I’m a little confused and it’s probably because I haven’t read any level 85 guides.
But it seems people say Physique is best. But how does this work out for gear?
In Titan Quest which this game is similar to there was Melee gear that would be Physique (strength) and Caster gear that would be Spirit (intelligence). You couldn’t even hope to be able to equip both. One reason being that the effective level cap was around 65 even though the actual was 75? I think. The xp gains pretty much a humongous grind after 64 or 65*. A very different game in that caster and melee was more divided in that OA did nothing for a spell or bow for example. Ok so in TQ you play a caster and you take spirt and enough cunning (dexterity) to stay alive and not get critted so much. Melee would take Physique (strength) for damage and cunning (dexterity) for crits and DA. Even piercing builds strength was more damage. Spear builds needed enough to equip every spear. Bow builds needed to equip bows but OA did not affect hitting or crits with range. Very few end gamish uniques needed dexterity such as the tracker hood.
So stats were pretty simple. Some people said non-caster 2:1 Str: DEX and you wouldn’t go far astray.
But for Grim Dawn people say Physique. Does this mean nobody is using caster armors? Or is it more complicated? What about gun users? They need cunning right?
and popular mods like x-max eventually made it much easier grind
The simple answer is that this isn’t Titan Quest. A lot of things have changed. If you try to play it like TQ then it’s similar enough to be really frustrating.
Most casters can get enough Spirit to equip their gear with little or no points in Spirit. You get enough from the mastery bar, and from gear and components.
Gun users sometimes need a little Cunning to be able to equip rifles. They always take the Hawk constellation which gives -10% to ranged weapon requirements. It works out.
The three most important stats are Health, OA, DA. Physique gives 2 of the 3 - not much else to it.
The short answer is that Grim Dawn’s physique is the equivalent of Titan Quest’s strength + HP + dexterity (because physique also raises your DA).
There are basically two kinds of armors, heavy armors (needs a LOT of physique) and the rest (needs moderate physique or needs moderate physique and spirit).
Physique is actually a bit overrated unless you have very specific end-game items for your character in mind which don’t carry a lot of +physique or health. Raising your physique/health using various items and devotions is just too easy otherwise.
It’s also pretty obvious that melee characters are going to need a lot of it or else you won’t even be able to equip your best armors/weapons.
The thing about physique (and health) is that you only need enough for gear or to keep your character from dying - and that requires a trial and error/experimental approach. As you gain more experience playing the game and figure out which HP thresholds work for you, you can adjust the number of points you invest in it.
Bottomline is unless you’re playing a tanky build then a few more HP is probably not going to be able to save you against some of the game’s nastier attacks (think Barmanu’s Meteor Fall - Grim Dawn has a lot of similar attacks/equivalents).