Rising awareness about Path of Building unintended negative consequences.

People bring up Grim Dawn but even GD has GrimTools and mods that show you DPS and damage taken as an overlay... as if people don't optimize the hell out of their characters in that game

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ArtCrusade wrote:

People bring up Grim Dawn but even GD has GrimTools and mods that show you DPS and damage taken as an overlay... as if people don't optimize the hell out of their characters in that game

People will do that in any arpg game.

But personally, I never had to use any of these in GD.

Sure, my first characters failed. But after studying the game's stats and classes for a while, I can make literally any off meta build and clear all content with it.

That's because the GD devs limited their dmg multipliers and released updates based on "Which item could I create or skill could I buff to make X, Y, and Z playstyle viable or more viable?"

Any decent GD player can make any build and clear everything(except for infinite dungeon ofc) without having ever touched the "benchmark" tools.

Same just cannot be said about PoE.

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trixxar wrote:

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Gordyne wrote:

This issue will only be alleaviated by making the player rely more on his gameplay than on raw stats.

I agree with most of what you said.

However, I think it can only be achieved with pretty hard caps on dps and tankiness. Otherwise, abusing the mechanics will always beat skill when it comes to 50,000 players.

I think PoE would be a better game if players did have to react to the game more, which would require capping dps at maybe.. 5 million dps, and tankiness at taking.. at least 15% of the base damage of any hit, or something like that.

Something like that. Ofc you can have some items that break those caps for someone that wants to make a unique build that has more atk speed than others, for instance... but those should be those kind of builds that are built around the item and not mandatory etc etc

I think that when you allow for too much of an "extreme" in these kinds of games the balance starts to break in a snowball effect.

Whenever you allow players to have insane atk/cast speed
or insane life leech
or insane life regen
or insane dmg
or insane tankyness

Doesn't mean you CAN'T have builds that have one of the above caracteristics, but those builds should be like "unarmed" builds that are cool and viable but have their flaws and aren't top tier meta.

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AllMasterKing wrote:

If you really understand the game. You can make come up with a build within seconds. Therefore I can not agree that PoB save you anytime. Actually the opposite. Everyone who used PoB knows it. It takes multiple hours and attempts to make a build. You wasting your time instead of playing the game and learning actual mechanics. Most of you don't have 2 years of experience playing the game without PoB. Surely you don't even understand what fundamental mechanics I am talking about. The game explain to you everything you need in a indirect way. All you need to do is to pay attention and connect the dots.

I mean, this is just wrong but also right in a very tiny way. You can understand the game sure and make a build around a gem like Flicker Strike. It's fairly easy to use this to beat the campaign. But you're never going to be able to min max or even stretch your legs. It's not about failing to know mechanics, but about not being an encyclopedia of POE. Memorizing every unique for instance and how they interact with the tree is almost impossible. Then adding multiple unique and their interactions is outright never going to happen. Not to mention how gem interactions work, aura and etc. POB lets you do that, by being able to search, sort and add to your build in ways you'd not be able to, even in game.

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BaumisMagicalWorld wrote:

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Gordyne wrote:

That's because the GD devs limited their dmg multipliers and released updates based on "Which item could I create or skill could I buff to make X, Y, and Z playstyle viable or more viable?"

Grim Dawn devs killed their own game because they thought/think they "know better" than their actual playerbase. They get to dictate how much fun you are allowed to have. After they removed all the cool stuff, i.e. automating Devotion skills, among many others, their player numbers stagnated and never recovered, despite the addition of multiple DLCs. Around 3k players on average, down from 61k all-time peak. And when the DLCs released, they got roughly 3x that. That's honestly pathetic, given that the game has over 100k Steam reviews.

I've had the displeasure of dealing with the devs on the forums years ago, and from what I could tell, they are completely power tripping to this day. The entire community around that game is much like the PoE subreddit, except the concentrated version of it. I literally had their top (official) forum moderator stalk me over my negative Steam review for >2 years because it had traction, pointing out a ton of flaws they publicly disagreed with. That tells you everything you need to know.

What's your point? I'm not comparing the game's success?

You sound like those posts that "POE is definitely dead this time. Look at player retention!!!" that come out every few months.

I've always seen the exact opposite, with players being surprised and excited about how much new stuff and possibilities each new patch provided.

Ofc an indie game will have less players at dlc launch than at Base game launch. Especially when competing with D4 and PoE that were already established.

