[1.1.8.1] No-set Physical Forcewave Death Knight -> CR 4:50/ 170ex naked 6:55/ SR 105/ Ravager 2:20 + Mogdrogen 2:35 + Crate boss/ 75-76 farmer

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
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Hello, just another build from me, physical no-set Forcewave Death Knight this time. Build depends on convertion damage into physical so we can skip a lot of enemies armor. Very tanky concept with good damage and kiting potential in bad situations.

Huge credits go to @grey-maybe for suggestion to try Death Knight instead of Warlord and ideas how to improve build.

Build
https://www.grimtools.com/calc/YZemkyvZ

No-set builds has pretty flexible itemization so there are possible swaps:

Helmet - Ravager’s Dreadgaze or Warborn Visor. Octavius should do the job too.

Armor - Octavius for elemental conversion, however current armor gives flat vitality to convert and more survivality so it’s BiS option from my tests.

Shoulders - aim for damage + resistances affixes. Fleshwarped Pauldrons are very good choice too if you have better one than Korvan Spaulders. Purple options are Titan Pauldrons or Targo.

Amulet - rare is best because of mod to Forcewave. Like always - Damage/OA/resistances. Another good option is Avenger of Cairn - ton of survivality but damage will suffer a little.

Gloves - Grasp of Unchained Might.

Relic - Doom/Serenity/Honor but Deathstalker is very helpful because of RR. You can either control him to destroy Benjahr’s crystals or mines in one sr map.

Ring - Menhirian can be swapped for some rare (Gargabol prefered) with resistances and damage, depends of rolls on another gear pieces.

Performance
Crucible 4:50 with 2+4 setup

Crucible 6:55 naked with extra spawn. Maybe could be faster but I have not much experience in this challenge.

SR 105, few points added into physique

Ravager 2:20, pharma needed

Mogdrogen 2:35

Crate boss

SR 80 all bosses pulled

Regards

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Nice one! congrat

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Nice to see Death Knight using FW for a change.
I wish I was such a well rounded builder/player to have so many achievements at the same tame.

How do we skip armor? I don’t understand it in this example.
I know Vit -> Physical skips armor but it’s on top of FW base Physical damage
so it would already be skipping even if it was just not-converted flat Physical?
Or is it this weird thing that all additive flat Physical would get blocked separately and Vit - > Phys does not?

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Thanks!

As far as I know flat damage converted into physical do not go through enemies armor like non-converted physical - but I have no idea about calculations and some deeper mechanics behind it.
At start I was testing Warlord but after changing into DK I had average 10-15 seconds faster clear times - necro has a lot of aether/vitality/cold to convert, warlord is pure physical.

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All these converted numbers don’t seem that much but also the difference is not huge so it might well be the case.
Thanks for mentioning comparison with Warlod because I was going to ask about it

Btw it took me a lot of time to figure out where does the conversion from Aether comes from :pensive:

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It only skips armor for those converted from SH/SB/Chest and pierce from Azraka etc so not all damage goes through without armor check. Don’t know how much the percentage of it’s FW single hit but not the big portion. So the success doesn’t come from conversion but the building setup. Though even 5-10k damage without armor check with each hit should make the build faster in CR because clearing thrash/heroes etc will be much easier.

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~200 dmg (100% Vit, ~25% Cold & Aether) or so (I multiplied it by 2 because of 190% weapon damage) is not that much but noticeable. Could be making a difference.

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No you need to multiply it with the %2839 physical damage bonus + base %100; it’s like 4500 damage without extra buffs with each hit goes through without armor check. And that probably means 40k dps without armor check at tops. But I never played FW in high levels and he didn’t share the tooltip so I’m not sure. I might be wrong because it’s math :rofl:

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Sorry, I always talk about damage before applying this multiplayer.
I meant just flat damage multiplied by % Weapon Damage multiplier from Forcewave skill itself.

If there were more options to convert Chaos / Acid maybe Witchblade could compete

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I tried a lot to make a works on paper theorycraft with Physical Sentinel OA/DA is hard to balance or you lost resistances no middle way. Maybe Witchblade works better.

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I have some old Witchblade which has these stats an good levels even without temp procs:
https://www.grimtools.com/calc/RVvBBkkV
Could probably optimize it further because resistances got better with the patches and are now “too high’”
(living armor, affix on amulet, maybe DA augments)

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It works well with end-game content. Some build lost their mojo with nerfs or RR rework but gained more freedom to build differently with better augments. There is now more creativity on play.
And I mostly tried with DW with Beronath Sword or Gutsmasher to convert chaos aswell. FW isn’t my thing :frowning:

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Great job on this build!

Seeing FW spam build doing SR 105 is awkward :stuck_out_tongue:

I want to ask which are the consumables used in Ravager fight, wanna try smth like this in future?

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I wish I would know anything about GD math, I am pretty much trial-error builder :frowning_face:

@Nery Thanks! For Ravager I used few health regen (probably useless), increased HP, OA, DA. But most important were Slithblood Tincture + Courageous Tincture (when Menhrir, MoT and Health Potion were down) and Lifestealer Oil + Hungerer Oil for faster leeching. Aether Cluster is very helpful too when really everything is down and health rapidly go down.

Usually you have to be ready for very hard damage coming in when Ravager starts to roar few times in row. It means he is debuffing you for few seconds and you are probably going to die without any defense cycle ready.

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wow, who would know such a straightforward setless thing just smashes everything to bits. Well done.

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Great build. I wonder tho, if there is some way to add 5-10% extra Adcth without sacrificing too much damage. It feels like with some more lifesteal, facetanking ravager without any pharma would be super easy.

[Edit] I can think only of Lifegiver signet ring, instead of Menhirian ring. I lose ~100% phys modifier and some armor, in favour of 6% adcth, ~600 health, some DA and +2 to Soul Harvest.

If i get highroll 7% adcth, i almsot double my lifesteal from 15% to 22%. Maybe less than that , since there is also some lifesteal from devotions

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I don’t know how it would work in practice but these are gear changes only for Ravager I would possibly do:

  1. Lifegiver signet as you said, even two of them.
  2. Golemborn greaves boots.
  3. Mythical colossal grasp gloves.

Maybe 1 or 2 points would be enough. Ravager is hard for forcewave characters if you do not go any pharma or gear switches (or if your basic build is not absolute tank).

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You could probably squeeze in Haunted Steel since there’s seem room for it. For example Blazing Ruby or Chains of Oleron components are used in the build and could be swapped with resistance components to compensate.

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Haunted steel converts physical into vitality so it’s better to use Seal of Blades - but I don’t know really if this 5% is going to change that much. 4% physical resistance is lost too.

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:man_facepalming: true, forgot about it

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