[1.1.9.7] Void Moon Witch - 2h Chaos Scyther - Cr170, SR 76

Deceiver, Level 100 (GD 1.1.9.7) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator

Thought I’d go back and revisit and old favourite. Chaos scyther builds! :smiley: This is a VERY HIGH DAMAGE build with ‘decent’ survivability. This screenshot shows a 1m Doom Bolt crit, and I’ve seen critical hits from Reaping Arc around the 390k, and Blazing Charge around the 500-600k mark.

This build just chews through enemies.

Crucible 150-160:

SR 75:

This is the first iteration of the build. It could do with much more resistance to crowd control effects - being stunned or frozen is typically what kills this build!

But, it’s very high attack speed, with massive weapon damage, and 33% life steal on each attack typically keeps this build’s HP quite sturdy.

For future tweaks, I’d consider taking points out of Sigil of Consumption and it’s modifier, and put them into Horn of Gandarr for greater AOE damage and damage reduction to enemies, Vigor for more CC immunity, and on deadly aim for more crits and more crit damage while it’s active. Delish.

Enjoy!

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Actually you could make some SR 75-76 video because both me and @lMarcusl found out it’s not very good there (you wouldn’t farm this level for gear) but perhaps with this Sigil it feels better.

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Well, 75-76 isn’t quite where the issues really start to show. It’s when you try to take the build all the way up from 75 to 80 that it really crumbles due to poor AoE and reliability and safety issues.

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Ye good thoughts. I found it could clear the rooms quickly due to good dps, and not bad AOE dps with sigil, reaping arc and Horn of Gandarr, but it was a bit squishy, and died a bit due to low CC resists (stunned or frozen so I couldn’t lifesteal or escape)

@tqFan @lMarcusl just updated the original post with a vid of SR 75, it felt quite comfy on that run (I was playing a bit more attentively and less gungho “DMG DMG DMG DMG DMG” with it :wink:

I think Sigil of Consumption helps out a lot because it means added AOE damage and lifesteal while stunned/frozen which is of course very important. I think Horn of Gandarr’s confusion is also really helpful to prevent trash mob damage piling up

@tqFan @WyreZ I guess I’ve just been building it wrong in the past. Just took the latest version that I’ve been playing (and failing with consistently at higher SR) and simply swapped Bloody Pox rr conduit for chaos WoP conduit, reallocated Bloody Pox points (which was just taken for Wasting anyway) to fully juice WoP and did a deathless 75-80 within timer first try with some iffy muts (-100 DA on a low DA setup, -15 % health, increased enemy chaos res). And that was with me being all fingers after not playing the build for a while. Boosting WoP to full fixed the lacking clear and also dealt with the issue of getting shredded by ranged before I can close in thanks to the attack speed slow and impaired aim on WoP. There were still some scary moments, it’s not super sturdy outside of Seal, or in it if you get crit cause the health is fairly low, but it’s a functional design. I’m sure the SoC version with Inqui Seal conduit feels even safer at high SR, with all the ranged lifesteal. Thumbs up from me.

(So much for me telling myself I won’t be doing SR testing until the 9.8 SR changes are live. Goddamn this game, this is the 3rd build I’ve SR tested in the last week!)

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Oh awesome! Glad you’ve found a way to tweak it to be more stable and effective. Do you have a link to your old build handy? Maybe we could look at the differences to see why one of these similar builds feels safer than the other?

Also worth mentioning thuogh, this scythe didn’t always have the Word of Renewal bonuses for chaos damage and conversion on it. Maybe the main difference is the patch changes?

Nono, it definitely was with the Word of Renewal bonuses already in. I’ve done a TON of variants of the build but all of them were with the current version of the items. Off the top of my head the major ones I’ve tried:

  1. full Rah’Zin with Covenant of the Three and Riftwarped Grasp, using ToC as main attack and Seal of the Void WPS with maxed Word of Pain plus low lvl CoF (because of Rah’Zin bonuses) for AoE; WoP was only about 60% converted (without conduit) through Rah’Zin, weapon and jewelry
  2. similar setup (full Rah’Zin) but using fully converted RoH for AoE
  3. partial Rah’Zin with Pox conduit and with RA but no Harbinger (still Covenant and Grasp)

Among those I’ve been changing devos as well, I had Ghoul on some, worked in Eye of Korvaak in place of Abom on others to make up for poor AoE and improve crowd control. The latest variant that I’ve been failing with was something like this (recreating it from memory) Deceiver, Level 100 (GD 1.1.9.7) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator

And this is what I’m using now Deceiver, Level 100 (GD 1.1.9.7) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator, very similar to your version with just a different source of AoE, really. It really doesn’t look like it should feel all that different from what I was using before but the previous version completed 75-80 maybe 1 out of 10 times. This one did it first try, and second, and third now. The gameplay is somewhat simplified and the DPS uptime is better because of it since I cut out most of the in-between casting (Pox and Solael’s Flame). On the other hand, I have tanked my OA shred on a pretty low DA build and RR has gone down by -25% but Chaos is a poorly resisted damage type so enemies still evaporate.

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Oh, the biggest difference that I notice right off the bat is the DA. A while ago I was experimenting with solo non-pet builds for SR 90-100, to see what’d be effective. The best one that I came up with, which can do 100 or silghtly higher only had 13k hp… but DA of 3600. It had the highest DA of all the builds that I tried, and I really did notice that DA of 3000 feels like a minimum… DA of 3200 feels comfier. 3400 feels like a ‘tank’, and 3600 feels flawless most of the time. As far as avoiding hits and crits is concerned, anyway!

Consider… if your build has enough DA, it gives enemies a 40% chance to miss you with their attacks. So not only do you rarely take the spike damage of crits, but it’s also like 40% damage absorption on top of whatever other damage reduction buffs and debuffs you have. DA is golden … :open_mouth:

The other main difference would be the lifesteal from Sigil of Consumption, I think. It helps a lot!

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Well, DA is an iffy thing. The two versions of my build aren’t that different from each other and their DA is pretty much the same, except the previous version had -225 OA shred from Wasting and the new one does not, yet the new version feels much better than the old one regardless because the play pattern has improved (less faffing about casting debuffs, more hitting shit till it stops moving and then hitting it some more). More DA is always better if you can get it at reasonable cost, of course. I could switch to Voidsoul Shoulders and Chest like you’re using at the cost of the OA advantage, which would cut down somewhat on those nice (doubled) Doom Bolt crits. I might do some more testing for reliability on this build and if it seems a bit too fragile, switch to Voidsoul for the DA.

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Sure thing. But I’d always argue that a living DPS does more damage than a dead one, even though big numbers are always a treat to see :smiley: