This build has the main focus of utilizing the Krieg’s Armament since it is such an amazing set, by converting 75% of your physical damage into aether, 100% physical damage converted to aether damage to Cadence, 100% physical damage converted to aether damage to Blitz, and 50% of your elemental damage being converted into aether damage, then boosting aether as much as possible with physical being a side-product of Krieg’s set. Any time you see flat physical damage on an item, skills, devotions, etc anywhere in this build… may as well consider it extra aether damage. It is also worth mentioning that you will literally be a walking source of skill proccing since everything you do is basically considered an ‘on attack’, ranging from autoattacking to your skills and even your procs. Thats right, even your procs can proc procs, that can also proc procs. I will explain what procs are at the bottom of this forum thread. This setup also gives you the potential of -100% aether resistance reduction which only exacerbates the high amount of damage this build can put out. I will be going into excruciating detail below as to what makes this build tick.
Grim Tools:
Main Build - https://www.grimtools.com/calc/eVLpJk4V
Budget Version (a big thanks to malawiglenn for commenting this suggestion) - https://www.grimtools.com/calc/D2p8JGy2
Pros:
-
100% Cadence damage converted to Aether Damage
-
75%+ Physical Damage Converted to Aether (Higher with good item rolls. Higher is better.)
-
50% Elemental Damage Converted to Aether (This extends to your devotions skills such as Spear of the Heavens, Arcane Bomb, and Aetherfire)
-
75% Critical Damage
-
-100% Aether Resistance Reduction
-
Large Burst Damage[1]
-
Blitz turns you into a semi-truck made of arcane biceps
-
Very high cadence damage (350k on average)
-
Double Blitz! (Blitz and Will of the Fallen Kings)
-
You eat aether crystals like wheaties
[1]Through my testing, I have managed to hit up to 540k+ damage on the third cadence strike, with 350k-400k damage being the average third stike hit. Since cadence can strike up to two targets, that is a whopping 1 million damage if you hit that 540k, and about 700k-800k on average.
Cons:
-
First and Second autoattacks are subpar (unless they crit, about 50k-100k+ on average). This is, of course, natural for Cadence, but felt it should be included anyways.
-
Inconsistent Damage[2]
-
Very Wide Weapon Damage and Weapon Attack threshold
[2] Damage can jump around between 50k to 500k on a good crit.
What is so special about this build?
Krieg’s set is the only purple set that offers physical and aether damage bonuses with a decent amount of armor, which makes it prime for specialized physical/aether hybrid builds, but I took a more aether focused build while using physical damage as a supplement to boost aether damage through conversion. With the Aetherfire Fleshwarped Core of Shattered Reality, you get a natural 50% physical damage to aether damage conversion, but you may have to farm that monster infrequent in order to get the proper suffix and prefix for it, but in my honest opinion, it is well worth it. With Seal of Corruption, you can bump that conversion up to 60% physical damage to aether damage conversion, then further increased to 75% thanks to Reckless Power. The amount of conversion can vary widely since these items can come with increasing or decreasing Physical Damage -> Aether Damage. With the luck of the RNG gods, it is possible to reach 87% conversion rate.
Another thing to keep in mind about this build is that despite pieces of Krieg’s set and the weapon stating 25%, 10%, or even 5% chance of proccing on attack, this build has attacks that are proccing several times a second (Autoattacks, multiple DoTs, etc), so you will be proccing these skills quite literally back to back despite their low chances.
I will go through each important item and devotion to explain how they work with this build and my reasoning behind it. Krieg’s Mask and Krieg’s Grips are explained below under the ‘Why does Blitz turn you into a semi-truck made of aether biceps?’ and the Magelord Signet and Bands under the section ‘What is with the blue rings?’ as they make most sense to be placed there.
