[1.1.9.8 – 1.2.0.2] Build Overview - Fire Retaliation Commando (SR75-80+)

Introduction

(this section will repeat between my build overviews; you can skip to Build Concept if you’ve read one of my overviews before and are familiar with my rating system and test criteria)

Patch 9.8 brought, among other things, major changes to the Shattered Realm. Given that SR is where I do my endgame build testing, with the release of the patch I decided to redo all the testing for all my builds. And since I’d be putting in the time and noting down all my results anyway, I thought I might as well post the builds and their scores publicly for others. Who knows, maybe you’ve been trying to make something similar. Or maybe you’re just morbidly curious and like that tickly feeling in your brainhole when you see someone play something utterly stupid.

Now, what exactly does this testing entail? Each character has to do 10 SR75-80 runs (I used to do 5 runs but I’m expanding it to 10 for this second wave). Every run completed within timer counts as a success. It takes 6 successes (over 50 % success rate) for me to consider a build complete. If a build keeps failing to meet that quota, I keep improving it till it works. Ergo, no build I post here will have a lower score than 6/10, because if it doesn’t have over 50 % success rate, I’m not done improving it and it doesn’t get posted.

Three rules were followed to make the results more representative: 1) no consumables other than healing and energy elixirs can be used; 2) no shrines can be taken; if a build has bad resists, it’ll have to make do with bad resists, Rattosh isn’t gonna be saving its ass; 3) no mutator hunting; if I get shitty mutators, I’ll have to succeed with shitty mutators. Other than that, it doesn’t matter in what manner the runs are completed. If a build takes twice as long to finish a run than others do, that’s perfectly fine as long as it successfully finishes. Doesn’t matter whether the build has to dodge Nemeses in shards like the plague or whether it hunts them for sport, doesn’t matter if it has to kite like crazy or stands its ground with ease, doesn’t matter if it completes the runs deathless or not. Only thing that affects the score is completion within timer. Generally, a weaker build that is slow, fragile, hard to play etc. will end up with a lower score regardless because its shortcomings will affect its reliability across the 10 runs.

Now, one final thing before we get to the build itself. As mentioned in the title, this is a build overview, not a build guide. What’s the difference? Well, a build guide says “this is the way you should build this type of character”. What I’m saying is rather “this is what I did, here’s why I did it this way, here’s how it turned out”. It’s more of a documentary, a post-mortem, rather than an example to be followed. “Wait, that’s just a fancy way of saying you make shit builds,” you might say. No, not exactly. I try to make the build I set out to create as good as I can without deviating from the concept of the build. But the concept of the build might not necessarily be something one should even be doing in the first place :smiley: While my build concept and the in-game support will often align to create a reasonably predictable, almost cookie cutter build, just as often I’ll just be doing something abundantly demented for my own reasons. I’ll always endeavour to explain in the Build Concept section why I chose to do a thing a certain way, but I don’t want you to get the impression that what I’m presenting is a thing you should necessarily be doing in the first place. With that out of the way, let’s get to the build itself.

Build Concept

1.2 UPDATE Dracarris now triggers on attack instead of on kill, which makes it better in the boss room. The downside is, its fire retal number has been cut in half. and, more importantly, it no longer has permanent uptime (which the item’s game version changes section in GrimTools completely glosses over). In light of that, I’d replace it with Pagar’s Betrayal. Unfortunately, that costs the build a thick chunk of OA it was getting from the Flame Touched mod on Dracarris. Also, the gain from Pagar’s Betrayal is partially diminished by the fact that Pagar turns the Fire Retal from Vindictive Flame into Chaos. It’s still a better option than Totally Normal Dawnshard. Other than that, the build has more passive regen and block chance went up 5 %. Despite the unfortunate weapon situation, the build still walks through SR80-81 with ease, multipulls boss rooms and tanks through Sunder if need be, though as the shards go up, the increasing enemy health pools get a bit annoying in the boss room, especially if you roll the monster health mutators.

Updated 1.2 link


Where in most cases I will set out to create a build a certain way and then bend over backwards to make that happen without compromise, I landed on this build in a very roundabout way and ended up with something I didn’t even really set out to create in the first place. So this will include a bit of a story. Stay awhile and read (cause I can’t be assed using my vocal cords to make you listen). Or, you know, just skip to Performance, if you so desire.

