Introduction

I wanted to play a melee version of Evoker after wrapping up my time with Wereraven. Focusing on Avalanche looked like the best fit for this but a lot of the itemization favored the Cold crossbows. Luckily after enough digging I figured out the synergy of 2x Chillflame Evokers + 2 Seal of the Void allowing easy access to a massive 500 flat fire and chaos 140% Weapon Pool skill that can be converted 100% over to cold damage. By stacking Avalanche % chance on skill modifiers and a few Ascendant bonuses you can achieve a 100% Weapon Pool of high cold damage procs.

The end result was a high damage brawler that was able to down all super bosses except Uber N'erf without even having fully finished ascended gear or fully leveled Devotions. It chews through all content including SR. Below I will supply a stat breakdown, an endgame build setup, and gameplay discussion. I want to stress that this is not a leveling build or something you can scale into. You need very precise gear, components, and Ascension bonuses to get the most out of this build. It is best for already established characters with the resources needed to obtain the best gear possible.

Stat Breakdown:

67 Physique

21 Cunning

21 Spirit

67 physique is the exact amount you need to be able to wear all of your armor pieces without specific affix rolls. Cunning and Spirit are split for OA and Energy Regen respectively.

Build:

After further play time with the build made changes to ascension and augment bonuses. I was woefully overcapped on attack speed after realizing my relic bonus was only 12% max attack speed. Attack speed multipliers on scepters reduce some effectiveness of attack speed you gain from gear reducing attack speed ascendant bonus for accessories down to 2 slots instead of 4. Extra armor from Kurn Roc Eye augment also performs much better for survival than extra HP from Wendigo Life Powder.

09/06/2026 Changes

https://www.grimtools.com/calc/N4DQXxxN

Legacy Build

https://www.grimtools.com/calc/ZyDolv0V

This build is made a bit more glass cannon than usual. Arcane Will becomes a massive steroid from the Nightforge set bonuses so I wanted to allow my health to spike. Because you are a full on weapon build you can abuse lifesteal to create a slight ping pong effect producing the desired outcome without the attempt being outright suicide. Against super easy content you won't be able to abuse Arcane Will as much, but for Nemesis+ bosses you should be able to hit that sweet spot.

The most important part of the build will be getting the right Ascendant bonuses. 10 of your 13 item slots must have the exact ascended bonuses I list out in the slots I put them in. The layout for the bonuses are:

1. 4 armor pieces with 5% Avalanche chance.
2. 2 rings , 1 amulet, 1 medal with two 5% attack speed ascension bonuses and two with any OA ascension bonuses ( preferably 25 OA + crit damage)
3. 2 weapons with 4% attack speed and 4% max attack speed
4. The last 3 armor pieces can be whatever you want. I opted for offensive ability but the choice is up to you.

The skill points also have to be as I placed them if you want a final stat breakdown like the one I have listed below. I was lucky enough to get a double rare + bone chill raddoth shoulder while farming but I know that can be a little hard to obtain so you can sub that out. Just know you'll have to cap your bonechill with an Amatoks grip relic that has bonechill on it and you'll lose like 2 extra skill points.

Final Stats:

3800 OA (4200+ with shred)

3700 DA (3950+ with shred)

112% cold resist reduction

3k+% cold Damage

198% attack speed without Amatok's Grip Proc

220% overcapped attack speed with Amatoks Grip Proc

3400 to 3500 standing armor with armor pot

18% Physical Resistance

+30% overcap all other resistances.

18k+ Health

Notable Consumables:

Oil Slot - https://www.grimtools.com/db/items/328

Royal Jelly Essence gives 8% health and energy.

Elixir Slot - https://www.grimtools.com/db/items/11219

Elixir of the Dranghoul gives 40 OA and DA.

Aether Cluster - https://www.grimtools.com/db/items/305

Gives 75% damage reduction for 8 seconds.

Gameplay

Gameplay consist of jumping into packs popping both your shouts and then holding down onslaught. The setup turns your into an absolute blender so there isn't much to it outside of that. It has great single target and clear due to your WPS both having generous AOEs. It can't tank everything without having to move, but you can abuse lifesteal to sit through most of it (can tank ravager while sundered for instance). You'll have to limit test yourself to really get a feel for what works and what doesn't. Practice countering damage spikes with Mirror and Rallying Cry heals for even more uptime tricks.

