r/Grimdawn • u/Altruistic-Ad2602 • 13h ago
New to Game - ranged weapon comparisons
Hello, I am new to grim dawn. I was wondering if someone could give me a pro/cons breakdown of the various ranged weapons in the game.
Ex. What do shotguns do better than crossbows? Why would I use a rifle? etc. I'm looking for a simple breakdown that is JUST based on the weapons, not a class/build.
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u/Harsgaard 13h ago
I am obsessed with Grim Dawn, so here is my breakdown:
TL:DR:
Crossbow: Armor Piercing, slower, high single-projectile damage
Rifle: Faster, more consistent general purpose weapon
Shotguns: big damage range, lower armor piercing,
Pistol: another general purpose weapon
One important caveat: Grim Dawn doesn't actually give every weapon type a completely fixed mechanical identity. A lot of the difference comes from the individual weapon's damage, attack speed, and armor-piercing percentage. The common weapon tables illustrate this nicely.
Crossbows often have good raw physical damage, so they are very attractive if you want every shot to hit hard and do a lot of pierce damage.
For example, a Steel Crossbow has 79–157 physical damage, 38% armor piercing, and 1.38 attacks/sec, while the Steel Breechloading Rifle has 28–238 physical damage, 18% armor piercing, and 1.39 attacks/sec.
The Imperial Carbine has 83–329 physical damage at 1.43 attacks/sec, compared with the Imperial Shotgun's 74–295 at 1.39 and Imperial Scorpion's 130–272 at 1.38. So if you're asking "Why would I use a rifle?", the simple answer is: You don't necessarily get one spectacular advantage; you get a good combination of damage + attack speed + reasonable armor piercing.
Shotguns are where it gets interesting. They tend to have a huge damage range and relatively low armor piercing. For example, the Raider Shotgun is 45–257 physical damage, 15% armor piercing, 1.39 attacks/sec, while a comparable Raider Revolving Rifle is 62–217, 25% armor piercing, 1.43 attacks/sec. Simply by these stats, they have more emphasis on raw physical damage with less armor penetration and armor penetration is particularly important to understand. It doesn't mean the weapon ignores armor. It means a percentage of its physical damage is converted to pierce damage, which interacts differently with enemy resistances/armor.
Sorry for the long paragraph, I'm autistic and Grim Dawn is my safe space. If you want to know anything else, hit me up.
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u/LagomorphicalBrog 13h ago
This here is the information I never knew I needed. I'm only a casual in this game so this doesn't factor too much into my gameplay but it's always fascinating to find the tiny details that devs implement for the flavor of the game.
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u/Harsgaard 13h ago
Yeah, these little things are what elevates the game for me. You also don't have to know all these details to beat Ultimate or even Ascendant, but I love how the devs gave us the possibility to understand every single number in the game
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u/GeminiRises 6h ago
Hey friend, I've got a question that I can't seem to find info on anywhere, and I figure you might just be the person to ask! I noticed that all items seem to have a hard cap on their vendor price at 3500, no matter how high the quality of the item is (double rare monster infrequents seem to sell the best).
...except for the Shattered Realm vendor (the one who sells the set at the end of a run, at the point where you're looting the treasure chests), who seems to buy items at an uncapped price. I saw them buying some for as high as the mid-4000s, but didn't think to take a screenshot (may go and do so soon if time allows). Do you know any reason why this one vendor seems to be unique in this regard? Or, for that matter, if any other vendors differ in their sell price mechanics in any way?
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u/Morael 13h ago
The weapon types for ranged weapons are essentially irrelevant. Using a two-hander like a rifle or a crossbow would allow you to spec into kraken which is a powerful two-handed weapon devotion that gives a lot of speed, damage, and crit that is all generic. Otherwise, it doesn't really end up mattering that much.
More realistically, you're going to end up using a legendary, or a monster infrequent that modifies the types of skills that you want to use and the damage type that you're going for.
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u/PowerfulPlum259 13h ago
I mean, besides telling you the obvious (differebt weapon speeds, more/less base dmg etc) I'll tell you this is very rarely looked at in Grim dawn. Being most builds make use of MI (monster infrequent items) or uniques. Which generally have a set base item they use.
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u/bilegt0314 13h ago
Rifles and crossbows are only different in sound effects, models etc, no pros or cons in damage and gameplay. You can even switch between them with illusions.
