[1.0.5.1] The Gildam Arcanum - AetherLightning Mage Hunter

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
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[If you guys are looking for a polished build that can do 151-170 crucible consistently, you are looking on the wrong thread. This build is still in polishing process]

Allagast.png832×838

Preface
Greetings!
This is my first serious build thread. Allagast’s Masterpiece is a set that have not been explored much by the top builder. I am trying to make a 150-170 crucible worthy build with this set.

Duo damage of Aether Lightning. Allagast set gives a really important modifier for Storm box, which is flat CDR of 1.3 second.
This enable you to stack triple Aether / lightning damage of storm box and lightning tether to the enemy. In addition, you also get a huge flat aether damage and Stackable RR for aether + lightning.
Coupled with maximum cast speed, the DPS of storm box can achieve as much as 150k.

The set also support Trozan Sky Shard by adding more flat damage and converting all cold damage to aether.
Personally, It seems a weird choice from the dev as I think giving the skill modifier to devastation will make the set much more powerful.
However I will still try to get around it. :stuck_out_tongue:

The Build

https://www.grimtools.com/calc/pZrrvJ5Z
Screenshot with deadly aim, and sitting on inquisitor seal
DPS shown in the screen is Storm Box

Equipment Choices:
Core items:
Main Hand, Chest, Shoulder, and 1st ring is Allagast set obviously.
2nd ring: Myth band of eternal haunt. For Aether RR
Amulet: Aetherbolt Pendant. Gives more Aether + Lightning RR to Storm Box, also cast speed.
Belt: Myth Cord of Violent Decay. Converting fire damage from devotion procs to aether.
Relic: Eternity. The best relic for aether build using mirror.

Others:
Helm: Mythical clairvoyant head. For plus skills and maximum CDR.
Off-Hand: ### Rolderathis’ Tome of Celestial Wrath. For flat CDR on TSS. Celestial wrath suffix for +Aether Lightning damage and Cast speed.
Pants: Myth Arcane Harmony Leggings. For huge flat DA, spirit, and mainly skill disruption resist.
Gloves: Myth Light’s Defender Gloves. For overcapping Storm box, also giving nice cast speed.
Medal: Myth Gildam Arcanum Commendation. We use all the skills it pluses, give nice modifier to storm box and WoP, also cast speed.
Boots: To cover resistances. Fallen skies suffix for plus skills to TSS and nice procs.

Devotions:
CDR in this build is mainly used for activating defensive skills and procs from devotions and mirror.

Aetherfire to Storm box of Elgoloth
Really important for this build. Props to Superfluff for his Uroboruuk apostate build for giving me this idea. Storm box with lightning tether behaves similar with channeled skill. Converting 50% (max 60%) of fire damage to aether provide so much damage. Tether one big enemy and running around, it will cover the whole field with aetherfire and cleaning the trash so fast. Also because it gives no DoT, all damage will be stacked.

Phoenix Fire to Trozan’s Sky Shard
Helping survivability so much. 42% CDR is needed to make this proc up forever. Sit in inquisitor seal with phoenix active, then you can face tank one nemesis + some boss enemy.

Arcane Bomb to Aether Corruption
With this build CDR, you can get the procs cooldown to 1.2 sec. Bounded to aether corruption, like aetherfire, it will cover the whole field with the bomb.

Time Dilation to Transmuted Callidor’s Tempest
No explanation needed. :stuck_out_tongue:

Healing Rain
Up all the time

Giant’s Blood
With time dilation and eternity reset, up almost all the time.

Build Performance:
This build should have no problem in campaign.
Have not been tested to the celestials though, the character have not even complete the ultimate. :smiley:

In crucible, I only barely finish 150 crucible, but I think it is only because my bad piloting skills as I only have 430 hours in this game.
I think this build can still achieve higher levels.

Out of vanilla nemesis, only valdaran gives much troubles because it has full resist to Aether and Lightning, others can be dealt easily.

Rashalga will be difficult if there are so many trash surrounding it.

Have not been tested to AoM nemesis as the character is still in fort ikon.

What need to be improved:

  • Offensive Ability: Without Deadly aim but with DA shred of Storm box, OA is only barely passable.
  • HP: not even achieve 10k with full buff.
  • Defensive mechanism: I am currently testing the Nature’s guardian proc with this build, equipment needed to be rearranged for the loss of OA and phoenix fire need to go. Build version with Nature’s Guardian: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/q2MmJqr2

That is about it. Comments and constructive criticism will be appreciated!!

