[1.0.6.1] Poison Paradise: 10:30-11:30 Crucible Gladi. 150-170, no green items caster WH [c+][vid]

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
1

Hi, mom!

E7fkCqi.png940×1079

The taste of your lips
I’m on a ride
You’re toxic I’m slippin’ under
With a taste of a poison paradise…

Poet, circa 2003

Foreword (such a weird word, “foreword”)

I had this build in my countless collection of builds that I would probably never play - dozens of grimtools links that translate into hours and hours of sweet procrastination. The concept was pretty simple, few months ago, I made a Dark One Conjurer vitality caster, back when Dark One set was just introduced and Crucible was cold, brutal, unforgiving and smelled of jajaja’s tears and his broken dreams about an era where melee characters could dominate once more (such a shame he didn’t live to see that). Conjurer kinda worked, but its Crucible success rate was not something I was happy with so I shelved it (and eventually remade it into Shockingly Versatile Build). At the same time I played with the concept of a poison caster wearing same Dark One set, a caster that due to class’ natural synergy should’ve been a tankier and better version of Dark One Conjurer. But back then I thought, meh, poison caster, what a boring build. Well, I was wrong. Kinda.

Build Concept

Massive AoE DoT and debuffs

This build deletes screen after screen of Crucible waves without too much effort. Everyone on the screen is affected in one way or another: huge slow, insane RR debuffs, disgusting OA shred, confusion, you name it.

Affordability

I love making affordable builds that don’t involve double rare green monster infrequents or a set of Alkamos rings. First and foremost, because I don’t have all that, even after almost 1400 hours in the game (well, I do have a lot of stuff, but still no Stonehide Stoneplate Greaves of Kings, even after 4000+ crafts or Ancient Kuba Chausses of Kings, etc.). Second of all, it’s satisfying to make a build that a lot of less experienced players can try and have success with it.

Tankiness and easy piloting

Did I mention I suck in actually playing this game (a lot of games, tbh)? I made this build in a way that even less skilled pilots will have success with it without learning all Crucible spawns or hitting insane timings with double mirror and clicking 20 buttons. This caster is tanky, and it’s relatively easy to pilot.

1.0.7.1 update

After 1.0.7 Crucible has been toned down a bit and I made this build work. You have to kite a lot on waves 160 and 170, but at least now you can kite effectively with 63% slow res and Ghoul as additional defense layer. Every other wave build handles with ease. Added a video of 10 minute Crucible 150-170 clear (3 buffs/1 banner).

1.0.7 update

Build is now just semi-viable for Crucible 150-170 farming. It deals more damage but due to Crucible buff and Acid&Poison still being weak I wouldn’t recommend trying to farm Crucible with it.


The Build
<<<<<<<<<<<GRIMTOOLS>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Gear

All gear choices are pretty obvious. Dark One’s Gift is a set that offers a huge amount of nice stats and uncompromised level of defense and it doesn’t occupy Amulet/Weapon slot (looking at you, Dreeg set). Both weapon and off-hand are craftable and offer really nice offensive stats (that juicy resist reduction on Mythical Plaguebearer of Dreeg). Try and get %Physique or %Armor bonuses on those by crafting them at Angrim. Off-hand should have 17%+ cdr (try to get 19%). Conduit of Eldritch Whispers is an awesome defensive amulet, we need RR mod for Bloody Pox, secondary resist can be Aether, Pierce or Chaos (Poison or Vitality or Bleeding won’t do), it should be also crafted at Angrim. Boots offer a very valuable trap resistance that is crucial to our build, they should also be crafted at Angrim. Relic choice might seem weird, but trust me, it’s an awesome relic and fits this build like a glove: pet gives -RR aura plus is a decent proc machine.

Skills and Devotions

We are maxing out Dreeg’s Evil Eye branch and Merciless Repertoire (for %damage and flat Poison), as well as Wasting mod of Bloody Pox spell. For everything else, you can move few points around depending on you might need (like more resists or more damage). Devotion setup is pretty neat, you can choose to use Eye of the Guardian instead of Bat (and I would recommend it for campaign), but in Crucible Bat offers very decent and stable health returns and loss of damage from Eye of the Guardian is negligible.

