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Grimdawn, I think the first 20 levels are best done with skills socketed into weapon, shield or caster offhands. Add GDautocaster and you can put points into a long regen attack skill and while it regens fire the socketed skill(s).

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On 12/7/2022 at 9:16 PM, Timotheus said:

I feel TQ and Grim Dawn are on a different level. Not PoE, thank god, but still a lot more complicated. I started with Shaman and was getting on pretty well against normal mobs but struggling with tanky bosses, until I found a guide that basically told me to delete the main skill I was invested in and stick all my points in another - which quite literally increased my damage output by 50-80%. Without that guide I would have never figured out based on the descriptions that I should make that new skill my main attack, and would render my old skill fairly useless in the process.

I haven't really felt that way. Titan Quest at least does very little to overwhelm the player and you can respec skills easily in both games.

GD is a lot more complicated in many aspects. The case you describe is a particularity of GD specifically. There are some skills that are only good with proper gear support and some are god tier at quick leveling while being mediocre late. TQ is my #1 ARPG. Love it to death. While most prefer GD, it has 4 major flaws for me:

1) Too much power has been shifted to gear. My optimal ratio of skill/gear power is about 50/50 or 40/60. But it's like 15/85 in GD. You can't do pretty much anything without good gear in Grim Dawn while in Titan Quest, the skill tree alone can get you very far.

2) The skills have too high caps and there are not enough skillpoints. Leading to most builds being mostly about spamming one or 2 buttons and then having "devotion proccer" skills and gear that supports those 2 buttons. In Titan Quest, I can eventually max several skills leading to a much higher variety in gameplay. I have multiple "main" skills on most of my TQ builds. In GD, it ultimately boils down to about 2 and then taking every passive that boosts those 2 skills in some way with a single point in devotion proccers/utility skills.

3) Aggressive lategame scaling. Getting less skillpoints the higher the level you are actually makes grinding out the last couple levels very counterproductive. You are making yourself noticeably weaker by going from level 94 to 100. You get basically nothing and enemies still scale out the wazoo. That is the one thing that should never happen in an ARPG - make the player feel bad for leveling up.

4) Game revolves pretty much exclusively around resistance shredding. If your build doesn't lower enemy resistance to your main element by at least 50%, it will not be effective. Making many builds feel very samey.

 

I still like GD a lot, but it's probably about #4 for me, after Titan Quest, Diablo 2 and Sacred 2.

Edited by idbeholdME
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On 12/7/2022 at 11:36 PM, gogoblender said:

I love guides Timo! Diablo’s seasons concept I guess is built around that … that you hunt through all the guides and look at the YouTube videos .. and when you find one yiu like .. boom count clock starts and yiu have till end is season to get it successful and collect goodies .. is there any hosted online for grim?

🏄‍♂️

gogo

Not that I know of, no. And I find having to resort to guides a little disappointing, to me that mainly indicates that the skill system is either imbalanced in some way or poorly explained.

On 12/8/2022 at 11:11 AM, chattius said:

Grimdawn, I think the first 20 levels are best done with skills socketed into weapon, shield or caster offhands. Add GDautocaster and you can put points into a long regen attack skill and while it regens fire the socketed skill(s).

To be honest, I was doing quite fine without any skills at all and just dumping points in my mastery. Granted I was playing on the lowest difficulty.

19 hours ago, idbeholdME said:

I haven't really felt that way. Titan Quest at least does very little to overwhelm the player and you can respec skills easily in both games.

GD is a lot more complicated in many aspects. The case you describe is a particularity of GD specifically. There are some skills that are only good with proper gear support and some are god tier at quick leveling while being mediocre late. TQ is my #1 ARPG. Love it to death. While most prefer GD, it has 4 major flaws for me:

1) Too much power has been shifted to gear. My optimal ratio of skill/gear power is about 50/50 or 40/60. But it's like 15/85 in GD. You can't do pretty much anything without good gear in Grim Dawn while in Titan Quest, the skill tree alone can get you very far.

2) The skills have too high caps and there are not enough skillpoints. Leading to most builds being mostly about spamming one or 2 buttons and then having "devotion proccer" skills and gear that supports those 2 buttons. In Titan Quest, I can eventually max several skills leading to a much higher variety in gameplay. I have multiple "main" skills on most of my TQ builds. In GD, it ultimately boils down to about 2 and then taking every passive that boosts those 2 skills in some way with a single point in devotion proccers/utility skills.

3) Aggressive lategame scaling. Getting less skillpoints the higher the level you are actually makes grinding out the last couple levels very counterproductive. You are making yourself noticeably weaker by going from level 94 to 100. You get basically nothing and enemies still scale out the wazoo. That is the one thing that should never happen in an ARPG - make the player feel bad for leveling up.

4) Game revolves pretty much exclusively around resistance shredding. If your build doesn't lower enemy resistance to your main element by at least 50%, it will not be effective. Making many builds feel very samey.

 

I still like GD a lot, but it's probably about #4 for me, after Titan Quest, Diablo 2 and Sacred 2.

To me Titan Quest became repetitive too quickly. I felt Grim Dawn changed scenery and opponents in a more fitting way. Also I'll never forget getting stuck on a stupid lich on my first playthrough of Titan Quest which absolutely destroyed my enthusiasm.

1. Completely agree. I found a crossbow at around level 20 and I was still using it at level 40+ because the stats were too good to give up. Regular DPS seemed abismal, but the damage output of my skills dropped severely whenever I tried switching it out.

2. Yup.

3. Not there yet, and never did more than a playthrough of TQ either so can't really comment on it :)

4. True.

All in all I think I agree on your points, however I feel that Grim Dawn seems to have a better pace that suits my preferred playstyle and that was one of the things which I liked less about TQ.

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On 12/12/2022 at 10:28 AM, Timotheus said:

3. Not there yet, and never did more than a playthrough of TQ either so can't really comment on it :)

All in all I think I agree on your points, however I feel that Grim Dawn seems to have a better pace that suits my preferred playstyle and that was one of the things which I liked less about TQ.

TQ has static enemy levels, dependent on area/difficulty. So no scaling per se. You know exactly what you are dealing with in a given area, allowing you to just grind a couple levels in the worst case acenario. It provides a much better feeling of increasing power. In GD, every level up will be scaling the enemies as well, drastically so in the 95+ level territory.

GD is definitely more fluent in combat and faster paced, which is why I think most people prefer it. TQ also requires pretty high level for your character to truly shine. Once you start regularly using multiple active skills in combat from both masteries, it is a joy to play, but that only happens in the 50+ level territory. In GD, the experience feels mostly the same from level 40-50 onward as far as skill trees go. Any further power gains are mostly from 100s of % damage bonuses on gear.

In TQ every additional skill point feels very relevant and I look forward to every level-up and those 3 juicy skill points. You can regularly be adding new skills to your repertoire in the late game. In GD, it feels fine until level 50 but past that, once you start getting less skill points per level at 50  and 90, it starts feeling a bit meh. Wow, I just hit level 92. That passive skill is now level 5/12 instead of 4/12 :/

Edited by idbeholdME
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