[1.1.4.2] 'The Amurrrican' DW Pistol Purifier (Red, White & Blue damage types - Fire, Ice & Lightning)

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
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Same old story here. Long time player, nearly 1000 hours but has been largely casual in terms of experimenting, builds, progression, etc. The game has these intense boss difficulty spikes that literally force you down this path in Ultimate even though the rest of the game is very manageable, even the next boss might be killable but the one you just fought was nearly impossible. I’m here because I just got past that boss on Ultimate…Ramzul, High Priest. Stun locked by towers, 1 shot by almost any damage, limited kiting space…rough fight.

The nemesis boss fights…forget it. That’s another reason I’m here.

I’m not familar with this process, but I have thick skin and really do want feeedback on where I’ve gone so terribly wrong because it feels like I’m fast approaching the ‘no fun zone’ with amount of deaths, individual boss difficulty, etc.

Let me have it!!

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My build:
https://www.grimtools.com/calc/r2B1YezN

Build originally based on
[1.0.4.1] DW Pistol Purifier (lokarr 21sec)

1 Like
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You asked so I’m just answering. If you wanna get better at the game you need to spend some more time in GT reading.

For example, Anderos Amplifier. If you scroll down the gun’s description you’ll notice the mods. They can give you (not always accurate!) a clue as to the kind of build this item is good for. It reads, “Mortar Trap.” This is not a Mortar build, it’s an autoattacker, so this item is just terrible here. Another example, relic. Go to GT, click on the relic, search “in demo” and then “in inqui” and you’ll have lists of all relics giving +1 all skills in demolitionist and inquisitor respectively.This is the kind of relic you want 9 times out of 10. Following this logic, just about every item you got there is wrong (for a dw ranged Firestrike build).

But this is not all. Skills. This you just gotta know. Like the fact that pretty much every single Firestrike build puts as many points in Brimstone as possible. Or that Storm Spread is best at 7/10 (leave it you to figure out why). Same with devotions. If you don’t feel like reading every last digit on every last devo (or at least following builds of players who do) then you won’t do any good.

Last, stats. You cannot pull off endgame and even main campaign with stuff like negative resistances (all of them must be well over 80%). Or 4% adcth (life steal). Or 1k armor with 2k da. Check out @Nery’s guide on recommended stats for endgame.

Good luck!

3

Thanks for the feedback. I figured it was mostly going to be just ‘get good.’ The difference in being able to plow through the game, even deep into Ultimate by just organically equipping what you find and occasionally crafting something (sorry, I’ve no time to run Steps for hearts over and over with only a chance it drops and I need many of them for nearly everything useful.

Not complaining, but the game seems to turn on it’s head and become a completely different thing when as you said ‘every last digit on every last devo’ is required knowledge to advance.

Thanks, I’ll spend some time in GT learning just how horrible my build is.

Seriously though, thanks a ton for taking the time to provide feedback. Very much appreciated.

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We actually follow the same build, yeah Ramzul is an ass with his stun, storm, and his slap just murder my purifier out of existence.

Looking at your build, you seem just just put your skill & devo point anywhere, better get those ghoul and chariot devotion like in the guide. Your resistance also is at the negative and will always give you bad times at that far in the ultimate like ya1 said above.

Your chest armor and relic are obsolete at that high level too. Check your stash if you have other item that can change or improve your defense and use that, if you didn’t have other item, then the faction stuff is a good place to go upgrading.

Also, collect any green armor that have at least 2 resistance.

Here is what I try to improve based on your gear and change some with faction gear https://www.grimtools.com/calc/62aP97XN

1 Like
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Yeah, I struggled with the whole ‘copy known working builds’ vs ‘have fun and build my own’. My choices aren’t completely random, or at least I didn’t think they were when I placed them. I tried to put devo points into stuff that made sense for a ranged damage dealer, but clearly I err’d along the way, lol.

A game this deep and complex, but still kind of has a blueprint for what is ‘best’ it seems. To be perfectly honest, I was trying to see if it was viable to just organically play through the game, equipping what drops, skill points, devos without a cookie cutter. I guess there’s a happy medium I need to find.

I also struggle with literally HOW to get all of the appropriate gear. I’ve played a lot, but with the sheer number of items, descriptors, sets, etc…I find it hopeless to think I’ll just come across everything I need.

I’ll do faction gear digging to see if I can improve my survivability. This game there appears to be no true ‘glass cannon’. It seems you should stop worrying about damage output and start focusing on defense once you start getting into Ultimate and for sure the endgame content like nemesis.

Thanks for the feedback. Now to decide how much effort I want to put into learning stuff so I can advance!!

**edited - any tips for getting relics (blueprints) of an appropriate level?

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Shop the faction vendors for a bunch. Besides that, check out Vinelton the merchant inside the Ancient Grove since he sells a few at a time randomly.

The better option compared to Vinelton is the hidden Blood Grove merchant. You can check him for recipes, then exit, restart and check him again. Do that a few hundred times and you’ll have plenty of recipes! :sunglasses:

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I think you don’t need to min/max everything on your character to be able to beat the main campaign, but if you have far from optimal gear, and on top of it not the best skill and devotion allocations, you will probably have a hard time.

The main thing is if you wanna survive, to max out all the main resistances, it will help you tremendously. Faction gear can help you with this, and of course components and augments.
All the rest comes after this. You can check some builds, guides, beginner guides, and try to understand why and when to max out a skill, when to put one point in it, when to soft cap, etc. Some skills have very good point value on ultimate levels, some skills have worse, but still worth on some builds, and so on. And after that we can talk about resist reduction, offensive/defensive ability, resist ovvercaps and the rest of finer things, but at first you don’t have to worry about this so much.

For example on a fire strike build, it is always worth to max out Brimstone, put as many point in it as you can and as soon as you can. Check the damage values in gromtools, to see why. Later on maybe you can focus on converting the chaos or fire damage of it to your desired damage type with the help of some items.

You can put together a character to be able to reliably farm Steps of Torment or Bastion of Chaos, or some Crucible or Shattered Realm, and you wil have plenty of items and recipes quickly.

For Nemesis farming, it depends on the nemesis, but you probably need a more optimised character with good gear. Mousilauke is probably the easiest to kill, especially for ranged. The ones in the expansions are kinda hard (Grava, Kuba, Kaisan).

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Thanks again for the feedback. The vendor reset after 2 buys is a nice time saving tip.

TBH, I didn’t realize just how shoddy my gear was. I also moved away from the survival devos going to more pure dps, which appears to be the wrong answer.

Here’s the updated toon with some tweaking. Still have a few levels to farm, but this guy survives MUCH better. However, in FG there are some ‘regular’ bosses that I literally do not have enough DPS to kill. Can stand there on top of them for minutes and they retain full health bars. I have to combo them with a charge of some sort and slowly…and I mean slowly, widdle them down and hope they don’t do whatever it is that heals them to full.

https://www.grimtools.com/calc/O2GL4wkV

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As far as I understand, you use self found gear here ? So besides craft able/farmable/fraction items it does not make any sense to comment on your gear choices.

I would still as recommended look up other ranged auto attack build why they chose their respective skill distribution. For example, this one:

or even better, since the build has more explanation:

With no experience in ranged auto attacks, I would go for skill with +flat damage, resist reduction and %fire and/or %lightning or elemental.

If you have question, why one skill was chosen over the other just asked in threads themselves or here with an @<< thread author>>

For example for your build, I would max out :
deadly aim and aura of Censure

drop some points from the upper skill row in inquisitor and move them into

flashbang and arcane empowerment.