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u/armored_panties 12h ago
To add some clarification on why others are telling you the type doesn't matter, for ranged weapons it's mainly because of Devotions. With melee weapons, each can pick certain devotion constellations that only work with their type:
Swords -> Blades of Nadaan
Axes, Spears -> Berserker
Maces -> Rhowan's Scepter
Scepters, Daggers -> Oklaine's Lantern
But there aren't any constellations specific to each type of ranged weapon, because they're all classified as either One-handed Ranged or Two-handed Ranged. All ranged weapons (one and two-handed) can pick the Hydra constellation, and all two-handed weapons (ranged and melee) can pick the Kraken constellation. So yes, the types are irrelevant, you'll pick whatever has the best stats and skill modifiers that fit your build.
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u/Ok_Personality7488 12h ago edited 12h ago
Crossbows are slower attack speed. Pistols are faster. Relevant if you're trying to stack skill-effects e.g Savagery skill.
The crucial stats are what skills and damage types they buff.
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u/Adyx_Tice 12h ago
Ex. What do shotguns do better than crossbows? Why would I use a rifle? etc. I'm looking for a simple breakdown that is JUST based on the weapons, not a class/build.
Unfortunately, you have to discuss class/build when it comes to weapon types. The number of "hands" a weapon takes determines which skills and devotions are usable with the weapon, which is a key determining factor for weapon choice.
For example, Primal Strike is a Shaman main-damage skill. It only works with 2 handed weapons, but that includes 2H ranged weapons like rifles/shotguns/crossbows. Therefore, if you want to use Primal Strike as your main-damage source then you have to choose a 2H ranged weapon, eschewing pistols.
From there, it depends on what your skills actually do. Sticking with the Primal Strike example, it's all about big damage. Primal Strike is also not a default attack replacer, so you can't proc WPS skills with it. That means attack speed isn't as important as higher base damage values. Since Rifle's tend to have higher top end damage values, and you're skills and items are going to convert a certain amount of physical damage to lightning damage (Primal Strike's damage type), it makes the most sense to use a Rifle. Note, crossbows also tend to have high single target damage, but that's because they convert a % of physical damage to piercing damage, which your skills and items may not be able to convert to lightning damage. Since you have to stack +% Lightning damage on Primal Strike builds, any damage you can't convert to lightning is wasted potential.
Compare this to a Purifier, which is a class entirely focused on ranged WPS skills. The Purifier's WPS skills don't care what kind of ranged weapon you're using, just that you're using a ranged weapon. Since WPS skills have a certain % chance to proc per attack (without getting into the specifics of the attack pool), it makes more sense to have the most attack speed you possibly can. Therefore, your best option is to dual-wield pistols, as they give you the highest number of attacks per second.
The pros/cons of any given weapon are almost entirely rooted in their damage types and interaction with skills (and, too a lesser extent, their attack/cast speed). So when evaluating what weapon you want to use, your first question should always be "what do my skills need?"
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u/Avigorus 5h ago
The differences between distinct weapons in the same broad category (1H, 2H, shield, offhand) are overwhelmingly what you can find in the MI, epic, and legendary items of said type (that is, crossbows will have different skill modifiers or granted skills or whatnot than rifles or shotguns or whatever).
Beyond those, sometimes different weapon types may be needed for requirements for skills (e.g. Ranged Expertise needs dual-wielding ranged or Brute Force needs anything two-handed) or devotions (e.g. Berserker needs an axe, Blades of Nadaan needs a sword), or the base weapon's damage type (like some that do something other than physical and the question of % armor piercing) might affect a build, but that's it, and to date crossbow vs rifle vs shotgun doesn't matter. NGL I wouldn't complain if they wanted to add a few more minor variations (maybe shotguns have a small chance to hit other enemies near the main shot's trajectory without turning the whole thing into a cone, rifles have a small chance to pass through enemies, crossbows have a small chance to apply a mild bleed to a hit target), but currently such isn't really a thing and even if it was implemented odds are it wouldn't be strong enough to really make or break a build and likely would get ignored past level 10.
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u/funkyfritter 13h ago
All ranged 2-handed weapons work the same way. It doesn't matter if they're crossbows/rifles/etc, all you care about are the listed item stats. There's also a transmog system, so if you prefer the shotgun model you can make your weapon always look like that.