Well, I finished the game, on Veteran Difficulty, at level 46. I know many ARPG players say the game doesn't really begin until you hit the higher difficulty tiers and start the serious gear grinding. I appreciate that approach, but I get bored with my character to easily to go that route. In a week or two I'll probably crank Grim Dawn back up and give it a play through with a different class. For now, here's how Balthus ended the game.
My gearing and basic stat priorities didn't change any from my last post. Still primarily focused on defense. One thing I did start looking for was weapons with attack speed bonuses. I found those significantly boosted my DPS. Still I put a higher premium on improved defensive ability.
I started giving my weapons the "Severed Claw" upgrade at about level 30. It grants an attack skill called Brutal Slam, which I found gave me good burst DPS against enemy heroes. I slotted it as my right mouse button (RMB) ability and kept Savagery slotted on the left as my default attack.
The above link leads to the Grim Calc for Balthus's skill set at the end game. From where we were last time, I continued putting points into the Shaman Mastery until I hit Tenacity of the Boar, which I then maxed out. At that time I also picked up Upheaval, which grants a small AOE that ads bleed damage and stacks well with bleed damage buffs. From there I pushed Shaman all the way up to Storm Touched and maxed that out as well. I then filled out the remainder of the Shaman Mastery before dumping points into Stormcaller's Pact.
As for my Devotion points, I finished off The Tortoise constellation, unlocking the Turtle Shell skill. This ended up proving to be a life saver on many occasions, giving me critical seconds to heal or to finish off some of the tougher fights. After that I filled in The Lizard constellation, which provides significant boosts to health regeneration. The next constellation I went after was Ulo the Keeper of Waters. This constellation provides a lot of elemental resistance bonuses, as well as a passive skill that has a chance to remove buffs from enemies. Finally, I filled out The Solemn Watcher, which provides resistance to physical damage and increases defensive ability.
Throughout the game I continued to kill most mobs in one hit. There were points, when I was near to maxing out one of the skills, when my progress would slow due to my stats being low. I think that in the future I'll try to find more balance between boosting skills and boosting the mastery bar. That said, I didn't much struggle with the final boss, Loghorrean. I was able to maintain respectable damage to him while only occasionally popping potions to improve my health regen.
As I said, I know many people don't consider the game to have even started until they hit higher tier difficulties. If I were to continue past here on this character, I would probably finish off Stormcaller's Pact, then put one point each into the Mogdrogan's Pact skill line before returning to the Occultist Mastery to pick up Second Rite. I'll be keeping Balthus on ice for the time being, but maybe I'll pursue that someday and give another update on how it worked out.
I think that for my next character I'm either going to go for a rifleman build or for a glass cannon caster, I'm not sure. What I am sure about is that I'm going to give Grim Dawn a rest for a time. As far as my overall impression of the game is concerned, give me a few days to mull it over and organize my thoughts. I'll be back with a Grim Dawn Final Review by the end of the week.
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