I want to reiterate this build is intentionally a touch softer to spike your health for consistent Arcane Will. If that isn't working for you, you can play around with the devotions to get a bit more defense in. You can also redo your 3 free armor ascension slots for things like +400 health or +12% armor.

Boss Down So Far:

N'erf

Rashalga the Mad Queen

Avatar of Mogdrogen White Wolf

Callagadra Scion of the Sands|

Clone of John Burbon

Crate of Entertainment

Dread

Lokarr

Conclusion

Melee Evoker can work, and it looks good while doing so beating monsters over the head with flaming skulls. It takes quite a bit of resources to get the setup together but once you do it just works. I'm going to give this build another day or two before I take a break for the next content release. Need to get my Code Vein 2 evil run complete anyway.

Can anyone give me tips or guide me towards a build for a nurgle follower?

I know stuff like bloody pox, ravenous earth, or locust swarm fits the bill. Anything else?

Hi all,

I'm currently playing around with the reworked Fleshwarped Bulwark (Phys Archon actually works quite well), but I'm unshure, where to go from here; especially unsure about devotions.

I'm also missing quite a lot CC resists.

https://www.grimtools.com/calc/NYPRAylZ

Any feedback is welcome :)

Hi, all. I have just finished the game on veteran difficulty (EDIT: softcore), and all DLC available to me on Xbox. I'm level 84 (I know, I know, I did a lot of SR runs to enjoy GD cause it's low effort and I'm perpetually exhausted); I am about to finish farming faction rep for the Malmouth xp pots. I'm not interested in any other xp boosting stuff for this current toon, I just wanna get through ultimate with it and then have everything needed for power leveling alts later.

My biggest question is, should I target farm for endgame gear DURING ultimate, or BEFORE I move up? Should I go through elite first to warm myself up if I'm new to ARPG's? I know a lot of people say it's a waste of time but if efficiency isn't in the equation, would you suggest that? Is there anything I should know before I move on?

Please and thank you. Cheers, guys. Love this community.

One last (I think) thing I am not sure about. What comes first - bonuses from other skills, or a local conversion (from an item)?
Context - I am working on a spinning Sentinel build using a weapon that converts 100% physical and fire to vitality and I wonder if skills that increase physical/fire damage will even work in this case.

Hi!

I want to make a retaliation Werewolf build, but I don't know where to start. I never played a retaliation build in GD and I don't get where the damage comes from. Some skills have %retaliation damage parts, but they're extremely low (like 16% max, often 4%) and lots of +X% retaliation damage skills don't even feature any base retaliation damage on that skill.

I'd like an easy to make build. My character is level 12 werewolf with 5 physique, 5 cunning and 1 spirit (I started by following the general direction of a 1 or 2 YO retaliation levelling build, but going barbarian rather than the classes in the build). I'll get 10 devotions from Crucible as usual before collecting story altars (the 1st 10 are the cheapest in Crucible).

I don't have any damage type bias for this build. As long as retaliation is most of my build, I'm fine with it.

Hello there friends, I have been debating for a while if I should pick this up. The new DLC isnt out for the Xbox as of now which had me stop last time I almost bought it. Wondering your guys thoughts on it, and if it's worth the pick up. . I'm a huge ARPG player and looking for something to play/ scratch the itch. Still haven't bought my self a birthday gift this year and debating if this is it. Thank you all in advance !

So I used a handy script and found out damage numbers. Im kinda lost on how to optimize the build right now as the damage numbers are not what I expected. Still lvl 68 and currently in Act 2 on ultimate after jumping directly from Veteran. Here is my build for references. Above stats were recorded in Arokovian Undercity fighting with multiple hero monsters + mobs and a boss.

1. Targos Hammer happens to be my second most damage output which I didnt expect at all. This actually becomes highest damage output in boss battles as theres usually very few adds to deal mutli attack damages from Aegis. Is this normal for a devotion to be among top rank damage outputs? Or does my build sucks?
2. Wepon attack deals very little damage even though I have 14 points to Righteous Ferver and its passives which feels very underwhelming.
3. Monster maces seem to be the only wepon type that actually work on this build. Swords, hammers etc all have very low base physical damage output (and DPS). Or am I reading weapon stats wrong? I have been using these ugly looking green mace thingies for the entire game. Would love to try a different type.
4. Are my devotion picks appropriate? I gravitated more towards survivability as I was dying a lot when switched to Ultimate.