EQUIPMENT:
Aetherfire Fleshwarped Core of Shattered Reality - This here is the bread and butter (aside from the Krieg’s Armament set) that makes this build do massive amounts of damage, which leads me to believe that this is a match made in heaven in terms of this build. The weapon itself has 195-495 aether damage tagged onto it, along with 104 additional aether damage added on top of that making this weapon actually does 299-599 base aether damage, making this possibly the highest damage dealing aether weapon. It comes with 8% crit damage to compliment the decent crit chance and a 542% aether damage boost, which is most certainly nothing to sneeze at. But the highest worth of this weapon comes from the fact it can convert 50% of your physical damage into aether damage, or 60% if you slap a Seal of Corruption on there as well, turning over half of your physical damage from your soldier class right into aether damage. This weapon also grants you a nice 720 health, 90 Offensive Ability, 10% attack speed, and 10% Skill Cooldown Reduction. Everything about this weapon is tailored nicely to the Krieg’s Armament set, and it can be found rather easily without having to farm with many different prefixs and suffixs from Hyram at the Malmouth Steelcap District. This weapon also grants you two skills that are very useful to this build; Arcane Blast and Aether Corruption.
For those of you who feel that this item is too hard to acquire for the time being, a good replacement for this weapon would be a Mythical Soulsplitter or, as mentioned above, one of the Fleshwarped Cores sold by Hyram at the Malmouth Steelcap District.
Arcane Blast - Despite having a 10% chance of activating on attack, you will find that this skill procs pretty decently for being on a 4 second recharge. It deals 15% of your weapon damage (which is pretty high already), along with 291-459 base aether damage and 291 base fire damage that is being half converted into aether damage on top of it.
Aether Corruption - This one is a pretty fun one to play with, in my experience. This comes from the Seal of Corruption component that will be placed onto this weapon. With enough damage, you can wipe out the lesser monsters in a group of monsters without having to fight them if you let the corruption tick through it’s entirety. The way this skill works is that it spreads like a plague when you cast it on one monster, ticking about five times for 165 base aether damage and 92-200 base lightning damage before it wears off. Half of it’s lightning damage is converted into aether damage, which further boosts it’s damage and it comes with -8% aether resistance reduction which spreads to every creature that comes becomes afflicted by it (basically every creature in your fight). What also makes this skill quite grand is that each tick of damage on a creature in this form of DoT is considered a form of attack, and since this spreads to several creatures rather quickly and procs five times on each creature, this turns you into a beacon of aether proc spammage that can literally pop any weaker creature that comes near you.
Conduit of Warring Whispers - This amulet is also an integral part of this build as it basically converts 100% of your physical damage to aether damage on cadence, plus tacking on an additional 70 base aether damage (boosted further by bonuses of course). There is nothing to not love about this item.
Doom - This is the best choice in terms of relics for this build, with Agrivix’s Malice coming in at a close second. The reason for this is pretty obvious at this point, the flat 12-18 base physical damage is being mostly converted to aether damage (boosted by aether bonuses) and the granted skill Doomforce is also being converted into most aether as well, at 60% weapon damage, 344-432 base physical damage (mostly converted to aether), and 1375 base internal trauma over 5 seconds. Also, you kick everything within a 8 meter area down on it’s arse and draw them in for a big aether hug. The optimal completion bonus for this item would be Deadly Momentum and Squad Tactics.
Badge of Mastery - Okay, so this here is a very hard item to get considering you have to keep making this item until you get the proper prefix and suffix on it, being +5 Cadence. Consider this as your long term goal at the very end of your build as this will allow you to reach and cap Cadence to 26+, minus points you’ll be shedding off to put elsewhere into your build from overcapping. In place of this item, you can use Mythical Mark of the Dreadblade until you manage to get your hands on the right BoM.
Thunderstruck Kubacabra’s Chausses of Insight - This is an integral part of this build as it provides Reduced Stun Duration, the needed aether, chaos, and elemental resistances for overcapping, and lots of nice OA to keep you above 3k. A decent replacement for this would be Mythical Wrathborne Legwraps, but you may have to juggle around some resistances.
Why does Blitz turn you into a semi-truck made of aether biceps?
Krieg’s Grip converts 80% of Physical Damage to Aether Damage on Blitz, which will naturally be enhanced by Aether Damage bonuses, and gives you 14 base aether damage. But due to Aetherfire Fleshwarped Core of Shattered Reality, it is pushed well beyond 100% than it should… but that is only an afterthought. This item also grants you the skill Krieg’s Fury, which procs at a 10% chance on Attack, deals 124 base aether damage, 70-94 base physical damage, and stuns a target within a 16 meter range for 1 second.