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Reserved for things

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If you use a Wendigo Eye Medal you can get a huge bonus to effective OA. It is another MI, but I’d say it’s pretty much required for this build. Without using this medal you’re unlikely to hit crits and trigger Deadly Aim, so the build is probably dead in the water. You lose some chaos resist from using it instead of the Mythical Gildam Arcanum medal, but you can swap some augments to make up for that pretty easily. You had a lot of armor augments that gave +poison resist, but there isn’t really a reason to overmax poison resist imo.

You didn’t invest a single point in Fabric of Reality, which I think was a mistake. That gives flat bonus aether damage to all your spells and shouldn’t be underestimated. I also think you don’t need to use seal of resonance on your off-hand. If you use another seal of corruption you get more OA, and you stay at 67% stun resistance, which should be enough.

Tweaks: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/4NOlpLP2

You may also want to consider grabbing manticore in devotions for flat resist reduction. You already have a lot of -% RR, but no source of flat or %reduced RR. I’m not sure how big of a difference it would make in damage output, but it’s worth investigating.

With Manticore: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/q2mGKXmZ

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Fabric of Reality only adds flat damage to weapon damage skills, so its useless in this build.

To OP: I assume you made this for 170, based on your gear choices. Too bad I’m on mobile so I can’t suggest a devotion path but I’m pretty sure you can get TD, spear and tree without sacrificing something important like widow. Actually I don’t think tree is necessary given that you can have mirror and giant’s blood and seal. I think what you should get in your setup are: TD, Spear, Giant, Widow, Manticore. The rest is just about being more efficient in getting there. Suggesting spear to help with OA. Now that I think about it try looking for Ptirodaktill’s Spellbinder build. The devotion path there could be easily applicable to this. I’ll be providing a concrete setup if I get to my laptop.

As for gear, try using phantom thread girdle. Gives you a shit ton of OA, which is really the only problem with this build (but it’s a big problem). Use Ravager’s eye on both weapons. Helps with DA (you can never have too much of this) and HP. If you can afford it, try getting an MI pants that covers a lot of resists and see if you can afford using wendigo lifescent powder on gear after that.

You don’t really need to max mental alacrity cause it’s not a spambuild.

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I could have sworn Fabric of Reality was an exception to this and its damage applied to skills, regardless of whether or not they had a % weapon damage component. But looking around I can’t find any information to substantiate this, so I must have been mistaken. :eek:

EDIT: Based on x1x1x1x2’s thoughts on devotion routes I came up with two possible alternative devotion routes:

Alternative devotion route 1: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/d2jOXG0V (no manticore, but better OA)
Alternative devotion route 2: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/pZrrvn3Z

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IMHO for 170 it’s probably best to turn this into a pure kiting build with high emphasis on movement speed and slow resistance. It’s also not a terrible idea to consider Enslaved Wraith for the offhand.

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Wendigo eye medal can indeed be good with gildam arcanum suffix; massive cast speed, chance of massive CDR, and 60% skill disruption resist!
I can replace the pants with myth chausses of barbaros that will gives massive OA! Or replace the gloves + pants with eastern set that will also gives big OA.
Lost some skill points on lightning tether and elemental balance though,

Fabric of reality: Like x1x1x1x2 said, base on the basic game mechanic, this build will only benefit from % damage increase. The flat damage increase, which will be the only reason to pick it, will not benefit storm box and TSS at all.

Seal of resonance: If we are aiming for crucible 170, the build need to have good CC resist, which resonance can provide.

Manticore: I actually have tested it, Indeed it increase my kill times to Valdaran. However, in the current setup, without phoenix fire, I occasionally get one-shotted by whatever things that I cannot identify in 60ish wave. Manticore nodes also do not provide anything beneficial to this build at all. Maybe because my kiting skill is not good enough.
In short, relying solely on mirror for defense (inqui seal and maiven sphere is not enough), demand high concentration almost all the time, I don’t really like that playstyle.

Mental alacrity: is for its cast speed. Without it, storm box will not achieve 100k DPS like in the pic.
Refer to Zantai post: http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/showthread.php?p=575526#post575526

TD, Spear, Giant, Widow, Manticore, and imp is indeed possible. The equipment might need to be made more defensive though.
I like taking giant + tree because with seal, I can achieve 1K health regen :smiley:
Increasing the OA and DA by sacrificing health regen may be better though.