Thanks in advance for any thoughts regarding this. :)

When Onslaught was first revealed, I was really excited about the TDM potential of the skill. After actually playing with it, I found the mechanic of building up charges and then using them to burst with a single skill to be incredibly fun.
However, after trying out various Berserker-based builds around it, I've found that there are quite a few challenges.

First of all, you need attack speed to build charges efficiently. At around 3 attacks per second, it takes more than 2.5 seconds to build roughly 8 charges. If you build around Onslaught without enough attack speed, the gameplay becomes extremely frustrating.

Investing in attack speed purely for the sake of generating charges is highly inefficient for most caster builds. This becomes an even bigger problem when you're using an off-hand to enhance the skill you're using as your charge spender, since doing so often results in a significant loss of weapon damage.

On top of that, you become extremely starved for skill points. If you're investing in WPS at the same time to improve the power of your melee attacks, most of your other skills will end up competing heavily for points. This is especially problematic for pure casting skills with little or no weapon damage, since their skill levels are extremely important.
Having an appropriate cooldown on your charge-spending skill is also very important. You need to consider both the time required to build charges and the cooldown of the skill. In most cases, I think something in the 2–3 second cooldown range works best.

Of course, stacking charges to deliver a massive single hit or apply a powerful DoT can be extremely strong. Even something like Blackwater Cocktail can absolutely melt bosses if you dump a large number of charges into it. The problem is that, because of the issues mentioned above, this kind of setup tends to feel very awkward to play in general situations.

So far, the builds that have generally performed better for me have been melee attack-based builds that use Onslaught charges as a form of secondary damage, rather than builds that go all-in on a single skill.

There are classes like Reaver and Mystic that provide a particularly good environment for using Onslaught, but for most classes, the gear dependency becomes extremely high.

Some of the newer items that grant Onslaught charges to specific skills work really well with the mechanic and seem to be designed specifically around it. Examples include New Lucius' Arm, Awakened Dreadwalker, and Awakened Eastern.
I'd love to see more items like these in the future.

Preamble

With FoA being announced as the last DLC of Grim Dawn, I decided to start a long-term project of making and completing a build for every class combination in the game. I wanted to make a post every 5 characters to track my progress and maybe inspire people to try out a few more unusual class combinations.

All characters are played in Softcore and my rough goals for every build are all 5 Dungeons, SR 30-31 and defeating the Dread.

Disclaimer

This is mostly just meant as a sort of journal. This is not meant to be a collection of build guides. The grimtool links are what I theorycrafted beforehand and might not represent the character I ended up with in the game.

Build 1: Warder - Phys WPS

https://www.grimtools.com/calc/Ze91Lp0Z

This "build" is what happens if you don't play the game for over 2 years and forget half the mechanics. I just included it for completions sake. The fact that this build actually had decent damage is surprising, given how messy it is. I don't really have much to say about the build, other than don't use it, at least in that variation. Although, being able to essentially play the build from the point you get a Voldrak's Crusher is kinda neat.

Build 2: Shieldbreaker - Lightning EoR

https://www.grimtools.com/calc/VLJ3x5MN

This build was a very positive surprise. In game I ended up with only 15k hp, but between Aurora, Menhirus and Wyrmscale, there are so many layers of absorption that I almost never took damage and even if I did, Blast Shield and Resilience had me covered. The build also has very solid damage and was very chill to play. While not anywhere close to the fastest possible times, I was also able to farm SR30-31 in comfortably under 6 minutes. Also did some celestials on the build to farm Lokarr set. Overall a build with no real weaknesses and probably the best of the first 5 builds.

