But you still have to reach Ultimate with your first character first. Why dont make it available for your first character too?
And still, having a “difficulty” everyone just wants to skip isnt actually good.
Yes, i know it’s pretty major change, but i believe we need it.
At this point it’s pretty much pointless because the game is mostly done. And i say mostly because i’m surprised the game is still getting updated, i thought the game was gonna be done way before the current patch.
Plus, buffing and nerfing stuff takes far less work than removing a difficulty and having to rebalance the whole progression.
You can use GDstash Char Editor to unlock Ultimate if you really need it for your first character.
Everyone? Speak for yourself. I only use merits to unlock portals and quest rewards, I still play the main quest on Normal and Elite. Also I recently started from nothing again to play the game with a friend who just bought Grim Dawn. We both had much fun progressing through all 3 difficulties.
Skipping difficulties is aimed at players who got burned out from playing through the game many times with many characters, not at first time players.
Imagine a first time player skipping Elite, with little experience in the game and only the few items they found so far on Normal. They’d probably get crushed in Ultimate and become frustrated quickly.
I doubt there many first timers who want to go straight to Ultimate without proper gear from previous difficulties, or without the experience to deal with the increased threat. For the few that really wanna do it, GDstash exists.
As the devs have mentioned numerous times, the game is content complete. The only things that are still being worked on are balancing patches and bug fixes. So this is really the wrong place to ask for gameplay changes and new features. But you can always ask in the modding section for that kinda stuff.
campare with deathdealer/Barrelsmith’s Crossfire/Darkblaze Incinerator，their granted skills both have average total 250% WD skill and 70% Chance to pass through, so i think the aether gun need a pass through or higher %WD buff
Guess it’s not too much to ask for to play through Elite with your VERY FIRST character. That one, having -nothing- in stash, would not be fit to skip that difficulty anyway.
a couple of words about Stun Jacks. for now it’s probably the cluckiest Demo skill (except bwc that is the utmost champion) and it speaks for itself. the cone is too wide, distance is too small and spread is too wide.
also it’s still quite tricky to stay alive with them even with green sword wilth LL mod.
what I suggest:
i legit don’t support this, i think stun jacks’ ridiculously comically wide cone is entertainment
and the cone doesnt’ matter if you facetank fat targets anyway
leech and dmg boost i can totally get behind tho
There are Thermite Mines too. Yes, their RR effect is incredibly powerful, but their wierd spread and pathetically low AoE make them clunky as hell, unless you get some items to increase it.
I agree about Stun Jacks - they just dont have enough gear support to be used as a main skill (despite having a transmuter for that).
Aether spread is a direct analogue of Storm spread and should be compared with it. Now it’s about 2-3lvl.
Because new players come in thinking because they played an ARPG before that they can handle the highest difficulty. They get steamrolled on Ultimate and then downvote the game for being “imbalanced” by idiot devs. 
The game is huge now, and one could argue the 3 difficulty formula is unnecessary, but Elite is still a meaningful stepping stone on the way to Ultimate for many players and I don’t see any motivation to shake up the entire game now. The difficulty merits fill the gap for veterans and the smooth difficulty progression remains for new arrivals.
We made the difficulty unlocks remain after the Loghorrean battle even if you own the expansions for a reason. Getting to Ultimate takes no longer with both expansions than it did in vanilla Grim Dawn.
From my experience on Harra at least, Stun Jacks are pretty solid as an AoE death zone for trash, single target chunky shotgun for bosses and provide solid healing with the set and weapon. I don’t think it’s Stun Jacks itself as much as perhaps non-Harra gear support that’s lacking. Don’t know, though, haven’t played those other builds like Light’s Defender myself.
I hope Grim Dawn 2 still has at least two difficulties for progression. One difficulty feels pretty empty, to me at least.
So here’s something I’ve been tinkering with for awhile…
Grimtools: DW Viper Hemorrhager Warder
Now before everybody doubles over with laughter, it’s shockingly not terrible for a meme build. With a bit of buffed love, it could potentially be another decent pistol choice added to the mix.
