[1.1.3.1] [HC] Aether Spellbinder - PRM + Devastation, Faceroll-NO-Piano Spellbinder (c+)(sr)(g4/5)(vid)

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
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Introduction:

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This is by no means a new and unique build (I think Ya made a similar SC Spellbinder in the past), even though I made this one independently, through trial and error. It is unique in a way that it does NOT require a piano style piloting. In fact, you can steamroll through the entire campaign, including nemesis and bosses (except for celestial superbosses of course) with just your LMB lol.

I wanted to make a tanky mage caster, suitable for hardcore, easy to play and relatively fast when it comes to clearing speed. Last, but not least, it should have a variety of spells and procs, creating the wipe-the-entire-screen effect when destroying hordes upon hordes of enemies. A true arch mage, one wizard army!

And here comes RaistinE Majere (the female version, hehe). The most fun build I’ve ever played in GD.
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The Build:

BIS https://www.grimtools.com/calc/vNQdLW8Z

Stats with permanent buffs:

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The green medal is the core of the build, for the elemental to aether conversion to PRM. Unfortunately, it’s virtually impossible to get those BIS rolls on it, but it’s not a huge deal, since you can still get very nice defensive/offensive stats without too much damage loss.

The second green item is the Stone groble effigy. I prefer to go for a mix of defensive and offensive stats here. Mine rolled with 9% phys resist which is amazing for a build with only 2k armor and no inquisitor seal or shield.

Conduit ammy - the only viable choice for HC (and possibly SC too), we need every bit of resistance we can get here. Plus an extra aether bonus to PRM.

Anasteria’s helmet adds a huge damage bonus, but if you don’t have one, can get away with a mythical Spellgaze.

As stated above, I wanted to make this build easy to play, thus dropping some useful components (seal of corruption) and taking the watcher instead of the dying god. You can argue that it’s a huge damage loss, but I’d rather focus on passive defence and relaxed gameplay, as opposed to spamming 2 additional skills (corruption + siphon souls) and making sure not to mess up the rotation to keep the god active most of the time. And all that for what? 10% more damage?

Pros:

28% Damage Absorption
26% Physical Resistance
14% ADCTH - works great with PRM thanks to the medal
14k+ HP
83%+ All resistance
3.3K passive OA
200% Casting Speed - Permanent!
A ton of crit % damage - (over 80% for PRM)
Devastation major + Devastation minor (passive proc, helm)
Fire to aether conversion from belt (works great with the proc from helm)
6! Additional passive procs from gear alone!
Maxed out mirror 22/12 and 10/10 Mark of Torment for tanking hard hitting bosses and nems

Cons:

As every caster, the build lacks defences, so can be squishy in some situations.
Only 2.8k DA - goes to 3k with Arcane Will active.
Very hard to get top rolls on the medal and effigy.

Video:

Just a quick Darkvale run to showcase the build (still lacking some gear, levels and about 10 skill points) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMTPoeTXDwE&t=20s
Galakros - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGEJAdcqSyo
SR 35 run - https://youtu.be/b5Poa9JknUA
Crucible - coming soon …

That’s about it, Guys. Feel free to post your suggestions. I don’t consider this build to be final by any means. But it’s very solid as is both in terms of damage and defensive stats.

Thank you!

To be updated…

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Nice one

Why not revenant over Manticore?

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Good question. Manticore’s 28% RR is applied in a 4m radius for 5 sec. Isn’t it a more reliable debuff than that of the skellies?

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It just seems that Revenant gives more usefull stuff than manticore notes too (like energy leech, dmg red from undeads, more life steal etc), Plus you can get one more node in Dying god (the 4th one) if you take revenant.

and you said you kill trash with LMB in a matter of seconds anyway

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I’ve just tried switching to revenant. It’s very nice! 20% ADCTH vs 14! Pretty good! And the 4th node in Dying god gives us so much needed chaos overcap! I’ll update the build with your suggestion, thanks man!

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Chaos overcap isn’t needed. Aether kills chaos things pretty quickly. 5%-10% is enough.

Anyway, here, should be stronger: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/JVlW5672. Pierce res should be good with good rolls on conduit and Krieg boots. Da is actually about 120 more than in op setup due to Blood Boil.

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It is stronger for sure but the exact opposite from what I’m trying to achieve, that is to minimize the number of spammable skills and cooldowns to pay attention to. That’s why I didn’t pick Siphon Souls, Dying God and Seal of Corruption in the first place. The main goal is to make an easy to play, newbie friendly and still powerful caster mage. I did check your spllbinder and it’s really powerful, but I just don’t enjoy the piano play style much.

