I wanted to share with you the results of my (long) quest for a comfortable and forgiving Trozan druid .
I love the trozan druid as much as I love farming SR 75-76 but was frustrated how unforgiving the Cairn wilderness isā¦ Volcanoes, crystals, aether pools, they almost hurt more than legos on a naked foot!
This build is a variation of the excellent DmT trozan druid: the core items and gameplay are the same but thereās also some noticeable differences between the defensive/offensive concepts and the devotions. More on that later.
Performances
This is the exact same build for all the vids: no augment, skill or devotion rework needed.
As this build is about kiter sustainability, all runs are naked and without health potions.
Modrogen, no vid but is the easiest of all celestials, just a loooong fight
Pros and cons
Pros:
Defensives layers allowing you to walk on aether, resists SR crystals and ground volcanoes (for a few secs), tank a big one shot hit (i.e: alex meteor) . Can facetank all bosses and a majority of nemesis one by one in SR 75-76.
A 17000 HP pool and good life sustainability.
Good secondary resists for a spellcaster kiter: 80 for stun/slow/freeze/petrify, 60 for skill disruption, 47 for trap.
Still decent 3500 OA and 2800 DA for a caster. >50k Trozan shard
Rewarding gameplay (if you like kiters).
Cons:
Being a tanky caster is still far from being a real tank. You still need to kite all celestials + Grava Tul , Fabius and Maiden (a bit) in SR 75-76.
Piano gameplay as you have 4 offensive and 2 defensive spells to manage
Gear can takes quite some time to farm as you need some RNGesus.
Rerolling the set items for perfect stats is ressource consuming.
Resist reductions (RR) are supplied by Raging tempest of the wind devils, and the following devotions: Rhowanās crown, Widow, Ultos
The Hawk and Wraith combo is preferred to quill and lizard for the sweet Offensive Ability (OA) and critical damage boost.
Note that the price of our defensive setup is the drop of Spear of Heaven, as an alternative we got the more accessible Korvaak , the Eldtritch sun for similar boosts to OA, damages (and more life and chaos resist!) . That also mean we do not care anymore for ether to cold/lightning damage conversion and can start looking for alternatives to ring of Anubar.
Defense:
The wyrmscale footguards and seal of ancestry will soak the environment fire and aether damages. Tortoise shell is the big hit life saver.
The Bat, Giantās blood and Ghoul are the life refillers. Use Mirror of ereoctes in alternative with the ghoul proc while the other is resetting. The 50 CDR will help you to cycle continously between the two. Bat need the vitality to lightning damage conversion to heal decently, thatās why the chain of brandis is mandatory.
Some good roll Wyrmscale footguards will also takes care of your stun/petrify resists while providing a good boost to OA and DA and add +2 to storm Totem: too good for any alternative.
Alternative gear and farming:
Your goal is to reach threshold between those stats: resistance, speed casting, OA/DA, life, armor rating. To achieve that, you need to roll a good combination of prefixes/suffixes on the green items of this build and use some augments.
As it is useless to expect the exact same items drop I got, here are some general tips on the way to go.
First farm the rolderathis tome for the following affixes: thunderstruck/sandstorm/glacial + of celerity/any rare suffix with casting speed and resists (if youāre very lucky or very patient). Ideally you also want it with 18 CDR to get as close as possible of the 50 CDR threshold.
The second item to farm is the chain of brandis.
The hardest resists to complete on this build are poison, bleed, pierce and chaos.
So youāre looking for the combination of any of the following prefixes and suffixes: incorruptible, impervious (poison/pierce), of readiness, light bringer, of the gildam arcanum, menacing, ā¦ anything that helps you with a big boost to the aforementioned stats. This item is tedious to farm because it only spawn on watcher Brandis who is far in port valbury. Its easier to look for the correct complementary affixes on the rings once you have found a good chain of brandis.
Last but not least is to go for the living rings, you can easily get them from Vinelton in ancient grove. The trick is to reset its merchandise by exiting the zone to the south then re-enter. Its long and boring but easy. Just prepare in advance the list of affixes youāre looking for.
Once you have all the items, use augments to achieve the resists overcap, you can also sacrifice a bit of armor absorb on the legs for another ugdenbog leather.
For the rest of the stuff, Iād advise trading on steam and/or farming SR as soon as you can. Vinelton can sell a blueprint of the non mythical version of trozan hat and the non mythical starfury emerald it can also helps if youāre starting from scratch. Iād also be happy to help anyone who need to craft the mythical trozan set (but you have to provide the materials), I also have some spare mythical starfury emeralds.
This is my first and only build I ever played on grim dawn so Iām open for suggestions and improvements . Thank you if you have read this far (sorry for my broken english) and I cannot recommend you enough to give a try to trozan druids, they are a lot of fun!
I recently played a bit again and, after some testing, found a few defensive improvements without changing the items, sacrifying damages or other stats.
So I tested a few naked challenges with this new setup and here are the results:
We can now fully facetank the first half of ravager with a bit of luck and can kill him in 3 mins instead of 5. Video here.
In SR 75-76, we can now fully facetank Fabius, Maiden and Grava Thul 1v1 (still need to dodge Grava Thul nullification projectiles though) Hereās a run where I encounter the three of them.
Crucible 170 extra spawn is still doable naked, more easily but slower, 7:15. Hereās a run with Alex, Fabius, Maiden and Grava.