Krieg’s Mask further enhances Blitz in a good way, offering -0.4 second skill recharge, and 100 more aether damage (enhanced by aether damage bouses). Plus the +3 to Blitz is very nice for this as well. It also offers -1 second skill recharge and 80-200 aether damage to War Cry, which allows War Cry to actually deal damage. While this is all good and dandy, nothing compares to the carnal sin attached to this item under the name of Aether Spines. This beast of a skill procs at 25% chance when hit, but has no recharge time, meaning you are basically guaranteed to proc it pretty consistently, hands down and no question about it. Since +75% of your physical damage is being converted to aether, this skill blows out five projectiles of mostly pure aether damage.
Now with all of this in mind, let us talk about Blitz. This skill deals damage in a 180 degree attack arc and hits up to a maximum of three targets. What makes this skill shine the most is that it deals 325% of your weapon damage and 406 physical damage on top of them. Now keep in mind that Aetherfire Fleshwarped Core of Shattered Reality does a massive amount of raw aether damage and 100% of your physical damage is being converted into aether damage on top of that, which makes this skill deal massive amounts of damage for up to three creatures on impact. On my character sheet, it shows that Blitz does about 100k damage baseline, but the character sheet tends to lie so we cannot rightfully go with that, but I have seen numbers higher than even 100k when a Blitz land on a target.
The Set - Krieg’s Armament: There is a lot to be said about the bonuses you get from this set, as they are basically geared towards being a bruiser melee aether fighter. It gives you 6% to both Health and Offensive Ability, +1 to both Soldier and Arcanist, and with the full set, you are given decent flat aether damage, additional flat aether damage on Reckless Power, AND Reckless Power is given a natural 25 Reduced target’s Resistance for 3 seconds. The national RR to Reckless Power is quite powerful for the fact it is a constant, naturally innate effect that doesn’t go away unless you turn off Reckless Power (which should never be the case).
When you have all five pieces of the set equipped, you are granted the skill Krieg’s Wrath, which dishes out 70% of your weapon damage, 335-450 base physical damage (most of it converted to aether damage), 402 base aether damage, and further reduces the aether resistance of every enemy within a 9 meter area by 20 for 3 seconds. This skill is not bad at all.
DEVOTIONS:
Spear of the Heavens - While Blitz lets you slam into creatures like a semi-truck, this devotion lets you rain down semi-trucks from the heavens themselves. It has a 1 second skill recharge which means it will be activating quite consistently for an ability that has a 50% chance of proccing when you are hit. It takes 60% of your weapon damage, deals 294 base aether damage, 192-332 base lightning damage (partially converted to aether), and stuns the target for 1 second. The funny thing about this devotion, and this is also true for Arcane Bomb, if you are hit by something and there is no target within a 2.4 meter radius, it will literally search out the closest target on screen and hit them instead. It makes for some rather comical long range hits when you get out of a recent fight with a tick still on you. I have this devotion set to Reckless Power as this guarantees it will proc passively so long as Reckless Power is active.
Arcane Bomb - Arcane Bomb is your bread and butter as far as aether shredding is concerned. This, along with your natural -25% aether RR on reckless power, basically gives you easy access to -60% aether RR right off the bat. With a recharge time of two seconds and a chance to proc 25% of the time with each attack, you will basically be laying arcane bombs all over the battlefield when you smack your enemies. When the bomb blows up, it hits all targets in a 5 meter radius for 120 base aether damage, 120 base lightning damage (partially converted to aether), reduces their Offensive Ability by a base of -95, and shreds -35% of their aether resistance. I have this devotion set onto Cadence because why not?
Ghoulish Hunger - This devotion here is something that is guaranteed to keep you alive and I will explain the reason as to why right here. When you fall below 45% health, 80% (90% if you include devotion bonuses) of your attack damage is converted to health, you gain +22% attack speed, and 18% physical resistence. This devotion syncs exceptionally well with Menhir’s Will, which grants you 47% of your health restored (+3% from increased Healing Effects in the Lizard constellation making it actually 47*1.03 = 48.4% [Thanks for the math correction malawiglenn]) and +128 health regenerated per second for 10 seconds when you fall below 33% health. Thanks to Both of these skills together create a hard brick wall for about 5-10 seconds of just about complete invulnerability. With all your devotion bonuses combined, you are looking at 90% attack damage converted to health and 34% physical resistance. You will basically be healing for about 100k+ per hit for those 5 seconds with little room for creatures to deal any meaningful damage to you. This devotion is set onto Field Command to assure that it is constantly up.
