[1.1.4.2][Caster] Cold FoI MageSlayer Gladiator 150 MadQueen 7s Lokarr 45s with bad pilot (me!) [No Greens]

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
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I’ve seen a number of posts on the Mage Hunter class using the “combo” of the Mageslayer set and Farath’s Cube, with the primary weapon of Flames of Ignaffar. However, some commentators seem to feel Mageslayer is among the worst sets in the game for casters, due to legimate concerns regarding a lack of both %physical resistance and casting speed. I believe this used to be a “good” build, but it appears to my untrained eye to have fallen out of favour - or at least that’s what a search of these forums sorted by most recent reveals to me. Is it just not OP enough any more?

Well, fear not. It must be at least halfway decent if a bad player like myself can use this build to finally do this:
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So here it is in all its glory:
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GRIMTOOLS

Highlights (with all permanent buffs, Word of Renewal up while standing on Inquistor Seal):
170k sheet DPS, 3124 OA, 3229 DA, 18% physical resistance, >100% cold resistance shred, 190% casting speed, all resists overcapped.
With all triggered celestial powers active, Deadly Aim etc included, the build exceeds 3500 OA & DA, has 50% physical resistance and other things besides (though only temporarily). These numbers suggest the build is in the “right place” relative to other builds seen on these forums, and it is far and away the most powerful build I have in terms of owned gear.

Vital aspects:
Elemental resistance shred. Aura of Censure, Hand of Ultos, Elemental Storm and Ignaffar’s Combustion provide 96% elemental resistance shred on a nearby, attacked enemy. Add in further cold resistance debuff of 15% from the set bonus to OFF (limited effectiveness vs major enemies) and 12% to Storm Box off the Cube, and the Cold FoI becomes a significant threat. That’s assuming I understand how this works, but there’s no guarantee of that!
OFF. This freezes a surprising number of enemies, especially those meleers that like to get in our face and test our armour. With just 1 point invested for a total skill level of 10, this allows Elemental Force off the Elemental Harmony rings to lay waste to the trash, while the character focuses on the primary threats by tagging them with Storm Box and then facetanking them on the same Inquisitor Seal. -200% fire resist? Why not!
Casting Speed. While hitting the casting speed cap is possible, I felt that 190% was decent enough that I could use Seal of Blades on the weapon for the physical resistance and general assistance with the build’s difficult resistances of Vitality and Chaos. This freed up the augment slots usually devoted to these resistances to provide flat DA instead.
Defence. Those bits of the devotion tree not devoted to resistance shred deal with boosting DA/OA and physical resistance, as well as the twin heals of Giant’s Blood and Wayward Soul. Along with Word of Renewal the build has a great deal of health sustain such that it can tank quite well.

But can it hit and run? FoI needs a character that stands and delivers, after all. Well, it does take a while to kill Kupa, for instance, and it’s obvious that guy needs to be kited most frequently, but this has presented no serious issue on Ultimate. Drag him and his spawn between your Elemental Storms - oh, and he does freeze with OFF for a short while that you can frostburn his face with a decent burst of damage.

I believe the build can be improved by changing the rings to a Mythical Band of the Eternal Haunt and a Mythical Reign of Ice and Fire. Unfortunately I don’t have the blueprint for the latter, so I can’t test. I did try with two Eternal Haunts, but found a reduction in kill speed due to having to take down each enemy individually with FoI. I also discovered I needed the heal from Giant’s Blood - I initially removed the devotion points in Behemoth as well at the bottom-right point in Ghoul so that I could unlock the Rumor celestial power, linking it to Storm Box. With Mythical Reign of Ice and Fire, I’m hoping that the life leech will provide enough sustain that I could make such a devotion switch permanent, which would provide another huge kick to cold resist shred.

Either way, I’m a bit staggered with the build’s effectiveness, even if it takes bits and pieces from other builds I have seen online and finding a way to merge them together is all I’ve really brought to it.

Enjoy!

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Can say that this is breakthrough

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Hey, mate, welcome to the forums!

You can improve your build TONNS if you add Murmur. Relevant RR devotion is mandatory for any build. You can also improve your damage output by taking that Slow resist to at least 50% (casting speed is affected by slow debuffs). Also, you don’t really need 3300 DA, Anywhere around ~3k DA should be enough if you everything else in your build is done correctly.

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On a side note has anyone tried pyre, warpfire, mageslayer magehunter or something to that tune?

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I like your itemization, but really lack of -RR devotion is hurting the build. FoI with Mageslayer is very interesting concept btw.

Can’t understand the Crucible time, is it 20 minutes unbannered?