But then again most of what you said is meaningless to me because I know what I experienced in this game, and that is that it has much more build viability and doesn't restrict you like PoE does. If you prefer crazy exponential theorycrafting then PoE is the better game for that.

But if don't want to depend on 3rd party tools then GD is objectively superior.

If you prefer PoE... great for you. But PoE makes you play the way it wants much more. Try making a Physical 1h+shield or 2h melee warrior that also casts cold spells like a battlemage in PoE. So a character that attacks with phys and casts with cold damage. Untwinked without using PoB and beat everything in PoE except Delve.

You can't. Unless you have a master's degree and been playing for 10 years obsessively

I can do it in GD without any external tools, without insane time farming for something and beat the hardest campaign + any Nemesis boss. And reach a good level on Shaterred Realm too.

In PoE you'll get the old: "Focus on attacks or spells man...", or "why stop to cast somethign if I can just attack with more effectiveness instead". Apart from that, the class that was supposed to solve that is so clunky that players try to bypass the "Fanaticism" by using gimmicky playstyle.

PoE has it's strenghts, but ACTUAL build diversity/experimentation and balance isn't one of them in endgame. It's been getting better, sure. Hope PoE2 fixes a lot but so far my experience has been better with other games, not just GD.

And as for the stalking part, that's between you and them(if true). Doesn't have anything to do with the state of balance of both games.

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BaumisMagicalWorld wrote:

One's a dead game, the other isn't. One game has competent devs that understand game balance, the other has devs thinking of themselves as the sacred leaders of a cult following.

Grim Dawn released in 2016 and peaked in 2019 with their second major expansion "Forgotten Gods". PoE was an indie game. Grim Dawn isn't a bad game, it's a good game influenced by too many bad decisions.


This is literally impossible because of how the class and itemization systems work. I have 700 hours in Grim Dawn, most of which were spent in 2016 and 2019, so I don't need you to tell me what build diversity is in that game. I have killed most of the Uber bosses and had a dozen lvl 100 characters before I quit for good.

To say that it has more viable builds than PoE is utterly ridiculous when viewed in context, in particular because Grim Dawn devs refuse to build in hard and soft caps on enemy stats, so EVERY build has to invest into MINIMUM X amount of OA and DA. Every single build needs some kind of RR to counteract the massive enemy resists. There's not a single enemy in PoE that naturally has over 100% resists, in Grim Dawn there are hordes of them, and there are no hard caps on enemy resists. That's why RR is the name of the game and, to my knowledge, this hasn't changed at all.

So, apparently you are the one who has no clue. GrimTools has been a staple for years. It's the PoB equivalent and is used in basically every build guide. Edit: Actually, it's arguably better because it's essentially the PoE Wiki, PoEDB and PoB combined in one.

You wanna know why that "works" in Grim Dawn? Because the entire game is balanced around dual damage types with a dual class system. I spent many hours discussing the game with devs. Again, I don't need you to tell me how the game works.

And, on the flipside, no one really does that because it's almost always better to go all-in on RR and debuffs and focus on a single damage type, simply because of adaptive enemy resists and how RR works. (RR as a catch-all term, not just Resistance Reduction.)



This is a snippet of my achievements. Last character I played was Vitality damage based. I never touched HC, so those achievements I don't have, but I racked up 4 deaths total on that lvl 100 character, even after fighting Uber Uber bosses for the first time.

Idk buddy, dead game? With a next major expansion going to be released? Like PoE was proclaimed *dead* several times?
As I said I like both games, but let's be completely honest here. I don't know how the GD devs operate. You might be telling the truth or not, but GGG devs aren't saints either, you know that. It's PR things of the business world, I get it, but I won't praise one over the other because, guess what? Every company/devs have flaws.

Companies, as much as they love games, don't usually waste money on dead products. If they are making it and it is selling/earning profits, then it's not dead.
Also, it's basically a single player game without economy. Even if there was only me(1 player), playing, it would be alive to me and have the same qualities.


My bad, I forgot explain correctly: I meant more build viablility based on % of content present. GD has less skills than PoE, but all of them are viable.
There's also the absence of the "noob trap" that PoE has in abundance that also helps to feel like more things are viable.

I never bumped into a skill/class/archetype in GD and say: "Meh noob trap, reroll.". This will only happen if you have severe lack of understanding of the game stats.(which aren't that complicated). You might end up with a weaker build than meta... but 2x weaker not 8x weaker like PoE

PoE on the contrary has many noob traps and things that seem viable but are really inferior to others.

