KickStarter Grim Dawn

How's the multiplayer in this? As in can i hack'n'slash shit with some codexers? I am tempted to get something that requires the intellect of a fish to play and which i can play with someone, is this worth it?

Also is there a viable soldier/nightblade build?

 

Well sad thing is, if you play with some random guys there always is a possibility for savegame hackers, because whole character data is stored on the client computer. Otherwise If you have some trusted guys to play with it can be pretty fun

 

If anyone has Shoulderguards of Justice or Handguards of Justice and is willing to trade / give them away, let me know. I have some Legendaries to trade away for them.

 

Is a pet build with the demolitionist not viable? I haven't played much but it seems to have a lot of pet skills. Or are they more like totems, where they don't get pet buffs but are based on your spell power instead?

 

There aren't any pet skills in the demo tree. And, no, the only viable choice for a pure pet character is Occultist + Shaman.

 

The demo's mortar firing ability is technically counted as a pet, but they don't really have anything else that works well with other summoning skills, sadly.

 

Ah, I thought some of the mines were also considered to be pets. Shame.

 

You can always take Flame Touched and Temper from the Demo tree, that will buff the Hellhound quite a bit as well as the other Hound pet from the Savagery Relic, since it does Lightning damage. It will take quite a lot of investment in points to manage this, however. You'll be level 51 by the time you max out the Hellhound and the buff from Demo, without touching anything else yet.

 

It's not. It used to be but it was stupid (Thermite Mine too), so they changed it to scale with your stats. I'd know because I'm currently playing a build with it in it :p

 

Lady speaks the truth.

 

Is it fun/effective? It caught my eye but mortar is fairly far down the tree and I already sunk a lot of hours into trying other builds, currently taking a break because going through the early quest/tutorial shit is tedious.

 

Eeeehhh. This is my current build -> http://grimcalc.com/build/GchH8U
The mortar is the only straightforward AoE, though the storm totems are the most reliable. This build obliterates trash mobs, but it's not so good against bosses, mainly because of the Thermite Mines' shit range-of-damage. It's very similar to the trap assassin from D2 and I'd say it's fun. The worst thing about the mortar is the slow launching of bombs, when I envisioned this build I thought it was similar to a mounted submachine gun/flamethrower and I was disappointed ;d. I also would've liked the Demo to have some wind-up bombs on legs to enable some build that focuses entirely on explosions and stationary contraptions (like the Thermite Mines and a mounted submachine gun/flamethrower), doing fire dmg. Now it's more like a shaman with toys.

 

Ulzins Chosen + Cannister Bomb + Granado is a good way to wipe everything in a few seconds. But the survivability in such a build is pretty low.

 

Who needs survi when you make everything blow up before they can touch you. Slap something cool on the Canister Bombs like Aether Bombs and each one of those fragments has a chance to proc another mini AoE that stuns. But in all seriousness, you should take Arcanist for Maiven's Sphere if you wanna go spellcaster Demo. In fact most of the builds that run Ultimate effectively have Arcanist if only for Maiven's Sphere, regardless of build. That spell is godly.

 

I have made almost all of my builds with the mindset of the gamebuild when maxlevel was 20 and I killed warden over and over and over. Now with Levelcap 85 I must rethink many things, sometimes I wonder where to put in the skillpoints in my builds because I'm too afraid to put too much mastery points into my secondary classes because you can't respec mastery points.

 

Well you can have a shield with that build and take soldier skills for more survivability.

 

Good grief. I finally got my Soldier tree done with my Battlemage and started investing points into IEE only to find out that the more I put in it the more DPS I lost. Apparently you aren't supposed to have +Physical% modifiers for this shit to work. I'm less mad about that than I am about the points I already managed to waste on Spirit.



At least I have this to keep me calm. That's right, niggas. I have a complete set of Legendary armor.

Edit: Unfortunately the proc was less glorious than I had anticipated. All it does is cast the fire ring around you, the same one that the Fire Revenants use. O-okay then

 

RTFM.

 

Most of the animations are rather lame. Not surprised that the proc looks like every other fire buff. They should really look into that in the future (patches, expansion etc.). While it is a shallow fulfilment, looking cool in a hack and slash is part of the charm.

 

That is one of the main problems of the game. I tried to give that exact feedback on their forums and got swarmed by fanboys.

 

Fooled around with some more stuff. Is it just me or is bloody pox just a terrible, awful fucking skill? Devouring swarm is accessed earlier, does way more damage, has more range, and no cooldown. Not to mention massively debuffs two resistances and steals a large portion of life back, each tick. Le fuck?

Also tried fooling around with wind devils. Is it just me or do they not stack with eachother? Kind of makes focusing on them rather lackluster as well. The whole shaman tree seems to be a weird mishmash of stuff that doesn't synergize too well, but rather works best in conjunction with other classes.

 

I read it but only after it was too late. At least the lessons that you learn the hard way tend to stick with you the longest.

Which is strange because they put in a lot of effort into the item models. Some of them are pretty neat, but you'd never know that unless you zoomed really close and looked at them hard. With the way combat looks you'll never know what your character looks like after level 20 because its just heaps of effects thrown on each other. Most of the effects are just functional, and that's the nicest thing I can say about them.

Every single time, man. I've given up having discussion there about the game because 90% of the posters there are cucks with stockholm syndrome for any kind of design Crate comes up with, even if it's bad. I mean you'd have people vehemently defending non stackable components for the longest of time simply because "that's the way Crate intended them as".

Bloody Pox gets ok once you have like 6~ points invested in it. The only real use for it is if you go Occultist + Shaman and take Devouring Swam AND Bloody Pox and go for a Bleed / Vitality build. Otherwise Bloody Pox becomes a shit and useless spell in Elite. You're right that Shaman doesn't synergize too well with itself exactly because it is intended as a seconadry mastery to fill out some niche void. However there are some things you can do. The Briarthorn pet is beneficial if you go melee or cold / lightning damage with Wind Devils and Totems. He's a tanky guy and can take a hit even without pet gear, plus he has an AoE stun and can buff you and him with Total Damage% and more OA.

 

Shaman and Occultist, like previously mentioned, are in the awkward position of trying to do everything at once to cater to the other masteries. It's a pretty befuddling design decision tbh, but Crate have been making questionable decisions for a while now (good thing they removed the random bonuses on components though). It's still a good game and I personally find it better than any other modern offering of this genre (Diablo 3 ( ), PoE, the cartoon one (forgot the name) etc). It just needs a little more thought put into the masteries.

 

Grim Dawn is easily my favorite ARPG since Diablo 2.

 

Well I went with the conjurer after all, always liked the necro in D2. Is it always strictly one minion per spell, or do those constellations / some uber gear provide you with more? I kinda miss having the huge skelly army, even if a single hellhound is already completely br00tal by itself.

And the devotions, is it a Big Deal if you miss some of those shrines, they seem to be off the beaten path and I might've missed a cave or two already.

Still too early to tell for me, but it seems much improved from TQ which I liked a lot already. The general flow of it all just seems better which is a big deal for an ARPG. And of course it helps that your character doesn't run around looking like he shit his pants, like the Titan Quest duder.