[1.0.0.6] 2H ranged Blademaster 0 physique/spirit- The crosbowmaster - Ultimate ranged DPS

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
1

2H Ranged pierce/phys dmg Blademaster - The Crosbowmaster

Some time ago I posted 0 physique/spirit S&B tank blademaster and 0 physique/spirit DW melee blademaster so time has come to test 0 physique/spirit Blademaster as a ranged build and here we are.

Honestly I had some doubts about this since nightblade is innate dual wielding class and soldier is more melee shield class, so neither of them dont shine when it comes to ranged. But if you look from other side there isn’t any class in GD that shines as ranged (Im not counting casters) and tbh GD really misses some dedicated ranged class but that is another story.

After initial tryouts I was surprised how well this BM build fares in ranged combat and after polishing it I am now certain that this is one of best if not the best ranged class this game has to offer and certainly is the only one that can outshine most melee builds when it comes to single target dmg output.

To support this claim I tested this build on dummy: It averages 35-36 secs with lowest time of 34 seconds for dummy kill.
Also highest crits on dummy were ranged close to 200 k.

Picture of the build with constant auras, PB and deadly momentum on:

Grim calc with +skills: http://grimcalc.com/build/1006-jveyTh
Grim calc without +skills: http://grimcalc.com/build/1006-B1NWDh

Note two different devotion setups, one more offensive with assassin and other one more defensive with falcon and 3 pts in behemoth. I will later elaborate on this.

How to build efficient pierce ranged character with so underdeveloped AP ratio on ranged weapons and no component or devotion ability to increase to pierce ratio for ranged builds?

I will be honest with you on this, its hard. You can try with some uber gimmicky sinister prefix ranged green weapon but you would lose +2 to all skills and that’s huge. Basically main reason to pick silverbolt instead of Valdun rifle is +2 to all skils. Only thing we can do is to equip Valdun armor set to increase AP ratio and to try to stack as much flat pierce dmg from other sources as possible. So we are using all devotions (or almost all If you decide to go on defensive devo setup) that are giving flat pierce, relic with flat pierce, weapon with flat pierce, rings with flat pierce, amulet with flat pierce, hat with flat pierce (2H ranged weapon bonus), chest with flat pierce, set that gives flat pierce bonus and weapon component with flat pierce. To bad for the shoulders I still dont have good fabius ones with flat pierce.

If my calculations are right this build stacked 155-207 flat pierce dmg (emp piercing aura bonus excluded). For comparison its more than base dmg of silverbolt or Valdun rifle, so its like you have some uber pure pierce weapon equipped.

Sidenote: Going phy dmg ranged is even harder because even if you stack abundance of flat phys dmg you cant avoid to pierce conversion on weapon.

Some pictures to see how this looks like:

Cadence tool tip breakdown:

Dmg % bonuses:

You can see from cadence tool tip break down that almost 70% of total dmg is pierce,with weapon atc situation is even better 73% of total dmg is pierce and thats not so bad considering the options :wink:

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Concept of the build

When I started this build I just wanted to check how 0 phys/spirit BM will fare in ranged combat, after I realized its potential it evolved to much more.
This build is ranged equivalent of melee DW blademaster, fast moving fast killing machine, with same philosophy as its melee counterpart: Kill fast or die fast! It relays on its high evasion (dodge/fumble) and ADCTH to stay alive.

Innate dodge/deflect are 25%/28% respectfully, coupled with high DA and COS (22%to fumble on 4 pts) it makes it really hard to hit, much less to crit.
ADCTH is provided from devotion and black star, 8% total and I find it enough.

Much needed AOE is provided from 25% chance proc of Valdun amulet, cadence chance to pierce trough and blade spirit/blades of wrath combo. AOE could be better but I find this more than sufficient. If you want more invest some more points into fighting form for better chance to pierce trough.

I personally use offensive devotion setup for this build and dont have trouble facetanking most nemesis most of the times. But be advised that to do so you have to time your heal and PB, one error with that will bring you in hard position and you will be forced to disengage or die. Also be extra careful with Fabius blade barier, if you hit it, specially if its cadence hit or crit, its same as you shadowstriked on it using DW melee BM and we all know what that means :smiley:

Only thing that is not facetankable at all with this build is Mad Queen, retaliation aura will shotgun you down if you try it, believe me I tried and died several times. To kill MQ you need to kite.

If you are unconfy with offensive setup and want to play more casually take defensive devotion setup, bind falcon swoop to blade spirit, put 3pts in Behemoth and haunted steel in weapon. That will double you ADCTH and you will gain Behemoths nice circuit breaker. Also you can invest some more points into COS for even higher evasion.