Yeah you have to invest in OA DA, Resists, some RR like any other arpg ever. But I can do that in PoE that has much more requirements for a build and still end up being terrible because the game is unbalanced.

That's the difference, in GD you meet these minimum stats and then you can pick almost any skill and class and it will work like it's supposed to. There's no GOTCHA!! :) like PoE where they present something as viable but it's actually 8x worse than others.

And it can be done easily WITHOUT tools or guides which I NEVER used for GD. I don't like guides and I only use POB because it's a requirement.

So, sorry man but I don't get your point about the battlemage working in GD and multiple damage types. You complain because in GD you invest into minimum reasonable stats, get one or 2 key items and suddenly your idea of build/character is viable and not a noob trap?
How is that bad? Do you want some arbitrary walls that you have to overcome by abusing certain things in order to feel more powerful than others?

Yeah the game has dual class systems. Just like PoE says you can create anything by not restricting your path on the tree. The difference is that in GD they steered it in a way that actually lets you build what you are going for.
In PoE they let you go into many directions but only some of them works and others are 10x stronger via gimmicks. Aka illusion of choice.

GD stat requirements are less severe and items serve to give you new skills and procs to make your build more unique and exciting... But you seem to prefer more unrestricted stat bloating. At least that's what I understood, it's been a long day. Can't really disagree, that's your preference after all.

So you seem to dislike GD because it doesn't generate fake difficulty and demands less theory crafting to make a character that plays like you are brainstorming...(and doesn't require GrimTools) That's ok. It's your right to prefer that and I support you 100% that.
But that's just your preference.

Elemental builds also have to invest into -Resists and ELE pen here in PoE, did you know that? What a terrible concept, right???

I thought it was weird at first(multiple damage types) but they added items to make it better.

And also you'd be surprised at how my Gun + offhand Spirit based build works well JUST because the skills have multiple damage types, so those 800% increased damage from spirit actually buffs all the different skills and procs that I use.
I use Acid/Chaos/Vit and Elemental skill all togheter and it is all buffed by 800% so In fact it's something like 1600% inc. damage. Devotions and equips are mostly defensive + MoE and Blood of dreeg to keep myself alive.
And with evade things become even better.

I only died once and I'm using Grimmarillion with 2xdensity + 2x hero mobs and it's one of the strongest builds that I made so far.

And that's on a build that has only 10 points in Phys, rest in Spirit as people DO NOT recommend. So the possibility for experimentation is bigger than I thought.

And without using 3rd party calc tools

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AllMasterKing wrote:

Anyone with the ability to count to the number 20 can make a perfect build in game.

But you decide not to? Or why are you stuck at 10 challenges?
Don't tell me I have only 8. I'm not the one claiming to be able to make a perfect build.

Games can be as complicated and complex as they want to be, that's not a problem.

However, there has to be accurate feedback for player input.

In many instances, PoE does not provide you with enough information to know what's going on.

Take floating damage numbers for instance, they simply do not exist in PoE. If it were a low-budget pixel game, sure no need for numbers but I think it is one of the most important feedback mechanisms that has to be there for a modern RPG. For people who don't like it? Add an option to turn these off.

Even for people who plan their builds on PoB, there is simply no way of knowing how certain interactions will go live in-game. Unfortunately, testing these things in-game is very tedious and time-consuming.

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BaumisMagicalWorld wrote:

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Gordyne wrote:

My bad, I forgot explain correctly: I meant more build viablility based on % of content present. GD has less skills than PoE, but all of them are viable.
There's also the absence of the "noob trap" that PoE has in abundance that also helps to feel like more things are viable.

Firstly, no, you got that backwards. There are far fewer skills that are "viable" in Grim Dawn. Try a pure Bleed build and you will hit a wall as quickly as Act 2, because the entire Act is filled with Undead that are immune to Bleed damage. This type of thing does not happen in PoE.

And Grim Dawn has more noob traps than PoE, too. The in-game guide is still not properly updated and missing a TON of info. The tutorial is basically non-existent. PoE doesn't even let you go past the barrier if you don't equip a weapon to kill the zombie. So many things in GD that scale differently than you'd expect. Do you know how RR works derivately? Do you know that there are Player Pets and Pets? Do you know that Devotion skills procced by Pets scale with Pet Damage (unintuitive because Devotion is tied to you)? Nothing in-game tells you that or even hints at it, and good luck ever figuring that out on your own. The way skills interact in the game is vastly different to PoE. GD is a bigger noob trap than PoE ever was. On the surface, GD is easier because it has a baby mode. It also has enemy level scaling, so every enemy will always be a few levels above you at all times, up to the cap.