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Everything about this build seems solid. Except one thing: the main skill.
Everytime I see FoI I can’t help but think it needs some love.
The idea that we finally have AAR to feel good and perform great but FoI still feels like you’re tryna kill stuff with morning breath is… baffling to me.
I commend you on your efforts, it does sport some very cool numbers. winks with both eyes

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Hey @LordThundyr, nice build!

Have you tried the ol’ Ultos+DG+Revenant devo route? It really helped me with the issues of cast speed & sustain cold FoI seems to have (at least on my infiltrator version) :slight_smile:

I’m kind of in the middle of a pretty extensive Mageslayer FoI testing marathon, actually :stuck_out_tongue: (takes a little time though since I’m somewhat tied up IRL at the moment)

Dmg-wise, 2xPyre rings Purifier seems to be the strongest of the fire FoI versions I tried so far, but survivability is a b*tch on that one (granted, this goes for pretty much all Mageslayer FoI builds I tested so far, so…).

Despite the huge dmg potential of the fire version, the overall best performance amongst my theorycrafts goes to the Cold FoI infiltrator with Chillheart+Ice&Fire rings atm, mostly because of superior sustain & RR.

MH is obviously the coolest though, simply because freezing frickin’ nemeses with OFF+Mageslayer feels absolutely awesome.

But either way I doubt there really is a true tier 1 build hiding in there anywhere; we’re still talking FoI, after all :slight_smile:

I might do a post summing up my testing a little more comprehensively at some point, however – if anyone would be interested in that.

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Can say that this is breakthrough

@omnitrio I’m not sure I understand why you highlight Murmur and Widow while saying this. I mention in the OP that I wanted Murmur but couldn’t sustain the health regen without either Giant’s Blood or Reign of Ice and Fire (which I cannot craft since I’ve never dropped the blueprint). Widow is even weirder to me - it has little relevance to the build, imo. This particular build deals no aether damage, and lightning is the smaller component of the FoI damage by some distance (and there’s just 1 skill point in each of Storm Box and Lightning Tether). To me it feels strange to spend 6 devotion points to boost the secondary source of damage of a build that already does a LOT of damage but has defensive issues.

Then again, as I also said, I’m a bad player… :slight_smile:

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I was sure that all the elemental -RR was enough, and obviously have a plan to include Rumour in the future. But I guess I set my sights too low! :smile:

The Crucible “time” is not a time - it’s the first time I’ve completed 150 Gladiator with any build, and since I’m not a streamer or whatever I figure it was proof enough that the build works. Actually, it’s the first build I have that clears any waves on Gladiator beyond the first 20 or so. I’m not entirely sure what "unbannered’ means. I manage to get myself killed by Moosilauke’s TSS for some reason (the only enemy that threatens the build in the run to 150, as it can tank almost anything), so I buffed the character health and defences after wave 110 just to be sure [he always spawns on 115, and I’ve had the “pleasure” of 2 on 120 before]. I didn’t purchase any other upgrades. In this particular run, I got distracted by my daughter, got killed, and reset to the “checkpoint” which was wave 90. So 90-110 unbuffed, 110-150 with 2 buffs. How long do they last - 20 minutes? It looks like I’ve got about 15% of the time remaining on them in the screenshot. Is that a good time for those 40 waves?

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@LordThundyr , you can use banners in Crucible. Best is Vanguard, which increase your damage in radius. But it’s expensive.

Buffs last 25 minutes, so your times are probably 22 minutes or so for 40 waves. The time isn’t good, but not bad either. If you can beat 100-110 without dying, place buffs after 110 to beat 150.

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I believe what he’s trying to say is that -% reduced resistances is one of the most powerful stats in the game, so taking the constellations that correspond to your damage type is usually a very good idea. You can never have enough -%RR :wink:

Taking two different RR devos, like Murmur & Widow, is often an overcommitment, though, since you can spread yourself too thin very quickly, so you are probably right about that.

Congrats on beating 150 for the first time like that, btw! I doubt many people get that far all by themselves (I, at least, relied 100% on forum guides made by others to beat, well… pretty much anything for a long long time :P)

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@LordThundyr Good start on a Cold FOI MH build! I haven’t made one yet, but I would suggest getting Murmur as others have said as well as checking out a relevant build by @Nery here:

Although it’s for PRM, the skill choices will be pretty similar and most of the itemization/Devotions are applicable as well. Using the Rimetongue chest would increase your FOI damage by moving a significant portion of the Lightning Damage to Cold. Also, using the Scales of Beronath could be an option for a belt. I think if you get more Cold damage converted, grab more RR and swap out all that DA for quite a bit more OA (plus more crit damage) you could kill faster and get lower times in the end.