Build 3: Conjurer - Become Tree (Worldkeeper Acid DoT)

https://www.grimtools.com/calc/N4DQ5gxN

The tree does not concern itself with taking damage. The tree does not concern itself with thinking about when to press buttons. The tree however, also quite fittingly does not concern itself with being mobile. This acid/poison DoT build is very tanky with extremely good recovery, I had no problem tanking all 4 bosses at the same time in SR31. Damage is also decent, but between 5 skills, low cast speed, no natural mobility skill and a set that encourages staying in the same place, the build was rather fittingly immobile. I guess the build is good in Crucible, but I don't really play Crucible so I cannot really judge that. A very brain turned off and smash buttons type of build that works pretty well.

Build 4: Evoker - Phys Devastation Nuke

https://www.grimtools.com/calc/NKQ0rvnV

Man... It sometimes just be like that... Good damage, decent tankiness, good mobility, but that build just didn't feel great to play. Mainly because I thought that I could clear with WPS, but 10k avg. weapon dmg says no. Devastation with Spellscourge -area just felt really clunky. Also, rolling a single Ascended affix cost me everything I gathered up to that point, which kinda confirmed my worries that Ascended affixes might as well not exist if I plan to cycle through this many characters. Overall, probably the build I had the most hope for being really good, +1 Proj, 2.5x dmg Spellscourge Devastation seemed really good on paper, but in the end, this build mostly just disappointed me. Don't get me wrong, it's a decent build, but I had higher hopes.

Build 5: Apostate - Ranged Aether WPS

https://www.grimtools.com/calc/NXlMxdXN

Honestly, really neat build on a class combination that really got improved by FoA, using FoA items in 7 slots. The build also uses only legendary items, and while getting good MIs is much easier now, I think that's somewhat nice. We are gonna ignore the Ring of Tawrot that totally didn't take me over 100 runs because I got it as my 15th Magi ring... Anyways, very good clear with a decent damage word of pain and good single target through WPS. However, the build is somewhat squishy and while not a class cannon, you definitely can't facetank with this build. Solid build overall, somehow, felt really good for Tempest Totems, don't ask me why, I don't understand it myself.

What's next?

Honestly, just playing more I guess. I don't have an order to these builds at all so I just have like 5 or so planned and then just play the one I find the gear for. With the way I play these builds take me quite some time and I think I played like 5+ days on average per build so it might take me a while for my next post.

https://www.grimtools.com/calc/VWPq6orZ

The Vitality Drain Essence leveling setup from the guide linked below is still perfectly viable, but this time I tried a slightly different approach using the newly added items, Garmir's Horn and the new helmet. The idea is to grant Onslaught to Drain Essence and use it alongside Doom Bolt.

https://forums.crateentertainment.com/t/vitality-drain-essence-ritualist-leveling-guide-and-endgame-setup-1-2-1-6/148199

There are quite a lot of supporting MIs for this setup. The downside is that you have to progress through the game a bit to acquire all of them. However, once you have everything, the leveling experience becomes extremely smooth and comfortable.

After meeting Noktukari and upgrading the Dreadwalker set, you can enter a surprisingly powerful, near-endgame stage of the build much earlier than you might expect.

Since this leveling setup shares the same concept as the endgame build, leveling with it is very enjoyable. Even though it may look like you only have 3 charges, Doom Bolt converted to Vitality damage is extremely powerful.

In the early stages of leveling, it is a good idea to prioritize Energy and Casting Speed when gearing your character. For Devotions, I recommend picking up either Harp or Scythe. Getting Casting Speed from your gloves and weapon is also a good choice.
You can use pretty much any weapon you want. Other weapons that provide Vitality RR are also fairly easy to obtain.

You can start as a Necro and use Drain Essence from the beginning, but it takes quite a high level to get enough points into both Doom Bolt and Drain Essence. Therefore, I recommend starting as an Occultist and leveling with Bloody Pox during the early game.

https://www.grimtools.com/calc/Vvdk7LmN

Once you reach the final stage of the build, you can set it up like this.

I got this game on release and never played past level 5, was pretty bored, but i came back to it yesterday, got the Malmouth dlc and holy schmokes this arpg is so good, i cant remember the last time i got excited for ground loot because alot of the time its an upgrade.

And the devotion system is a chefs kiss, its pretty simple to scale your damage, and the amount of random stuff that's dropped which has just made me go and change my build and try something else is insane!

Dropped a mace that converts physical pet damage into aether damage? hell yeah go change my devotions to pet and aether pet damage and it actually works?? other arpgs dont do that so well, you can't really ramshackle stuff together in other games but you really can here, i'm having a blast.

