[1.0.1.1] The Wendigo - Fevered Rage Vitality Conjurer and Hardcore God

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
21

This is a very new player friendly build. Both masteries provide an early good casting skill ( Dreeg’s Evil Eye or Devouring Swarm) and both provide pets that can take on most early content (hellhound or briarthorn). One can get to level 40 or 50 easily with those 2 skills maxed.

I started a new character and went the Shaman route and by the mid to high 30’s had a maxed Devouring Swarm, Briarthorn, Wendigo Totem and 3/12 Blood Pact, Storm Totem with vitality transmuter skill ( there are also some 10 points assigned to Modragon’s Pact line). Devotion-wise I went bat, wiper, lizard, wendigo to give life steal procs to my totems. Your devotion path also works. Which shows how new player friendly the build really is. Its a difficult build to 'screw-up". As an aside, I have not needed DS in many levels.

Because of the ease of gaining quick leveling skills and the fire and forget nature of most of the skills (lets face it you can drop SoC on yourself if you like); this build is a very good “starter” build.

22

This is a lot like my build I am using for my first playthrough which is also a hardcore character.

I am finding it very easy to play, I was worried about no circuit breaker but Im level 33 and already have 5.7k Hp.

I have leveled up like so;

I used Devouring swarm exclusively for my damage early, getting Mogdrogen’s pact to 6 and then pumping points into the mastery, I decided to forgo any early points in Occulist as I saw it needing to many points to bear any real fruit. My thinking was Devouring + Storm totem/Corrupt storm with Wendigo/Blood Pack would trump Devouring + Curse of frailty/vulnerability and if I invested that far I would be mad not to go that little bit further for Blood of Dreeg.

With that plan i was able to get to 40 Shaman mastery and points into Corrupt totem at 25 and by 28 my build was was looking like this…

I am currently 33 and going great, I did have some early spirit problems with gear but they were easily fixed and might have a few more issues in the next few levels. I restarted my character (previous character to this one) after I found out through testing I can use the crucible to get early devotion points and basically max my points after a single normal playthrough (currently have 19 points and yet to start my veteran playthrough). I am clearing up to wave 80 easily and now just repeating that over and over (doing early waves because its fun haha).

I am pumping points into Occulist to give me the stats I need only stopping to get 6 points into Blood of Dreeg and then going all the way to 50 mastery and plan to invest into Possession then most likely Curse of frailty back at the start. I’ve simply been balancing my Devouring swarm points based on how much mana I’m chewing through currently I have it at 12/16 and doing great as max I was waiting for my mana pots to come off CD in big waves.

For devotion I want to hit Dying god quickly but due to the amount of points needed I first invested in Bat, Lizard, Gallows and currently putting points into Wendigo… considering once I tackle normal at level 40ish with 22 to 24 devotion points from doing the crucible Ill just move over to dying god while doing that run.

Hope this helps anyone who might be a bit stuck with how to tackle it, I was a bit worried I would do something wrong but this has worked out fantastic thus far. If I happen to die I can almost say with certainty that it will be because I got careless and not due to the build.

Edit: I will add wave 35 in the crucible (I think its waves 30 to 40 anyway) there are two champ parasites that spawn a poison one and a blood one… THEY SUCK SO HARD! Its not that they are dangerous (they can get you down but I always had a health potion on cd) but they must be almost immune to vit damage, even with my totems they take a minute, my first kill without the storm totem took 5 minutes I reckon lol, because this build is so tanky it was like the unstoppable force vs the immovable object.

23

I agree that this is a great starter build; this is my fourth character and has the best kill speed of the four. Now that I spent some time with this build (finished Normal @ LV51), I’ve reordered the devotion progress in my last post.

For skills, I went with Shaman mastery first and maxed out Devouring Swarm to use as my main damage skill. At level 22, I had Shaman mastery at Rank 40 and one point in each Shaman skill that this build uses. From 23-30, I raised Wendigo Totem to 11/12 and Storm Totem to 16/16. From 31-51, I maxed out Occultist mastery and put one point in each Occultist skill that this build uses. From 52-58, I’m going to raise Heart of the Wild and Oak Skin evenly to 8/10. I’m not sure what I’ll do after that.

I’m in Warden’s Cellar (Elite) right now and I’m still using Devouring Swarm as my main damage skill but it’s starting to feel less efficient. I think I’ll switch to using Storm Totem for damage when I start Act 2.

