Playing again reminds me of what I don’t like about D3. I know its not a problem with an established character, but with a new character every level is unlocking too much stuff. I feel like every level I need to decide between 4-5 skills/runes which aren’t necessarily better than the lower level runes I have already unlocked. I prefer using a skill tree, where even if I am not picking the best skills, I have a plan.
Hence why I use that leveling guide/google spreadsheet I posted earlier. Someone made a plan for me!
Fair enough, but I think there’s decent variety. Doing bounties takes you all over the map/game for bite-sized sessions so you need not get tired of any one area. The rifts are pretty fun (esp with the diff enemy mixes you get), have good rewards, and again don’t take long to do once you start getting powered up a bit. There are lots of short and long term goals at hand.
On a different note, I got a Ramaladni’s Gift earlier (adds socket to a weapon). Anybody have a good guide/resource for rerolling weapons/Ramaladni’s/ancients etc?
That defeats the purpose for me. I suck at Grim Dawn, but I could build a character and have fun with it without looking at any guides. That’s not to say I can’t do the same with D3, but I feel overwhelmed with it. In GD I level up and put points into the skills I already decided on. In D3 I level up and I need to look at each skill/rune and decide what it is best. Then I have to look at my hotkeys constantly trying to relearn what I just changed.
I know this is a minimal problem, but it does take away some of the fun for me as a casual player.
I fully understand. I always play in fear of ‘screwing something up’ so enjoy D3 on occasion because I simply can’t - if something doesn’t work, just change it! (Granted, I rarely play end-game, so I’m not affected by having to change gear).
You’re right, that is a plus for the game, you can’t screw it up. Just right now, at level 20 something, I feel lost every time I level up.
Typically I play seasons until I get the stash reward via the journey and/or until I can solo near GR70. About that point I tend to peter out and it pretty much becomes an unenjoyable (for me) gear optimization and paragon grind.
But getting a fresh 70 to up to TX is still plenty fun and there are enough interconnected systems and gameplay content to keep it interesting. Ultimately is it all about collecting gear, but the progression to TX is all about optimising the content and systems to maximise your power progression. If it takes you hours upon hours upon hours, I would humbly suggest you are doing it wrong (as I admittedly did for many years). Half the journey is understanding how to game the system to get the items (Legs and Sets) you require.
Get the cube, run bounties to cube a few legs to get you started, run low rifts and GR’s to start building your leg gem collection. Optimise gear at the Mystic, spend shards for gear, craft at the blacksmith or cube to get gear. All these things empower you. 3 items in the cube will elevate you a couple of torment levels, 3 leg gems will do the same. Same each time you hit a new set bonus.
Are you using these systems effectively? Are you running at too high difficulty, thereby taking too long to kill and curbing your effective drop rates? Are you using an effectively useless L63 legendary weapon instead of crafting a far superior yellow L70? Are you prioritising sockets on jewelry above all other stats for the power amplification legendary gems provide? Does all your gear that can have crit, have crit? Are you running bounties solo (for the love of all that is holy, at least run bounties in public groups - you are taking 4x as long as necessary otherwise and pubs will pretty happily share drops with you if you let them know you need something).
If you are mindful of all that you will progress to TX and complete most of a season journey in a few weeks of casual play and it will be pretty enjoyable in the process.
Of course, if you just don’t like smashing shit over and over and over, it will be tiresome regardless. And that’s what happens to me when I play GR’s that are too high. I don’t really like banging on a GR guardian for 3 minutes to kill it, so I get bored at that stage. That’s how I played for many years - playing at levels too hard, taking minutes to kill a blue pack, wondering how the fuck anyone progress into high torment levels. So, if you are running T5 and it takes you a minute to kill a yellow pack, drop it down a couple of levels and go back to pulverising them in seconds. Your effective drop rate and power progression will thank you to boot!
Yes. :(
You are not alone.
As it were.
Heh.
Man, I find Grim Dawn to be about 100000000 times more involved than D3, looking at the tons of different resistances, and the constant loot upgrades with 756 different things to take into account, along with all the loot that has to be combined/enchanted. I actually stopped playing GD because it felt like a job. Everyone comes at things differently, but citing GD as more casual friendly just seems mind boggling to me lol.
I have D3+RoS for both PC and PS4. Thinking of coming back for the anniversary event (still going on? for how long?). Better to do on the PC or the PS4? I have a 70 on the PC but only lowbies on the PS4. Still, kinda interested in playing PS4 due to couch + UI – how does it compare to the PC version? Hopefully can level up fairly quickly.
Bravo. :)
Anniversary even runs until the end of Jan, so get in quick! I don’t think console or PC will matter much as I think it is best to do the Anniversary content on a fresh toon, otherwise it is trivial. It won’t take more than 2-3 hours anyway.
Awesome, will do on PS4 then with a fresh toon. Thanks for the heads up on the end, I would’ve totally missed it.
Most people who tried both prefer the PS4 because using the controller is more fun than the mouse. Gives a more immediate connected feeling of control, and combined with the dodge it’s sweet - as I’m sure you know.
But I can’t go past the higher res, anti-aliasing, and higher frame rates on PC. :)
I’d love to see controller on PC, maybe they’ll do that one day since they are bringing seasons to console starting s10.
Is everyone in the QT3 clan? You’re all more then welcome to join me whenever I am on, but there never seems to be any QT3 folk online at the hours I play currently. Other side of the world and all…
But really, solo bounties at some point become a tremendous waste of time. Once you are running bounties solely for the mats, which you need for cube recipes (particularly when you get to the point of trying to re-roll pieces for ancients), you just need to get them done quickly and a group effort splitting drastically reduces the time. I can tell you from experience that, unlike something like Overwatch or League of Legends, grouping in D3 is almost totally painless. Folk won’t talk to you all that much unless it is to perhaps communicate a special gob, or vault portal, they will happily drop shit they don’t need if you ask or tell them you need an item and you almost certainly won’t get abused unless you`re obviously only there to be carried for free mats or you collect bounties out of order, costing them bonus caches. Other than that, people just join your game, do their shit, complete all the bounties with you then go their separate ways.
You’ll go from clearing all bounties in 60 minutes to 15.
Yeah, there is usually one or two clan members on whenever I’m playing. I’m on the same side of the world as you but only ever see you idling in Battlenet, never really in-game. :)
I might try a new experience and open up to the public during bounties, and see how I go!
At this point in the game’s life, there’s really no need to look at guides. I mean, you can if you’re into that, but I’d just use whatever skills and runes you like while levelling. I tend to just put them where they make the prettiest lights. On Normal/Hard it’s very hard to die and most your dps on the way to 70 will come from your gear.
All of that is non-operative if you’re playing Hardcore, of course. You’ll need a few defensive cooldowns for HC.
You’re not gonna need to start any serious skill min/maxing until you hit 70 and start moving up the difficulty tree.
Well, they’re different games, you see, so they couldn’t possibly bring controller support, offline singleplayer, or any of the other benefits the console version offers to the PC version, even though they’re adding pretty much everything that they insisted defined the PC version to console. Or at least, that’s the response they’ve given so far, and I doubt that’s changed.
You are completely right…but this is why I greatly prefer GD to D3.
I know…I should just play that if I like it better…