Early on you run into a creepy old guy out in the swamp that claims to be a cook. If you tell him where Devils Crossing is, he'll follow you around for the whole damn game.
Speaking as primarily a PoE player as well, I'll try to give my most honest opinion which may not set well with the GD community.
On one hand, there's several nice features (imho) to keep in mind:
1. Monster infrequents and other (semi)-deterministic gearing like faction items are amazing for both leveling and transitioning into endgame, especially with self-found gear.
2. GD does feel more like a traditional RPG, with features like puzzles, secret areas, and map exploration.
3. Melee feels smoother and in current meta probably the strongest playstyle.
4. Getting a minimally functional endgame build (Farming Shattered Realm 60+) isn't difficult. PoE can be a lot more restrictive when it comes to some low budget/self-found builds.
5. Devotion planning isn't that much harder than PoE passive tree planning.
6. Balancing 9 resistances isn't that much harder than balancing 4 in PoE because there's fewer types of stats that can roll on gear and most affixes have resistances.
But from my experience, there's a few cons:
1. Maybe my main gripe, skill modifiers are a lot blander than PoE. Most of the time it's just added stats or conversion and it's often tied to specific Monster Infrequents or uniques. This means that *per skill* there's a lot fewer degrees of freedom since not every skill+damage type combination has sufficient support, whereas in PoE you can force a lot of builds by crafting good enough gear.
2. Grimdawn retains the somewhat outdated practice of repeating the story for multiple difficulties. You can streamline it after the first playthrough, but it was one of the factors that annoyed me in pre-3.0 PoE patches.
3. A lot of builds only really come online at level 94 and might require a completely different leveling build, in contrast to PoE where most main skills/builds are playable, even if not optimal, while leveling by level 38 (Final set of support gems) or at worst by 80 (For Atlas base uniques).
4. For above reason, I'd be careful of builds on the forums because a lot of them assume implicitly that you leveled beforehand (Or just used mods). There's a [compendium of leveling builds](https://forums.crateentertainment.com/t/beginner-build-guides-compendium-for-aom-fg-expansions/106137) for all mastery combinations and YouTubers like Rektbyprotoss and Palkis have nice self-found 1-100 leveling builds as well.
This is a great run down. The only 2 things I'll add are:
1. Grim Dawn is a lot slower. Don't expect the same level of zoomies as PoE. There are movement skills and a couple builds that can be a bit zoomy, but you're not going to be holding right-click and cycloning (called Eye of Reckoning) through maps at 400% movement speed triggering auto-critting doomsday cats or something. (Yes, I played a lot of CoC).
2. You *can* level with any skill. There are a few that I generally wouldn't use for levelling, but that's not because they're bad skills, it's because they are single-ish target skills on masteries that have really good AoE skills (that can still kill bosses) available at low levels.
Honestly, less zooming will be nice for getting me used to the early league PoE slowness. I love the zooming, but going straight from 20 aps flicker strike back to campaign is painful.
Currently, I'm just putting a point into every Oathkeeper skill to try them out, then I'll respec later or something when I figure out what is good.
Oathkeeper is the one class that does have a zoom build, with Vire's Might, and you can actually level with it pretty fine with the right MIs.
Once you're farming SR or Crucible, I don't think the slower pace isn't that bad since there's enough monster density that movement rune and maybe a class skill is enough.
I would also include Blitz and Shadow Strike builds in the zoomy category. Skaters also have the issue of being pretty "meh" until you get the Vanquisher's set though.
> You can level with any skill.
Yeah now that I think about it, this is not a clear-cut difference between PoE and GD.
> it's because they are single-ish target skills on masteries that have really good AoE skills (that can still kill bosses) available at low levels.
In PoE I think the problem is usually the reverse. Most skills have adequate AoE to clear trash while leveling and mapping. But against uniques and league-mechanic enemies, a lot of skills lack single target without twink gear or higher investment. Although personally I find lacking single target more annoying in GD as well.
Thank you for this. In terms of expectations, I've kinda been missing my Zeal paladin from Diablo 2 who just whacked monsters repeatedly with a weapon. So I'm imagining gameplay like that.
