[1.1.2.0] Bonemonger's Fury - DW Melee Aether Apostate/170+ SR+/+caster/spin/2h bonemonger variants

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
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Introduction:
Shout out to Nikof for sending me a copy of my original post he had open in his browser after the wipe.

The time has come for my first new build of the Forgotten Gods expac. I’m sure there have been plenty people have looked at the bonemonger set, wonder how the f*** to properly utilize it. Look no further friends. I also will be posting some build variants that also have good performance while having different play styles (videos for these will have to wait for now) My play time generally is somewhat limited so I will update this post as I can. I also hope to be putting up a new post for my conjurer soon (post is updated now)

The Build:
Build in video - https://www.grimtools.com/calc/4NOne7eZ
Alternate with direwolf crest for %beast damage + more flat aether - https://www.grimtools.com/calc/Q2zqw0dN

Videos:
Bonemonger’s Fury - DW melee auto attacker
SR 75-76

Boss fights at ~6:15 and ~16:00 marks… Also you can see me die to arcane mobs at ~13:30
I also forgot to put Mark of Torment back on my bar after testing something against the dummy… So theres that lol
Music: DANCE WITH THE DEAD - Loved to Death
MadQueen

Temporal Bone-Blade - 2H Caster
Crucible 170
Most of the bonemonger builds here clear in the ~7:30 range on my computer (which means probably around ~6:30-7:00 for someone with a good one) The exception would be the Aprocstate, but it is the most fragile of the apostate builds. (Best clear was 6:35, but only cleared 2 out of 10 runs)

Mad Queen
Note that 387k boneharvest crit :smiley:

The Spinmonger - DW Spin2Win
SR 75

The Aprocstate - Caster 1H/Book
~6 sec MadQueen

Pros:

  • Dual-wield melee
  • very high flat absorb (near 600)
  • very high life leech
  • decent CC resists
  • aether damage
  • -154 aether resist + 30% resist reduction
  • Easy to re position for a build reliant on seals
  • Massive number of keybinds
  • Lots of Cool blue-green aether damage procs flying around
  • Lots of Bonewaves

Cons:

  • Attack speed isnt at or near 200%
  • Lowish armor
  • Mid tier physical resist
  • Dual-wield melee
  • Massive number of keybinds
  • Requires a MI weapon**

Overall this is a great build for multipurpose farming. You will feel invincible in main campaign. You will notice I listed some things on the pros and cons… Depending on the player they can be either. As far as DW melee goes, this is my new favorite character overtaking my classic blades of the luminari infiltrator as my most played character. Which is awesome considering I always felt apostate was an underplayed class anyways… Synergy classes ftw. Personally I love having lots of hotkeys to manage, so this is my wheelhouse.

Gearing:
Obviously we are going full Bonemonger set here. We also take two piece Krieg for some extra physical resist +aether damage boost. The Magelord rings are taken to convert some of our elemental damage to aether as well as the sweet proc. Korvaak’s brand or direwolf crest to enable DW. Serenity for the awesome resist, +1 all skills, and the decent circuit breaker. The pants are mainly take just to over cap resists. Good alternates include Mageguard Leggards, Wraithborne Legwraps, and Legwraps of the Tranquil Mind. Each of these options require you to shuffle resist augments, and to adjust physique/cunning/skill points to optimal levels. They each have their strong points as well… but some will mean using potions to overcap chaos or poison resist. (having near or over 30 overcap on everything is best)

**The weapon Heart of Theodin Marcell is the build enabler. Finding a good roll will take awhile. Ideally you want to find the Aetherfire prefix + an attack speed suffix… but Aetherfire prefix + anything will do for most content.

Devotions:
Alladrah’s Phoenix (Ravevnous Earth) , Ghoul, Bat (Inquisitor Seal), Widow (Fleshwarped Strikes), Spear of the Heavens, Aeon’s Hourglass (Horn of Gandarr) are your main goals.

Gameplay:
Teleport/ Run in
Drop Inquisitor Seal
Cast Ravenous Earth
Cast Bone Harvest
Cast Word of Pain
Cast Siphon Souls
Cast Aether Corruption (generally only casting if a group of heros or a nemesis)
Fleshwarped strikes while doing all the above generally on cooldown/as needed
Cast Mark of Torment if predicting damage spike
Watch for phoenix fire proc to get to 1second left, cast horn of gandarr. Since TD as 100% proc rate on horn, this gives back to back procs for big uptime on near 600 absorb.

