b Hagaraz The Dark One - Vitality Hybrid DW Melee
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Credits to THT for his glorious concept of Dark One scourge strike Cabalist. You can access his thread here:
Update 1: Shifting skill points from ravenous earth skill tree to bone harvest and reaping strike based on Ptiro’s suggestion. Also adding more explanations
Update 2: Just realized that theurgist prefix for soul harvest is not really needed. Although the flat vitality damage added would be 22, generic prefix suffix like stalwart and readiness can also be used. Decaying is also usable as the flat vitality damage increased can be 21. The build updated with dread lord’s prefix + chaos strike as another nuker, increasing the kill speed considerably as it enable us to move quicker! Credit to superfluff for suggesting.
Preface
Cabalist is the first mastery I started with when I start playing Grim Dawn. That is because I like to play pet build in every ARPG I play, especially the one that use skeleton. Unfortunately, pet build is the weakest archetype in grim dawn, mainly because of the itemization, skill tree, and devotions cannot fully support the stats separation between player and pets.
I still play pet build though, but only for levelling a necro :p. Other than that, I am still trying to build a truly hybrid pet build in grim dawn.
So, after failing to make a pet necro build, I stumbled across THT thread and converting my build to DW melee. After that, I am experimenting a lot with other vitality build cabalist, trying all the skill available in them.
This build is one of them, an effort to update THT build with all the patches.
The Build
https://www.grimtools.com/calc/eVLBxBMN
Screenshot with all permanent buff + blood of dreeg, soul harvest, hungering void, and call of the grave.
DPS shown is scourge strike
Build Feature
- High OA DA
- Huge Weapon Damage
- Can reach +3500% of vitality damage with some good rolls
- 109%+10% Vitality RR
- Good Crits Damage
- Good Lifesteal
- Quite tanky due to dark one procs, possession, reduced enemy damage (ravenous earth & bloody pox modifier), and OA shred (bloody pox). Mark of torment is only used for facing high attack boss and nemesis.
- Claw of Hagaraz is faction blue prints.
- 3 Nuker came from item (sacred, chaos, scourge strike)
- Dual wield melee
- Need to drink energy potions if energy leech is not working.
- OK CC resist, it is enough for finishing no buff and banner 150 Crucible though.
- To some people, too many button to press
- Dual wield melee
Equipment Choices
Core Items:
Full Dark One Set
Main Hand + Off Hand: 2x Claw of Hagaraz. Build defining items, craft at arngrim for +% armor
Medal: Mythical Direwolf Crest. For dual wielding
Amulet: Death-Watcher Pendant. For increasing Call of the grave durations, Best prefix should be dread lord’s for adding more flat vitality damage + ADCTH, enabling us to use riftstone component. Other prefix option should be decaying, stalwart, or whatever for resistances. For suffix, get one that increase OA/DA like protection, attack, readiness, or dranghoul
Relic: Scourge. Build defining relics, get %DA for completion bonus
Others:
Rings: Judicator’s seals set. OA&DA Bonus, RR, heal
Belt: Mythical Girdle of Stolen Dreams. Huge OA bonus, helpful energy leech, +Occultist
Pants & Boots: To cover resistant, Cunning and Spirit Requirements.
Devotions
We are going all out in offensive vitality devotions, taking triple T3 devotions, twin fangs (bat) and the almighty flame torrent (fiend):
- Dying God --> staple for vitality build, super 40% crits damage and high vitality damage multiplier
- Rattosh --> Huge 25% Vitality RR and 8% Life leech RR for even more
- Aeon --> Use offensively (double attack for all our nuker, call of the grave cooldown reset) and defensively (reducing mark of torment cooldown)
- Twin fangs --> Trash clearing, more sustain with life leech
- Flame Torrent --> If scourge strike, sacred strike, chaos strike, and bone harvest are our cannon, flame torrent is our machine gun.
For sequence:
- Crossroads Red
- Fiend, bind to ravenous earth
- Bat, bind to curse of frailty
- Crossroads Blue
- Eel
- Lizard
- Solemn Watcher
- Lion
- Scholar’s Light
- Crossroads Yellow
- Jackal
- Rattosh the Veil Warden, bind to bloody pox
- Sailor’s Guide
- Dying God (to procs only), bind to bone harvest
- Aeon’s Hourglass, bind to scourge strike
Gameplay
Keybind:
LMB: Scourge Strike
RMB: Bone Harvest
Mouse scroll up: Curse of Frailty
Mouse scroll down: Bloody Pox
Middle mouse button: Blood of Dreeg
Keyboard 1: Ravenous Earth
Keyboard 2: Call of the Grave
Keyboard 3: Sacred Strike
Keyboard 4: Chaos Strike
Keyboard 5: Mark of Torment
Standard procedure:
Cast call of the grave
Scroll up & down & press to activate CoF, Pox, and BoD
Chaos strike in
Cast Bone Harvest, triggering hungering void
Cast Ravenous Earth near the enemies, triggering Flame torrent
Mash LMB, RMB, keyboard 3, keyboard 4.
Rinse and repeat, kite if necessary
Build Explanation and Performance
In cabalist, Dark one set, solael witchfire, second rite, soul harvest, and possession can increase weapon damage considerably high. By dual wielding, it will increase even further. However, cabalist lack the skill to utilize that huge weapon damage aside from bone harvest (which unfortunately only use main hand damage).
Then what do you do with those huge weapon damage? Use item skill of course! This build use triple strike skill on top of bone harvest for nuker: chaos strike for mobility, sacred strike as RR, and scourge strike for super nuker! All of them utilize both weapon damage. In addition, WPS skill is also used so you can trigger some when you are mashing those attack button.
There are some selection for vitality damage weapon, going by THT concept and dark one set purposes, you can use bonespike, then focus your skill point to ravenous earth. For me, I pick Claw of Hagaraz, which provide more skill point to both masteries and unique self buff to call of the grave.
Claw of Hagaraz is silently buffed in patch 1.0.5.0, adding +10% crits damage to call of the grave. This provide more burst damage to the build with sufficient OA. With more skill points, we can add bloody pox (OA shred and reduced enemy damage), a bit of WPS, and mark of torment! Increasing the build survivability.
With +600% Vitality damage and +20% Crits damage, also more RR and leech from Rattosh, the offensive part of the build -compared to THT concept- is still there and can potentially be greater. With Aeon + death-watcher pendant modifer, call of the grave is inactive for only 3 second.
The build can consistently and easily clear 150 Crucible with no buff and banner. Basic understanding of what the enemy and nemesis can do is essential though.
I also tried to do 170 crucible without buff and banner, but in 160 alek and reaper killed me, pincer attack me from both sides.
Well, this build can surely do 170 with buff and banner with more practice, especially on the next patch.
Afterword
Go Team RED!!!