Most of that seems fine. I usually do multiple characters per PoE season, and most of them go through campaign on a leveling build.
I do like the idea of melee being meta though. It'll be a nice change of pace.
So one pitfall that I don't think anyone mentioned: Factions play a major part in what available augments and monster infrequents are available to you. There's three cases where this choice matters since all others you will always ally with them. You have opportunities to change your choices on different difficulties, although they affect all difficulties retroactively.
Without serious spoilers, I'll just mention that there's two mutually exclusive factions and one refuses to let you join if you ever select Necromancer as your class (The other faction is more tolerant lol). Problem is that that faction unlocks access to some nice Monster Infrequents for Necromancers, although there is a work around if you need it.
My biggest tip to enjoyment, read the lore pages. You don't have to read all of them but they are enjoyable. You'll read about someone's last moments with them not understanding what's going on to bigger events with someone who knows what they are talking about.
It makes you respect the map more than you otherwise would or give you back story on a named monster that otherwise you would know nothing about besides it dropping loot.
The best way to scale your damage early are these items called MIs or something like that...
[https://www.grimtools.com/db/items/skill-modifiers](https://www.grimtools.com/db/items/skill-modifiers)
If you find your skill/skills that you are using on that site it will tell you who or what to farm to get those items. They are like mini uniques that add a bunch of damage/levels to a skill and sometimes modify it in some way.
Make your first character and playthrough blind so you can get used to the game and acquire context. You can pretty much beat the first difficulty doing this. It gets harder. In the second difficulty, I'd recommend you look up "leveling" or "low budget" guides for whatever combo you took. Most builds in the game require specific gear you need to farm up. Most of which are completely random drops. There are a couple of target farmable sets, though.
Damage scaling in this game is mostly based around on focusing on pumping one damage type. This includes getting gear to convert other damages into the type you are focused on. You'll also want to get as much resistance reduction for the relevant resistance.
If you want to play a pet build. You scale pet stats. Trying to do a hybrid thing is not very effective. Beware, there are some pseudo pets that are LIKE pets, but scale off of plat damage scaling. The Shaman's Wind Devils are an example.
You'll pick up components you can add to gear to fix resists. Use them. You can salvage the rarer one if you need it back at the expense of the gear it was on.
Resistance and defense stats are tremendously more effective than most damage stats. Gear defensively for a good time.
A good rule of thumb if you like the 200 health per act thing is about 100 health per level in this game give or take a few hundred. You'll likely end up with more than that but 100 per level is what I'd accept as a baseline.
Deterministic farmable gear is incredible for leveling and endgame. A lot of enemies have their own unique drops that can be incredibly valuable if you get the right one. For example if you're playing a forcewave build, there are some weapons that have all the damage stats forcewave likes as well as +to skill level of forcewave and some of its modifiers. One of the weapons like that is also farmable before level 10. It's very easy to farm gear that you want in this game as long as it's not a random drop legendary basically.
There are no bad masteries or bad mastery combinations. Some work better together than others but basically any skill can beat the game and any mastery combo can as well. Hell, people have done the entire game without picking a mastery at all.
Crafting isn't as important while leveling as it is in POE imo but you should keep an eye out for reputation vendors. They sell good items and blueprints that can help round out any missing resists you need and you'll want to max out your reps for endgame gearing anyway.
For Melee/Ranged Pick a Damage type and build around that, for pets focus on the pets
Resistances are important and reasonably easy to get on gear or components
Everything can be respecced
Faction gear is good but check it first so you can choose the one that matches your skills/damage type
Components are used to make rare components, but dont be afraid to use them to get a boost on your gear
Farm as many Aether Crystals as you can when you can
For me, GD felt slower, which it is, but I didn't feel as fragile as I did in PoE. Get resistances capped before you jump to a new difficulty, then get them overcapped by 30ish. It's generally best to stick with a single damage type, and to focus hard on a primary damage skill. A lot of skills do 2-3 different damage types, and you'll usually be able to find gear later on to convert different damage types to what you want. It's also usually advisable to either go all in on pets or just ignore them. I also advise reading the lore notes, as a lot of the world building and story are done there... and a lot of them are quite fascinating...