What is the purpose of the Symbol of Solael in the main weapon? Why not use Haunted Steel?

24

I guess it is to get the - res to VIT and chaos.

25

Also, the ADCTH bonuses from Haunted Steel aren’t so useful because the build does not use weapon damage skills

26

The build doesn’t use weapon damage, so haunted steel wouldn’t help with sustain.

27

found my answer, nice build. started something similiar around december (been some time since I played that toon), may try to redo him into something like this. keep it up to date please :slight_smile:
My thanks to the devotion guide provided by Pickle as well, it was helpful.

28

I managed to get to wave 147 on challenger with my level 54 toon after tweaking things, but i had to give up when I was confronted with the mad queen.
I could not out dps her sustain so after 5 minutes of hit and run I decided to stand still and drop dead.

I wonder if my dps will improve as much with better gear? As of now it looks like all the spells I use are damage over time and I am not sure if there is stuff I can spam in order to increase my dps? I am clicking the skills like a madman, but maybe there is a way to be more effective, any ideas?

29

LOL! Honestly that’s more a testament to how great/powerful the build is than an issue. Keep in mind there’s a large chunk of builds that struggle to clear Crucible on Aspirant at level 85, and even more that struggle with Challenger at 85. The fact that you can get that far when you’re only level 54 is super impressive.

Just keep leveling and try again later =)

30

thanks, I guess there is nothing to complain in general, I was just not sure by how much my dps is going to rise, cause it took me ages to do it.

I think it is not too hard to clear challenger. I did it once with my chaos cadence toon around the same level a few months back.
As long as you know your enemies abilities and act accordingly (of course some RNG is always involved).

31

I’ve got a question. I really like the build, but I get obliterated by ultimate nemesis Anasteria, especially when fever raged, unless I’m kiting her quite heavily, and even then it takes quite a while for me to kill her. I don’t have the appropriate Gollus rings, so I used the Judicator’s Signet set.

32

There are a couple of enemies you don’t want to use Fevered Rage on and Anasteria is one of them.

33

Yes, I found that out the hard way :). Still, she will go down eventually, but only after a protracted kiting maneuver.

34

Thank you for sharing this incredible build as well as your HC Guide! Awesome work!

I’m more or less new to hardcore in Grim Dawn after years of D3 HC and kinda curious to know why you chose to invest so much devotion points in order to get the Manticore/Acid Spray 25% RR. Instead of Rat and Manticore you could chose Ghoul (with a circuit breaker) and Giants blood. Is the 25% RR worth so much more, especially since you got a lot of RR already? Or am I just disproportionately afraid of dying?

Edit: http://www.grimtools.com/calc/r2B0PbZA

35

RR is always worth it. And I don’t think he really gimped survivability by taking Manticore when we see in the video that he just facetanked a Fevered Raged Iron Maiden. Also, Ghoul won’t work in your suggestion because ADCTH only works on weapon attacks and this build doesn’t use any. This is also why you can’t see Haunted steel in the build

36

I noticed that. How do we know which effects work only on weapon attacks?

37

OK, so better than ‘a lot of RR’ is only ‘more than a lot of RR’, got that. Could you then please help me understand why we put 5 Points in Destruction (chaos & fire damage) instead of Vulnerability for example (morrrrrre RR)? - Is it for sustain this time (sigil adcth)?

38

I don’t really know by just looking at it. I just learned it from reading the forums. Obviously flat damage only works on weapon attacks too, and IIRC, x% reduced resistances (like Viper).

I don’t play this build but what I know is that Vulnerability scales poorly beyond 10/10. If you look at it, you will notice that past rank 10, it only gives 1% RR per level instead of 2% per level before 10/10 (i.e, it has diminishing returns). A lot of skills work like this. Now a lot of people don’t like overcapping skills with diminishing returns as those points are usually better spent elsewhere (Destruction in this case). 4% additional RR isn’t really a lot and this build has good Chaos damage too (901% from grimtools) so Destruction helps sustain a bit.

39

Thank you for clarifying this!

40

When it comes to the devotions, I am unsure which skills are the best.
Is this optimal?:
Dead God:Bloody Pox
Manticore: Devouring Swarm
Bat: Storm Totem
Hourglass: Sigil of Consumption
Wendigo’s Mark: COF