There are plenty of easy to gear up builds in Grim Dawn (the Krieg set meta is pretty outdated these days), 2H melee pierce is not one of them.
2H pierce melee was just a reference to my experience. The main part is those 3 points. You don’t think they are valid?
Sorry, the points about lack of 2H melee pierce support are valid imo.
If Rancor had attack speed, you would have at least one easy to get decent-ish weapon to go for.
But given how overtuned bleed rancor builds are, we might not see any attack speed on it in the near future.
Rancor
Not just pierce, 2H melee in general. Yes, there are stronger builds. But the customization is very low. No sets to choose from, no relics, no flat bonus multipliers and chances multipliers for 2H to make lots of legendaries and devotions more viable for 2H.
- It doesn’t matter if a 2h sword is part of a set, if it’s strong enough it’s even cooler to NOT be part of a set. Sets are constraining. Also a lot of sets lack weapons, so some 2handers are designed to fit into a set well without being part of the set. Open your mind padawan.
- Pointing out that something doesn’t exist doesn’t mean it needs to exist. A generic 2hander melee relic might be cool, but it’s just not in the game atm and nothing in the game particularly is begging for one, especially after next patch 2hander buffs.
- The compensation is stronger base attack, high stats and high impact skill modifiers, stats etc.You need to stop making direct comparisons in ARPGs and instead consider all the factors working together. There are top tier 2hander builds in GD that can go past Shattered Realm 75 or clear Crucible Gladiator in 7 minutes or less.
Melee 2h pierce I agree with you, it’s just not really there yet. Nadaan’s Reach needs to do more since Ring of Steel is a weak main skill.
Rancor is a super powerful weapon and pierce builds with it need to be experimented with, but it’s a caster weapon. @malawiglen and you can expect that OP bleed build to get nerfed lol
But aside from that, there just isn’t much support for 2h pierce melee.
https://www.grimtools.com/db/items/13738 should eventually get piercing shadow strike support at least.
I do find your points weak though. Every set without a weapon is a set to choose from. Heck even breaking a full set for it can be worthwhile sometimes. You should try temporal arcblade out with bonemonger, as a caster or attacker it works.
Relics? Any relic with a damage type supports a 2h of the same dmg type, and builds often go for relics based on their class not the weapon. 2hander builds have used all kinds of relics.
The only other thing you mentioned that I particularly agreed with is that it’s unfortunate that two-handers are forced hard into the Kraken constellation. But it’s pretty late in development to try and fix.
I might try a 2H pierce build with Rancor at some point, just for the sake of being able to give feedback based on a real life example build and just not a Grimtool link and “ded biild” xD
@malawiglenn It might not work but I like to imagine something crazy:
Cooldown phantasmal blades with Aeon’s Hourglass, and maybe Shammy WPS? The attack speed will be a pain to gain. I really wish Z would put attack speed on Rancor.
How would you use nightblade WPS with rancor?
I edited before you posted :). I’m tired man.
I would tone down the bleeding part on it and casting speed a bit. Then give it some attack speed. Should make it more balanced and useful for other fun builds.
But yes, pierce PB shaman I think someone did post such build. Edit. sorry it was bleed … no pierce build yet from what I know
After the bleed builds with it are fixed (you can count on first round of nerfs coming 1.1.4, he’s well aware) I imagine Zantai will be more receptive to the pierce side of Rancor. Cool weapons get all the love 
One way to give 2H more love is to give more items passive 2H bonuses, similar to what Mythical Titan Pauldrons have
- Having a powerful item as a part of the set on top does give you customization - do you want to go for set bonuses or do you want to browse other gear for better single piece items. How did you escape this concept in your mind?
- Yes, i’m pointing out that some options that exist for other playstyles don’t exist for 2H melee. Hence my point of lack of customization. I thought the discussion is about the current sate of the game, not about guessing future changes.
- Again, you don’t talk variety. If i already have a weapon with gagilion base dmg and i’m looking at myriads of epic/legendary gear pieces that give flat dmg - they aren’t that good for me. Every piece of gear just looks like it’s flat bonus is balanced for one-handed weapons. Again, limited customization. Same with devotions: low chance for a proc on attack limits customization. With high attack speed of a one-hander i have an option to stack several on hit procs.
