are lower…
use at least one scaled hide component to boost armour absorbtion

Thanks for the help, I am really trying to find heads and tails in these masteries, especially with this combination I am finding it difficult to match things up. What I really want to focus primarily on though are the 3 fire, cold and lightning procs in Inquisitor…
But I also want more from my gameplay than holding down left mouse button, however from what I’ve read Word of Pain is not good enough to invest in as a (primary) damage dealer (even though it practically does everything I want from a skill, lightning, cold and fire dmg), that leaves a few other… more specialized options.
To me it seem like I have to go for either cold (rune of Hagarrad),
fire (rune of Kalastor/inq seal) or lightning (storm totem/wind devil/storm box). I’m having a bit of trouble with finding the balance where I don’t overly commit to 1-2 elements and making the last useless and might as well not include it… But if it had to be one it would have to be fire I guess, it is the least represented element between the two Masteries. But I don’t really want to do that tbh, I picked this because of the 3 procs (I am a proc guy, shit needs to proc stuff and stuff needs to proc shit, that’s how I roll)

Have fun. You won’t get the build right first time (or quite a few times!), but you’ll get through ok and Grim Dawn gets more rewarding the more you learn and understand it.

Create some alts and work on a couple of ideas in rotation. This helps you learn more mechanics and also allows more reuse of gear :slight_smile:

Yeah I have made a few character before this one and I saved some weapons I thought looked fairly good. They were some scepters that both gave +2 to “Solael’s Witch fire” and a flat chaos dmg increase to “Sigil of Consumption”. So I stashed them in that transfer tab, made an occultist+nightblade and got to level 12 through the crucible. dual wielded them and tried it out and the damage was surprisingly good. Not sure if that is a character even worth investing more time in though.

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Welcome dude! I am brand new to the game myself so we are in the same boat, haha.

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Welcome to the game and to the forum. :slight_smile:

There’s not a lot on how the masteries synergise with one another, probably because there are so many different ways to make a class. Don’t know if this will help.

https://grimdawn.gamepedia.com/Masteries

For more general knowledge have a look at these

http://www.grimdawn.com/game.php

http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/showthread.php?t=56243

Otherwise, just ask questions.

8

I can list for you what damage types each mastery do and some of the resistance reductions they have (there are three ways to reduce resistances, and not all of them stack)

Necromancer: Vitality, Aether, Cold. Resistance reduction in Vitality, Aether, Physical

Inquisitor: Cold, Fire, Lightning, Pierce. Resistance reduction in cold, fire, lightning, aether, chaos, pierce

Soldier: Physical, pierce, bleed. Resistance reduction in physical.

Shaman: Physical, bleed, lightning. Resistance reduction in vitality, bleed, cold, fire, lightning

Occultist: Vitality, bleed, acid. Resistance reduction in physical, bleed, cold, fire, lightning, acid

Nightblade: pierce, cold, acid, bleed, chaos. Resistance reduction in pierce, cold, acid.

Demolitionist: fire, lightning, chaos, pierce, physical. Resistance reduction in fire, lightning, chaos.

Arcanist: Cold, Lightning, fire, aether. Resistance reduction: physical, fire (can not be applied to higher monsters like bosses)

(I did not include the damage over time - dot - types)

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So what are you currently playing around with? Would love to know what others who are new are doing.

Yeah that’s what I thought as well, but was hoping someone had done some kind of breakdown for new players. I mean “new player friendly builds” are nice and all, but I think most want to do make their own thing.
Thanks for the links anyway I will take a look at them, hopefully I can learn something new about the game.

Hey that’s really cool, thanks for that! Certainly narrows things down and makes things a bit more manageable from my point of view.

I was trying to make a nightblade/Occultist chaos/vit/bleed damage build on the grimtools calculator, but from your post I can now see that this class has no resist reduction for chaos type of damage.
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Also if anyone has any tips/guidelines on point management, that would be appreciated. What skills do I max out? What skills are fine with half? What skills are fine with just 1 - 2 points. From looking at other people’s builds they really really seem to like spreading their points out and maxing a few. Some abilities aren’t maxed out while their passives are, what’s up with that? Some builds even have skills that are heavily invested in going waaay over cap. It is kind confusing to me.

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Try to focus on 1-2 damage types and their dot (if applicable)

There are too many skills to cover to make such list.

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Alright will do

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Lord Crutos, the game allows you up to a maximum of 10 extra points in skills which come from things like items in the game, not the skill points you get from levelling up. So you could have say, 10 points in Inquisitor’s Chilling Rounds, but with items that give either +1 to that particular skill, +1 to all Inquisitor skills or +1 to all skills that could be boosted as high as 20.

Juggling skill poiints is an art and something you’ll learn as you go along since there’s never enough to go around. Some skills which you see are not maxed may be because they don’t really give you much in return for more investment in them. So you may see advice to leave some skills at their “soft” cap which is usually the figure you can get them to without the extra +1 points from items. Again, taking Chilling Rounds “soft” cap might be as low as 5 while the “hard” cap is 20. The +1’s are a good way to boost some skills since it allows you to just put one point into that skill which means more to use elsewhere.

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@ Lord Crutos: Welcome! So nice to see yet even more new friendly players!

@ medea fleecestealer: I bet you hear this all the time, but I just wanted to point out, that you are doing a great job welcoming all the newbies into the fold and providing them with useful information.
Very cool. :cool:

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Okay, now it makes a lot more sense to me, thank you very much. I think it is great of you to take your time to help.

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Generally the main damage dealing skills scale well with +skills above their “soft cap”, like forcewave, cadance, rune of haggarad etc.

Some skill modifiers do scale well to, but some do not.

Some passive skills scales well, some scales extremely poorly.

Some skills also have “breakpoints” like Undead legion for Raise skeleton, at certain skill ranks you get additional skeleton max summon limit. And Chillsurge for Rune of Haggarad, at certain skill ranks you get additional projectiles. So if you lets say spend 2 more points into those, you might not get that extra thing but you need 3 or perhaps 4 skill points more to get one more skeleton / one more projectile.

Since there are sooo many skills, it is very hard to give a complete list. Just take it as you go along and study other peoples builds too and try to figure out why this skill is overcapped, why another skill is softcapped and why yet another skill just have one hard-point invested (but raised higher due to +skills on gear)

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@ Tsuelue Thanks for the welcome!

@ Malawiglenn

So it is basically just looking at a skill’s scaling as it levels up and determining if it is worth maxing?

Breakpoints yeah I noticed that for “storm spread”, when going from 6 points to 7 points it adds another projectile to the skill proc. So I can just check with +skill gear how a skill scales past its “max” on the grimtools I guess.

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Yes

And yes, grimtools is very nice for determine in advance what to do

You can upload a char to grim tools, I have video about it. I did send you a PM with some information.

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http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/showthread.php?t=76322
https://www.grimtools.com/calc/

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Here’s a build using one of those bloodsworn scepters, though only at Level 75 so far… It’s fun though. It was dual wield, but I found an Orb of the Black Flame which works for now.