Almost every single build requires Physique for Health and Defensibility stats. Cunning and Spirit attributes seem like an after-thought for gear-purpose only. So why not rework the attributes so players can diverse these stats?
Some suggestions:
Physique: Add Health, More Health Regeneration, and Defensibility
Cunning: Add Offensibility (increase the value please!), 50% Health (than Physique’s bonus), Physical/Pierce/Weapon Attack damages, 30% Defensibility (than Physique’s)
Spirit: Add Energy, Energy Regeneration, non-weapon attack damages, and some 30% Defensibility (than Physique’s) and 30% Offensibility (than Physique’s)
The problem is casters would benefit the most from Spirit attribute, but Physique is too important for end-game boss fights. So why not give Spirt some Defensibility so players can diverse the attributes?
The biggest problem with changing attribute bonuses around is that they effect everything. Every build and every Boss would see changes to their OA, DA, health and % damage. No one wants to see everything get thrown out whack out of nowhere.
Attributes are in a fairly ok place as now. Sure Physqiue is king but there are reasons to pick Cunning/Spirit, some builds can even invest heavily into either. Could the system be better? Sure, is it really that bad? I wouldn’t say so.
I don’t really like how attributes work either. I don’t know exactly what to do but its seems to me your suggestions make everything too much alike. Giving DA and health to everything, OA to spirit and cunning; physique gets health and spirit gets energy but cunning doesn’t get anything.
I’d probably do something like…
physique gets health and DA
Cunning gets OA, Dodge, and physical, pierce, bleeding damage
and spirit gets energy, energy AND health regen, magic damage.
Alternatively, put the health regen back on physique and give spirit resistances.
physique being king, aside from arcanists and nightblades getting to dump in the other two. A quick way to solve that is to make Anatomy of Murder () and Inner Focus give even moar cunning/spirit%
TBH it’s soldiers who get to do cunning dumps because of military conditioning.
i.e. you only have the luxury of going ham on spirit/cunning if you satisfy your defensive requirements.
I think cunning is perfect the way it is because physical/pierce devotions tend to give a lot of DA, but very little OA.
As for spirit…you’re right to say that the only real class who can afford a spirit dump is the arcanist. But honestly? I feel like that should be the case.
Spending your attributes according to the main damage type of your build seems to be working pretty good, at least for Veteran and Elite.
Physique is a general stat for everyone, cunning is the main stat for physical based builds(physical, pierce, bleed, trauma), and spirit is a main for magic based builds(fire, lighting acid, etc).
Based on the above and as a personal rule, I always spend 60% of my points on my main scaling attribute(cunning or spirit depending on the build) and the rest between the two other stats equally. That’s how I roll on Grim Dawn, but then again, I never play on Ultimate. Ultimate is the land of the min-maxers, a place witch is waaaaaaay outside of my gaming life.
Mastery combos that can get a metric ton of DA from buffs as well. If you can pick up 1 or 2 out of skills like Word of Renewal, Shadow Dance or Temper to name a few and push them deep into their Ultimate levels (like +8-10), that can go a long way to minimising how much Physique you need.
I didn’t say anything is wrong. I said “I dont really like them”. Maybe I should put emphasis on the really. I like them but another game should probably try to make some edits. No big deal.
One universally defensive attribute.
Two offensive oriented passives… one part universally applicable offensive stat (OA, energy/regen), one part situationally applicable offensive stat (damage type), one part universally applicable defensive stat (dodge, healthregen or resistances).
Torchlight 2, despite its flaws has probably the best attributes system.
As for me, the problem of physique is its versatility and overestimated efficiency.
By pumping just one parameter, we increase survival from everything.
As for me, the bonus on HP needs to be replaced with something else. For example, on some type of protection. For example% physical protection.
So that the physique becomes part of the assembly, and not a standard way to increase survival.
IMO it’d make stats too powerful. You also need to understand that stats will increase monster difficulty the same way it will increase the player’s powercap.
Given that end game bosses/superbosses have at least 3 times more stats than we do, you should seriously reconsider your stance
From what I remember (been like 6 or 7 years), Torchlight 2’s system is pretty much the reverse of Grim Dawn’s where Vitality was only ever taken on Shield users to hit the Block cap (which wasn’t hard to do anyway through other means; a Blocking scroll and the right Shield covered a big chunk of it) or characters that got no use whatsoever out of Strength/Focus (like Minion Engineer). Otherwise, everyone dumped points in Dexterity up to the Dodge cap and the rest went into Strength/Focus for 2 reasons:
Equipping weapons way ahead of your level while levelling to make steamrolling things even faster.
You got most of your defense largely through gear pieces like Limoany skulls or skills that really empowered your character like Frost Phase/Rune Vault/Onslaught/Shadow Rush for high, consistent mobility and Ice Prison/Forcefield for on-demand defense that actually mattered to name a few.
Either you homogenize the attributes to the point that they have a lot of overlap and are boring, or players will tend to focus on the most defensive one. Or you add in an attribute where most of your crit comes from it and then players will focus on that and the defensive one.
This is because attributes are not as interesting as skills, devotion, items. Players want to get their “fun” “flashy” offensive gameplay from skills/devotions/items when possible, so if they can get more offensive “cool” stuff by having enough defense to survive from “boring” attributes then that’s what they’ll do.
We do have 100% spirit builds and 100% cunning builds for GD as is. I think attributes are fine.
Full spirit is little tougher of course. But one can see my recent builds focused on stacking spirit and how much damage they can muster. Physical/Pierce/Bleeding builds are stacking cunning.
So after added health to spirit and cunning, they are fine. Physique is still the universal attribute but other have application too.
It also helps that we have augments that give 70 flat DA, like that Malmouth augment. Physical/Pierce/Bleed builds can put points in cunning and compensate for the lost DA from not putting points in physique with that augment.
) and Inner Focus give even moar cunning/spirit%