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Build Variants:
Temporal Bone-Blade (2h Caster) - https://www.grimtools.com/calc/4NOnaoKZ
Temporal Arcblade received some nice changes, and makes a perfect fit with the bonemonger set. This one combines; the proc from the sword, chillspikes x5 projectile shotgun, Ravenous earth, the new reevnant skele bros, and high oa/da shred to maximize the proc chances for the set. Bone Harvest provides a nuke. The un-realistic greens are not needed, just a best in slot idea… although you will be hard-pressed to overcap resists for SR without stonehide on boots.
(I would use this devotion setup to cap slow res in crucible https://www.grimtools.com/calc/aZqO9792)

The Spinmonger (DW Spin2Win) - https://www.grimtools.com/calc/aZqAQW5Z
Stonehide is needed on boots to achieve decent res overcap…still isnt ideal. This one runs with korvaak devo, so the OA/DA shred is nice to have. You dont have TD for better uptime on phoenix fire, so some more awareness of downtime is required on some bosses. Overall the healing is higher with this build due to better crit chance/more hits/sec + the nice built in adcth from the yugol relic. It feels squisher/ a bit more clunky though. As on the main version energy is a pain in the ass… If you really want to put the healing through the roof, use one mindwarp + nex. The shadowbolt proc flat damage will be about half converted to aether damage… and will be another stream of steady heals

The Aprocstate (1h + Offhand Caster) - https://www.grimtools.com/calc/0V0RMwyN
proc machine. storm box + imp. chill spikes + seru. WoP + seekers. all nearly full aether… what more do you need?

Decree of the Bonemonger (DW Caster) - https://www.grimtools.com/calc/w2647beZ
The one is a bone lance caster. Belgo relic helps us with flat CDR, harp to try to fix energy (still is very rough, imo bonelance skill cost needs to be reduced), and rune of displacement for re positioning. . Lower phys res, lower armor, little to no res overcap… But with good piloting skill it can be effective as well.

Bonemonger hybrid fire/aether Paladin (2H Autoattacker) - https://www.grimtools.com/calc/aZqlg45V
Over 100 rr to both aether and fire… solid mix of damage. Massive smite hits. lvl 22 seal + phoenix + ascension with time dilation = over 750 flat absorb with good uptime . Lowish attack speed + lower leech can lead to problems in high SR. But overall a good build… lots of green though

Bone-Harvester Oppressor (2H Autoattacker) - https://www.grimtools.com/calc/q2m1EmG2
Big smites + necro wps + big boneharvests for nuking ability. This build doesnt feel as safe as the paladin or apostates, but it has a higher damage ceiling. Decent attack speed/ leech + big damage leads to good performance in the right pilots’ hands… again lots of green

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Leveling:
Eventually

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Please back it up:eek:

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yeah I will from here out :undecided:

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Apocstate is pretty disgusting :smiley:

Very well put together (except impossible pants), gratz.

As I was saying in feedback and personally to Doom, Aether damage is oupie and %Aether values should’ve been toned down across the board (or monsters’ Aether resist upped slightly). It should be %Aether instead of %Pierce having lower values.

Instead Z. almost destroyed Spellbinders but the problem of Aether brokeness still persists, it was never solved actually. (sorry for ranting here, mate)

EDIT: BTW, is spam with Chillspikes that good? Did you try playing with Reap Spirit instead?

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  1. Any proves that aether damage is oupie or broken?

  2. Before upping monster’s aether resist you should take care for the masteries combinations with lack of aether RR.

  3. Clear & math structured definition of destroyed builds/masteries combinations please. Otherwise it sounds like just words.

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  1. This build. Or any Aether build. Even with with one RR mastery they hit like trucks (any Agrivix Spellbinder, Cadence Krieg DK, even Agrivix Defiler). Hell, even my Defiler on Clairvoyant manages the best clearing times among Defilers (or used to before FG) despite being a DEFILER.

  2. What? Should I take care of that?

  3. Basically half of Spellbinders specs were cut/deleted. Clairvoyant Spellbinder for example or any Spellbinder that dared to take Star Pact instead of Reckless Power.

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Why is that?

I know gt numbers don’t say it all but… On the aprocstate, he’s got 2.4k% total dmg (pretty normal). On main build, it’s 2.7k% (good but not unseen on lightning even without greens) and 16k tooltip wd (way below cold, acid and beronath phys dw - and that with Bone Harvest and Theo mace which with these affixes looks like a 2h).

I do not think that aether is anywhere close to broken, binders or no binders. These builds are just good. This is my opinion but I respect yours so I wanna know why you feel that way.