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Gordyne wrote:

I never bumped into a skill/class/archetype in GD and say: "Meh noob trap, reroll.". This will only happen if you have severe lack of understanding of the game stats.(which aren't that complicated).

Massively incorrect. See statement above. And that is also the definition of a noob trap. And, ironically, GD's game mechanics are actually more complicated than PoE's, lol. There were several documented cases where the devs didn't even know how something worked and players had to correct them, only for them to then change the interaction to "work as intended". And I'm not talking about a bug fix, but a mechanical misunderstanding. Don't quote me on which specific ones, it's been years.

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Gordyne wrote:

Yeah you have to invest in OA DA, Resists, some RR like any other arpg ever. But I can do that in PoE that has much more requirements for a build and still end up being terrible because the game is unbalanced.

Seriously, how far did you even get into the game? You talk like someone who beat the game on Normal and is now a self-proclaimed expert. Do you even understand why OA/DA is so important? Unlike PoE, your Offensive Ability is weighted against the enemy's Defensive Ability, which affects literally EVERYTHING in the game. You cannot skimp on this part of your build because there are a ton of debuffs that affect your stats directly.

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Gordyne wrote:

That's the difference, in GD you meet these minimum stats and then you can pick almost any skill and class and it will work like it's supposed to.

This is completely false. Go open up GrimTools and check the amount of debuffs that exist in the game and also what they do. GD is far more unforgiving in the grand scheme of things than anything in PoE. It's also littered with on-death effects, so that type of cancer is not exclusive to PoE.

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Gordyne wrote:

GD stat requirements are less severe and items serve to give you new skills and procs to make your build more unique and exciting...

Yeah, ok. You beat the game on Normal, maybe even Veteran. There's no way you made it to the highest difficulty. Ultimate lowers your resists by 50%, if I recall correctly. On top of that, there are so many debuffs, you will EASILY have your resists lowered by 100%. GD is so goddamn stat heavy you literally have SINGLE BUILDS for SINGLE CONTENT, i.e. Callagadra farming builds that literally forego all extra resists because they need so much extra resistance to counteract her Rage mode and extreme debuffs.

While I do agree with you regarding the poorly detailed ingame help and the fact that GD has plenty of noob traps, I don't feel it requires GrimTools to play it. I've like 150h only and still pushed to 100 in Ultimate difficulty (Ashes of Malmouth + Forgotten Gods), finishing the campaign and a large number of dungeons, all without using GrimTools or any other 3rd party, if any. I played with a friend of mine, who is TERRIBLE at arpgs and gets crushed everytime he tries PoE, and we also cleared the whole campaign up to Ultimate and level 100.

Of course there are hard content that we failed to defeat (iirc we quit after being crushed by mogrodgen's avatar, or whatever their name, and didn't come back after that), but you do go much farther in the game than in PoE. It took me one league and a half plus PoB to defeat Sirus back in the days. These are just two different universes.

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BaumisMagicalWorld wrote:

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PoitelMarto wrote:

While I do agree with you regarding the poorly detailed ingame help and the fact that GD has plenty of noob traps, I don't feel it requires GrimTools to play it.

PoE doesn't need PoB to play, either. Both GrimTools and PoB are character optimization tools. However, GrimTools has the massive advantage that it has a complete monster library with enemy stats, skills, buffs and debuffs. If you've hit a wall at a specific boss, pop open GrimTools and check their stat page. However, in PoE it's usually a skill issue; in GD it's usually a stat issue.

Any Undead enemy and, for example, your Bleed does nothing because the enemy has like 140% resists, and your RR won't be enough in this case. That's why such builds usually also have a Physical hit portion, because you'd otherwise hit a dead end by Act 2. The game is plagued by so many bad design decisions; it's honestly a sad sight because it could be so much better with a few tweaks.

I also once tried a challenge run without a weapon, to see how far I would get. Didn't go so well because in GD almost everything scales off weapon damage. So much for "not as stat heavy". I don't remember how far I got, but I do remember killing the Warden at least. However, the game in general is a slog until you hit around level 35 (without twinking). I can see why many people would quit before that.

The answer is to just play Internal Trauma because it does everything bleed does but better, has better legendaries to support them and is easier to gear for... only reason I don't is because I cba running Forcewave again lol.

There's a really good video by Josh Strife Hayes on an adjacent topic: guides. I'd relate this to build guides as it plays into the optimization of games and meta gaming: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dASHWXBBXDg