Still with me? Ok. Back when the rocks were soft and GD had no expansions, I set out to cover all the basic ARPG build archetypes. Mage, summoner, 2h figher, ranged shooter etc. One of these core archetypes is undoubtedly the sword and board fighter. And so, starry-eyed, bushy-tailed, just straight dumb as a brick, I went looking for the right combination of masteries to make that possible. Soldier was a given. In vanilla GD it was the only mastery with direct support for shield use. With it also came a neat package of a basic attack (Cadence) and various phys based CD skills and buffs. With that in mind, and considering I was, at the time, still building primarily around mastery synergies and not specific gear, the choice of the second mastery was narrowed down to just two options that made any semblance of sense for a physical build: the Occultist, with CoF and pretty much nothing else, and the Demolitionist with Temper…and pretty much nothing else. Sure there were some auxiliary boosts to speed such as Solael’s Witchfire or Vindictive Flame respectively, but in terms of physical support, there was very little there to carry that playstyle any further. Given these choices and bearing some nostalgia for my Juggernaut (Earth + Defense) build back in Titan Quest, which didn’t turn out nearly as well as I had hoped, I decided to go for the Demolitionist to perhaps remedy the shortcomings of my efforts in TQ.

My enthusiasm for the build lasted all of about 25 levels. The Soldier side of the build was fine. Cadence was doing its job nicely, Blitz was making engagement with the enemy fast and easy, shield use was very much part of the gameplay. But the Demo side just felt wasted. I wasn’t really playing a fire build to recreate that Juggernaut feel and for the physical aspect Demo just made very little sense. And so after beating Veteran I dove headfirst into making other interesting characters and just kept putting this one off. And so it happened that by the time Forgotten Gods came out I haven’t moved an inch with this build. And FG brought exactly the thing I was looking for: Oathkeeper. It made SO much more sense than Demo it wasn’t even funny. I would finally have that proper SnB character after all and I was actually excited about playing it this time. Which left me with a question. The fuck do I do with this Commando now? I went from a build I wasn’t excited to play to a character I had no idea what to do with. The fire side of the character had little use for Soldier and the physical side cared little for Demo. How do I gel these masteries together? What’s the overlap? Wait a…Vindictive Flame and Blast Shield add flat fire retal, there’s a retal boost on Temper and Soldier has its fair share of retaliation support as well, even though it leans a bit more on the physical side. Can I make a thorns build out of this?

And so my enthusiasm was renewed. I dove into theorycrafting, looked through the gear options, assigned the devos and the skill points, looked through the item modifiers. And my enthusiasm was right back at zero. There was no way to get retaliation damage onto any of the base attacks. No retal Fire Strike or Cadence, no retal Stun Jacks. There’s Turrion’s Reprisal but a) tossing around BWCs doesn’t make the build feel very “thorny” nor does it particularly match the SnB idea, we’re just a caster at that point, b) how do I stay alive when BWC is my main source of damage? there’s no leeching off of it! and c) if we need Turrion to make retal Commando happen then what’s the point of Colossal Fortress? That thing is custom built for Fire retaliation Commando and I’m just gonna gloss over it? No way. There has to be something there and I’m gonna figure it out.

But the end result of committing to this path was that where Warlords would be merrily applying their retal to every attack and essentially playing like a normal fighting character, at least on the surface, with scaling off of attack speed and leeching like normal from attacks…what were my options? I had no basic attack. Enemies could hit themselves silly on me, sure. But every hit I take sticks cause I can’t leech off of my retal. And what about the rest? How am I applying my retal to casters and shooters? Sure, a scrap of retal can be applied through Grenado’s third node, but it’s on a lengthy cooldown and again offers no sustain. There’s Canister Bomb if I take Mask of Infernal Truth. But same problem, no sustain, long cooldown. The mask provides Flame Breath, with a good bit of retal on it and % WD so I could leech off of that. Every 2.5 seconds. How in the world am I staying alive and what am I doing with my time? Just standing around, throwing a Grenado, Canister Bomb or Flame Breath on cooldown and that’s it? There’s no way that does significant enough damage, I mean look at the retal percentages, the cooldowns. And how am I staying alive damnit? There’s just no way. Has someone done anything like this? So I looked around. I found @AdamNavel having played something very much in that vein. And he was killing celestials with it? No way. I looked back at my theorycrafted build. It looked very similar to Adam’s. How can this pile of garbo even stay alive, let alone do significant enough damage to kill Celestials?