@Valinov

On aprocstate, why do you go for two nodes of Spider for 5% cast speed when you got Jackal with 6% total speed? Gt shows your run speed is 120%…

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Aether damage hits hard, not much to say here. Probably the hardest hitter in the game along with Lightning. Part of the reason is items support, part of the reason is always great devotion maps, part of the reason is how much %Aether can be gathered on a build and part of it is Aether’s potency (monsters resists).

As you can see from Apocstate’s Mad Queen kill, Valinov destroys Mad Queen in 6 seconds with procs and converted Chillspikes.

For example, the strongest cold build, which is my Harra’s Infiltratrator (which also kinda prompted Inquisitor’s changes) does the same in 5 seconds having a stronger RR and a stronger attacking spell.

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True, this result is pretty good… And the new devotion path is interesting.

@ Valinov

For the record, cameras flashing, voice recorders rolling, WHY ARE YOU NOT USING DYING GOD ON YOUR AETHER BUILD WITH AEON AND SPEAR? :D:D:D

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Because they buffed the shizzle out of Seru and Blind Sage was always pretty strong. So he converts them all to full Aether on top of fully aetherial Aetherfire that is bound the best proc machine in-game - Storm Box (it procs it like crazy without cd). It’s a very good build design. Valinov is a master when it comes to designing proc machines.

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  1. Any testing results for powerful aether damage builds vs. powerful other damage types builds? And we need to declare clear metrics to judge if it is OP or not.

  2. Yes you should in the sake of balance. Otherwise you won’t be good game designer. :wink:

  3. Does not sound as solid argument to me - to take non-aether exclusive skill in many aether builds only for CDR. It seems wrong. Should be another solution.

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I meant his default build with Aeon and Spear of the Heavens but Phoenix in place of Dying God. Just a little joke on all those people who keep claiming that Dying God is taken everywhere by everyone.

That other build - aprocstate - right, the devo setup is amazing. Except that two points that I’d put in Jackal instead of Spider. :stuck_out_tongue:

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Aether by itself isn’t strong. Aether conversion is very strong. Most aether skills have some elemental sub-damage and ele>aether is probably the most common non phys>x conversion in the game.

I was a strong proponent of nerfing ele>aether conversion in the past as a way of nerfing binders but now it’s the only interesting thing that aether has left. Please don’t nerf this crate.

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Strannik, please, stop trying to sound like Zantai.

  1. You got the test results right in front of your nose. In this very thread.

  2. I am not a game designer, I shouldn’t do shit, it’s not my job

  3. It’s called build diversity. Sometimes you take Star Pact on a Fire Sorc. Sometimes you take Master of Death on a non-pet class. Vitality Raddagan Inquisitors take Aura of Censure. Vitality Tricksters can take Stormcaller’s Pact. Some elemental Inquisitors do take Aura of Conviction (or at least used to).

Aether by itself is strong. Element’s damage is always a combination of factors. But if you start nerfing those factors one by one a lot of builds/stuff can suffer. That’s why I always proposed %Aether nerf across the board or %Aether resists upped across the board (that was pre-Spellbinder nerf) so the cool synergy Aether builds have remains but the overall damage is toned down a bit.

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Bit of good news some one had my old post open on a tab and pm’d me the info… Will update post when I get home from work :smiley: :smiley:

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You’ve got your cheering squad, why can’t I have mine?

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Then point me to an aether build that doesn’t have at least 50% fire/elemental to aether conversion. The most used items for binders since pre nerf times wasn’t clairvoyant or agrivix. It’s cord of violent decay. Many clair binders even add magelord which agrivix doesn’t usually use since it can get up to 90% conversion without magelord. Krieg builds have magelords tho it benefits them more than just conversion. These apostates have at least 50%.

You’re right that it’s always a combination of factors. I just disagree at “aether by itself is strong” since the statement itself implies that you can’t go wrong with aether. But you can. You need the core conversion items to make aether work. It’s either magelord or violent decay or whatever, there’s always that small core of items that you need for aether.

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As long as you don’t stop hearing us over your cheering squad’s cheers :stuck_out_tongue:

Yes, conversion items are a part of Aether meta. Not a deciding factor, but they play their role and it’s significant. Usually, there is always a cord of violent decay or Albrecht’s Duality or something else. For example, dw Krieg Death Knight does pretty much the same without Magelords, but it converts a huge amount of physical damage with dual Mindwarps (most oupie sword in the game).