Gearing/equipping this build

For equipping this build, picking gear, and related stuff apply same rules as for DW melee BM build I posted earlier. Only difference is that now you use 2h ranged weapon and silverbolt is a BIS weapon for this build.

Currently equipped gear

You know the drill, try to cap all resistance if possible or if you don’t find it necessary do what you consider best.

1. Head: Valdun hat - leathery hide component - 7% Aether/10% Lightning armor augment

2. Chest: Valdun jacket - Kilrians shattered soul - 7% Aether/10% Lightning

3. Shoulders: Warding Iron Maidens shoulder guards of fortitude - Mutated scales - 7% A/C - BIS option would be Warding fabius pauldron of nature bounty

4. Hands: Voidsteel gauntlets - Mutated scales - 7% A/C

5. Legs: Stonehide Dreg set legguards of the boar - Scaled hide - 15% Poison and acid

6. Boots: Survivalist exalted threads of survival - Mark of Mogdrogen - 7% A/C

7. Belt: Reforged chains of oleron - AV salve - 10% Aether

8. Amulet: Valduns bounty - Focusing prism - 20% to all dmg 2% OA/DA

9. Ring 1 Belgothians Sigil - Frozen heart - 20% to all dmg 2% OA/DA

Ring 2 Cutthroats Cronley signet of atack - Frozen heart - 20% to all dmg 2% OA/DA - BIS option would be Cutthroats Cronley signet of the rifthound/alacrity

10. Weapon: Silverbolt - Vicious spikes - 25% for 15% rr, 15 chaos resistance

11. Medal: Black Star of deceit - Arcane spark

12. Relic: Belgothians carnage

In closing

This time I have to write bit more than usual in this section, hope you dont mind :smiley:

  1. Ranged builds, all ranged build are uderdogs in GD, period.

  2. Its really shame that there isn’t any ranged weapon with high AP value and also ranged weapon without AP value.

  3. There should be from devotion or component some option to increase AP value for ranged weapons, at least that.

  4. More underdoged and underdeveloped branch of ranged builds are DW pistol builds. You cant find almost any dedicated gear for those pore guys, and if you still want to DW pistols you have to equip some in most situations mediocre armor, belt, medal or relic.

This is younger brother of 2H ranged 0 phys/spirit BM, DW ranged 0 phys/spirit BM. He is younger cuz this pore guy is much weaker just because he wears 2 pistols.

I hope I didnt bored you to death, thx for reading, have fun :wink:

Peace out!

1.0.0.7 CHANGES TO THIS BUILD

Like all previous upgrades this one also was not favorable for blademasters. Everything that hit DW blademasters is hitting this build also due to being it ranged counterpart. Belgotians carnage flat pierce dmg got nerfed, blades of wrath got nerfed, nights chill got nerfed, deadly momentum got nerfed.

But we got a slight upgrade also, cunning received slight increase in % dmg and a really small increase in OA bust (I would like someone to confirm this, Im not 100% sure but it seams like this, also it seams that phys got slight increase in DA boost). So now more than ever high cunning investments are paying off.

Bottom line for 1.0.0.7 is slight decrease in dps, slight decrease in AOE, slight increase in OA/DA, noting significant.

Here is the pictures how this build looks like in 1.0.0.7, cadence dmg:

1.0.0.9 CHANGES TO THIS BUILD

Changed pants to get some so much needed ADCTH, shoulders (they are warding of the kings now), relic (since belgo carnage is so overnerfed that is not a BiS even for pierce builds any more) and ring, rearranged some skill points and here it is:

Its almost as good as it was in 1.0.0.6, 20k more dps but for some reason it needs more time to kill the dummy than in 1.0.0.6 :rolleyes:

3

Nice Build!

Are you doing anything to boost piercing ratio? If not, why not a crafted two-handed with the Sinister prefix and attack speed suffix?

That seems to be the drawback of ranged weapons, no? The pierce ratio is too high for physical builds and too low for piercing builds. Night’s Chill resistance reduction won’t apply to the physical portion of the damage.

4

Only thing I can do is to equip Valdun for +30% to pierce, but to pierce conversion is not the problem cuz silverbolt has low innate dmg so Im using other sources to stack flat pierce and increase dmg (silverbolt flat pierce, valdun pieces, valdun set bonus, devotion, rings,… to bad I dont have beter Fabius shoulders)
Going with sinister prefix or valdun rifle means you will lose +2 to all skils from silverbolt and thats huge drawback.

And you are right its awfully hard to build either pierce or phys ranged build due to somewhat unfortunate AP values on all ranged weapons.

