[1.0.0.8] Reaper of Cairn - Cold/Vit WH using the new Alkamos items

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
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Those pants and boots really don’t fit.

Overview
Ever since the stats for the new legendary items were posted in the first 1.0.0.8 preview I was really interested in the new Alkamos items and started to theorycraft a build to use them. I got all the items I needed together and waited for the patch to drop (the delay was killing me). After the patch I must have been blessed by RNJesus because I got the Alkamos drops fast. Maybe this was to compensate for having to spend a whole day farming Anasteria for her hat.

Some initial impressions I saw of the scythe weren’t super positive; it has no attack speed after all. Well it turns out you don’t need attack speed if your damage doesn’t come from basic attacks.

The Build

Toggles, Hungering Void, BoD, PB, and Lethal Assault are active

Weapon: Soulrend; Oleron’s Blood/Potent Outcast’s Deathtouch
Amulet: Demonslayer’s Defense; Wardstone/Mogdrogen’s Sanctity
Ring 1: Alkamos’ Touch of Anguish; Mark of Illusions/Uroboruuk’s Word
Ring 2: Alkamos’ Touch of Dread; Corpse Dust/Survivor’s Ingenuity
Medal: Undying Oath; Arcane Spark
Head: Demonslayer’s Hat; Leathery Hide/Outcast’s Warding Powder
Chest: Demonslayer’s Jacket; Hallowed Ground/Spellward Powder
Legs: Arcane Harmony Leggings; Scaled Hide/Spellward Powder
Shoulder: Stonehide Zantarin’s Shoulderguard of Menhir’s Will; Scaled Hide/Outcast’s Warding Powder
Hands: Iceskorn Talons; Unholy Inscription/Outcast’s Warding Powder
Feet: Golemborn Greaves; Mark of Mogdrogen/Mankind’s Vigil
Belt: Girdle of Stolen Dreams; Rigid Shell/Mankind’s Vigil
Relic: Scourge

Grimcalc (no +skills)
Grimcalc (with +skills)
Full Disclosure: The shoulderguard is absolutely crafted with GDStash. I had it leftover on this character from when it was a DW poison/acid build with awful gear that I was trying to improve without consideration for if I have the items or not. Instead of leveling a new WH for this build I figured I’d respec and I saw no reason to get rid of the shoulders. That said the shoulders, pants, and boots are all nonessential to the build (though I’d recommend having some sort of Zantarin Shoulderguards), so if you’re trying this feel free to replace those with whatever you need to round out your stats. I just was using what I had on-hand for this.

Gameplay: How does this build work?
Part 1: Weapon Damage and Conversion
The fact that Soulrend has no AS on it is damning at first glance, but if there’s one thing 2H weapons have going for them it’s high base damage. Also, we want to take advantage of the high %vit damage on Soulrend, but the flat damage from Second Rite isn’t nearly enough. Using the Demonslayer Hat, we can convert a chunk of cold damage to vit. Between the Demonslayer’s Jacket and Alkamos rings, about 50% of pierce damge from skills is also converted to cold/vit. From skills, gear, and devotions we can get a ton of flat weapon damage leading to stats that will look something like this:

Part 2: Applying Weapon Damage
So we have a ton of weapon damage, what do we do with it? There are 3 low CD skills that this setup has access to that hit hard: Scourge Strike, Shadow Strike, and Oleron’s Might. This is what the damage numbers on the skills look like.

This is your damage output right here. With high cast speed and 25% CDR, these skills will come out fast and frequently. Weave in auto attacks and ABB while they’re on CD and you’ll have pretty consistent heavy damage output. Damage numbers can get pretty high with good OA/crit damage; as of the most recent setup I’ve seen hits for around 160k, but my highest damage dealt is ~240k due to playing on multiplayer.

Specific devotion progression and gameplay videos will come shortly.

Concluding Thoughts
This build turned out better than I could have imagined considering I didn’t really have much to test it with before 1.0.0.8. I’ve been running BoC with 0 issues to try and get Shar’Zul’s weapon. Haven’t tried Nemeses yet. Since your damage doesn’t come from holding LMB you don’t have to facetank if you’re worried about dying, and 2 heals + insane ADCtH (with no compromises might I add ;)) means survivability is high. DA is a little lower than I’d like but Veil and ~50% uptime on Wayward Soul means around 2200-2350 effective DA which is satisfactory. Also I enjoy the playstyle way more than that of most DW builds.

As far as leveling is concerned I have no idea how viable this kind of setup is at lower levels since a lot of your damage banks on these specific items. It’d probably be better to do a DW setup then switch over if you’re looking to try this with a fresh character.

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Reserved or something

3

Not bad. Not bad at all.

I was theorycrafting something similar even before the 1.0.0.8 patch notes came out.

Some ideas for you:

  • Oleron’s Blood for Oleron’s Might
  • Some points in Circle of Slaughter for fumble
  • Crown of the Winter King
  • Points in cooldown PB (requires rebuilding your char so you don’t have 50/50 mastery points)
  • Going Spellbreaker to push your CDR even further
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Oh wow I completely forgot about Oleron’s Blood. That probably beats the hell out of the Coldstone/Haunted Steel setups I’ve tried. Some flat damage loss would definitely be worth having a third skill to use. I’ll try that tomorrow.