@Cinder’s suggestion of Chillheart would be awesome as well combined with the Rimetongue Chestguard - almost full Lightning to Cold conversion then… Just need to grab more cast speed elsewhere.

Just my 2 cents! :sunglasses:

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I dunno, kill speed is nice, sure, but if you haven’t gotten that experienced in running crucible yet, a more defensive setup might actually be more useful here.

Chillheart & Rimetongue are indeed great though; the only issue with that setup is cast speed (for some reason both Mageslayer & all FoI-supporting off-hands offer little to nothing in that regard).

The devo setup that worked best for me at least on an infiltrator was, due to this reason (and due to survivability issues), this one: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/b28enLqV

But I have to admit that Elemental Seekers look very tempting here, too, so if your arcanist stats allow you to do it (Mental Alacrity helps a little with this, I suppose), maybe Nery’s PRM devos would be better…

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Infiltrator looks interesting offensively, but not sure how good is the defense and energy regen.

About my cold PRM, it was one of my first builds posted, I am little puzzled what I was doing with devotions :sweat:
But Seekers with CDR and conversion should be decent, but route with Ultos, Amatok, Murmur, Elemental storm and maybe Phoenix should be better perhaps :thinking:

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Well, that’s kinda my point, though. I’ve already got Elemental Storm (flat reduced), Ultos (% reduced) and Aura of Censure (-%), and mentioned wanting Rumour in the OP (another source of -%, but I might not be “good enough” to lose Giant’s Blood for it - dead mages deal 0 DPS, and all that). The build also has a few other -% on gear and -% on OFF should it happen to freeze the enemy. Widow is aether/lightning, so seems superfluous to a cold/lightning build where the lightning is far from 50% of the damage total. I agree one can’t have enough -RR, but the build needs balance as well surely? 6 devotion points in a non-essential constellation seems like a “luxury” to me.

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Good info, thanks! The character can definitely beat 120 unbuffed, probably much higher with a more experienced pilot - I just suck vs Moosilauke. Maybe the point mad_lee made about Slow Resist is a key here. I probably overcompensate with the high DA as well - I did make a concerted effort to get it as a “natural” 3k+ (permanent buffs only). :slight_smile:

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In an earlier version of the build I squeezed out Ultos, Elemental Storm, Seeker and Arcane Currents. I had to compromise a LOT on some of the devotions chosen and honestly couldn’t be sure what was working and what not. In the end I decided on the -RR route, which was infinitely more effective. At no point did I have this final build in mind - I was actually trying to use Cube and Storm Box as the primary source of damage (and therefore did have Widow, btw) even though in the back of my mind I could see all the forum builds with 1 point in the skill and a linked -RR devotion saying, “This is how to use that skill - stop being silly, save the skill points and do the same!”. It was only when I realised I actually had the weapon, pants and chest lying in my shared stash collecting dust, as well as the Mageslayer’s Hood blueprint to craft the rest of the set with the FG inventor’s transmute, that I started to seriously look at what I was trying to achieve.

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@RxJunkie: Nery’s build was one that caught my eye, for sure - it’s impressive to say the least! Unfortunately, I’m way short of being able to build it, not least because I don’t have the Mythical Spellgaze, the weapon nor the ubiquitous Stonehide greaves, which seem the most important parts of the gear to me. One of the ideas I took from that build was to plan to craft Vampirris, getting weapon damage above 45% on FoI and then life leech on it would be around 10% under normal circumstances. I figured this concept was a better fit with the obvious “FoI Apostate using Tainted Flame” than an elementalist, so abandoned it.

I hadn’t considered the Rimetongue chest - I was a little blown away by how much easier Fateweaver’s makes the build “construction”, so have never for a moment considered replacing it. I like Beronath’s belt, though - as I said earlier, I might have over-compensated defensively with the build in general, hence the Cord of Deception. These things I can test though, cos I have these items … somewhere…

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I’m sorry, I think I was a little unclear before :see_no_evil:

I meant that it might be bad to take both Murmur and Widow because, as you said, going for two different damage types here is probably an overcommitment (although your overall lightning dmg without Rimetongue chest/Chillstrife sword is pretty high; Mageslayer is a tri-elemental-set after all).

However, due to how RR works in practice (you can read up on all of this stuff here if you like: 🤯 malawiglenn’s guide on game mechanics for beginners), -%rr is basically the best form of rr you can get. So picking Murmur here should make quite a difference (-1%rr is, as far as I know, about equal to ~1% gain in overall damage(!)).

Seekers are only really worth it if you have a decent amount of lightning/fire>cold dmg conversion, btw., like with the chillstrife sword. Then they are pretty darn awesome, though.

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For cold builds Murmur is must yes. Btw Chillhearts convert fire and lightning to cold, not Chillstrifes.