If in any doubt about a game and if you lack the ability to handle the frustrations of the Early Access / Beta process, this is the safest route to follow.
I recently completed another playthrough of Grim Dawn so I have both long-time and fresh impressions of both. Speaking of fighting, difficulty, skill trees and crafting, I definitely like Last Epoch better. Grim Dawn shines in the fact that it can be played completely offline, on worse computer, has mods and I like the story better. I sometimes travel by train for a couple of hours and LE is quite … useless there. Grim Dawn can be played on laptop without (good) internet connection 
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Speaking of character building, Last Epoch feels to me very straightforward and accessible but allowing a lot of customization. In Grim Dawn, more power of my character actually comes from gear rather than skills and I needed to think about synergies between classes, skills, gear and components/augments more than in LE. The learning curve of GD was definitely steeper. Boss fights were are the same. LE is more modern, faster and boss fights are well telegraphed whereas in GD I had to learn them more.
At the end of the day, both of these games are in my opinion great. Since LE is not finished yet (and I hope that the story is getting completed soon because it … well … kind of abruptly ends*) I really see it as The Next Big Thing in this genre when it is finished.
As for now, where Grim Dawn lacks, Last Epoch shines and vice versa.
- I know that very few people actually care about the story in ARPGs. I actually do because it sets the world and lore and makes me wish to spend time in the world. I also like to level alts rather than having one character as my projection to the game world. That’s also the reason I hate gender locking which LE has … I don’t understand that.
It’s on their list of things to do but wasn’t planned for pre-1.0 so it’d require a fair bit of reworking other systems. If you can stomach it, there’s a 364 post thread here.
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Amen to that.
Sadly, it is apparently not on the cards at all. Even the mysterious mythical 1.0 “release” doesn’t include story completion anymore.
That makes me sad, but I suspect we are a very tiny minority, most people don’t see any problem with going to “endgame” before going through “game”…
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LE is a very good H&S. I tried to get into GD, but somehow the game couldn’t really hook me in.
LE, imo, has a very low entry barrier. They explain most of the mechanics very well. The skill system is what makes LE unique, with the skilltrees for your 5 main skills and procs and synergies.
My favourite mechanic is to convert damage types, like turning a fire skill into a lightning skill (that also changes the visuals).
It’s easy to learn and not convoluted like PoE. In terms of complexity it sits somewhere between D3 and PoE.
The story is ok. It’s still not finished in terms of content and also regarding presentation, like voiceovers or ingame cutscenes. I’m also currently not sure what the plans for 1.0 are. Will story content be finished?
But as LE is designed to be a live service game with cycles (seasons/leagues) we will get additional content regularly that could also extend the story by time.
The devs are currently working on Multiplayer implementation and therefore we haven’t had a content update for several months now. The MP patch is scheduled for 2023/03/09. Although it will have no trading system (see the current discussions on social media).
With the MP patch there will also be a bunch of polishing features coming into the game. Devs are working on combat feel of impact, new 3D art for items, VFX, SFX and so on. I’m sure the game will feel a bit different in terms of gameplay next year (in a positive way).
Performance is a big topic and hopefully the MP patch brings a big improvement.
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Game is terrific. You’ll easily get your money’s worth, even in beta. I had nearly 3000 hours in Grim Dawn (my personal favorite arpg of all time - so far, as I’m not dead yet and who knows how the current landscape will develop.) LE is a great successor so far. Who knows, perhaps it will be Terminator 2 to Grim Dawn’s Terminator 1. I do know though it won’t be Terminators 3-6. 
Yes it’s fun.
i agree. also all the additional resists (chaos, puncture, aether, something, something, something) and the novella worth of affixes and capabilities on a piece of gear really wore down my patience.
Im well over 1k hours into GD and I still dont fully understand the elemental conversion order of operations lmao.
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Theres no conversion order, this isnt PoE where theres a conversion line of Phys>Lightning>Cold>Fire>Chaos
Damage conversion applies first so you cant double dip on damage. I played a modded character that converted everything to something else, there was 10 conversions going on and the final damage was 67% Pierce the remaining 33% split into all remaining damage types.
If you use a Demolitionist and scales Fire % then use Mortar Artillery thing and use the set that converts 100% fire to Physical you dont deal good damage as its all invested into Fire, but if you have say a Demo/Soldier and scale all the Soliders Phys…thats where the build works
Physical damage is the best type in Grim Dawn, it has monsters with the lowest innate defence and shreds the most
Fire/Vit/Chaos arguably the hardest to scale end game
In PoE conversion is broken it scales every step
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Hey man thank you for the reply! I should have been more specific, there are conv mods on skills themselves, general class passives, and gear. Not only that, but conversion stats on a certain piece of gear (or passive tree) overrides another conversion mod. Somebody made a huge FAQ about it on the Crate forums, it is that convoluted.
Yea, if you are simply converting fire to phys, no big deal. Also to note, like you said, all fire% bonuses do nothing (unlike PoE where you can now scale phys and fire), but you DO keep any bonus flat fire damage, it makes its way into the phys calculation.
I love the game, damage conversion is the one mechanic that was simply convoluted till you managed to learn the odds and ends.
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