Edit:

Just calculated from all sources I stacked 155-207 flat pierce if my calculation is correct (Im not counting emp piercing aura bonus), its higher than base dmg of silverbolt :wink:

5

Updated some stuff.

6

Uploaded all planed content.

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Yup, it’s a real shame that ranged, and DW particularly, are so under-supported. Here’s hoping they add a specific ‘ranger’ type class in an expansion with proper DW support.

What did you take instead Kraken on the DW build?

On a side note, I wish they would change the way weapon-specific auras work, so that they re-activate if you switch weapons and then switch back. Same with piercing aura, at least if you have the component on your melee weapon as well it should stay active. Simple QoL issues that would probably stop me playing this build…I think I’d have an OCD meltdown :slight_smile:

Nice build though, and impressive kill times.

Night’s Chill (and CoF/V) are really OP, I guess it’s no coincidence that WB and BM are the OP builds. Another thing that could do with changing in an expansion…give more sources of -rr please.

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Thx :wink:

Main reason I dont swap weapons is exactly the one you stated :smiley:

Here is devo setup for DW http://grimcalc.com/build/1006-daGPyw its a current state so maybe it will be changed idk.

In current state of the game (pet builds excluded) night chill, COF, cadence and brake morale are vastly superior to anything else. So when you mix them up you will get OP build for sure. Tho is not just that, this game needs serious balancing to somehow reduce gap between main campaign and crucible. Ie make crucible less defensive oriented and make main campain more defensive oriented.

Just 2 my cents :smiley:

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Hey hey, started leveling one of these last week specifically for BoC farming since I had a couple Silverbolts laying around, only level 55 atm but good to see it should work fine at end game. I’m actually surprised you’d use it as a general weapon though considering most of its bonuses are going to waste in half the game, unless this was a stub level 85 character. I’m also missing most of the valdun set so during leveling and before all pieces are in place you’ll want to focus more on physical damage with only 40% conversion (assuming using Silverbolt, I often had less while leveling to 50).

Took a break just before the patch that made cadence awesome, so playing with these ranged piecing builds is fun (also leveling a apparently now fotm witchblade that will use dual havoc until I find something most interesting)

10

This character is leveled as dual wielding melee BM and recently changed to ranged.
And I disagree about most bonuses wasted from silverbolt. Atc speed, flat pierce, % to pierce, %to all dmg and specially +2 to all skills are huge and perma useful. If you are searching most efficient way to lvl up go with 2H blade arc.

11

Remember that a large part of what makes Cadence builds good is Deadly Momentum. The higher your piercing ratio is, the more of the flat physical damage bonus on Deadly Momentum gets converted.

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I know that, but making sinister 2H ranged weapon even if you get 100% to pierce conversion and same atc speed like silverbolt will make you lose +2 to all skills. You will probably have more dps but you will be so stretched on skill points that it will be hard to survive much less to be efficient. Tho it would probably lower your dummy kill time.

13

1.0.0.7 CHANGES TO THIS BUILD

Like all previous upgrades this one also was not favorable for blademasters. Everything that hit DW blademasters is hitting this build also due to being it ranged counterpart. Belgotians carnage flat pierce dmg got nerfed, blades of wrath got nerfed, nights chill got nerfed, deadly momentum got nerfed.

But we got a slight upgrade also, cunning received slight increase in % dmg and a really small increase in OA bust (I would like someone to confirm this, Im not 100% sure but it seams like this, also it seams that phys got slight increase in DA bust). So now more than ever high cunning investments are paying off.

Bottom line for 1.0.0.7 is slight decrease in dps, slight decrease in AOE, slight increase in OA/DA, noting significant.

Here is the pictures how this build looks like in 1.0.0.7, cadence dmg:

Happy holidays :wink:

14

I’ve actually been thinking of doing a very similar build but instead of a 2H ranged, i’m gonna to use a Gun + Shield.

Yeah, you read that right. I was thinking of using Deathdealer Sidearm and Siegebreaker. I guess the main issue is that it only converts 30% physical to pierce. Makes me wish they would make a ranged equivalent of Blessed Whetstone.

15

That would be nice, or just to delete sword requirements for blades of nadaan.

Here 0 Physique/Spirit

16

Very unusual build, i’m gona check this out carefully. Thanks !

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It is :slight_smile: Have fun, I know I did :wink:

18

Looks like I found a build to use some of the ranged weapons I have… this should be fun.

19

It certainly is :slight_smile:

20

Hey JoV! Interesting build. Any rough leveling tips if one wants to lvl this as a ranged toon?