New to the game, am I missing something about skills on items?

Grim Dawn Gameplay Discussion
1

I thought I understood bonus skills and skill modifiers on items, but I’ve stumbled across some stuff that has me wondering if I misunderstood.

So, I ran across suggestions for using Ugdenbog Venom Launcher for the elemental to acid conversion on a Paladin build.

The elemental to acid conversion is part of the weapon’s Blood of Dreeg skill modifier, an Occultist skill.

Paladin is Oathkeeper and Inquisitor, and does not get Blood of Dreeg.

I don’t know if the build is just 3 years out of date, or if I’m misunderstanding something, or if the build creator was lying about clearing SR80, or if there was some “obvious” way Paladin gains Blood of Dreeg from an item that wasn’t mentioned, or what, but nobody in the comments was calling it out, so I seem to be missing something.

2

Skills are unique to masteries, so any Blood of Dreeg mod is exclusive to the occultist.

3

Not really missing anything, a lot of builds just use items for some of their skill modifiers. Often the combination of skills on a single item doesn’t work out quite as well, or doesn’t get a lot of support from other items, so players tend to just take the modifiers that suit them and don’t worry about what else is on it for other classes. It becomes very clear that items are not “designed for a specific combination” if you look at cases where they support skills from three or even four different masteries — they are there to give us options, not to lock us into a pre-designed playstyle.

4

Venom launcher has a modifier to Deadly Aim(inquis),
and it’s the only MI acid 1h ranged weapon iirc letting you “cherrypick” affixes for high flat dmg/gain contra fixed epic/legend, with the only other strong acid pistol actually being a Vitality dmg pistol.
Depending on skills and such taken the elemental conversion isn’t the biggest deal/loss to not have (RF already converts fire in full now)

5

I probably ran into something like the guy emphasizing “UVL is great for the elemental to acid conversion” and then also mentioning paladin possibilities, without saying “and even without Occultist here’s why UVL is still good.”

Heh, probably would be clearer if I linked the posts but I don’t wanna ‘name and shame’ someone from 3 years ago, I just wanted to figure out if I was missing something.

Heck, it was just yesterday that I learned ‘elemental damage’ is just fire/ice/lightning and didn’t apply to my acid, which is what sent me searching some stuff.