With Oleron’s Might and the Alkamos set proc I don’t think I’ll need Circle of Slaughter as I’ll have a total of 32% damage reduction on a single target (assuming it’s additive, it likely isn’t based on the phrasing) and 12% AoE damage reduction.

I considered other helms and amulets but I ultimately stuck with the Demonslayer set for the defensive stats on the amulet and the conversion/CDR on the hat. The 5% OA set bonus is nice too. On that note I think Spellbreaker seems good on paper but would not be able to have any meaningful split damage due to no Possession/Second Rite. Also it would be way squishier without the % absorption from Possession and the everything from BoD (my P&A resist is -14% without BoD on).

In regard to the cooldown PB, do you mean the Breath of Belgothian transmuter on Pneumatic Burst? That requires dual-wielding to function doesn’t it?

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It doesn’t stack but it’s more reliable and you get 8% more reduction.

Cooldown PB = Phantasmal Blades without transmuter. I know it’s a long shot since it’ll require so many points to make effective. But at a certain point, the return on skill point investment becomes pretty strong.

I don’t know for sure whether Spellbreaker would be stronger. The biggest synergy is CDR which is the only stat in the game that has increasing marginal returns. But as you mentioned there are lot of sacrifices. Arcanist would certainly make it easier to work with a pure cold/frostburn setup with Crown.

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It would. I have CDR braking SB w/o Alcamos weapon CD on SS is 1.6s (I use double crescent moon so no CDR on weapons). Also use 2 PC of DM set to get SS line on 26/26 ss and 22/12 nje. Sheet dps with ss on lmb is 60k or at least it used to be in 1.0.0.7.

To OP: Nice build :slight_smile:

But lose DS set cold dmg is more potent for you than vitality cuz you have more rr for cold, there is no point converting more potent dmg type to less potent one. Also try to max nje or at least make it 12/12 for better CD on SS. And devotions vise try to get rowans crown for flat rr or manticore, also viper would be nice for you.

P.S. You wouldn’t be squishier with arcanist because with CDR you have your mirror would be on ~10 s CD and you can take maivens for even more toughens.

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Oh duh, I was fixated on Pneumatic Burst for some reason. In early iterations of the build (before 1.0.0.8 dropped) I had considered PB but, as you said, the point investment is pretty high and would likely require sacrifices elsewhere. At that point it would probably just be a PB build.

Thanks for the suggestions. I’ve no doubt that a purely cold damage focused Spellbreaker has more damage potential with RR and higher CDR. If I was using an SB setup I wouldn’t even touch vitality.

I don’t think WH benefits as much from pure cold though, and can somewhat afford the damage split since you have easily applicable RR for both cold and vit. I’ll play with devotions tomorrow to see if I can reach Manticore without major sacrifices. I think I can also move some points around to get NJE higher.

I also have my doubts about SB not being squishier without relying heavily on extremely specific BiS rare rolls for pants, boots, etc. 3 seconds of invincibility is nice, but I’d be concerned about the other 10. With WH, Blood of Dreeg means I can completely ignore P&A resist, and the added armor is great too. 2 heals instead of one, the sustain that comes innately with high vit damage investment, and a 9/12 blade barrier with 1 point invested makes you essentially unkillable.

With all that being said I do want to try out an alternate SB setup as the high CDR sounds really neat. Once my “weekend” starts on Monday I’ll likely use GDStash to edit an 85 SB that’s currently a PB caster and post the results.

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Cold/Vitality…Necromancer Confirmed :rolleyes:

Nice build. I had CDR-Breaker in mind. But i don’t think i have plans to play anymore (atleast not level up any new char) so that build will have to wait till expansion :slight_smile:

Anyways, i am happy that someone managed to work Cold/Vitality synergies. Those were a bitch to figure out :eek:

Nice build

Add it to Build Compendium V (Visit the thread and you’ll see how to post your build)

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Been a few weeks I was thinking and starting to work on a Cold/Vita WH and BAM.

That said, in my idea I was more on a ranged character (with dual pistols ^^)/

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Just a quick update taking into account the suggestions that got posted here. [ul]
[li]Replaced the Coldstone with Oleron’s Blood. As expected, flat damage goes down slightly but Oleron’s Wrath is 100% worth.[/li]
[li]Dropped the single ultimate rank that was in both Aspect of the Guardian and Posession to get NJE up to 5/12; could be higher but every point spent there is welcome.[/li]
[li]Effectively replaced Revenant and most of Amatok with Hawk, Manticore, and Viper in devotions. OA went way up and the RR means I’m hitting harder, but the lost sustain from Revenant is noticeable. I facetanked Benn’Jahr with this new setup still so it can’t be all that bad.[/li]
[li]Adjusted some augments/components to account for lost HP/other stats.[/li]
[/ul]
I may get around to the spellbreaker setup later, I’ve been too busy playing the game among other things :stuck_out_tongue:

Thanks. I think splitting damage like this is ultimately less effecient but the build still works surprisingly well. I love the idea of damage conversion in this game and like trying to make builds work around it. Still toying around with something using Decree of Aldritch and Aetherstorm jewelry. I’ll be sure to post this in the compendium.

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Hey. Awesome concept, and build paths. Your equipment choice is very good. Have you considered re-speccing those three points in amatok into rhowans crown for the elemental storm proc? Also, if you are willing to make a new character, can put 32 points in nightblade, and spec into the PB line (1 point PB and the rest in heartseeker no PB modifier for extra burst to weave in with your other attacks). Just some suggestions.