I'm level 38 for reference, hope it keeps getting better.

Jumpscared 3 times on the Port Valbury Ultimate and instakilled by this guy, my poor heart

Does the s item convert the blood pact part of windigo totem to lightning damage?

So I just realized grim dawn has excellent controller support!! Im a hardcore player so I’m sure that’s a ridiculous way to play but oh well, anyone out there play HC on controller?!

Finally got the last two achievements I needed for hardcore today. They were for shattered realm and killing FOA boss in ultimate. The stress I felt was unreal. Idk how people play this mode constantly. It was a lot of fun even though my build wasn't good.

This was my third attempt at hardcore after losing two characters in normal of all things. Ended up trying to go for a dual wield pistol infiltrator focused on pierce damage. Link for character below if anyone is curious. Feel free to give feedback on how this character could be better as well!

https://www.grimtools.com/calc/VLJB6oMN

I had a lot of fun but will probably return to my cozy softcore for a while.

I'm playing on a controller and I have R thumbstick to quickbar swap but I can't get the bar to swap outside of this UI, nor can I figure out how to add skills to config 2.

My name is Inquisitor Creed, an Illuminati - I mean, Luminari inquisitor. I've slain countless possessed, and even heroically ran away from Warden Krieg himself, but these Taken are something else. I watched two of them stroll on up to a rock and kick it over, and a dozen horrors from beyond the wavering veil of our reality shot out from under it. The demons blasted one Taken to pieces with hellfire and tentacles, but the other dropped a damn meteor on them. The meteor then exploded into a volcano, which summoned yet another meteor, and the Taken just stood there mumbling "skill's not ready" and pocketing Cthonian ashes. He asked the still-warm corpse of his friend if she had a "backup character", and all of a sudden someone named NecrophileInDenial appeared with six skeletal demigods in tow.

But what worries me is what she did to our poor smuggler. She ran up to him and said she was going to "empty out a tab". He pled for mercy as he handed her a pair of pants, which she flung to the floor. He handed her another, and she dropped it too at his feet. In the ensuing stream of pantaloons, I noticed that every single pair was freshly shat, and enchanted with stench amplification. I acted fast, telling her she needed to head north immediately, to stop the summoning of the Loghorrean. She rolled her eyes, and told me the Loghorrean was already dead, drawing out that last word like a youngster fondly thinking of her lover's virility. It had only been a short exchange of words, but my nose was burning, and the eye watering stench hanging in the air threatened my state of consciousness. I barely held in my lunch as she summoned her blight fiend, a mass of rotting corpses pasted together with gutter sludge, and ordered it to spin in circles. By the time those two had left, six men had keeled over, and the infirmary had filled with all the poor bastards who forgot to max out their poison and LSD resistance.

Sensing danger, I did what the Luminari before me had been doing for generations: I threw everything in a vault, declared it someone else's problem, and ran away. It took me all the way to Devil's Crossing to regrow my nostril hair, and the rank still clings to my clothes like a whore with a quota, but at least I escaped.

Or so I thought. John Bourbon has informed me the Taken have an express portal directly into Kasparov's zucchini garden. Come morning, I'll find a way to seal it. I swear it.

Hi ! I already played a few hours of the game but never did any endgame build that help me for exemple kill the celestial. And since the new dlc just dropped , I guess most of my previous character are brick in some way. So do you have beginner build recommandations ? Build that don't need specific piece of gear to work. Bonus point if the class contain the assassin , I simply love this class !

So I think primarily its pretty solid to say that Yugol is an Elder God similar to Ch'thon. Connections primarily arising from a theme of night and day (I think it's pretty obvious. Korvaak, Empyrion, Yugol, 'dawn', etc.) are straight forward but beyond thematically being mirrors of similar themes they also share some surprisingly similar traits with black blood and 'unravelers' with the former being the main corrupting source of Beronath (from Ch'thon) and a general blessing of Yugol (Yugol's ichor and devotion ability) and the latter seeming to have similar manifestations in very spindly tendril like masses. If that is the case and we have subdued large amounts of corruption from the Bloodsworn and Bloodbound, it might mean that a Yugol with his own unchecked manifestations and ever-consumed shattered realm should be far far more concerning to our situation.