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Binders will never be easy to play beyond main game. You always gotta pay attention to cooldowns whether you like it or not.

I agree that piano is bad. But Siphon is taken instead of CT so no extra buttons there. Aether Corruption, on the other hand, is too good not to take it. It spreads so you don’t really have to spam it. Besides, Siphon is only for the biggies. When you need that da/heal then you cast it. If you don’t then you don’t have to. No piano hindrance here, imo. (Even less piano on my AAR where I got rid of RE which is the slowest and most disruptive cast. But you need this RE proc proccing)

With cdr and Aeon it’s criminal not to finish DG when you can. It’s up all the time. Crit dmg is not what it used to be but still very strong. Especially with arcanists oa (and more of it coming next patch).

I’m not sure about pulling points from Fabric, though. There’s gonna be racial there that will be very useful for this build (no Anathema medal makes you much less powerful against Aetherials). Depending on how the numbers are arranged in the ranks, might have to give up on some or all of Blood Boil.

Also, there’s the question of Sanctified Bone vs. Prismatic Diamond. Diamond is better but I think that acid res needed fixing more urgently.

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I’m not sure DG is that important for this particular build. To take it, you had to drop Hawk, so minus 8% Crit and 3% OA, which negates about one third of DG. Next, you drop quite a few points both of the Mirror and Fabric to reach Blood Boil. That’s minus some 2-3% damage and +3 sec to Mirror’s cooldown (that one is very noticeable in HC. I tried keeping it at 12/12 but had too many close calls for my liking).

I agree about switching to Siphon from CT, the extra ADCTH is nice but not sure about BB. Going to test both options.

Yeah, Diamond would be great. But the thing is, it would be useless most of the time. Letting your HP drop below 40% is criminal in HC. It only happened to me a few times so far, a few times too many lol.

Oh and btw, what about low stun/freeze res? Wouldn’t Seal of Resonance provide better QoL compared to Corruption?

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You don’t have to drop Hawk. You can drop Imp and take Hound. But Imp is very powerful on PRM. 3% oa is recovered by swithing to Thunderstruck prefix. Also, your math is quite subjective, so to speak, 30/8 is closer to 4 times than to 3 times.

Dying God: there aren’t two nodes anywhere else that would give you as much dmg as these two. And extra speed lets you get more res from gloves component. Also caps your run speed.

As long as you cast Time Dilation at least once per 24 seconds it’s guaranteed 100% uptime. Or 22-23 seconds taking into account 1-2s of failed proccing.

You are talking HC but got 2.8da and hardly any overcaps in elemental and acid. You can be burst even on MoT when you’re heavily debuffed.

Your gains from 10 points over the cap in Mirror is exactly 2.4s. It is not worth it. If you really want a defensive binder take Eternity (not recommended).

Freeze res is 47 and sun res is over 50 from two craftables.

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B.but…my Pet Spellbinder…

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That’s petbinder not spellbinder. Get out! :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes: :wink::wink:

BTW which one? Ghul with 3pc Trinkets?

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I am waiting until the patch hits before testing the build. Basically looks like this atm: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/RZRQOzBV

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I’m gonna test your suggestions. As for resistances, I’m still grinding cult’s rep to get that part sorted out. If I’ve done my math right, all res will be overcapped by at least 25/30. DA is low, but your setup has it even lower and the only way to fix that is by getting that stalwart prefix on medal and/or putting 10+ points into BB.

So far, the build feels even tankier than my Physical EoR warlord. Which is a nice surprise.

15

That explains a lot. Maybe you should’ve done that first before posting a build?

Irrah Soulfife jewelry augments were made to fix binder da. If not that then Osyr Temper is imo better than Ingenuity if you don’t care about dmg.

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People can post whatever they want. The forum is not the build compendium you know. For the compendium, it reads that for a build to be included in the compendium it has to be more or less finished. Since this build can fulfill c+ and sr tags for HC, I would say it is definitely compendium material since it is “more or less finished”.

This is the actual phrasing

“While there never was a formal rule on character level of your build, it is a tradition to only submit builds that are at level cap or close to it.”

When it comes to just making a thread about a build, people can post whatever they want - there is no rule or guideline regarding that (Common Sense Rules for Build Posting)

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