And that was done mostly self found? I’m asking because I have 2H twink weapons than 1H(most of them are swords) and zero shields until level 60.
Finally found some motivation to do some Crucible with the witchblade. :x
As expected finishing the Gladiator 150 waves was kinda a joke with this character, i dont even needed to use every Crucible mechanics and didnt play especially well.
Tower used: none
Blessings used: The Might of Amatok
potion used: Royal Jelly essence / Spiritbane ointment / hoarfrost ointment
My next objective is finish it without any Crucible mechanics. :>
Link to the VOD (for wave100+, skip to 42mins30sec) :
I did the same thing, purely self-found 1H+Shield Cadence from scratch and I’ve been more than fine. Doing it on hardcore, haven’t died yet and I’m dealing quite a bit of damage now at level 73.
That’s an interesting build. Having played both, which do you prefer, that one with Scales or your previous setup with Dire Bear?
I’m on hardcore and seeing your previous posts I think my desired build is pretty closely aligned with your defense-priority mentality. I was going to shoot for Dire Bear though, because it seems like such a great constellation for this build, but I guess I can switch it up if Scales is really noticeably better.
I used blade arc all they way to 75. At lvl 50 i was lucky to get the legendary 2h axe with all bleed stuff on it, it carried me to 75. At 75 i specd to cadence, and im wearing atm myrmidon set cause i play self found, but feels good. Farming my set now, got 2 pieces.
Ignore this.
Well, both are OK. The main benefit of setup with full Dire Bear is 80% stun&freeze resists even without buffs. It’s good in normal campain on HC (you wont care about sudden stun/freeze lock), but in Crucible, you can just get Blessing of Ulo, or drink HoarFrost Oilment and get Ulzuin’s pact (permanent OVerguard = 100% stun resist), and dont care. Also, fighting in Crucible consumes much more energy, because there are lots of tough mobs. So, energy leech from Scales is more useful. And the last, in Crucible you will use banners/blessing with huge damage boost, so loss of Dire Bear is insignificant there.
So, my verdict is following
Setup with Dire Bear - sligtly more useful for normal campain or Ascendant/Challenger Crucible farm.
Setup with Scales of Ulcama - slightly more useful for beating Gladiator in Crucible.
I want to warn you, though - sometimes Scales of Ulcama wont restore your energy, and you will still have to use potions. It happens because most bosses are immune to Energy Leech, also i suspect some enemies are hardly resistant to it. So, watch over your energy bar anyways.
Lower-right Targo’s node provides +300 HP. Too much to lose, actually. I’d got Shepherd’s Crook for its OA (instead of Empty Throne), but i dont have an extra ability to trigger it :(. And i cant just drop Primordial Crossroads - it’s a prequisite for Targo the Builder (it requires 6 primordial, Sailor’s Guide provides 5 and Primordial Crossroads provides 1).
I use Warding Cronley’s Signet of Alacrity now, and still hope to get Warding Cronley’s Signet of Attack - it’s BiS, probably, cause gives so much needed OA.
I dont care about crit damage (and dont advice to care about it), because all bonuses to crit damage you can get from gear or constellations, are ridiculously low. The only thing i DO care about, is crit chance - because it triggers Assassin;s Mark, which then increases damage by a lot. In Crucible, buffs will provide enough critical damage bonus (and outside of crucible, you dont need crit damage anyway), so i advice to care about crit chance only.
Thanks for the response, think I’ll just aim for Dire Bear for now.
Trying to farm Bonescythes… finally found an ‘of the Abyss’, too bad prefix is Void-Touched. :furious:
Gladiator 140-150 No Buffs. At all. 0:03~10:23.
This was my fourth try. Dropped a shitload of damage for this very defensive setup. Would not recommend this if you can’t sport at the very least 16,000 hp and have reasonable resists (I’m talking stun, freeze, trap resist etc.) while maintaining 150% attack speed and 7-8% life steal. Oh, and the very very least, 2000 DA.
Grim Dawn decided to cooperate and not crash for once. YAY :rolleyes:
I dont think DA really matters. And overcapped resists do matter, because certain bosses and mobs can reduce them. Especially care about Anasteria - she is able to reduce your resists by a huge value (it’s exactly the reason why she deals so much damage and is so dangerous). Even non-uber Anasteria can do that, btw.
Well done, nice proof how OP this build is.
Secondly i’am impresse how you took so little damage under Shar’Zul debuff. 
Some boss have absolute resist debuff like Shar’Zul, overcap doesnt matter you will be reduce by half, i might be wrong but i think its also the case with Anasteria.
The Cruel mutator which increases crit damage by 75% can still be very painful if you have super low DA. DA is probably the least important out of all our defensive stats, true, but I think you should still aim to have at least 2000 (which is not all that hard anyway)
If anyone is still having trouble with crucibles, you can position yourself in places where melee monsters are only able to reach you 2-3 at a time and range monsters sometimes try to attack you even if their attacks fly into the wall or something. Using the map in the video for example, stand right on top of the vendors/spirit guides/blacksmiths whatever. I didn’t use this technique because I personally feel its a little too cheesy, but keep that in mind if you are having problems, because its not against game mechanics or anything.
