Converting energy to matter. I think this is what the kids call a meme build?
For my latest project (last sorcerer build for a while before I go figure out another class to play with), I decided to try a build that converts all elemental damage to physical damage. There’s itemization for this conversion, but holy shit is it not kind to Sorcerers! To make this kind of build “work,” you kind of have to duct-tape together some arcanist gear and some demolitionist gear and then super-glue a few Soldier pieces in there for good measure. I wouldn’t call it a great build, but I’m posting it here because I think it’s nonetheless interesting and kind of fun to play and it definitely got me thinking a little more about some of Grim Dawn’s itemization shortcomings, just in time for the likely end of meta-adjusting releases.
Screen caps coming when I’m free to get them.
Meta: Your spammable, life stealing main attack passes through enemies and procs a devotion skill that passes through enemies so it’s actually best to get a little range on packs when you can so that they’re lined up a bit. That said, Bone Lance is almost inarguably the shittiest end-game component skill. You could swap in a Seal of Destruction and use Stormfire instead and feel a little better about its AOE, and again it’s all converting to Physical, but you lose some of the other resists, bonuses and incidental Aether conversion from a Seal of Might at that point.
Devastation propagates RR, shittily. And it can be constantly active, between the set bonuses and CDR, so keep it running as it really helps sustain your HP and damage.
Grenado procs Ulzaad.
Charge a lot with your rune skill, as it improves DPS and the attack speed debuff is better than nothing.
Grenado - what can we say about the humble Grenado? Our set bonuses favor Devastation, so it falls to skill bonuses to improve Grenado and its modifiers. In the end it’s honestly still not that impressive, damage-wise. I tested Canister Bomb and it feels a little beefier but it’s primarily Pierce damage and so it doesn’t convert.
Devotions - most of these physical devotions assume you’ve got a pierce component as well, rather than an elemental component, so you’re already fighting with one handful of unconverted damage behind your back. Azarkaa should go on main attack, whether you go with Bone Lance or Stormfire. Assassin’s Blade should go on Devastation to cast the widest possible net. Speaking of, another big disadvantage of this conversion is that you’re very unlikely to have any class skills that debuff physical resistance, which means you have to go for the procs-only-on-crit Assassin’s Blade, which means your RR is spotty at best, especially since you have to go Scales instead of Revenant in order to get two Tier 3 physical damage devotions. It’s clearly a devotion built for a dual-wield physical character. So, like, do I build a Fire Strike physical convert sorcerer next? Maybe. Probably.
Gear
Full Spellscourge or it’s not worth it.
Decree gets you a spammable main skill with decent ADCTH potential plus a huge physical damage bonus.
Other than that, it gets sloppy as hell with trying to pull in some RR at the expense of unconvertible damage (hi Black Matriarch).
Probably my surprise favorite piece of this build is the Annihilation relic, which provides fully converted flat damage and fully converted proc damage, a nice little CC, as well as a decent innate Physical bonus.
The build still walks away with +2 bonuses to Arcanist and Demolitionist, as well as +2 bonuses to several key skills, which looks good on paper. So I guess just keep looking at that paper.
The main problem here is that it kills so damn slow. You’re tanky as hell, honestly, so you can cruise to a SR75 boss room, pull them all, and spend like two minutes raining Devastation on them until your circuit breakers run out and your cooldowns misalign and you get pancaked. If there were a reliable way to get the damage up, this could actually be a pretty brilliant build.
Honestly you may be better off converting physical to fire or something like that if you’re going to get creative but IDK what kind of item support exists for that either.
TLDR: Itemize my weird build please @Zantai, xoxo.