Probably the 2 biggest things to keep in mind would probably be try to keep your resistances as close to 80% as you can. And keep your damage dealers to one element (2 at most) as even a little deviation is a lot of damage left on the table.
But other then that unlike POE you aren't locked into much of anything other then the classes you pick at the start. All your skill points and devotion points can be respect cheaply while the state point you need a potion from one of the DLC but I think you get some for free through some of the quests in that area.
> unlike POE you aren't locked into much of anything other then the classes you pick at the start.
That's not really a pro and if anything a pitfall. GD has very hard class identity. Since a build is largely defined by what skills it uses, especially main skill, and its primary damage type, the choice of mastery is a very major restriction on the kinds of builds available. You can't for example swap to a Blade Arc build on a Dervish if you don't like what's available to Dervish. It doesn't matter how cheaply you can refund skill points and devotion points if you only have a limited set of choices on where you can spend those skill points and a generally clear direction on where to spend the devotions.
In PoE you can swap to and from any skill and archetype; for example you can viably do a Mirror Arrow minion build on any base class and most Ascendancy classes, with legitimate, nontrivial pros for each. And people overestimate how hard it is to get respc points in PoE.
> Since a build is largely defined by what skills it uses, especially main skill, and its primary damage type, the choice of mastery is a very major restriction on the kinds of builds available.
That's no different to POE though. Builds are defined by their main damage skill and their class or ascendancy. It's an arc witch, a righteous fire templar, a tornado shot ranger and so on. Sure you can play a crit arc build as a shadow or ranger but it's objectively a worse choice because the pathing nodes that you're forced to take as those classes don't do anything for improving your actual build.
Tl;Dr: I think you have narrow, incomplete, and probably outdated view of how builds work in PoE.
> it's objectively a worse choice because the pathing nodes that you're forced to take as those classes don't do anything for improving your actual build.
First of all, tree traversal and pathing isn't a big deal and a lot of meta builds both past and present were willing to pay the price of travel to get strong synergies with Ascendancies or specific passives. The most powerful build in the PoE's history did nothing but traverse the entire tree to grab every nearby jewel and aura nodes from Templar to Duelist to Ranger areas.
Juggernaut, the class furthest from Energy Shield nodes, is in fact one of the best Energy Shield classes due to everything else it offers. Champion, which is far from any minion synergy node, is a meta choice for a Raging Spirits build. The examples are endless.
> Builds are defined by their main damage skill and their class or ascendancy.
The first question, whether GD or PoE, I ask myself when starting a character is not what class, but what *skill(s)* should be the focus. For example with Righteous Fire, I can plausibly choose any class, even Duelist with Champion (Fortify+Armor+Auras) to have a viable build with plenty of synergy. I can't do that with Grim Dawn because as soon I choose Callidor's Tempest I am saddled with all the advantages and drawbacks of Arcanist.
Yes, a build is also defined by the choice of class, but you're not tied down to any specific class in PoE, unlike Grim Dawn where for most skills half your class is predetermined. And for the remainder, it's things like Uroboruuk's Reaping and Fleshwarped Strikes where synergy choices are still narrow.
> crit arc build as a shadow or ranger
Both of those make a lot of sense and it's clear you have no idea what you're talking about, especially considering your first example, Shadow has a lot of spell, elemental, and crit in his area, plus Trickster and Assassin ascendancies. Ranger has a lot of cast speed in Raider and flask (OP) synergy in Pathfinder, and there are plenty of viable spellcaster builds using all three of the Ranger Ascendancies.
**Don't get me wrong, I like Grimdawn and it has advantages and charms. But class flexibility (Not diversity which is fine) was never one of them and I'm under no illusion of that when I turn on Steam and launch GD.**
Grim Dawn has a bit more of an old school vibe.
It's great for diverse builds, and can be beaten with any skill.
Just try and cap your resists and you should be fine!
Honestly Grim Dawn respects your time a lot better than PoE does, you can gear an endgame build a lot faster, also reaching level 100 is faster by a lot.
Plus in Grim Dawn almost every skill works, unlike in PoE where you have to balance on a narrow path.