Phantom thread girdle: Myth cord of violent decay convert 50% of fire to aether which I really like to pair with aetherfire. Without imp, there really is nothing better to pair storm box with.

I’ve tried it, by not taking seal. DA of this build need to be increase more though. Because without it, like I said before, it will get occasionally one-shotted by random boss enemy in >60ish wave of crucible. Also, because this is not DoT build, more kiting will make clear speed significantly decreased.

Movement speed and slow res is easy to be capped, but the thing is we do not have a good CC in the build.
You can build up good CC by maxing word of agony and using myth temporal tempest + myth gildam arcanum commendation for -40% total speed to the enemy, which is not possible to be used in this build.

Enslaved wraith: About this item, it only benefit lightning damage though. I choose rolderathis’ tome mainly because of the flat CDR to TSS, to spam it more often.

I actually used it in my first iteration of this build though, focusing mainly in the lightning damage: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/YZeavPvZ
It can occasionally finish the 150 crucible, but it has big problem in facing fabius and especially iron maiden. While with the new build, you can face them no problem.

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Didn’t know about the cast speed on Tether thing. Anyway, I managed to fit in Tree, Spear, TD and Imp but no Manticore cause I think you have enough RR from gear. Here’s the setup: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/eVLB5G4N

I think it’s fine on paper, especially if you can manage the buttons but that amount of buttons isn’t just for me so I can’t test. I changed belt, pants and boot prefix cause I felt the build needs more res overcap and to accomodate lifescent powders for HP. Also I think Violent decay conversion isn’t really cause Imp isn’t your primary DPS source anyway, though I would understand if you really wanna use it and it’s easier on resists. You’d need some affix change to account for the OA loss though. IMO, you need 2.8k OA for this build minimum.

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@x1x1x1x2: thanks for your help! I agree that this build need more OA, like 2.8k unbuffed.
I will try to rearrange the build, although violent decay need to stay there because honestly I feel that imp contribute to the build so much.

About the spear, each of its nodes are powerful I agree, but the proc is weak. We also don’t have high weapon damage to utilize it fully.

Also, I might ditch the TSS entirely and go with devastation… :stuck_out_tongue:

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On spear, you’ll need it cause OA, there’s no other way of getting more without changing gear aside from maybe Dying God

And please don’t ditch TSS for Devastation. It’s already overused by now :stuck_out_tongue: . Honestly, though I think TSS will net you more efficiency and (actual) DPS cause with devastation you want to kite only around the raining area which is risky (and will need more practice to be reliable) while Mirror is on cooldown. It won’t net you so much DPS cause you didn’t build for it. TSS on the other hand is naturally supported by your gear and you can hit it better, especially with the decreased radius mod which gives more shotgun potential. And the only thing you worry about when kiting is not breaking tether.

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I agree with x1x1 that you want to get spear and/or dying god for the OA bonus. Without it you’re going to have trouble getting enough. Also TSS > Devastation for this build for sure.

EDIT: Here’s an interesting devotion path which doesn’t complete spear. It uses 4x Dying God and 3x spear to maximize OA, without sacrificing manticore, behemoth, or imp.

You can also adjust from x1x1’s devotion route to get 3x dying god nodes, which makes your OA higher than it needs to be (potentially allowing other adjustments to devos/skills/gear)

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The second one is indeed interesting. I will try that…

@all: I can easily make this devastation build by changing the helm to anasteria’s and off hand to ternox. Also, tether may not allow you to kite far because it has maximum distance.

Honestly, I am just tired of killing valdaran too long…

Although it will need some further testing if devastation is really fit with this set.

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I made some adjustment to include devastation, omitting TSS entirely, using the same devotion, adjusting some equipment to increase OA/DA.
https://www.grimtools.com/calc/62aO4ggZ
(word of pain can be bound to phoenix)

Damn, wave 150 become completely easy. I was dead in wave 160 because I got cocky in facing reaper. But the damage and synergy in the build is so good.

Storm box damage dps decreased by 30%, but it’s worth it.
Lightning tether is not allowing you to kite far, also you can stop by inquisitor seal when you stop kiting.

Edit: What I don’t like if using TSS is, you need to stop and cast it continuously.
Devastation is like storm box, cast it and forget.