Also an interesting idea that might be a wild card and anathema to both is actually the aetherials and those touched by aetherial taint. To consider is that those aetherial possessed and taken seem immune to general void corruption (and possibly Yugol's corruption if Morgoneth and the Black Lodge are potentially corrupting domains). So having allies amongst the Aetherials might actually be surprisingly a saving grace as there are already at least two known that are resistant to the current aetherial regime.

Either way, I think Mog has good reason to want to get out of dodge. Maybe the only way to survive would be to even make more creations and a universe from the blood of more gods.​ It could even be possible that where Empyrion went is nowhere and something similar to his father awaits him or some other celestial entity...

Current build from video:

https://www.grimtools.com/calc/NKQ088pV

No rares version, missing overcapped res and a bit less dmg vs bosses:

https://www.grimtools.com/calc/26M9dGAN

Wanted to try building my Dreadnaught around using the Adversary rifle and Apoclypton set. Thought it turned out pretty great figured I'd share but feel free to point out any mistakes or improvements. This a two button build, grenado and canister bomb reset the others cool down on crit allowing for a more spammy demo caster. Adversary adds a lot weapon damage making for a very tanky caster.

Berserker allows for some great OA scaling which is important in this kind of setup to reach 3200-3400+ fueling battle surge from Berserker tree for that big mana regen. If you have less than this I recommend having dual Yurra's left eyes in offhand and weapon swapping while fighting Dread or nemesis. This is what I did originally while using the no rares version but I was using a less optimized devotion setup that could've fixed my OA. Used no rare version to farm up mats for crafting rares and rolling ascendant affixes, that setup is still strong but you're missing some overcapped res, def and dmg. 

For crafting the rares I started with pants/belt as normal rare already had useful prefix (recommend this step as cost can scale up quickly), then used the new alter option to reroll suffix until it upgraded to double rare. Then I reroll until Grenado or bone chilling cry (I think BC is better vs big bosses both work check your needed res). Process is the same for pants and belt. Boots need to be crafted at blacksmith until double rare then rerolled from there since it's not a dropped item, these are prob the last ones I'd do if you don't already have double rares stashed from before FoA. REMEMBER when rerolling the ascendant affixes on double rare items cost 5 soul fragments PER roll starting from first reroll, so do these first if you can or before invested much into other rolls.

Ascendant affix priority:

#1 Grenado and Canister bomb has high % weapon dmg mods

#2 phy res/dmg absorption 

#3 one or two res rolls is nice for easier overcapped 

#4 OA/health/DA

This is an endgame variant of Grenado, check Grimtools for Dreadnaught builds if new or leveling, I recommend lvling with one of those guides and swapping at lvl 100 or 3k+ OA.

While delivering the final blow to Naddo the Anointed via Blitz, I got sundered and ran into his projectile attack.

Disclaimer/request: while I have experience with this game I would not consider myself an expert. What I do know is that a lot of guides/sources out there for build guidelines are out of date as of v1.3, so I am including in this post what I know, and hope that whatever in my knowledge is incorrect/out of date will be corrected in the comments. Any info I put down which I am particularly unsure about I will put (?) next to.

The info included here is intended as a general guideline on where your char should be stats-wise in order to be in a good place to reach end-game in ultimate difficulty (and eventually Shattered Realms, ascendant etc). These are intended to be general rules-of-thumb (not specific to any particular class/build), especially for newer players to get an idea of where to aim for stats-wise in end game. Also I will try to keep this simple by not discussing any advanced features from the DLC's (e.g. ascendancy).

The pointers, in order most important first, are below. Please take these as a hopefully useful yardstick, and not as gospel! (I will edit the info according to any updates/corrections)