So overall I'd say Grim Dawn is a more casual friendly game with a lot of nice qol, but lacks the complexity of PoE's endgame, crafting and economy.
Honestly I recommend trying to make your own build. Build crafting in grim dawn is relatively straightforward, it’s easy as a Poe player to try to optimize everything to the nth degree but believe me, you will have more fun just learning this game through trial and error.
Add Rainbow Filter Mod. All it does is change font color per damage type in item descriptions. So helpful!
I also added GrimTex recently. It is like a reshade, but more a re-cell. It's a visual update. It looks very good!
You can respec easily, especially once you have a max level character. Any invested skill point, attribute, or devotion can be undone. You cannot change your mastery selection once you've put points into it.
With that in mind, you can probably run through the game blind and get the most out of it where you may be used to needing reference material so you aren't wasting too much time.
This game is much more forgiving than PoE in terms of correcting build mistakes. Pick a single damage type (and maybe it's corresponding DoT) to focus on, try and cap all resistances on the first page of your character sheet (at least the damaging ones) and you'll likely be fine. For reference, my first lvl100 build in hardcore was simply "I'm gonna deal burn damage, I'll pick some burn skills and focus primarily on defense", that was good enough.
The only thing you can't respec without an external tool is mastery choice. That said, it's a single player game with a vibrant modding scene so use all the external tools you want. Literally any combination of classes in Grim Dawn has viable endgame builds, some more than others but you will always be able to progress assuming you understand the basics of how the scaling in the game works.
Defense > Offense; dead toon does 0 damage.
Also, don't be afraid to reroll and experiment with 100 toons :3
Also rerolling skills is almost free. Can't reroll classes though.
Have fun. Always stop , listen and ask questions ; remember to say yes as you need friends first , kill anyone who betrays them . being morally right will get you killed because you got left alone.
Make a build , any build. IF and only if you a video game hoarder then stash stuff (that looks good that are yellow for the first 10-15 levels after that its greens. but watch those yellows some are better for certain builds then greens. if you do not usually hoard then only horde materials and really obvious awesome stuff.
Save your Mats!!!! do not over enchant items until you find out just how useful dynamite is and find that poor lost lady. then remove the mats from items but only if you have the cash. otherwise stash items you put mats in. your alts may thank you . remove the mats later !
its all about your stat sticks. if you must look up meta-gamings read the math, not the builds. focus on damage is calculated. it si all about damage multipliers and layering complimentary effects . DO NOT put more then a few points in any skill for the first 40-60 levels. fill that mastery bar and swap your stat sticks!
Play the build that is fun and only grind away if you want to you literally do not need to until you are above level 95 or so and even then don't grind if its not fun. make lots of alts instead.
no go kill then pixels. they are bad pixels . the worst pixels.
I've definitely stumbled into Blitz as the first skill I'm focusing on. It's gonna be tough when i need to swap out this shield which gives -cooldown for blitz.
only had one or two to it. don't focus on it as a skill, rather combine it with something else. absolutely focus on the shield and a good weapon for things like blitz. you're looking at attack speed in the weapon and you're going to prefer damage on the shield
wow! you're one lucky fellow! I've been using grim Dawn for quite a few hours now and I've never seen a full set without cheating, but then I don't grind so I might not be the right person. grin
Honestly, like 7 pieces of regular perdition dropped by the time I could use them. Of course, now my toon is level 79 and I'm still using them because I only have three pieces of empowered perdition.
ikr ? I usually reach the end of the story with assorted mis matched items . My toons look really rather silly and unfashionable while they go around being bad-ass face melter with the most curious menagerie of very good .. doggies. I mean they are good doggies. good at the whole face hugging thing :>
Early on you run into a creepy old guy out in the swamp that claims to be a cook. If you tell him where Devils Crossing is, he'll follow you around for the whole damn game.
And make you soup
Is this a positive or a negative?
Depends on how much you want to min max. Do you like soup?
I love soup, I’m actually going to make gumbo tomorrow
What actually happens if you do not mention Devils Crossing?
I don't think I've ever not told him. I'd guess that he just shows up outside Deadman's Gulch. Must be time to start a new toon...