Hungering Void - What is even better than empowering yourself with the raw power of the Aether? Empowering yourself with the raw power of both the Aether and the Void! Since we have a considerable wealth of attack damage being converted into health naturally and with ghoulish hunger, I have decided to take up Hungering Void as it not only gives us even greater power, but this build makes the active health cost per second quite trivial. Every autoattack pretty much keeps your health topped off completely and you have so much health to begin with, you will hardly even notice your health dropping unless you are out of combat. Due to recent changes to hungering void, get this devotion last as it will definitely kill you early on if you get it before the other devotions. This devotion has been set to Blitz for two reasons:
Blitz gives it a 100% chance of activating on attack, meaning that whenever I use Blitz to enter combat, it will always activate.
Hungering Void activates at the same time as Blitz lands, meaning that Blitz benefits from Hungering Void.
Aetherfire - While this devotion on it’s own is not overly strong, the skill that this is attached to makes it overwhelmingly strong. People usually tie this devotion onto DoTs that tick a lot due to having no recharge time so that it can set down patches of aetherfire randomly about the battlefield, with a 15% chance of proccing with each tick. The problem most people found with Aetherfire is that when you use it on a skill that hits all targets at once, it only applies 1 patch of aetherfire. Nothing special and certainly makes the devotion lackluster. But the true potential of this devotion shines when it is set onto Krieg’s Wrath. Unlike most skills that hit multiple targets, Krieg’s Wrath pushing out in a quick wave that hits all targets individually within a 9 meter area and not at the same time, with a 75% chance of Aetherfire Proccing. The result of this causes several aetherfire patches to be droped down all around you which not only causes a massive burst of damage, but each patch of aetherfire has a 33% chance to Confuse targets for 2 seconds who step on it, and these patches CAN overlap. Aetherfire does 165 base aether damage and 140 base fire damage (partially converted to aether damage), ticking three times over 3 seconds with a 33% chance of Confusion. Combined with Krieg’s Wrath which does 70% weapon damage, 402 base aether damage, 335-450 physical damage (converted to aether damage), and applies 20 Reduced Resistances for 3 seconds to every target in a 9 meter area, creating a very devastating high damage burst/crowd control wombo-combo when completely surrounded by enemies. Follow up with Doomforce to knock everyone on their butt and pull them back in if you want to:
-
Pin them down to keep them from wandering in a confused daze
-
Pull them back into the aetherfire patches for the luls
-
Extend their 2 second confusion CC by knocking them down for 2.5 seconds of additional CC.
-
Clean up (most weaker creatures will be dead, the tougher ones will be CC’d).
What is with the blue rings?
Due to lacking itemization for physical/aether builds and the fact you really need to push yourself as close to the Cadence skill cap as possible, I had to dip into blue items to fill in slots that compliments the general playstyle of the build, but honestly I was not disappointed with what I found.
The two magelord rings, Magelord Band and Magelord Signet, complete a two piece set called The Magelord, and it works very well into our favor by converting elemental damage into aether damage. This means our skills and devotions which do have some elemental damage tied to them (fire, cold, and/or lightning) now do 50% of it’s damage as aether, which is further boosted by our aether bonus scaling. While this only affects one skill (Aether Corruption) and three devotions (Aether Bomb, Aetherfire, and Spear of the Heavens), this is only half the focus of those rings.
The other half is the lovely boost of +5 to Cadence and +2 to Deadly Momentum. There is also the side bonus of Aether Smash proccing 30% of the time on critical hit, which is super nice considering the build has decent Offensive Ability and you have skills that have a constant chance of proccing this ability naturally.
The Procs, in greater detail.
By the time you get to the bottom of this page, you will probably be wondering ‘What the hell is a proc or proccing?’. Well, proc means “programmed random occurrence.” It’s a computer gamer term which is known as both a noun and a verb, that’s used to describe whenever a random gaming item activates, or a random gaming event occurs.
