[1.1.9.8 - 1.2.0.0] Hungering whispers - Chillwhisper cold DE Apostate [8 minutes Crucible+, SR81]

[Serafim_94]

The poor cold Apostate grows stronger still. A few more patches like 1.2, and the build will actually become good. Credit to @Nery for creating original concept, big thanks to @tqFan and @lMarcusl for help with troubleshooting.

GT link: Apostate, Level 100 (GD 1.2.0.2) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator

Build update: replaced Mythical arcane harmony leggings with different green pants. Rearranged skillpoints for improved QoL.

Playstile:

Standard Inquisitor channeler. Stand in the Seal channeling Drain Essence, cast Rune of Hagarrad on CD, refresh Siphon Souls on enemies as it expires. If you need to move, make sure you can recast the Seal on arrival.

Features:

Relatively tanky - combination of seal, DE leech, MoT and couple defensive debuffs give you a decent survivability, allowing to completely facetank individual bosses and sunder up to the SR80. Keep in mind, however, that said tankiness relies on always standing in seal, and actively debuffing enemies with 2 very short range skills, making the setup completely crumble in high SR.

Terrible AOE - DE is the worst beam skill in the game, and this build is capped at attacking no more than 7 enemies at the same time with it. This makes the build struggle with big hero packs more and more the higher it climbs in SR. RoH doesn’t help either, its delayed activation and terrible pattern making it wildly unreliable. In Crucible it suffers less, but gets no awards there either.

Low damage - single target damage isn’t great, and cold-resistant nemeses are a particular struggle. The build is held back by lack of itemization for apostate, and DE and RoH in general being bad skills even with recent buffs.

Itemization:

Nightshard - can be replaced with Mythical Speaker for the Dead for bigger cold resistance shred. I highly advise against that, as Ill Omen creates absolutely uncontrollable pulls in SR, making build’s struggle with big packs much, MUCH worse.

Those greens - they don’t matter, any legendary cold pants/boots will do in their place. Even fantasy greens don’t make build’s struggles any better.

1.2 endgame performance:

SR:

SR 81 with several deaths. It can be cleared deathless, but requires caution, as hero ganks start to pose threat. Most bosses can still be facetanked through the sunder with careful use of MoT, with notable exception of Shattered Outcast. Anything below SR80 is a slow, but stable clear in full facetank mode.

SR 85 can not be cleared deathless no matter what, and demands precise execution of sunder mechanics. It also completely stops being fun, with Moosa and Kuba taking a fucking eternity to kill. Build still is capable of certain facetanking feats here, like with Valdaraan or Reaper, but hero packs, Moosa and Fabius become completely unreliable, making SR85 the end of the road for the build.

Crucible:

Full buffs with extra spawn, at 7.54. Requires careful piloting, but can be done consistently.

Full buffs without extra spawn at 6.59. Generally uneventful.

[afanasenkov26]

hello there!

may I suggest making some tweaks to your build, probably sth like this: Apostate, Level 100 (GD 1.1.9.8) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator
a bit better phys res, capped slow, more energy regen and better skills distribution (like you really need to max Artifact Handling while playing runes).

@Serafim_94

I also have no clue how to approach Mogdrogen, Ravager, Kalla or Crate. If anybody wants to test the build against those - be sure to report back how it went.

unfortunately, it will be nigh impossible to do any supers (except for maybe Mog).

[Serafim_94]

Good variant!

I’ve been experimenting a lot with RoH point distributions in previous patch. Sadly, my conclusion is that the build is explicitly NOT an RoH build, and as such I’d rather put more focus into DE. Adding or substracting points from any of the 3 RoH damage nodes made almost no observable difference back then. It’s slightly more of a difference now due to flat buffs, but barely. The rune here is mostly to serve as eye candy, to debuff, and to proc devos, in that priority order

The build also used to be really dependent on the combination of its debuffs to just live. It got better, but I really don’t want to test it without Blood Boil.

Edit: I also have to point out that Ultos devotion path still isn’t sustainable energy-wise, which is why I abandoned it for Leviathan/Harp initially, with Scales replacing Harp to iron it out completely. In prolonged fights (Crucible in particular) it will run out of energy sooner than energy potion comes off cooldown.

[Serafim_94]

For the record: current phys res is 19%

1.2 Work in progress:

Class changes:

Buffs to Drain essence damage, AOE and energy cost - noticeable but pending further testing.
Decomposition OA reduction is buffed.
Minor nerf to Mark of torment - whatever.
No important changes on inquisitor side.

Devotion changes:

Scales of Ulcama - DA buff
Leviathan - added physical resist
Scarab - increaded % shield damage blocked (lol)

Item changes:

Chillwhisper set buffs - OA, DA and more health. Some crit damage rearrangements. Nerf to Drain essence AOE (compensatory for core DE buff, so nothing is really lost).

Mythical Riftwarped Grasp - phys resist, OA buff, Drain essense damage buff. Awesome.

1.2 preliminary thoughts:

Brothers and sisters in Yugol, we’ve been buffed. Rejoice, all 3 of us.

