Grim Dawn

I just don't like this game. I want to like it, but I don't. The skills all feel shitty and only a handful of them actually scale well enough to be effective. Also, how hard is it to do random generation? Just build set pieces and shuffle them or something. I hate that the world is the EXACT SAME every playthrough.

No need to lie on the internet, m8. There are some semi-randomly scattered obstacles forcing your path forward to meander across various labyrinthine ruins, caves, mountains and forests, whose exact locations change from game to game. And some standing stone circles with the altar at the center can appear here and there in some games, but not in others.

My Reaper wears this amulet for this kind of occasions. Find something similar that suits your character.

Got some better stuff after hitting 50, these two especially for the purpose of tanking up. I had forgotten about the hidden path but finished that up.
Some mobs still make me fucking explode despite general gear improvements. Couldn't survive more than 2 ticks of this cunts aoe barrage spell so it was pretty much a gamble on how long I could stay stationary and burst before I had to run, if I was shooting when the animation started the boss wasn't at the edge of the screen, I'd die.

I've been working on a necro, it's a lot of fun so far. just me and a small party of 12 plus a wraith that's temp summon.

I like the sound of that, what's your build?

What a bizarre complaint. It really doesn't matter either way.

It's a Necromancer/Nightblade. As for the details, it's nothing special, as even at the lvl 77 I'm still using green weapons. It's a dual wield without any pets and with the focus on vitality and cold damage because of the debuffs to their resistances on sustained class skills I have. Most often used active skills besides the Shadow Strike are Bone Harvest and Amarasta Blade Burst because of the temporary buffs they trigger. The biggest downside is lack of dedicated default attack skill under the left mouse button. Notice that I'm basically playing the game on EZ mode with the mod NecroticMight which overpowers Necro builds very much - for example I have about 50% life steal on the attack of my character. Link below:
nexusmods.com/grimdawn/mods/47

Most of staying alive relies on good DA to keep enemies from even hitting you but at minimum landing crits 2-2.5k are minimum endgame to not get crapped on in Ultimate.

Then you have to overcap your resists because enemies, especially supports like the void harbringers, skeleton priests, Nemesis bosses and most magic casters can shred your resists well below, though at least capping them is priority #1.

Second is knowing and avoiding things like shotgun attacks from things like Mad Queen's Aura and some mages like Zantarin and the corrupted witch right after the Coven camp. Except for S&B Witchblades / Warders / Other tanks taking one of those in the face will 1hko you if you're not paying attention / have good circuit breaker skills.

Don't forget fumble/dodge, which stack with all the things you mentioned and add a strong, if unreliable, layer of defense. OP has flashbang, which means 30% less damage coming his way.

r8 my flame boi

Is this game more like Diablo 1 or Diablo 2? I've been holding off on it because it looked like 2 and 2 is crap.

It's made by the Titan Quest dev's, so that's a better comparison. This is way better though, couldn't get into TQ properly.
Give it a pirate if you're into these kinds of games but aren't sure you'll like it.

Didn't try Titan Quest either.
I only like Diablo 1 though.

Unlike Diablo 1, it's all over the map, literally. Lots of overland walking and fighting. Most dungeons are more or less small, the biggest ones have only 3 floors to them. You can have more only if you jump into Ch'tonian portals, but there is only a little variety of their scenery.

What's the grind like?

I agree with this user. I have seen this game hyped for a long time so I gave it finally some time after the expansion came and played 1.0.4.1.

What a huge fucking letdown

Why the fuck is this game so bad? Why is it filled with so much shit? Jesus fuck all this hours I have spent thinking that it will get better for nothing, all I was thinking was "I should have been playing Torchlight 2 or Diablo 2 instead". Fuck even PoE was starting to sound more atractive the more I played this awful game.

The best shit this game has to offer is the Crucible in multiplayer cause at least you can fucking skip the atrocious level design.

Torchlight 2 blows, man. I dumped 100 hours into that game with all sorts of class mods and everything just got bland and boring after a dozen hours for every character.

Because at least in fucking torchlight shit works as it should and the literal thousand of mods at easy disposal can make you come back to the game many fucking times.
I didn't like the style of Torchlight at the beginning but after seeing how many grimdark games not being fucking able to properly do what Diablo and PoE shame PoE is a fucking MMO in disguise do I am damn glad Torchlight looks this colourful.

Anyone have a magnet link for base game + expansion?

But Torchlight 2 has shit spawn distance for enemies and shitty camera controls (at least it had, when I last played it). At least in Grim Dawn firearms' projectiles don't stop working at the distance of two character heights from them. Playing Torchlight 2 feels claustrophobic for some reason for me and I like better the roughly realistic proportions of GD characters to cartoony style of T2.

Looks like you didn't even get past the first difficulty

It feels claustrophobic because it is. Playing a ranged character is dogshit sometimes because in some areas you basically don't see enemies until they are hitting you in the face. Even better, some bosses can shoot homing projectiles from the other side of the planet that can hit you for some reason, even when they are way off screen. The camera is just shit in that game. I still like it, but GD is way better in terms of character options and overall gameplay. The TL visual style is nice though.

You know that there are mods for what you're whinning about, right? Several in fact

I'll get there eventually. I may dislike the game heavily due to the entire big pile of shit I have said previously, that however wont totally stop me from doing at least a full run.
Yes, sometimes I think that I hate myself from doing this. I felt like playing an RPG but the only ones that I have not finished that I want to play are unplayable on my PC Disgaea series after 2 and Dragons Crown so GD is the only thing left

Mods to make the game more tolerable but if the game is intolerable without them that's very shitty way to view it.

t. someone who's went through the T2 campagin multiple times.

My main issue with GD is the fucking resistances and the whole meta around them. Without proper resistances there's all manner of shit that will gib you in less than a second on higher difficulties so you have to make sure various pieces of gear have the correct stats and that you have skill tree selections and star signs that fill in your various gaps left by the gear.

I value a game with the mods available to it, this is why I think TL2 is the best ARPG out there. Obviously, without mods it would just be on par with Diablo 2 with less classes.

Torchlight 2 mod scene is huge with a fuckload to choose from. You can get from fixes to the vanilla to new campaigns/areas and even new classes with quite a lot of stuff to do, no other ARPG has such a big modding scene except for Diablo 2 but the game is quite outdated (I still have it installed though) so it suffers from a lot of shit.

The resistances have been quite the most important shit in classic ARPG since forever, but GD seem to have EVEN MORE of them. I have felt what you meant in the crucible, quite the nightmare indeed.

I know about the mod scene for TL2, I use quite a few of them. Bag expansion, passive tiers, and a few extra custom classes. I like that I have those options but without me taking the time to use those options the game would feel like shit for me.

Whats more is playing with other people can be a trick dick situation because not everyone will use the same mods as me.

I understand it making some shit hit harder and keeping you on your toes when you go up against something that is stronger against your resistances but in many cases GD doesn't fuck around. It's not just a slight increase in damage done to you. Go up against the wrong thing and you will fucking get burnt down fast.

Because of this a lot of my strategies utlize kiting with various amounts of peek and poke to whittle them down. Feels cheap but whatever works ya know?

Titan Quest had alternate player skins introduced with a fan mod. I guess the same would be for Grim Dawn too.