You can’t go wrong with Krieg-based starter build. May not be the best in end game but it’s very flexible, doesn’t matters if you’re going to aether, physical, DK or BM. Even if you don’t have those specific items, you’ve margin. You like it? try it. 
(i’ve done DK and BM both from zero in 1.1.9.8 and ahead, they’re are perfectly doable)
Thanks for this interesting Death Knight build, I’m enjoying the levelling with Forcewave. I got lucky with the drop from Voldrak and got his Crusher with +168% Physical damage so I swapped out Massacre for it. I found a nice set of double rare Fleshwarped Pauldrons with another +48% Physical damage.
Please, if possible, update the devotions for patch 1.2.1
I like this build, but I cannot add the points to devotions like it show, due to some pre-requirements for some points.
I don’t know if this change on some of the patches after 1.1.9.0 because I just started playing a month ago, but I think that it’s the case.
If you could use the “record” while spending the points in https://www.grimtools.com/ it’s going to be really helpful too.
Thanks in advance.
Best regards.
Sorry, my mistake.
When you say “Hammer” or “Eel” I thought that’s only 1 point, but reading again and seeing the picture, if I understand correctly, you mean to complete the whole constellation, right?
Is this build still viable!?, or better try others more updated?
It’s still fine.
Build is fine, but from the guide do ignore that “mechanics of physical damage” section starting from “the last detail” because that bug was fixed. Armour now protects against converted physical damage same as any other kind of physical damage.
In that regard, one thing I question about the build is that it does not use the Dire Bear constellation and its “Maul” proc. (Which reduces enemy armour.) I was under the impression that this is considered a must-have for physical damage these days. So personally I would use a different devotion map on this setup.
But the OP mentioned in an older post that the build should be fine despite this, so your mileage may vary. (Blade Arc does deliver most of its damage in one big hit, so it’s less subject to armour than some other attacks.)
(You can always experiment yourself, reset devotion potions are pretty cheap and you can see what works for you.)
FYI, Krieg set no longer drops on Elite difficulty after 1.2.1.3 and the grim tools on the bosses shows this. Otherwise this is an amazing guide!
I’m a noob when it comes to the mechanics of GD, but my understanding is that bosses don’t have a lot of armour, they have a lot of health, and the way armour works 30% reduction of armour doesn’t actually amount to much damage. That and this build is hurting for abilities to proc attack devotions as is.
See this Reddit post for a better explanation:
You pulled up a 5-yo reply by someone who did not understand armor mechanics.
And didn’t bother to read the reply below, correcting them.
a) Don’t go to reddit for answers, when it comes to Grim Dawn, 90% of replies there are filled with outdated info, misunderstood semi-truths and straight-up nonsense.
b) Armor is subtracted from every single instance of physical damage.
When it comes to “weapon damage”, we see that as one big lump, but the game sees it as a collection of all the small sources of flat damage.
So for example 20 flat from a “Crushing” prefix, 100 from the weapon, 15 from a devotion, 100 from a passive buff etc.
And all those small values have to get past the armor value. By themselves.
They are NOT added up beforehand.
The only way to get them large enough in the first place, is to bloat them up with physical damage increases and crit damage.
Even then, a lot of those will be in the range of 2000-3000.
And reducing the monster’s armor by 30% down to ~1400 will make a huge difference all of a sudden.
Okay, so going by the grim tools of this build we have a lower scale of roughly 12500 weapon damage. Blade arc pushes that to 29500 just accounting for its first skill multiplier.
Going by the official guide on armour, this would mean with no maul armour reduction Lokar on ultimate difficulty would take roughly 28100 of that damage instance. With a 35% armour reduction he instead takes 28590 damage from that instance. That’s a total increase of about 1.7%.
I am aware I’ve not accounted for all the other damage instances in the attack, but I doubt they amount to a significant amount of more damage unless they are totalling up to around the ~2000 damage mark. What am I missing here then?
This
Let’s make example
Weapon flat damage is 100 phys
Ring adds 10 flat phys
You have +1900% phys damage
You attack skill applies 200% weapon damage
Enemy has 1k armor
The flat damage on the weapon deals 100x(1+1900/100)x2 - 1000 = 3000 damage to enemy
The flat damage on the ring deals 10x(1+1900/100)x2 - 1000 = 0 damage to enemy
If enemy has 650 armor
The flat damage on the weapon deals 100x(1+1900/100)x2 - 650= 3350 damage to enemy
The flat damage on the ring deals 10x(1+1900/100)x2 - 650 = 0 damage to enemy
More than 10% total increase in dps
Sorry, why is the equation WD(1+modifier)? Isn’t it just WD*modifier?