And so I kept putting it off, and putting it off, until eventually, all that was left for me to level and try at endgame was this, and about a dozen builds that, somehow, looked even iffier than this one (I got into some real memes with my later builds, what can I say). And so I gritted my teeth and surrendered myself to the disaster to come. I had no idea how what I’ve put together would keep me alive, or how it would deliver damage at a pace that doesn’t make snails develop narcolepsy. But there’s no substitute for hands-on experience. Let the suffering begin…I guess.

Performance and Setup

10/10!!!

Hoe. Lee. Fuck! I guess I don’t know shit about retal cause…JEEBUS! That staying alive problem? What problem? What’s healthbars? Any time anything hits us, it procs Counter Strike. Counter Strike applies 15 % retaliation damage and comes bundled with a whopping 76 % WD thanks to the shield. So they hit, we Counter Strike and probably leech back more than they hit us for. But what if they’re not alone? What if we’re outnumbered and overwhelmed? Good! More shit to leech from! The melee ones all take Counter Strike damage, the ranged ones get zapped by Ulzuin’s Wrath. Which applies even more of our retal damage, at shorter cooldown, and brings in 22 % lifesteal natively.

I have never seen anything look this shit on paper and work this well in practice. This build WADES through hordes of enemies and spends its time wondering whether that’ll be enough to finish the shard or whether it should go pull some more. It kills Mogdrogen and Callagadra without pharma. While the Callagadra fight isn’t a straight up tank and spank deal and does require some kiting, it’s comfy, it’s relaxed and it doesn’t take 20+ minutes. The build has a comfortable 80 % lightning res overcap so Mogdrogen is just a matter of “do I have time to go make tea or not”. In SR there are exactly two things that can kill the build: 1) getting hit by an Arcane dispell and not reapplying Counter Strike and Vindictive Flame fast enough and 2) getting too ambitious and doing a 3-pull in the SR boss room where a 2-pull would be more advised. That’s it. Even if you biff it in a high shard, chances are there’s like 10 or 11 minutes on the clock so you can still easily recover. Nothing can oppose you. The best they can do is slightly slow you down. And the funny thing is, this build was BUFFED for SR this patch. It was already fast and virtually unstoppable when I tested it last in 9.6, and now Shattered Souls give % total retal damage so it’s even faster :joy: :joy: It didn’t need help but…sure? Thanks?

Now that we know the build is a fucking animal, I guess I should discuss some of the choices I made. Firstly, I must note that 8 out of the 10 runs were done using the Honor relic, not Ulzuin’s Pyroclasm. While Honor is an Oathkeeper relic, it was the only relic with Fire retal on it before 9.8. and came bundled with a granted skill with additional hefty % rata. Given that the build’s missing a spammable skill, having another ability to fill out the rotation was quite desirable. Pyroclasm received flat retal damage and % rata in 9.8 and I kinda forgot that I wanted to swap it out until I was 8 runs in already. Compared to Honor there’s no block chance on Ulzuin, or damage to humans, which is helpful cause two of the fire resistant nemeses are human. It also has no % all retal. But what Ulzuin does have is the skill bonuses, and higher net damage on the skill because of the lower cooldown (although the net % WD is lower which means slightly less leech). It’s worth noting that Pyroclasm only procs on crit so if you’re fighting an enemy with very high DA, like, say Callagadra, Honor may still be preferrable. However, after testing Pyroclasm in the remaining two runs in SR, it performs just as comfortably there, gives you one less cooldown to think about and deals higher net damage on the proc.