Build is actually tanky now, without “if” or “but”. We got several physical resist buffs, which are extremely welcome. Our OA and DA situation also improved - which was a real struggle assembling this build.

SR 75-76 seems much tamer now, especially due to reworked mutators. The clear speeds are now generally in order with normal builds, with about 7 minutes on timer remaining, and ability to recover timer from a single death.

Sunder in SR is an absolute joke, and can be facetanked like no tomorrow.

Crucible became faster, but absolutely more brutal. Here sunder reigns supreme, and it requires actual piloting to get through big nemesis waves. God forbid.

DE energy problems are entirely gone, so I tried to go for Ultos/Yugol instead of Levi, now that we can ditch Scales energy sustain. Sadly, it turned out to be a tremendous loss of survivability and AOE potential, for very marginal single-target DPS gains. ESPECIALLY in Crucible. With this I can reasonably conclude that build isn’t viable without Leviathan.

[Serafim_94]

Why it still sucks ass: notes for begging Zantai for new itemization in expac

1. Cold DE is just a bad skill with this set (and maybe just bad overall):

1.1: It can deal 2 times more damage than now, and both AAR and FoI will still win over it due to sheer AOE potential. While chad AAR caster damages the whole screen in front of him, virgin DE user will still be running to enter the pitiful cast radius to attack its max 11 targets cap. FoI is more comparable due to its own crippled range, but…

1.2: It’s borderline impossible to plug % weapon damage into DE. There’s exactly one item in the whole game that does that - Night herald, which comes at a non-viably high opportunity cost, competing with main hand, and demanding dual wielding to be taken in offhand. Where it still competes with offhands. This heavily limits the damage DE can deal, while also feeding into its terrible lifeleech. We’re getting there. Meanwhile FoI casually pumps 58% weapon damage on its core node, which can be further improved by items. AAR potentially can get 16% from BiS neck slot, on top of its overall superior range. That and 1.1 culminate in…

1.3: …our final destination - DE lifeleech is a joke. It’s 15% on core. Paired with its AOE problems, that’s absolutely not enough. You can increase it to 25% with Vigar’s hunger, but it competes for a slot with vitality>cold conversion. Meanwhile, AAR gets to the 15% with a BiS offhand and one of 2 BiS amulets. The second BiS amulet is Conduit with % weapon damage, so that also leeches. FoI easily leeches with its native weapon damage. Both FoI and AAR will leech off anything in their radius, while DE is capped at 11 targets tops (actually lower, because that’s with MI). GG.

Bottomline: at the endgame level with itemization at hand, cold DE is a skill with barely competitive damage, absolutely noncompetitive AOE and barely competitive lifeleech. FoI is strictly superior. AAR is infinitely superior to both. Conversion options for cold DE further cripple it, where both AAR and FoI find their conversions casually on native sets and their own mutators.

2. RoH is a terrible skill, and Chillwhisper is a terrible set to support it:

2.1: Runes suck. Period. Between RoH and RoK, the first sucks even more. It needs more skill points to dump into than RoK, it doesn’t shotgun like RoK does, it has no immediate effect like RoK does, it has worse coverage than RoK. It’s trash.

2.2: Chillwhisper sucks. Chad Ardor of Octavius set offers to RoK the following: 400 internal trauma over 2 seconds, 240 physical damage, and 100% fire damage converted to physical. Virgin Chillwhisper set offers: 600 frostburn over 3 seconds, 80 fucking cold damage, and meaningless 33% energy cost reduction. No pierce to cold conversion. Do i really need to explain which set supports its respective rune better? Really. 80 fucking damage. Pierce to cold conversion is strictly unavailable to the build, requiring either a dualwield weapon or rings competing with RR options. Fuck.

Bottomline: runes are inherently bad, and RoH is inherently worse than RoK, with infinitely worse support from supposedly dedicated set. RoH is a terrible fucking skill with 0 redeeming qualities to it.

3. Itemization for cold DE apostate doesn’t exist. It’s all for Reaper.

Chillwhisper itself is a Reaper set, giving it a secondary skill in form of Blade spirit that just shits all over RoH. BS gets full pierce to cold conversion from the set, lifeleech and comparable (if not superior) damage bonuses, while not being a garbage rune.

Riftwarped grasp - vitality/chaos item for Cabalists. Mandatory regardless.

Cord of violent decay - spellbinder/defiler support.

Night herald - spellbinder support.

Scion of bitter winds - reaper support, loses half its value otherwise.

Leafmane trophy - an actual apostate support, but only for vitality DE and with conflicting conversions. Fuck.

Grasp of the dead - reaper support, loses half its value otherwise.

Gravetouch - reaper/oppressor support, loses half its value otherwise.

Speaker for the dead - reaper support, if for a different skill. Only has value for its RR shred.

Vigar’s hunger - native necro item, yay. No bonuses to inquisitor.

Deathbound amethyst - reaper support, still has value though.

Ilgorr’s eternal vigil - reaper support, loses half its value otherwise.

Bottomline: fuck Apostate. It terribly lacks items to support it, above all a viable offhand choice. While at current point in the game it’s probably too late to ask for items like that, I put my hopes into FoA release to rectify this damn mess.