Leveling and Attribute Points Distribution

Start leveling as Occulitst and max Dreeg’s Evil Eye branch along with CoF and Vulnerability. You can use transmuted DEE + two Marks of Dreeg component skills and you will be good till late Elite. In Elite you can add Night’s Chill and Shadow Dance from Nightblade’s tree.

Put 27 points into Spirit, equip any item that gives spirit, equip off-hand, take off that spirit item and put an actual gear piece. All other points should go in Physique.

The Showdown

How to play

In Main Campaign, it’s pretty trivial, we can facetank most things except Mad Queen or Grava’Thul. In Crucible, during dangerous waves at 150-170 you should always backpedal and cast all your stuff at 3 angry Nemeses that are trying to catch you and make a little brazzers video together. Build is tanky enough to take hits from Nemeses that catch up and keep on running and casting. Use Shadow Strike wisely, it’s a great tool to reposition and get out of danger, as well as a perilous skill when used recklessly (i.e. teleporting into Moosie while running a way from two Reapers is a bad idea or getting a drop on Zantarin at any time). Use Aetherward Oil for wave 169 or for pesky poison resistant Aleksander. Watch a video of 150-170 walkthrough bellow for a better idea.
And yes, it’s obvious, but I should write it here just in case, we are constantly spamming Biting Blades from Seal of Shadows component.

Stats:

Judicator’s Seal proc up (100% uptime in battle unless it’s a long fight with a lonely boss)

vnZGoA5.jpg931×1160

Build Pros and Cons:

Pros:

  • Massive AoE damage and decent enough single target damage
  • Huge Resist Reduction (currently -162% RR + 10% from Judicator’s Seals)
  • Tanky with multiple layers of defense: 25% dodge/evade, ~21% damage absorbtion, ~3170 DA, massive monster’s OA shred (close to 500), massive slow, two heals, “oh shit” button, teleportation skill, lots of ADCtH
  • Decent racial damage (12% chtonians/undead, 25% humans, 15% aetherials)
  • Most gear pieces are relatively easy to craft/farm. You can farm for Dark One Set at the Edge of Sanity.

Cons:

  • No Rune of Haggarad or overcapped Inquisitor’s Seal
  • Single Target damage is decent but can’t be compared to bursty builds
  • Still requires a reasonable amount of skill to pilot

Videos:

1.0.7.1 Crucible 8:25 run (3 blessings + 1 Vanguard banner)
Crucible 150-170 Acid Purge test spoiler alert: worse damage and survivability than Biting Blades

1.0.7.1 Crucible 150-170 10 minute run
1.0.7 Crucible 150-170 1.0.7 test (fail)

11:30 Crucible Gladiator Run (still a mediocre pilot, but you can see that build is relatively safe when you play it right)

Aldritch and Friends

Huge Brawl in Cinder Wastes featuring Grava’Thul as final boss (1:20 runtime, 30 seconds actual Grava fight)

In Conclusion

Thanks to Valinov for pointing out that Bat could be a decent addition to the build.

Spoiler real manticore

2

A round of imaginary Q&A

  • But mad_lee, what about dreeg set?

  • Dreeg set is not fit for Crucible and generally is in a weird place. Weapon and Amulet suck, plus spamming DEE is much worth than spamming Biting Blades plus nuking stuff with transmuted DEE.

  • And what about other relics?

  • Pet one is the best, all other ones are meh

  • Hey, you know you could use Acid Doom Bolt?

  • Yes, and I honestly think it would suck without dedicating whole build to it. You would need to hard cap it + support with Mythical Riftwarped Gloves (thus break Dark One’s set) + get some more cdr + get Time Dilation and mess up whole poison devotion map + it has no weapon damage or poison component.

  • But what about Acid Spay from Seal of Blight, it has a monstrous poison damage, and you like poison damage, don’t you

  • Interesting skill and I have tested it. It works in campaign (what doesn’t), but it’s super hard to sustain without dedicated devotions, plus it’s weapon damage component is low so lower ADCtH when compared to Biting Blades. Plus Biting Blades is an awesome spammable skill that pierces monsters spreading poison dot (decent amount due it’s 70% weapon damage) and Rumour (rumour that Seal of Blight sucks)

  • But you could dual wield and get physical resist from Dual Blades and be that cool new wave DW caster everyone is making nowadays

  • Firstly, there is no good secondary weapon to dual wield (Dagger of Dreeg sucks huge monkey balls), secondly, Wretched Tome is pretty amazing statwise and 19% CDR is a great boost for all our heals, devotions and our nuke - DEE, thirdly, 15% Physical resist is enough for caster-kiter build given how much defense we are packing in other departments

3

Nice build man. Glad to see you finally uploading it. :stuck_out_tongue:

I still don’t understand why you don’t use the runed dagger of dreeg. It provides better stats then the weapon you have, especially because the deathstalker scales with player based bonuses.