Pistol Physical + Bleed doesn’t exist as an archetype and other than creating an entirely new MI which I know Crate doesn’t want the hassle, the Hemorrhager seems like the only choice to approach this.
I also get Crate’s desire to not alter existing skill bonuses and I wouldn’t want to gimp anyone who use it as a leveling weapon for bleed caster Tricksters, Dervishes, etc (heck, I’ve used it myself just for that).
As the gun sits now, it only has flat bleed, %Bleed + duration, OA and the 2 skill bonuses. Compare this to its cousin the Sandspitter which has flat IT, two %damage rolls + duration, OA , conversion and skills.
So with that in mind, any thoughts on what could be done with the Hemorrhager to potentially give it an identity as an auto-attacker without affecting the caster parts? A %phys roll seems like an obvious one. Dual-wield functionality would be great and open up gear choices, but I’m not sure how much of a pain it would be to take an existing animation and tie it to this weapon with a bleed effect.
Anyways, interested to hear what people think or have better ideas. Thanks.
This happens unbelievably often for modded playthroughs. I constantly see people struggle through the game in custom modes like Grimarillion and DoM. Since custom games don’t have difficulty requirements, you can start the game at ultimate and these people have this mentality like, “I’m not a noob, I’ve played D2 before!” and they jump right into ult and get wrecked.
Oh come on, it’s tooooooo weak now.
Please please times the %WD by 7, like what was done to Bulwark of Octavius before.
Btw, Divine Mandate + 2 Gargabol rings is much much stronger than Oleron’s Rage + 2 RR rings which is already strong enough. Physical damage has dominated GD for too long. Please consider removing the % Physical and % Trauma damage on Gargabol ring, like what was done to prefix “formidabale”
Plus, the M colossal grasp is still too strong.
no thanks 
Then you can figure out a better way to stop Octavius S&B WL. Only dialing the trauma damage on the shield back a bit is definately not enough. As for as I know, Octavius 2 (helm and armor) + Siegebreaker WL is as OP as Octavius 3 WL. Easy sub 5 SR75-76. Faster farming speed than all other builds.
Physical SnB is still too strong.
the fook does that have to do with killing the only phys dmg MI ring?,
a ring some people have spent good amount of time farming, which in itself offers nothing OP or stronger than similar dmg type rings and their affixes?
Formidable was a totally different story since it had a bunch of other inherent stats to still carry it
if those items/sets are too strong, then you look at them, you don’t strip 500 other unrelated builds, of the only reason they bothered spending time getting that ring
and if the next argument is that a segment of the top performing gdstashed builds is also using that ring “despite not using the skill bonuses” then i don’t give a flying hootenanny and have 1 word for you, Cutthroat Vine ring of Spines, Regenerating Gollus Ring of Regen, Tempest Living Ring of elemental fackery
allow me to mention the word gdstashed again, because any build that uses 2 of those rings with specific phys dmg affixes sure as shyte didn’t try farming it legit, and is in no frickin way reason to strip it of its base dmg; much less when you have 5000 different avenues to correct the build(s) in question
the notion to just jump at the ring is completely ridiculous with all the other places to trim
I forgot that. You convinced me. It shouln’t be the ring to blame.
I quite don’t like guys mentioning gdstash because a single green physical affix MI ring is not hard to accquire, especially when the affixes are not limited to one or two but can be adjusted. I don’t know how many hours you guys spent on GD. I got more than 6000. There are a lot of players in Chinese GD community of this amount.
The discussion is not meant to make everyone mad. When you disagree with my points, i was waiting for some useful comments and probably potential solution advices, rather than “gdstash” which makes me feel offended.
If the avenues are all on Octavius itself, then the fist will have to punch the shield, the helm, 2 piece bouns, 3 piece bouns. Aegis and Forcewave would suffer more, unless there are some buffs to the skill modifiers. This is what I really want to hear.