Also your calculation for how armour affect physical damage seem to be wrong according to the official guide (Guide – Gameplay – Combat – Grim Dawn). Where armour is less than the total damage it would be:
(WD-armour) + (Armour*0.3)
So from your numbers (and adding the flat weapon damage that I don’t get) it would be, no maul 1000 armour:
3300 weapon damage and 120 ring damage for total 3420 damage.
With maul, 650 armour:
3545 WD and 120 ring damage for total 3665 damage.
That’s a 7.1% increase of damage. Still more than 1%.
Because by default you do 100% damage, resulting in an extra +1. % phys damage listed is the BONUS damage you get.
If you have a sword that deals 50 phys damage and 0 %physical damage, it deals 50 damage. 1 + 0 / 100 = 1
In your formula, it would be 0.
If you have 100% bonus phys damage, the sword deals 100 damage. In your formula, it would be 50.
By default, armour has a 70% absorption rate, which means that if you have 1000 armour, 700 points of damage is subtracted. That’s where the + (armour * 0.3) comes from, but conceptually I think it’s easier to understand if you do wd - armour * 0.7
It used to be that monsters had more absorb at higher difficulties but I believe that no longer applies. The player still can and should get higher absorb, though.
Either way, I’m assuming that the 650 armour figure was meant to be the effective figure after multiplication, not the paper value.
BTW, also bear in mind that the flat armour is applied AFTER physical resistance. So if an enemy has high phys res, (like Lokar, who has 82% phys res) the armour becomes that much more effective. But if you manage to reduce their phys res first, the armour subtraction will become much more marginal. Another reason why it is so very important for phys characters to have high OA to proc assassin’s mark.
I’ve done some napkin calculations and it seems to me that even WITH maul, those tiny sources of physical damage like 15 on the amulet would still fall under the armour threshold of many enemies.
Like many nemesis enemies have 1941 armour. Even if we reduce that by 35%, that 15 phys damage is going to be way under the armour threshold, so maul doesn’t really make a difference.
But it does help for any sources that are above the armour threshold, and it helps a lot for sources that happen to be JUST below the threshold.
Is that correct?
Somewhat correct, but
Armor absorption is at, I believe, 70% as of last patch, so 30% of the dmg goes through regardless.
Blade Arc has has +106% crit dmg here. 15 dmg through +2900% physical and 200% weapon damage would be 900 damage, so with a crit, you can actually push it past the armor threshold using maul. Orange crits even more so, as all the crit multi is applied again.
But generally speaking, the tiny amounts of flat have very little value, unlike for any other damage type.
True, but my point is that the same 30% goes through with or without maul. I was wondering whether maul makes the really small phys sources notably better or not. Seems the answer is “mostly not.”
But good point on crits, a big enough crit might indeed make a difference if you stack enough %phys.
Though looking at my own phys builds none of them have anywhere near enough %phys and crit damage for that to matter, except for the physical AAR battlemage… who doesn’t stack many small damage sources anyway because AAR doesn’t have weapon damage. I guess it’ll help with the converted vit damage.
Bottom line: I think I’ll just keep making magic damage builds.
So ultimately it’s not worth keeping beyond the early game where armour and health are closer together. 5 devotion points for likely around 10% damage increase. 3 devotion points and you get +30% all damage in the Owl constellation.
i remember while leveling Phys EoR Maul straight up doubled my damage output (I estimate by how fast hp bar was lowering) against some big armored guys but it’s the worst case scenario of course for this 
Owl is like 1% more damage. We’re talking about true DPS increase not additive % damage change.
If that’s your take-away here, then godspeed, soldier. 
+30% all damage is roughly a 1% total damage increase. (It’s added to all your %phys dmg).
By your own calculation, Maul alone is many times more effective, not even counting the +90% phys dmg, life leech and CC res.
I disagree with that conclusion.
The impact of Maul would still be armour * 0.35 * 0.70 * number of damage sources that are greater than 65% of enemy armour. (Roughly.)
Against Lokar, that would be about 500 more damage per blow PER bigger damage source, which includes at least: weapon damage, big flat phys damage on spear, blade arc flat damage, set damage bonus… and on a critical hit the smaller damage bonuses may also get added, as the honourable Sudoko pointed out. So we’re STILL talking a couple 1000 extra damage per hit, and you’re not going to get that kind of damage increase anywhere else except with RR devotions like Assassin’s mark.
Edit: I had more points about how Owl does nothing and Maul does much more even WITHOUT the proc, but got ninja’d.