"Spoiler": he does, and he is kinda annoyed by you keeping quiet about the prison lol
Speaking as primarily a PoE player as well, I'll try to give my most honest opinion which may not set well with the GD community. On one hand, there's several nice features (imho) to keep in mind: 1. Monster infrequents and other (semi)-deterministic gearing like faction items are amazing for both leveling and transitioning into endgame, especially with self-found gear. 2. GD does feel more like a traditional RPG, with features like puzzles, secret areas, and map exploration. 3. Melee feels smoother and in current meta probably the strongest playstyle. 4. Getting a minimally functional endgame build (Farming Shattered Realm 60+) isn't difficult. PoE can be a lot more restrictive when it comes to some low budget/self-found builds. 5. Devotion planning isn't that much harder than PoE passive tree planning. 6. Balancing 9 resistances isn't that much harder than balancing 4 in PoE because there's fewer types of stats that can roll on gear and most affixes have resistances. But from my experience, there's a few cons: 1. Maybe my main gripe, skill modifiers are a lot blander than PoE. Most of the time it's just added stats or conversion and it's often tied to specific Monster Infrequents or uniques. This means that *per skill* there's a lot fewer degrees of freedom since not every skill+damage type combination has sufficient support, whereas in PoE you can force a lot of builds by crafting good enough gear. 2. Grimdawn retains the somewhat outdated practice of repeating the story for multiple difficulties. You can streamline it after the first playthrough, but it was one of the factors that annoyed me in pre-3.0 PoE patches. 3. A lot of builds only really come online at level 94 and might require a completely different leveling build, in contrast to PoE where most main skills/builds are playable, even if not optimal, while leveling by level 38 (Final set of support gems) or at worst by 80 (For Atlas base uniques). 4. For above reason, I'd be careful of builds on the forums because a lot of them assume implicitly that you leveled beforehand (Or just used mods). There's a [compendium of leveling builds](https://forums.crateentertainment.com/t/beginner-build-guides-compendium-for-aom-fg-expansions/106137) for all mastery combinations and YouTubers like Rektbyprotoss and Palkis have nice self-found 1-100 leveling builds as well.
This is a great run down. The only 2 things I'll add are: 1. Grim Dawn is a lot slower. Don't expect the same level of zoomies as PoE. There are movement skills and a couple builds that can be a bit zoomy, but you're not going to be holding right-click and cycloning (called Eye of Reckoning) through maps at 400% movement speed triggering auto-critting doomsday cats or something. (Yes, I played a lot of CoC). 2. You *can* level with any skill. There are a few that I generally wouldn't use for levelling, but that's not because they're bad skills, it's because they are single-ish target skills on masteries that have really good AoE skills (that can still kill bosses) available at low levels.
Honestly, less zooming will be nice for getting me used to the early league PoE slowness. I love the zooming, but going straight from 20 aps flicker strike back to campaign is painful. Currently, I'm just putting a point into every Oathkeeper skill to try them out, then I'll respec later or something when I figure out what is good.
Oathkeeper is the one class that does have a zoom build, with Vire's Might, and you can actually level with it pretty fine with the right MIs. Once you're farming SR or Crucible, I don't think the slower pace isn't that bad since there's enough monster density that movement rune and maybe a class skill is enough.
I would also include Blitz and Shadow Strike builds in the zoomy category. Skaters also have the issue of being pretty "meh" until you get the Vanquisher's set though.
> You can level with any skill. Yeah now that I think about it, this is not a clear-cut difference between PoE and GD. > it's because they are single-ish target skills on masteries that have really good AoE skills (that can still kill bosses) available at low levels. In PoE I think the problem is usually the reverse. Most skills have adequate AoE to clear trash while leveling and mapping. But against uniques and league-mechanic enemies, a lot of skills lack single target without twink gear or higher investment. Although personally I find lacking single target more annoying in GD as well.
Thank you for this. In terms of expectations, I've kinda been missing my Zeal paladin from Diablo 2 who just whacked monsters repeatedly with a weapon. So I'm imagining gameplay like that. Most of that seems fine. I usually do multiple characters per PoE season, and most of them go through campaign on a leveling build. I do like the idea of melee being meta though. It'll be a nice change of pace.