The other item choices are all geared towards either maximising our flat fire retal or getting more ways to apply our retal to enemies to make up for our lack of a spammable attack. Hence I’m using the Ignaffar pants rather than Thornhides, cause getting better retal on enemy death isn’t an issue already, given that we output our best damage against massive hordes, Shattered Souls improve our retal output and we use the Judicator Seals so that our OA skyrockets when there’s fodder around. Ignaffar pants help us apply our retal where we need it most, which is single combat. Similarly, I went through the effort to get the Ulzuin’s Flame affix on the gloves to get that fire retal, but Blacksteel Gauntlets will do just as fine if you don’t want to break the bank. The chest is a bit of a sad tale cause there’s a seemigly perfect piece in the form of Dawnshard Hauberk with its high fire retal, % all retal damage and proc Except it then has global fire to lightning conversion to crap all over our hard-earned fire retal damage. Not sure wtf is going on there, why put fire retal on an item that converts away from it? So the slightly less desirable Divinesteel will have to do.

The only other noteworthy piece is the weapon, cause that’s a weird one. So, in my opinion, there’s only really five choices worth considering. Let’s go over them.

Pagar’s Betrayal - Gets us slightly lower CD on Vindictive Flame which carries over to Ulzuin’s Wrath, comes with both very high flat and solid % retal and has cast speed. A very nice option. Not quite clear on how the Fire to Chaos conversion on it interacts with the flat fire retal granted by Vindictive Flame. Would it turn to Chaos? For this comparison I’m gonna assume no cause I’m too fucking lazy to go check.

Totally Normal Dawnshard - Flat fire retal but no % all retal. % block chance to up the proc chance of our on-block devos. +1 to Demo. 10 % rata on the proc. Some cdr. No cast speed, however and no modifiers to anything.

Scion of Burning Vengeance - Flat fire retal but considerably lower than the above two options, particularly in the case of Pagar. % fire retal, 30 % rata mod for Grenado. Some cdr. But, no cast speed. The conversion from Fire to Lightning on Grenado somewhat diminishes the effectiveness of the % rata it provides to the skill, since it won’t take advantage of fire rr. Also not sure why the hell an item with the words Burning Vengeance on it converts to lightning. Like, tf?

Judgment of the Three - +1 Soldier skills, 6 % rata to Counter Strike. This was the option used by @AdamNavel, but at the time the item was quite different. Its % rata is now half of what it used to be and it lacks % all retal, making the skill bonus and rata the only attractive aspect. No flat retal, no % retal, no cast speed.

Dracarris - my personal choice. Probably not optimal but fuck is it funny to use what’s meant to be a summoner item and wrecking house with it in retal. It has neither % all retal or flat retal on it baseline. It provides cast speed, which helps since we cycle through a few skills, but so did Pagar (none of the others did, though). So why use this thing? Well, our OA is anemic to say the least. Even though we have Flashbang to remedy that somewhat, getting an extra 4 % OA on a buff we use anyway is certainly helpful, particularly if we’re using Ulzuin’s Pyroclasm. The % phys res is enjoyable as well but we’re well covered on that front. It gives +1 to demo which is the majority of our tree, something Pagar doesn’t do, plus boosts Temper for some more % all retal damage. But above all, look at that flat fire retal on the proc. That’s like two item slots’ worth of fire retal. And it has full uptime as long as shit is dying. Plus an extra 10 % total speed on top of the cast speed the item already has. This, this right here combined with Judicator’s Seals takes what would already be an unstoppable Juggernaut (I got there!) in SR shards and brings it up to abhorrent levels of filth. Suddenly, OA out the wazoo and more retal than god. For the whole shard. If we’re fighting a boss in SR that has any semblance of summons, this is always up. If you have a boss that doesn’t summon…well, just aggro them along with a boss that does :smiley: This actually rewards you for multipulling, which is something you might have wanted to do anyway, cause more enemies = more Counter Strike and Ulzuin’s Wrath procs = more damage. And now, you also get the benefits of the on-death triggers to carry over into the boss room. Delicious.

This was such a pleasant surprise I actually shudder to think what it must be like to play a retal build that looks good on paper. When I get around to making a phys retal Warlord I don’t think I’ll be able to unsee the cosmic truths it will reveal to me. In the meantime, for your daily dose of nausea, I’ll leave you with these snippets of two of my runs.

Run with Honor:

Run with Ulzuin’s Pyroclasm:

8 Likes

Looks solid. Just one minor thing that I thought when playing around with various counterstrike limited conversion types = the % retal breakpoints are more important than the %WD or %retal bonus. So you could probably save a point here without impact and stick it in Shattering or somewhere.

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I really love this part, very honest (and funny).

