There are players that enjoy creating and journeying with a classless mastery build.
The build is very challenging, but allows one to discover,exploit and experiment with a lot of underused items that can grant and give you a much needed skill or buff.
These granted skills can, and should be assigned to a selected DEVOTION SKILL once obtained from shrines.
In other words, you are building a character that relies mainly on damage,effects and buffs from equipment that is either crafted or found.
Whilst this style is currently very playable, there are a multitude of WASTED MASTERY POINTS that we cannot use when levelling.
All you can use for each level-up, is ONE measly ATTRIBUTE point. All the 3,2,1 progression MASTERY points you normally get are unused in a classless build.
You could opt to select masteries and ONLY use the mastery bar for the attibutes, but the Catch-22 here is that if you do this then you don’t REALLY have a classless build anymore!
(Look in your character view window - should just be Name and Level ONLY)
Is there a viable solution that could be incorporated into the game development without too much effort?
Maybe …
Consider the following
When you are asked to Select a Class - add a new option for “NO CLASS”.
Selecting this option, (with a possible warning popup confirmation), will set your character to CLASSLESS mode and henceforth will be locked out of all classes.
On levelling, you get your usual single attribute point, BUT the mastery assignable points now become ATTRIBUTE points and obey the same count as they do up to level 50,90 etc.
If this is possible, then it could open a host of new and exiting builds in Grim Dawn that herald back to the classic days of RPG where attribute point allocation and items were important managable resourses. The current use of attributes in the game is basically a “MEH - Pump Physique” strategy. Converting these mastery points to usable attribute points gives a classless build a whole new concept to expolore.
Expanding the current single and dual class combos with a NOCLASS concept might be a workable implementation?
If not, I will still play and enjoy my crippled classless characters as usual.
I do enjoy all of the class combinations, but classless is still one of my favourite challenges.
The devs will never make classless actually viable because it would defeat the entire point of the mastery system. Yes, you can beat the game classless but that’s going in with the notion that your character will be far weaker.
And what builds would classless allow? Classless is literally characters missing a ton of stuff from the characters with masteries. Meaning characters with masteries can use whatever classless characters can but have far more option because they have access to mastery skills. Going classless basically means having much less options.
My advice if you want to go classless is to focus on chaos damage.
Not many enemies have high res to chaos damage
Chaos devotion pathing offers incredible stats and the highest amount of damage
Lots of items now allow you to convert different damage types into chaos.
There are also items like obsidian juggernaut which gives you a pretty solid skill.
Good luck!
EDIT: IIRC, you can also stack about -100% chaos RR without relying on masteries too. That’s pretty huge. I don’t think any other damage type can say the same.
Point well taken, but I just fret about ALL those mastery points that are unusable in classless. If they could be used as alt attribute points it would change the gameplay considerably. I respect the way you guys balance the game and it is your decision at the end of the day anyway.
I could imagine a “single class mastery” mastery being great.
Attribute points like normal mastery
AA for melee/range, one generic spam spell with transmute etc
some defensive stuff
maybe even a pet
Just to to make goging single class a viable option. For my taste it would be awesome to actually being able to go “single class” like solo occu <3
Still i can see why its not an option cause of design phylosophy and somehow still not. Yeah lost potential for sure that wouldnt require any balancing in terms of items. Those skills doesnt even need to be supported by items or what not. The mastery would be there just to give the single class option a little boost.
Yea, that is what I did mention, BUT - in theory you are not now really CLASSLESS and you are still locked into what attributes points are assigned per mastery point as opposed to being able to allocate your own attributes in a granular fashion.
I was advocating CLASSLESS as a new class with a different attribute allocation method.
The game is what the game is, and with or without a CLASSLESS optimization I will be there bashing away.
Hold on…were we talking about classless builds? Because I couldn’t see without that caps-lock.
(Just teasing you)
I’m just trying to offer suggestions here. I don’t see the difference between picking a classless option and levelling the mastery bar of any other class, aside from the aesthetics as pointed up by nola.
I dunno, I’m kinda for the idea and I’ve never even bothered to try classless yet. What’s the harm of sneaking a little, out-of-the-way button on the mastery selection screen that when pressed locks you out of all masterys and auto-converts skillpoints to attribute points and health/energy…
…no balancing or support needed beyond that. It just becomes a, “Hey, you pushed this button, now deal with it.”, kinda thing. You basically just added 3 (4 if we count Veteran) new difficulty tiers to the game without having to do anything more than that.
The only checks I can think that you’d have to have in place would be for if they already had selected and specced a mastery at level 2 and then they decided at the level 10 selection to go this route would be to have the button also essentially wipe and convert everything they’d already might have picked. Oh, and of course the opportunity to “Undo” until they close the screen entirely, just like the other mastery selection options. Other than that… smooth sailing.
Or you could let it ask you twice at 2 and 10 with the second time picking it cementing you in to full “classless” or if you picked a mastery once and then choose classless the second time you are now a single mastery. BAM - you just made an easy fix for both these types of requests people have been asking on and off over the years.
The meat of it really that people that go these routes want is “something” productive being done with the unused points just laying there.
The reason these builds are appealing is precisely because they’re not supported - that’s what makes them fun. Self-imposed challenges make people feel accomplished when they beat the game because of the lack of official support for these builds.
There’s enough build variety in GD anyways, it would be way too much effort to attempt to support every gimmick, gimped idea that comes along and flies in the face of the game’s basic premises. I could make a build that wears no armor below the belt, and I could call it “Winnie the Poo”, but there’s no way in hell a dumb build like that should get officially supported. And yes, I’m implying that classless builds are dumb (but fun)
Maybe? Then again the only people asking FOR these things are the people that are actually DOING them. Deciding to wear no armor below the belt is an entirely different thing from wanting to be single or no mastery and I’ve always felt that the latter should be supported at least *minimally as described in this thread. Not wearing armor below the belt tho… that’s on you. Here’s a trenchcoat, you creeper.
*In an OFFICIALLY the support is in there buuut don’t expect anything more kind-of-way.
Should car designers support drivers who want to use their feet to accelerate Flintstone-style? I don’t think so. Why would Crate support something that’s based on a self-imposed challenge and it’s not the intended way to play the game? Should they also support itemless or devotionless runs because some players like that kind of challenge? The people who play like that are a minimal fraction of the player base anyway so focusing on supporting mastery-less runs would be a complete waste of developing resources and time.
Any modder can add 1 more mastery that don’t influence class name and have only 3 passive skills: +8 to physique, cunning or spirit per level.
But for What?
Deciding to wear no armor below the belt is an entirely different thing from wanting to be single or no mastery and I’ve always felt that the latter should be supported at least *minimally as described in this thread. Not wearing armor below the belt tho… that’s on you. Here’s a trenchcoat, you creeper.