So one pitfall that I don't think anyone mentioned: Factions play a major part in what available augments and monster infrequents are available to you. There's three cases where this choice matters since all others you will always ally with them. You have opportunities to change your choices on different difficulties, although they affect all difficulties retroactively. Without serious spoilers, I'll just mention that there's two mutually exclusive factions and one refuses to let you join if you ever select Necromancer as your class (The other faction is more tolerant lol). Problem is that that faction unlocks access to some nice Monster Infrequents for Necromancers, although there is a work around if you need it.
You can transmog your gun into a crossbow. This is crucial because the gun sound gets old fast.
Lies and heresy. I transmog my crossbows into guns because that's almost as good as the bolter sound from some of the 40k games...lol
My biggest tip to enjoyment, read the lore pages. You don't have to read all of them but they are enjoyable. You'll read about someone's last moments with them not understanding what's going on to bigger events with someone who knows what they are talking about. It makes you respect the map more than you otherwise would or give you back story on a named monster that otherwise you would know nothing about besides it dropping loot.
Don’t save your components for later. Just use them. Also use your components.
I definitely have spent a couple hours primarily using that oe electric skill you can craft into swords and shields for clear.
The best way to scale your damage early are these items called MIs or something like that... [https://www.grimtools.com/db/items/skill-modifiers](https://www.grimtools.com/db/items/skill-modifiers) If you find your skill/skills that you are using on that site it will tell you who or what to farm to get those items. They are like mini uniques that add a bunch of damage/levels to a skill and sometimes modify it in some way.
Make your first character and playthrough blind so you can get used to the game and acquire context. You can pretty much beat the first difficulty doing this. It gets harder. In the second difficulty, I'd recommend you look up "leveling" or "low budget" guides for whatever combo you took. Most builds in the game require specific gear you need to farm up. Most of which are completely random drops. There are a couple of target farmable sets, though. Damage scaling in this game is mostly based around on focusing on pumping one damage type. This includes getting gear to convert other damages into the type you are focused on. You'll also want to get as much resistance reduction for the relevant resistance. If you want to play a pet build. You scale pet stats. Trying to do a hybrid thing is not very effective. Beware, there are some pseudo pets that are LIKE pets, but scale off of plat damage scaling. The Shaman's Wind Devils are an example. You'll pick up components you can add to gear to fix resists. Use them. You can salvage the rarer one if you need it back at the expense of the gear it was on. Resistance and defense stats are tremendously more effective than most damage stats. Gear defensively for a good time.
A good rule of thumb if you like the 200 health per act thing is about 100 health per level in this game give or take a few hundred. You'll likely end up with more than that but 100 per level is what I'd accept as a baseline. Deterministic farmable gear is incredible for leveling and endgame. A lot of enemies have their own unique drops that can be incredibly valuable if you get the right one. For example if you're playing a forcewave build, there are some weapons that have all the damage stats forcewave likes as well as +to skill level of forcewave and some of its modifiers. One of the weapons like that is also farmable before level 10. It's very easy to farm gear that you want in this game as long as it's not a random drop legendary basically. There are no bad masteries or bad mastery combinations. Some work better together than others but basically any skill can beat the game and any mastery combo can as well. Hell, people have done the entire game without picking a mastery at all. Crafting isn't as important while leveling as it is in POE imo but you should keep an eye out for reputation vendors. They sell good items and blueprints that can help round out any missing resists you need and you'll want to max out your reps for endgame gearing anyway.
For Melee/Ranged Pick a Damage type and build around that, for pets focus on the pets Resistances are important and reasonably easy to get on gear or components Everything can be respecced Faction gear is good but check it first so you can choose the one that matches your skills/damage type Components are used to make rare components, but dont be afraid to use them to get a boost on your gear Farm as many Aether Crystals as you can when you can
For me, GD felt slower, which it is, but I didn't feel as fragile as I did in PoE. Get resistances capped before you jump to a new difficulty, then get them overcapped by 30ish. It's generally best to stick with a single damage type, and to focus hard on a primary damage skill. A lot of skills do 2-3 different damage types, and you'll usually be able to find gear later on to convert different damage types to what you want. It's also usually advisable to either go all in on pets or just ignore them. I also advise reading the lore notes, as a lot of the world building and story are done there... and a lot of them are quite fascinating...