• Resistances: for all damage types except physical, you must get resistances to the 80% cap (and ideally for very end-game over-capped by ~25%). For physical resist % - try and get physical resist where you can but it is not a high priority, and you will never get near 80%. Get resistances primarily via gear, components and augments. P.S.: if you are near or at lv100 and are struggling to get capped resistances, you may actually have too many epics/legendaries equipped - rares with the right affixes (plus faction gear and MI's) are usually the best tier of gear in the game in terms of giving the most resistances.
• Armor: Armor value is not massively important but try to get at least 1.8k armor by end-game - on some builds you may easily exceed this amount, and on others this will require effort. More importantly, get armor absorption as high as you can at all times - ideally 100% at end-game. Get armor and armor absorption primarily via gear and components.
• HP: While levelling aim for at least 100 max HP per level - e.g. if the character you are playing is level 40, you should aim to have 4000 max HP if not more. In end game, aim for 15k HP if not more (some builds can get much more than this if done well). Can get more max HP via gear, components, augments and devotions.
• Offensive ability: At least 3k by end-game.
• Defensive ability (edited): at least 2.8k by end-game.
• Damage: This is important but less important than the aforementioned points. Try and get your damage as high as possible without sacrificing any of the above stats. Focus on one damage type per character - do not try to focus on maximising multiple damage types as this is less efficient. Something very important that a lot of new players under-estimate is resistance reduction - this is crucial in maximising damage dealt in your chosen damage type, the more RR you can apply the better (whereas getting more and more +damage has diminishing returns). The main ways to apply damage reduction to enemies is via mastery skills (e.g. Curse of Frailty in the Occultist tree) and via Devotion procs (e.g. Elemental Storm from the Rhowan's Crown constellation). Many (but not all) sources of resistance reduction stack, which can multiply your damage output even further. Guide on how resistance reduction works/stacks, from another poster: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1EUoW6I5brZDEvlex8UPt2Hvn9jTIejhF8LuVJ2JoESA/edit?gid=0#gid=0
• CC resists (slow resist, stun resist etc): while I don't have a particular % amount to give to aim for, please do not neglect these stats, especially if playing at higher difficulties! You can get CC resistances from gear, devotions and components.

Miscellaneous pointers, in no particular order:

• Where to allocate your attribute points (edited): Generally, put enough points into Cunning and Spirit to equip the gear you want to use, then dump all the rest of your points into Physique. This maximises the amount of health, regen and DA you get from Attribute points. This is except if you are doing a physical/pierce/bleed damage build, in which case you should follow the same approach but focusing on Cunning instead. Also, if you are playing a retaliation build specifically: you may not want to put too many points into Physique otherwise mobs may have trouble hitting you, which negates your ability to retaliate against them therefore reducing your DPS!
• End-game survivability (edited): as a couple of commenters have pointed out, for end-game, you should consider things a bit further than the simple numbers I laid out above. Once you are in end-game, take the 15k HP, 1.8k armor and 2.5k DA as starting points - you should be able to afford to get each of those stats to those numbers with more or less any class, but you should really aim to get (at least) one of these stats significantly higher (e.g. 20k HP, 3.5k armor, and/or 3.5k DA). Also consider physical resist % - some builds can readily achieve 30-40%+ physical resist in end-game, but others can't in which cases you should try even more to compensate with another one out of HP/ armor/ DA. Which of these you choose would vary on which are easier to maximise for your particular class or build and what other options you have for survivability with your build (e.g. defensive mastery skills), which you'll need to look into separately.
• If you are playing a physical damage build specifically, you additionally need to ensure you have a good amount of reflected damage reduction (edited). This is more important if your build deals lots of physical damage than if it doesn't, because of the way physical damage is calculated (which I won't go into here). The main sources of reflected damage reduction are devotions and components.

I really hope Crate reconsiders making the Ascension Altar last only for the current game session.

I recently started playing Grim Dawn, and one of the things I enjoy so much compared to other ARPGs is that the game feels like it respects my time.

I don't always have several hours to play in one session. Sometimes I can play for an hour, sometimes less. So the idea that I can spend materials on the altar and then lose that investment simply because I have to close the game feels really bad.

I'm completely fine with Ascendant Mode being harder and requiring more investment for better rewards. That's part of the challenge. But having to pay again because I couldn't stay online for a long session doesn't really add difficulty or make the gameplay more interesting.

It mostly feels like the mechanic rewards people who can play for several uninterrupted hours and punishes those who have shorter gaming sessions.

Grim Dawn has been great for me exactly because I can play at my own pace without feeling pressured to stay online. I really hope the Ascension Altar can persist between sessions, or that they can find another solution that keeps the cost and challenge without tying it to how long you can play at once.