While everyone is talking about resists and debuffs, I want to ask, what is making the “Hidden Path” wave (the 3 guardians) so painful? I know I have some sort of debuff on my head, looks like a broken shield, but what does it do, and who uses it? I don’t think it even displays on my debuff bar.
Really hope Crate can make buff/debuffs easier to see on the screen, right now debuff icons are smaller than our mouse cursor, and some don’t even show up properly :furious:
“Broken shield” is resistance reduction (either absolute - like from “Plaguebearer’s mod”, or relative - like from “of Abyss” mod). Whatever it is, you just need to overcap your resist. Open your character window while fighting those, and you’ll see what you lack. Yes, it seems such debuffs (resist, armour, DA, damage, etc. reductions) arent shown. You can determine some of them by visual icon above you.
Chtonian Harbingers can reduce your Elemental, Acid and Vitality resists by 30 points(maybe also chaos - not sure about that). And they are pretty common mobs, so i strongly advice to overcap those resistances by 30. God forbid you get this debuff while fighting Zantarin and wont have vitality res capped…
Troll elders also capable to reduce your resists (elemental, probably - didnt checked that too close).
BTW, ATM i’m farming Crucible in Challenger difficulty (with banners and Might of Amatok to speed things up). It seems to be completely safe (no matter what shit/mutators it will spawn), and from my perspective, it gives much more legendaries+recipes per hour, that farming Cronley, BoC or any other location n main campain. Also, it gives tons of Nemesis shoulders :).
Still havent got Reforged Chains of Oleron and Menhir’s Bastion recipes 
Block makes wonders. That damage was mostly “absorbed” by block, i believe.
Anasteria reduces my resists to 53. Not really a half, but it’s very painful, as it means taking 2.3 times more damage. And yes, overcap seems to be useless agains that shit.
Cool, thanks for the useful info MK. I don’t think I will invest in overcap just for the Chtonian Harbingers, because I usually target them down pretty fast, and I always stay away from Zantarin until I’m sure he’s the only one left, so not too worried.
Would have liked to consider overcapping for Sharzul and Anasteria, but sounds like that doesn’t work on them. Just have to eat the damage like a man I guess.
BTW, ATM i’m farming Crucible in Challenger difficulty (with banners and Might of Amatok to speed things up). It seems to be completely safe (no matter what shit/mutators it will spawn), and from my perspective, it gives much more legendaries+recipes per hour, that farming Cronley, BoC or any other location n main campain. Also, it gives tons of Nemesis shoulders .
Still havent got Reforged Chains of Oleron and Menhir’s Bastion recipes
Was already farming Gladiator crucibles in favor of Main Campaign farming even before hotfix 2, now with the nerf in place, I am pretty confident it is safe regardless of mutators if using buffs. No more 19368 one shots thank god, suck on that Fabius 
Do you think running Challenger will be more efficient than Gladiator though? Never really ran Challenger that much, so I don’t know from experience.
This wave is painful only because of Solael (the weird bird),he spawn a little purple smoke on ground and it seems he can stack it at the same place and i can tell you the dps of this shit is insane, so you have to get out of this.
DA matters but mainly against bosses. I mean no matter how tanky you are good luck surviving a fabius crit when hes using the notched bone and has a 75% crit multiplier up.
My witchblade was one shot by fabius using the notched bone without the crit multiplier, he shadowstriked me for 17k, I doubt many people here have that much hp. I also had 2200 DA then lol.
I now have 2500 DA without even trying to get it and most of the time it even goes to 2700 from procs. I now never have to worry about crits 
You have to give up too much HP, resists, offence, etc to get 2500 DA. From my perspective, it just has too little returns, i’d rather got 20k HP and extra physical resist/armour/block, and survived 17k crit anyway.
MK,
How are you getting Targo in your devotion build here? It requires 6 Primordial and you’ve got 5.
I just unlocked 50/50 on my Witchblade and I’m trying to recreate this, but kinda stumped.
I think my hp is fine near 15k and I also have 2700 OA, 30% phys res with good dps and capped all res apart from aether, it’s at 70%. Like I said, I didn’t focus for DA, I just have that much and it does help. Fabius hitting me 17k when I had 2200 DA was dumb. And if he hit 17k then he would still kill anyone one hit with the 75% crit multiplier even if you have 20k hp. I guess it was just terrible luck though since he killed me once in hundreds of runs and his usuall dps doesn’t even scratch me. But still I feel better knowing I can’t be one shot other than bumb mechanics like zantarin.
Are we talking buffed or unbuffed here? how do you get 2700 OA and 2500 DA with 15k health?