However, I couldn’t help but notice that you are operating a Grenado/Canister build without Ulzuin’s Chosen. Surely it’s worth investing into here, no?
Also, I think component wise having at least one Skull is vital to any Fire build. I would probably go Chains of Oleron + Skull here (more OA to have a chance of proccing that Ulzuin’s relic proc).

I did consider Ulzuin’s Chosen. I honestly just didn’t feel like investing the extra 10 points into Demo just for that. I do get it to lvl 7 with a 1 point investment but then waste 10 skill points just getting there and all it nets me is a 25 % chance of no CD. Which, yeah, essentially it’s a 25 % total damage increase to those skills. But by the same token if I just sank those 11 points in Shattering Blast I’d boost the raw damage output of Grenado by around 45 % plus significantly increase its crit damage. So it’s not like Ulzuin’s Chosen is my one great option for damage that I skipped out on. There’s a number of them. But if I sink the points into any of them, where am I taking those points from? Like @hammyhamster1 said I can free up a point in Counter Strike. But what about the rest? My OA is already iffy given the benefits crit gets me so I’m probably not dropping points in Flashbang or Flame Touched. I could probably sac some points in temper but then I’m boosting the retal damage of a few skills at the cost of all my retal damage so is that worth it? One could argue I could drop Shield Training but that drops the proc chance of a bunch of my abilities, plus drops my survivability so is that worth it?

If you were to go really deep and calculate all the net damage you get from each point invested I’m sure some optimisations could be made. Then again, you’d be optimising a build that is, for the metric I’m measuring it by, impossible to improve. Unless you can make it complete 11 out of 10 SR75-80 runs within timer, it’s just making improvements for the sake of making improvements.

It’s the same thing with the components. It has to come at a cost of something. I can’t drop the armor absorb components and maintain my armor absorb, cause the pants slot has to cover my acid res, so no Scaled Hide there. I can’t drop the helmet component cause then the pierce res overcap disappears. So you’d have to probably shift some devos. And in the end you’re doing that for what, really? Grava? Grava is not an issue. Neither is Shar’Zul. Do they take a little bit longer than the others? Sure. An SR80 Grava with a -5% total retal mutator is still dead within two dispell rotations, so :person_shrugging:

I think either Overguard or Shield training is waste of points here, the bang for the buck is too low.

Overguard is definitely a keeper, even in chunks it’s a noticeable boost to survivability if you pulled too many nasties at the higher shards and it’s pretty important to survival if you end up doing double or triple pulls in boss rooms and find out it may have been a bit too much. One could argue you just relax on the pulls then but then, even if not directly, you’re effectivelly nerfing your damage output by having to play much safer.

how about this: more block recovery, more oa, more tankiness (due to relic choice, but can switch back to Pyroclasm) and some trap res and racial damage on top

Sure. But in the process you’ve lost about 10 % of the build’s total retal damage. Even shifting back to Pyroclasm nets you less damage than my version. And if you do so (shift to Pyroclasm I mean), and do a comparison, what was achieved, really? There’s slightly more block recovery but less block chance, which is more important for on-block procs. The build now has less health than it did before, it lost about 10 % of its armor, and it’s still down 5% damage across the board, all for what? 200 OA, unreliable 25 % total damage on two skills, and 8 % racial damage on enemies the build does not struggle with in the first place.

If you think the sacrifices are worth the gain, go ahead. Like I said, this is an overview of what I did, not a guide on the optimal way the build should be done. You’re free to deviate. But I’ll reiterate, you’re working on improving a build that already functions flawlessly for the content it’s used for. It’s like working your ass off to get a discount on something that’s free. It’s not gonna suddenly get free-er.

Also, don’t think I overlooked what you did with the reists on the gloves in order to make that component reshuffle happen :wink: Let me tell you, just getting the Ulzuin’s Flame affix on the gloves bankrupted me on mats and nearly also on sanity. If you’re willing to venture into the dream greens territory, you do you, but that’s a path I do not tread. The gloves I had I crafted the hard way and this is the best I got. That reshuffle is outside the realm of realistic possibility unless you have the patience of a saint or boosted your luck by snorting 50 ground-up leprechauns. And, yes, I saw the amulet as well so that you maintain a semblance of viable lifesteal. I don’t generate greens so this “slight update” would necessitate hunting down Kaisan across the universe for untold hours to…maybe(?) make an essentially unstoppable build slightly better.