The seven procs this build possesses are Aether Smash, Aether Spines, Annihilation, Arcane Blast, Insight, Krieg’s Fury, and Prowess. Since this build has so many ways of activating any of these procs, and in rapid succession mind you, you will find them being spammed quite frequently around you. There are a few listed above in this guide shown as part of their respective sources, but they will be listed below and probably repeated if they have already been explained.
Aether Smash - A very decent proc that is on a tiny skill recharge and his a pretty respectable range, with a 30% chance of activating on a critical attack. It takes 15% of your weapon damage, 90 base physical damage (mostly converted to aether), and 90 base aether damage, then pushes it out in a wave from your body to strike a target within 15 meters. You will see it proccing rather consistently and it is shown as a green erection that travels along the ground to it’s intended target. The source of this proc comes from the set called ‘The Magelord’ when you are wearing both the Magelord Band and the Magelord Signet.
Aether Spines - This is the passive skill you will probably see firing off more often than the rest of them, seeing as this one activates with a 25% Chance when you are hit. What makes this one a grand gem is that it is not restrained by a recharge time, and it can trigger consecutively if you are being pounded on by enemies. It sends out five protectiles that deal 36 base aether damage and 36 base physical damage, though a majority of that physical damage is being coverted into aether damage, which further boosts the damage potential of this skill. The source of this skill comes from Krieg’s Mask.
Annihilation - This passive skill comes from a component called Seal of Annihilation that is added onto your medal. Since this proc has a 15% chance of activating on a critical attack, you will likely not see it proccing often. But when it does, you will notice it when a good chunk of your opponent’s health vanishes.
Arcane Blast - Despite having a 10% chance of activating on attack, you will find that this skill procs pretty decently for being on a 4 second recharge. It deals 15% of your weapon damage (which is pretty high already), along with 291-459 base aether damage and 291 base fire damage that is being half converted into aether damage on top of it. This proc comes from the Aetherfire prefix that has a chance of being rolled on most MI weapons, which is our Fleshwarped Core in this instance.
Insight - Being more of a by-product than anything else, this was used as a partial solution since the Krieg’s Armament set had, or still has, energy problems. This issue has long since been mended with certain components (Arcane Spark) and constellation bonuses, combined with Iskandra’s Elemental Exchange for even more leeching. This assured that your energy will not deplete or even budge while you are in combat. Insight has a 5% chance of activating on attack, but given how many ‘attacks’ you can throw out during combat, it will proc rather reliably, giving you additional energy over a course of 8 seconds. This proc comes from the ‘of Insight’ suffix that has a chance of being rolled onto all MI armor except for belts.
Krieg’s Fury - Another passive skill that comes from one of the five pieces of Krieg’s Armament set, though Krieg’s Grip to be more specific. This passive skill has a 10% chance of proccing on attack with a 2 second recharge, at a range of 16 meters. This skill also stuns the target for 1 second while dishing out 124 base aether damage and 70-94 base physical damage (mostly converted to aether), making this skill pretty handy to have in both frays against multiple opponents and single target fights.
Prowess - This is one of the main reasons why the Badge of Mastery tends to be sought after. With a 100% chance of proccing upon an enemy death, you are given +100 Offensive Ability, +50 Defensive Ability, and +30 Health Regeneration per second over the course of a 10 second duration. More often than not, most combat will be over before by the time this duration wears off. It isn’t quite as good against very strong foes unless they are surrounded by weaker fodder, which you can kill to proc this passive ability, but it is well worth the effort of acquiring none the less.
Where do I go after I finish this build?
As with most builds, you will have to adjust and optimize depending on the almighty God of RNG. With moderate luck, your resistances will be covered by at least a modest overcap, slightly less if not… but it isn’t much of a big deal thanks to resistance augments.
My Twitch Gaming Stream:
TO BE ADDED:
Crucible Video
NOTE: This thread will be used as a basis for this build. Meaning that if anything in Grim Dawn changes or updates that affects this build, this thread will be updated accordingly.
One way would be to visit the Trade channel on Grim Dawn’s discord whom people are constantly buying or selling items with one another. Or if you have friends who play as well, you could ask them to keep an eye out for it, or see if any of them have the recipe for making the BoM or want to help with farming the weapon. The legs just take time and patience to get. I do have a replacement item for the medal listed in the write-up, however. I will see about adding replacements for the weapon and legs as well.