Nowhere did i say there are no top tier builds for 2H. I was talking purely about the options in customization available for 2H melee. They are very limited compared to other playstyles.
- you’re again, limited in the scope of your thinking of what occurs to gamers as “customization”. Sometimes a 2 hander is so powerful that it doesn’t matter that it breaks the set. Or you can go for green MI’s and what not. Depends on your view of customization. Being part of a set means all you have to think about is the other set, but not being part of a set means you get to tinker in stranger ways and can make more unique results.
- cus·tom·i·za·tion
noun
The action of modifying something to suit a particular individual or task.
It seems like you’re complaining about lack of variety and some specific kinds of customization options. Which is understandable, wanting weapons of every type for every damage type, every playstyle and wanting every skill to be supported. However it may or may not happen. Zantai is one guy doing balance, they have one guy doing art assets, and they’re ready to move on to another project. It is unreasonable to expect that in a game with this many damage types, that you can do absolutely everything you want with every damage type well.
I’m not against you man, I’m just telling you that just because you didn’t get one specific thing you want doesn’t mean the whole game is flawed. Especially in a game that has so much going on as this. I would love more 2h pierce support. That’s on a long LIST of things that COULD be developed in GD, but there’s only so much man power. It’s more important that the things that already exist be made worthy of gameplay than to keep tacking on more things to the game as the game reaches the end of its lifespan.
If Zantai and team are willing to addmore 2h pierce weapons that’d be great! I was not trying to dismiss your desire, only to tell you not to get your hopes up. But there’s no harm in asking! - Games need limits in customization. Limits and restrictions are what make build theorists find ways around them. The restrictions are part of the design. How much restriction is too much is subjective. Also GD is a game that grew beyond its initial planned scope so that caused some issues that cannot be fixed easily at this point.
I also think you have a very specific concept of what you think qualifies as “customization.” Literally every other member on the Discord Server thinks the amount of customization in this game is crazy high compared to previous ARPG’s.
I am not trying to make war here so: I agree 2handers are more restrictive in the sense you’re describing. But the benefit of this is that they often get flashier effects or identities in the game. The trade-off for the restriction of 2handers is raw power and charismatic gear.
Basically, if your point is that “two handers get less customization -i.e. 1 component where having 2 weapons lets you pick 2 different components, forced kraken devotion path, etc.” then yes I agree. But that’s by design, and it’s not necessarily a bad thing.
It’s a valid point about the manpower. It’s not like i’m going to seige the Crate headquaters with demonstrations. I understand how small their team is.
The course of events was very simple: i’m making a build, i don’t like the level of my gear, i start browsing for more. Going through the items i realise how limited my options are. Limited to the point its actually discouraging to go and farm legendaries (i. e. playing the game). Maybe it’s my build? What if i deviate from pierce? The real variety of viable gear is only present in phys. department. It’s not about the weapons, i like a lot of two-handers on their own. It’s just the lack of gear to support.
So i go in here and wright my feedback. Doesn’t seem like a sinful thing to do.
And the change like give 2Hs a 1.5 multiplier for every flat non-duration dmg bonus on the gear and devotions doesn’t seem like time consuming (although it depends on the code).
Well to be fair, you had a build in mind that has incredible low gear support. What if you had in mind to do a Bleed-Aether dual wield gun defiler build? If you are into 2H melee gameplay, there are some builds that are strong of course.
Yeah, my first char was deathknight with 2H melee phys. I liked how it was working out but two things made me stop: 1) the best gear you could possibly get in a reasonable time frame is Krieg’s set which is constraining and i’m not that big of a fan of the set 2) found out that enemy armor applies to every separate flat dmg source which again constraints the building process.
Did you try that 2H DK with Mythical Soulsplitter or Fleshwarped Core?
If you are looking for an easy to make 2H melee build, I would suggest Primal Strike / Savagery Warder/Vindicator
I don’t think Soulrend needs attack speed. Reaper using Soulrend is basically a piano build, cycling between Bone Harvest, Shadow Strike and maybe Amarasta’s Blade Burst. So I’d either put a cooldown reduction for Bone Harvest, thus eliminating ABB from rotation (e.g.), or simply a mod that adds cold damage to Bone Harvest.
I did not have those bad boys. But i did farm Steward for a well rolled halberd. I wanted to go phys.