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My point was that you can easily slot better components if you wanted to. Your damage net loss calculation don’t take into acount additional Grenados/Canisters from Ulzuin’s chosen and racial.

My approach is to present a spec that is optimal so players who follow it know what direction to take when picking up items and looking for upgrades. Your approach is just to document what kind of spec you have achieved while playing legitimately and not necessarily going into the nitty gritty of min-maxing. That’s totally understandable. By the way, from my experience it’s possible to sustain a retal spec that doesn’t have adtch skills (like Aegis or Vines) with Dryad, something that might be worth looking into if you are struggling to find sustain and sacrificing shield component slots for Seal of Blades.

1 Like

Lol that’s a damn long read for that one! I was posting very similar build few years ago and then updated this build so many times. (and even more, this was my first character from wich I started to play in GD from a times of alpha) and this is still my fav build. But in my case results was SR100 and all superbosses except Crate (as it’s slow as hell) but you did it actually another way, and as I see, worked a lot on the concept and conclusions about item. Great to see, retal build still alive and fun (shakehand)

2 Likes

Till the day I die I will make sure the word brevity is never associated with my name! :smiley:

Also props on your build, if I hadn’t found it when I did I’m not sure I would have ended up going the retal route in the end. The fact you had success with it is what cemented my commitment to see it through, cause on paper I really didn’t see it working.

2 Likes

I saw commando , I liked it.
I once made one too since 1.1.9.6 , my version was not optimized at all :rofl:

Hello there,
Is there any comfortable way to level it as a thorn-based character, or only respec it after 94?
Never tried to level retaliation type before, so bit confused on this

depends how you like to level
if you speed level it’s basically irrelevant, imo
if you normal level, and have “twink”/pre-stored items it’s easy
if you normal level, and don’t have pre-stored items, it will entail a bit of “grind”/target farming during levelling, which imo isn’t totally outrageous/feels fine
retal levelling is mostly fine, although a lot of your dmg wont actually come from retal early game ofc, and vindictive flame and counterstrike MIs are both available in malmouth/can even be bought from vendor

example Level 100 (GD 1.1.9.8) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator

that’s ofc aside from the several RNG epic retaliation drops, tho many will be acid oriented, and regular drops that can get retal affixes, and iirc Dawnshard legendary has some elemental/fire retal too?

Sadly since I decided to switch to retal at around level 75-ish on this build, can’t speak on how it levels. But generally the base game is easily doable with pretty much anything, you can be clearing with Vindictive Flame and Counter Strike damage only (like, the raw damage, not even retal), plus maybe mix in Grenado (either for raw damage or retal % if you already have some retal) and it’ll work, it’s just not the fastest. It’ll slow down considerably in the expansions since those have some enemies that are quite a bit taniker. But there’s the MI shield that’s available in Ashes of Malmouth, you can even buy it from a vendor in Steelcap District once you complete a quest there.

The biggest issue will definitely be that the build lacks a spammable attack, you won’t have a good retal relic early, and Canister Bomb won’t have any retal % on it until endgame so your damage sources will be pretty sparse. You’re probably better off levelling it as Cadence until Malmouth so that it’s smoother and faster, and then maybe the MI shield can power up your Counter Strike and Vindictive Flame enough that you might be able to switch off of it. Especially if you level the Devo tree for retaliation and not standard damage.

There are a lot of things that on Calc Grim Tools look superb, but not working in game, and vice versa. I was working on my build and testing it in many ways, after Commando I can’t say that any of my other retal builds was more successful that this one, but I did them a lot. Many patches ago I did sick Sorcerer build on Blackwater Cocktail with Turrion’s Reprisal shield, but than it was nerfed very fast :P, explosive damage that never will be great again.

Still missing two pieces to complete the build, but already by far the most lazy + quick experience I’ve ever had (got 10+ builds for SR75-6 farming). Pets, EOR, bombadier, caster. Nothing comes close to the level of explosive speed this build is capable.
Thanks @lMarcusl.

1 Like

Old age creeping up on ya. Juggernaut is Defense and Earth. Battlemage is Warfare and Earth. :wink:

Aw shit! Time to retire.

2 Likes

Any changes to this for 1.2?