Immortal Commando
He simply won’t die, period.
My Dear Hardcore Folks!
Have you ever wanted to build a real tank, able to stand his/her ground in pools of fire, blood and poison, while getting debuffed and attacked by dozens of enemy heroes and bosses? Have you ever wanted to walk on aether corrupted ground or stand on top of volcanoes without needing to drink health potions? What about trolling Mad Queen through her reflect attacks while still being able to kill her?
If your answer is yes - this build is for you!
On a more serious note, given the nature of SR and Crucible, I wanted to make a build that can reliably farm those. Meaning relaxed, albeit slow, yet steady gameplay with minimal risk of losing your gear. Every other game has such builds (Diablo and PoE being good examples), so why not Grim Dawn? So here you go, a HC Gladiator/SR farmer build! Keep in mind, this is not a high SR pushing spec, it’s too slow for that. I could see it reach 65-70 if lucky with damage mutators and mobs. It’s great for sub SR60 reasonably safe runs.
First things first, give credit where credit is due. This build was inspired by two other builds:
[HC] Melee Mortar Commando – by Keldon
[HC] Fire Retaliation Commando 3.0 – by Adam Navel
I loved the use of mortars in the first one and that crazy passive regen in the second build. Looking to combine the two features into a single working build, I’ve tested a bunch of different class combinations and had no choice but to pick Commando (duh). Soldier gives us all the needed sustain while Demolitionist provides some damage, RR and more sustain.
The Build
Updated for 1.1.4.0 - Mortar trap got nerfed, but I realized that taking the Big One gives it a lot of boost, so the overall damage got higher by at least 30%. This build is now approaching the c+ and sr+ zone. Still more improvements can be made. Stay tuned.
New Grimtools - https://www.grimtools.com/calc/a2EbMrjV
Grimtools 2 Greens (updated, thanks to Mad_Lee) - https://www.grimtools.com/calc/lNk8G1R2
Grimtools No Greens - https://www.grimtools.com/calc/a2EbmLlV
Defensive Abilities
3.4 passive DA, spiking to 3.6 most of the time
2.5 passive Armor, sitting around 3k+ in battle
16k HP, not much but will do
HP Regen – 5.5K passive, around 10k most of the time, and spiking to 15k+ when HP is below 40% (Very rare)
All resistances 83-90 permanent with at least 35-40% overcap, hitting up to 96% with Blast Shield (doesn’t happen very often either)
A couple of life saving passives (Menhir’s Will and Tinker’s Ingenuity)
Shield + Overguard + Obelisk = nuff said
Physical Resistance : 20% resting, spiking to 35% half the time, so it’s ok
Permanent Stats
Passive Health Regeneration - Permanent Stats
Damage – the not-so-amazing part
While this build can’t boast epic damage numbers or crazy clearing speeds, it chugs alone quite nicely thanks to 4 mortars, a bunch of mortar buffing items and about 94% RR. You won’t be seeing 100k+ crits here like with other mortar builds, but a solid 40-55K range performance is guaranteed most of the time. While still testing it, I finished the campaign and SR 45-50. I was still missing a lot RR and damage at the time and yet felt comfortable facing all bosses, superbosses and nemesis both in game and SR. I trolled Mad Queen, Gargabol, Kra’val and Kaisan as if they were on Normal. Some of these were recorded and are being uploaded.
This build fears nothing. The only annoying part, those pesky Arcane mobs that remove your auras. Be ready to restore the bar quickly when attacked by multiple bosses and nems at the same time. But even without the auras, your passive regen is around 3-4k, spiking to 7-8k so it’s not too bad.
Gear Choices
The core of the build is made up by the 3 pieces from Pyran’s set (some elemental buffs, mortar and decent regen), gun (mortar), medal (mortar), gloves (mortar). Why not to complete the Pyran set and get lots of damage buffs? Need a shield for more sustain, sorry. If going with the full set, might as well pick Shieldbreaker and go all offensive, it’s really strong now. But you will lose a lot of sustain and may even RIP in SR45-60.
Why no mortar conduit? An extra mortar would provide ~20% damage but you would lose about 20% regen which is substantial for this particular build. Since our armor and shield recovery stats aren’t epic, regen is the main source of sustain and thus being kept very high.
The rest of the gear is all about regen. The shield is very easy to farm, but if you can’t find a good one, - there are other choices like Meat shield. Anything that provides decent flat regen is good here.
Those sect pants are ideal but not mandatory, can use barbarosa or any well rolled greens instead.
Devotions
Alas, to achieve this level of sustain, we have to pick up pretty much every regen node. Eldritch Fire (thanks Mad_Lee for the tips) and Crown is all we can do about resist reductions. No damage constellations are taken here unfortunately. Can probably get Empyrion or Phoenix and lose Obelisk, but I felt squishier when tried it.
Crucible
Gladiator 1-150 - nothing can threaten you here. No need to get blessings, no need to drink potions, not even tonic of mending.
151-170 - can be done within 13-16 min with 4 blessings, based on my runs so far. Again, fear nothing, no need to use any potions or tonic of mending. Full facetank of all nems and ground effects. The one exception is Kuba and his pools. You can tank him while standing in those, but he will be gaining life, so, to actually kill him relatively fast you have to move around.
Full run 151-170 with 4 blessings, no pots/consumables used - https://youtu.be/1QT1obRkgtw
Can it take on the Celestials? Yes, but expect some kiting with Callagadra.
Here’s my Mogdrogen fight (the last 3 min) - https://youtu.be/StlMwITSHAg
Didn’t use any pots except for lightning resist, was too lazy to swap around components.
Ravager - took 10 min, had to kite to avoid getting energy drain. Can facetank him easily. https://youtu.be/zVTY7b-dpVk
Callagadra - https://youtu.be/T4_8iBYjW3Q
25 min. I don’t recommend taking on Calla in HC without some re-gearing. You would need higher physc resist (+50% overcap on pierce/bleed) and around 3.5-4k armor. I actually dropped some sustain and added another mortar to make this fight more reasonable in terms of kill times, but that forced me to kite and the mortars were missing quite often. It would probably be much better to grab a two piece of the Justice set and add a better shield (25%+ Phys resist).
Trolling Kuba - https://youtu.be/iRzVPOF8mNA
Trolling Warden - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgxBpWc3gpA
Trolling Aether - https://youtu.be/ffAV8_HKakw
Kaisan - https://youtu.be/z_cyCTr4KMw
Update - based on Mad Lee’s feedback I’ve changed some of the devotions and am now leveling them, will record new vids with more damage!
Trolling Mad Queen - https://youtu.be/4SijInpB2kw
Training Dummy - 50-55sec, slow but still ok.
SR 50 (missing about 20% damage in this run) – https://youtu.be/q8mYa3e-dpo
To be updated shortly…