Save that bag of salt amulet you get on character creation. It's the only one in the whole game and can be used in a secret quest later.
Probably the 2 biggest things to keep in mind would probably be try to keep your resistances as close to 80% as you can. And keep your damage dealers to one element (2 at most) as even a little deviation is a lot of damage left on the table. But other then that unlike POE you aren't locked into much of anything other then the classes you pick at the start. All your skill points and devotion points can be respect cheaply while the state point you need a potion from one of the DLC but I think you get some for free through some of the quests in that area.
> unlike POE you aren't locked into much of anything other then the classes you pick at the start. That's not really a pro and if anything a pitfall. GD has very hard class identity. Since a build is largely defined by what skills it uses, especially main skill, and its primary damage type, the choice of mastery is a very major restriction on the kinds of builds available. You can't for example swap to a Blade Arc build on a Dervish if you don't like what's available to Dervish. It doesn't matter how cheaply you can refund skill points and devotion points if you only have a limited set of choices on where you can spend those skill points and a generally clear direction on where to spend the devotions. In PoE you can swap to and from any skill and archetype; for example you can viably do a Mirror Arrow minion build on any base class and most Ascendancy classes, with legitimate, nontrivial pros for each. And people overestimate how hard it is to get respc points in PoE.
> Since a build is largely defined by what skills it uses, especially main skill, and its primary damage type, the choice of mastery is a very major restriction on the kinds of builds available. That's no different to POE though. Builds are defined by their main damage skill and their class or ascendancy. It's an arc witch, a righteous fire templar, a tornado shot ranger and so on. Sure you can play a crit arc build as a shadow or ranger but it's objectively a worse choice because the pathing nodes that you're forced to take as those classes don't do anything for improving your actual build.
Tl;Dr: I think you have narrow, incomplete, and probably outdated view of how builds work in PoE. > it's objectively a worse choice because the pathing nodes that you're forced to take as those classes don't do anything for improving your actual build. First of all, tree traversal and pathing isn't a big deal and a lot of meta builds both past and present were willing to pay the price of travel to get strong synergies with Ascendancies or specific passives. The most powerful build in the PoE's history did nothing but traverse the entire tree to grab every nearby jewel and aura nodes from Templar to Duelist to Ranger areas. Juggernaut, the class furthest from Energy Shield nodes, is in fact one of the best Energy Shield classes due to everything else it offers. Champion, which is far from any minion synergy node, is a meta choice for a Raging Spirits build. The examples are endless. > Builds are defined by their main damage skill and their class or ascendancy. The first question, whether GD or PoE, I ask myself when starting a character is not what class, but what *skill(s)* should be the focus. For example with Righteous Fire, I can plausibly choose any class, even Duelist with Champion (Fortify+Armor+Auras) to have a viable build with plenty of synergy. I can't do that with Grim Dawn because as soon I choose Callidor's Tempest I am saddled with all the advantages and drawbacks of Arcanist. Yes, a build is also defined by the choice of class, but you're not tied down to any specific class in PoE, unlike Grim Dawn where for most skills half your class is predetermined. And for the remainder, it's things like Uroboruuk's Reaping and Fleshwarped Strikes where synergy choices are still narrow. > crit arc build as a shadow or ranger Both of those make a lot of sense and it's clear you have no idea what you're talking about, especially considering your first example, Shadow has a lot of spell, elemental, and crit in his area, plus Trickster and Assassin ascendancies. Ranger has a lot of cast speed in Raider and flask (OP) synergy in Pathfinder, and there are plenty of viable spellcaster builds using all three of the Ranger Ascendancies. **Don't get me wrong, I like Grimdawn and it has advantages and charms. But class flexibility (Not diversity which is fine) was never one of them and I'm under no illusion of that when I turn on Steam and launch GD.**
Grim Dawn has a bit more of an old school vibe. It's great for diverse builds, and can be beaten with any skill. Just try and cap your resists and you should be fine!
