Hi!
Siphon Soul doesn’t deal any noticeable damage. It has one purpose - leech some life for you. It could be useful for kiting casters, helps them stay alive.
But for a melee tank, such as DK, it it useless, the impact is too low. You constantly recive damage so you should stack a lot of defenses and sustain, and Siphon Soul can’t compete.
Reallocating skill points is dirt cheap in GD, so you can try it yourself.
BTW, I’m going to make other versions of both battlemage and DK, which will probably perform better overall in crucible. I’m waiting for the new patch, cause it should change things, so it’s pointless to post builds until then.
Why do you say Siphon Souls is useless for a melee character? Everyone needs some instant life leech. Plus it ticks every second if I remember correctly.
Personal experience. Skill points are not infinite and from my opinion it’s better to invest them in other skills.
Can I be wrong? One never finds out if he doesn’t try himself.
Oh sweet! I’m making a Death Knight myself right now, but I’m looking for some pointers by an experienced player. I took some ideas from your build and some from another. For the life of me can’t remember his name, though, shamefur dispray on my part.
I have to say, your optimizations blow my build out of the water already, but I may just be going too much into offensive stats, rather than focusing on defensive side of things. I’m an avid Path of Exile player (well over 6000 hours) so I know how defense is key and glass cannons generally do not work or are super frustrating to play. I just don’t have the “feel” for where the “lines” are in GD yet, like I do in PoE.
In addition to my other post, mostly because I required post count to be able to provide you with a much needed link, here’s my take on your latest optimization: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/p25KeolZ
Most of the changes are in the devotion side of things. Some of them just feel too good to lose for what is gained on the other side. Feel free to bash, deform and mutate at will. I am by no means an expert builder.
Only way to be kymons chosen as necro, is to have not selected Necro mastery before doing the initiation quest. So:
Choose any mastery but necro. And do not choose 2nd mastery.
Get homestead.
Choose kymon as ally.
Level up.
Choose Necro as 2nd mastery.
I leveled up so many chars that I don’t remember if you will be able to purchase items from them after you finally choose necro mastery. But you can buy eveything you need beforehand.
But a much easier way is just to use other augments: pure vitality res, aether/chaos, etc.
Flame Torrent is much more useful for battlemage since he converts some fire and chaos into aether. I use it for DK mainly because I need red and green affinity points in my devotion setup and Flame Torrent is least useless.
Death Knight is very stong, he can take lots of hits. For everything except last waves of crucible it is optimal to go full offense, I even take Dying God devotion and its proc simply for 10% total speed and 40% crit damage.
But waves 150-170 can be extremely rough depending on mutators and what bosses will appear. So I go for Obelisk of Menhir. It has super great defensive proc which is way better thay any additional lifesteal you can get (you already have good lifesteal from Reaping Strike skill).
Nothing wrong with your devotion setup, but for toughest content I’d prefer mine. However it obviously depends on a player.
Good luck!
Just a tiny little update about the progress on my DK.
I’ve leveled and I’m still leveling with a 2h build as suggested, tremor forcewave, very effective. Doing pretty good so far, no deaths, not even close either, everything is a walk in the park. I’ve done Crucible up to wave 120 without any issues. Still haven’t touched 2nd difficulty yet, because I want to clear 100% and this game is absolutely massive…
Well, you’ve played PoE before, so you won’t have any big problems.
Many people here also played it, including myself, cause there aren’t that many good arpgs in the world. In terms of depth, complexity, balance (and a lot other things) I personally thing Grim Dawn is among 3 best arpgs in the world - together with PoE and D3.
So yeah, have a good time!
I haven’t really played Grim Dawn much or seriously until now, so my understanding of the stats and game in general are fairly minimal. I did of course grow up with D2, so…
I guessed the usual basics apply here, cap res, get some hp pool, enough damage to get through the story smoothly. It’s like PoE in that regard, defense first. I like that in an aRPG.
Just a post of thanks for the update here. I’ve had a death knight since your original build post. With the latest update I’ve moved up to gladiator level with ease! Oh and I finally had an Outcast’s Secret drop!
I can’t describe all game mechanics here, but here are a couple of tips:
capping resists is a must for ultimate difficulty. for gladiator crucible you need to have 30-40% overcap on elemental+aether res because monsters heavily shred your resists there and these res are most important
in terms of offense all top builds are made around Reducing Resistance mechanics (froms skills+devotions), these are the core to any strong build. Hence builds usually focus around one type of damage
in terms of defense we have Defensive Ability (DA). 3k DA will make you resistant to crits from bosses and 4k DA will add 40% evasion and 15% incoming damage reduction to that. That’s an enormous EHP boost, so most builds for crucible are trying to have 4k+ DA. (ofc more DA adds even more, but a patch is coming very soon that will make all DA above 4k ineffective)
In my signature I have a link to the thread where I gather most powerful builds, so you can see what concepts work if you’re interested.
That thread was the one I started on when I came back, I’ve looked through every build on there. I’m a bit of a thematic purist when it comes to builds I play.
I want the strongest build that is fun to play and not too complex (with like 16 buttons and juggling 7 cooldowns and 5 temporary buffs or something), but I also look for builds that look like the theme I’m going for. Meaning for example, fire will focus on fire damage, but I also try to include only or mostly skills and procs that look like fire.
That’s how I arrived at Aether DK, because it only has physical soldier stuff, which you can hardly see thanks to soldier the fashion minimalist, and Aether buffs, procs, and spells.
I made a similar one in 1.0.3.1 with Blademaster, also Arthas, but physical and cold only, with all the cold buffs, skills and shadowstrike. This was long ago though and I doubt it was any good end-game, I don’t have the build anymore anyway.
But yeah, that’s what I look for, a theme, and then the most effective min/max build for it. I do the same on PoE, even if it means not playing the “strongest” meta build. I play for fun.
You could at least post a link to your build.
I’m going for 90%+ success rate without too much effort. I can easily convert all my DA into damage, turning it basically into an original version for campaign. Yes, that can clear much faster, I did under 15min runs, but I didn’t like the safety level at all. I don’t know how people are running in crucible with close to zero defenses and feel comfortable, I find this way not suitable for me nor for 90% of players.
My build is the one you have posted in the update for DK. Just went back to the MI shield is all, the “Colossal Bulwark” you recommended in the original iteration of this build. It does much more damage than the Untouchable. Mind you I am farming 100 - 150 so easier to do without the added DA.
So you’re wrong because you were talking about absolutely different thing and didn’t mention it.
Waves 100-150 are a lazy boat ride on a lake during a sunny day and 150-170 is a full storm in the open ocean. Absolutely other difficulty.