For Callagadra, it does not change the difficulty at all you still have to kite the hell out of her.
The changes:
Exit The Bat et Behemoth and welcome Scales of Ultama and The Dryad for a better and more consistent life sustain.
āTip the scalesā of ultama works really well thanks to the 50 cdr, its trigger is also more effective than the bat since we want to be healed when being hit.
I made a small proof of concept video with a ātips the scaleā test. Without anything Iām dying to regular mobs within 5 secs, with tips the scale enabled but no vitality to lightning conversion I die in less than 10 secs. With the conversion my hps are being refilled too fast for the damage and I just stop dying at all .
With dryad blessing bound on trozan sky shard (TSS) and again thx to our nice CDR, as long as you spam TSS without missing a beat you will also continuously heal. The 3 secs of mirror of ereoctes are usually enough to refill a half bar life just by spamming TSS.
On top of that, Dryad an ultamas scales nodes are also far better for our build with the 4% physical resist, spirit, physique, and DA.
Better defensive stats thanks to the new devotion route :
Oklaineās lantern allow us to grab some %trap resist to reach a neat 72%: now all of our secondary resists are really good . Our casting speed also went up a bit.
With Jackal, Dryad and Tortoise changes in 1.9.6 we now jump from 17 to 27% physical resist. I also found a better lightbringer living ring (with the basilisk suffix) , it allowed me to replace some augments and components to boost the armor from 1973 (92% absorption, so 1815 damages soaked) to 2080 (100% absorption). With dryad being up most of the time it goes up to 2173.
We just leave one point in storm totems and keep using them to trigger Rhowanās Crown Elemental Storm and spend the saved points into āoverloadā and āelemental balanceā for OA and critical damage instead.
The only downside of this new setup is that since elemental storm is no longer bound to TSS but to the storm totems, you have more randomness to where the elemental storms triggers when theres a lot of ennemies. Its also a bit slower since you need to both deploy your totems and wait for the proc to happens. When bound to TSS, elemental storm (almost) always triggers and you are more certain about its location.
I also feel its fair to point out Monceaux Heal-Based Trozan Druid since itās him who originally brought the Dryad healing druid to the table .
How valuable are 2% phys resist from Jackal? Why not drop Jackal + Hound and take Viper + red/blue nods instead?
The only valuable stats on viper is the 3% oa, vitality res is already overcapped and theres no energy problems. The same 20% RR is already found on ultos and does not stack.
So the 15% armor boost, 6% speed boost, 2% physical resist and the bits of damages (any saved point in physique goes to spirit) are more appealling to me.
Have you considered taking Behemoth instead of Ghol in view of new changes?
I happened to roll exact prefix/suffix on the belt as you have, itās unbelievable! I notice you donāt need all those resistance from living rings. Have you considered switching to Mythical Starfires?
total around 30% vitality to cold = extra heal from Scales
Damaging proc from the ring looks really interesting
Iām actually using the v1.2 playtest and I still prefer ghoul rather than behemoth because of the trigger condition consistency despite the fact itās less potent than in 1.9.8. (I saw you bound it to arcane will but you still have to be a bit lucky )
I did play with the starfire rings (I did try starfire ā then anubar ā then these rings)
Hereās why I dropped starfire.
I experienced that my overall practical DPS and clear time of SR went higher when my defensive layers improved despite the fact my theorical dps went lower (the displayed ādamage per hitā on your char description)
I think some other players might get better results with a more āglass canonā build, but with my piloting skills thatās what work best for me.
These living rings are giving me so much defensives bonuses and resists that allow me in turn to use DA/life augments, 100% absorb armor, etcā¦
In fact my first rings were the starfire, I then went to the anubar rings before finding those good rolls living rings. The resist overcap was by design ā I wanted to be able to survive even when being āresist reducedā by mobs
But Iām actually trying an even more defensive devo path for the 1.2 (by dropping widow , which is very slow to setup) . My clear times are the same on average (8 mins), which proved me widow had little practical impact on my dps.
The 1.2 does not reward resist overcap so my augments are changing as well (titan plate ftw ) I will give a try to starfire again as you suggested and see . Now Iām still using living rings but with more offensive affixes.
I also brought back storm totem to the max, I found this skill way more effective than wind devil maelstrom to clear trash mobs quickly (especially for crucible)
I follow very similar devotion setup on my aether AAR Spellbinder and Widow devotion is the worse possible to proc RR, very clunky, long and unreliable - makes more sense when you facetank single strong enemies like superbosses, when dealing with crowds, thrash/heroes are usually dead even before the bombs charge - hence what the point at all in this? Considering you have almost similar amounts of % cold/frostburn and lightning/electrocute damage, i wonder if it may make more sense to focus on Murmur instead of Widow and go for Cold.
I indeed bind Giantās Blood to to Arcane Will and the proc has 100% chance in game to activate - and considering you have Star Pact (my spellbinder obviously does not) - itās going to proc very often.
Curious to know how your updated devotion map plays out in 1.2!
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New 1.9.6 Grimtools build 
(for a few secs), tank a big one shot hit (i.e: alex meteor) . Can facetank all bosses and a majority of nemesis one by one in SR 75-76.
you still have to kite the hell out of her.
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) I will give a try to starfire again as you suggested and see