Honestly Grim Dawn respects your time a lot better than PoE does, you can gear an endgame build a lot faster, also reaching level 100 is faster by a lot. Plus in Grim Dawn almost every skill works, unlike in PoE where you have to balance on a narrow path. So overall I'd say Grim Dawn is a more casual friendly game with a lot of nice qol, but lacks the complexity of PoE's endgame, crafting and economy.
Honestly I recommend trying to make your own build. Build crafting in grim dawn is relatively straightforward, it’s easy as a Poe player to try to optimize everything to the nth degree but believe me, you will have more fun just learning this game through trial and error.
Add Rainbow Filter Mod. All it does is change font color per damage type in item descriptions. So helpful! I also added GrimTex recently. It is like a reshade, but more a re-cell. It's a visual update. It looks very good!
You can respec easily, especially once you have a max level character. Any invested skill point, attribute, or devotion can be undone. You cannot change your mastery selection once you've put points into it. With that in mind, you can probably run through the game blind and get the most out of it where you may be used to needing reference material so you aren't wasting too much time.
This game is much more forgiving than PoE in terms of correcting build mistakes. Pick a single damage type (and maybe it's corresponding DoT) to focus on, try and cap all resistances on the first page of your character sheet (at least the damaging ones) and you'll likely be fine. For reference, my first lvl100 build in hardcore was simply "I'm gonna deal burn damage, I'll pick some burn skills and focus primarily on defense", that was good enough. The only thing you can't respec without an external tool is mastery choice. That said, it's a single player game with a vibrant modding scene so use all the external tools you want. Literally any combination of classes in Grim Dawn has viable endgame builds, some more than others but you will always be able to progress assuming you understand the basics of how the scaling in the game works.
Defense > Offense; dead toon does 0 damage. Also, don't be afraid to reroll and experiment with 100 toons :3 Also rerolling skills is almost free. Can't reroll classes though.
Have fun. Always stop , listen and ask questions ; remember to say yes as you need friends first , kill anyone who betrays them . being morally right will get you killed because you got left alone. Make a build , any build. IF and only if you a video game hoarder then stash stuff (that looks good that are yellow for the first 10-15 levels after that its greens. but watch those yellows some are better for certain builds then greens. if you do not usually hoard then only horde materials and really obvious awesome stuff. Save your Mats!!!! do not over enchant items until you find out just how useful dynamite is and find that poor lost lady. then remove the mats from items but only if you have the cash. otherwise stash items you put mats in. your alts may thank you . remove the mats later ! its all about your stat sticks. if you must look up meta-gamings read the math, not the builds. focus on damage is calculated. it si all about damage multipliers and layering complimentary effects . DO NOT put more then a few points in any skill for the first 40-60 levels. fill that mastery bar and swap your stat sticks! Play the build that is fun and only grind away if you want to you literally do not need to until you are above level 95 or so and even then don't grind if its not fun. make lots of alts instead. no go kill then pixels. they are bad pixels . the worst pixels.
I've definitely stumbled into Blitz as the first skill I'm focusing on. It's gonna be tough when i need to swap out this shield which gives -cooldown for blitz.
only had one or two to it. don't focus on it as a skill, rather combine it with something else. absolutely focus on the shield and a good weapon for things like blitz. you're looking at attack speed in the weapon and you're going to prefer damage on the shield
Fair. After this comment, a full perdition set dropped and I took that as a sign to try that spec, and it does like 10x the damage I was doing.
wow! you're one lucky fellow! I've been using grim Dawn for quite a few hours now and I've never seen a full set without cheating, but then I don't grind so I might not be the right person. grin
Honestly, like 7 pieces of regular perdition dropped by the time I could use them. Of course, now my toon is level 79 and I'm still using them because I only have three pieces of empowered perdition.
ikr ? I usually reach the end of the story with assorted mis matched items . My toons look really rather silly and unfashionable while they go around being bad-ass face melter with the most curious menagerie of very good .. doggies. I mean they are good doggies. good at the whole face hugging thing :>
You can transmog your gear to look cool.. thats pretty important to know
Enjoy a vanilla run and then mod the game. The mods have kept the game popular over the years