So the pet bonuses on the plaguebearer is going to go wasted.

4

“- No Rune of Haggarad or overcapped Inquisitor’s Seal” :smiley:

5

I’m addicted to you
Don’t you know that you’re toxic?

Dozens of links you’ll never play doesn’t seem right for someone like you :p. I have more than a hundred lol.

On to the build: have you tried going dw then transferring points from merciless repertoire to dual blades? Phys res is really hood nowadays. You’ll have better DEE to compensate for the loss of pox damage too.

6

Can’t. You need to DW to benefit from dual blades (shocking, I know.) :stuck_out_tongue:

7

Ummmmmmmmmm.

8

Ah, you mean that weird vitality weapon damage dagger that got roughly the same stats minus flat poison and MASSIVE -25% RESIST REDUCTION that Mythical Plaguebearer of Dreeg has?
Pet bonuses are not the reason I used this weapon. :wink:

You mean Dual Blades and and take what as a second weapon? There are no good choices really. Build has 15% physical resist before buffs and it’s more than enough as you can see in the video. Stats on Wretched Tome are just too good really, plus 19% CDR speeds up all our devotion procs and our heals and our DEE nuke.

9

This is a huge con!!!

I think the build don’t need phys res that much. It has dark one set bonus + judicator set + reduced damage + absorption. In my experience, it’s enough to facetank a lot of things. Plus the off hand is so good.

To Mad Lee: congrats, this is so good man. Really love it. Love all your item choices and skill and even devotions.

Sent from my Redmi Note 3 using Tapatalk

10

Thought about a 2nd plaguebearer but forgot that the RR won’t stack. Yeah offhand is a lot better.

11

Nice build! I have a question about the Bat - does the 45% ADCtH on Twin Fang proc work for all your damage or only for the Twing Fang damage (vita / pierce) + 22% weap. dmg?

12

Ah, you mean that weird vitality weapon damage dagger that got roughly the same stats minus flat poison and MASSIVE -25% RESIST REDUCTION that Mythical Plaguebearer of Dreeg has?

i didn’t even see the 25% RR. Yup. Hands down - we’ve got a winner here.

13

Nice build! Always loved poison!

Just wondering how vital is bat for the build? Always feel odd getting it outside a vit pierce build.

14

Thanks, man! It took build few iterations to figure out the most optimal one. I am still not sure about button bindings, because it seems that I am missing DEE casts sometimes because I spam Biting Blades from left mouse button.

45% ADCtH works only on proc itself, which is already pretty neat (in my builds it’s roughly 1,5k weapon damage + 500 pierce + ~2k vita, so about close to 2000 health leeched every time it hits an enemy. Ofcourse most enemies have life leech resistance, but it hits multiple enemies every 0,5 seconds). 3% life steal nod however applies to all skills that have weapon damage component in them (which is awesome because we spam Biting Blades).

Bat is pretty vital for Crucible. For campaign you can use Eye of the Guardian instead. You can make Eye of the Guardian work in Crucible too, but with Bat it’s much smoother and safer and damage loss from not using Eye of the Guardian is negligible.

15

Yey ty! Finally something to do with my wh :)…

16

Nice. Gets full value out of Dark One’s set bonuses to Pox and stuff. thumbs up

Edit: and also Deathstalker relic for more %RR. Nice +2

17

Solid build !

you finally got used to it in crucible :wink:

18

Just realized: the - OA of wasting doesn’t stack with murmur, right?

19

It does. -OA from different sources stacks. If two+ skills you have state XX reduced OA then only the highest will apply

20

Thanks, mate. Your advice on how to pilot this kind of beast definitely helped.

It stacks with Murmur, it stacks with Veil of Shadow and it stacks with Seal of Annihilation. So massive enemy’s OA debuffs as you can see.

Added a new video of a big brawl in Cinder Wastes that ends up in short (around 30 second) Grava’Thul fight. A good example of what kind of a beast this build is in campaign.