[1.2.0.3] War-Born Leviathan 2H Death Knight(no-MI) Ravagar: 1min 57sec, Calagadra: 1min 59sec, SR80+

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
,
1

Final Version Released, Go here: https://forums.crateentertainment.com/t/1-2-0-3-final-edition-warborn-leviathan-2h-death-knight-no-mi-all-3-superboss-killer/134237

Subsequent to my no-MI Superboss killer pet Conjurer
https://forums.crateentertainment.com/t/1-2-0-2-3rd-edition-elemental-bleeding-bysmiel-pet-conjurer-no-green-item-no-doping-all-superboss-killer/132539
and Subsequent to my no-MI Superboss killer WitchBlade,
https://forums.crateentertainment.com/t/1-2-0-3-final-edition-two-handed-physical-leviathan-witchblade-no-green-item-mi-no-doping-all-superboss-killer/132620/7
I present my third no-MI Superboss killer Death Knight.

Just for fun, as my personal opinion,
In terms of super bosses, my witchBlade is the best,
but, in terms of overall performance & versatility & interest,
my Pet conjurer > my WitchBlade >= my Death Knight.

I’ve seen very few Death Knight builds that can beat Calagadra. Of course, there is a Death Knight that is the only one that can beat all of the superbosses, but it has the disadvantage of using three MIs. So, I wanted to create a universal Death Knight that could take down Ravagar and particularly Calagadra, without using MI & drug(pharma) but using only common gears.

However, unlike WitchBlade, Death Knight’s skills don’t provide any Physical Resist, so I had to hunt all over the Constellation of Devotion to get the roughly 63+ Physical Resist required to take down Calagadra.

It took me two weeks of pains-taking work to develop a build that can safely beat the hard-to-kill Calagadra with Death Knight, while maintaining a very painful insistance on developing a macho hero that doesn’t use MI and doesn’t use shields.

In addition to Ravagar and Calagadra, I’d like to modify the build so that it can also beat Mogdrogen, but I’m too tired to do so. I’d appreciate it more if you could do that.

Here is My Macho Death-Knight.
Equipment/Skill/Devotion(30/January/2024, Seoul, South Korea :kr:): https://www.grimtools.com/calc/D2pYYpKV
Devotion selection process: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53cul9BwOgk
Here, you can download a copy of the hero :
_csk0103-death-knight.zip (1.8 MB)

My Death-Knight’s Brief specifications:
DA: 2676, OA: 3277, DPS: 182952,
Physical resist reduction is max 124%
Base attack speed 196, max out 206
Life leech : default 18%(+ conditional life leech in devotion)
Run speed 135, max out 143
All resist are about (15~30) over 80, except for Aether resist(0 over 80), Chaos resist(4 over 80), physical resist 63, stun resist 59, slow resist 80, freez resist 116, life leech resist 31, reflect resist 51.

Below is a video of my Death Knight battle.
All battles were fought without drug(pharma) doping.

General Combat(including Some bosses) : will be posted Later.

My Death-Knight vs Calagadra : :arrow_down: :arrow_down:

My Death-Knight vs Ravagar of Flesh : :arrow_down: :arrow_down:

My Death Knight’s SR 75~76 : :arrow_down: :arrow_down:

SR 80~81: Successful, Safety battle.

SR 85+ : Not Tested.

If you have any improvements or questions, I’d love to hear them in the comments.

(You can also take back 3 points from Constellation Crab to gain additional +5 physical resist on Jackal and Lotus. It’s a matter of preference.

Also, as you can see from the feedback from other users in the comments, By replacing Ravenous Earth with Bone Harvest/max Soul Harvest, you can catch Calagadra roughly 10 seconds faster. Bone Harvest/max Soule Harvest is definitely stronger than Ravenous Earth. However, for reasons unknown to me, I was more often faced with more risky situations in the battle against Calagadra & SR 75-76. Although Whether to replace Ravenous Earth with Bone Harvest/max Soule Harvest depends on your playstyle, Currently, I am testing a mix of “max Soule Harvest” and Ravenous.

snap2
snap21000×633 135 KB

)

)

2 Likes
2

Decent MI affixes will do imo. My deathknight managed to kill Celestials while face tanking them using decent MI’s. Even my relic is Juggernaut and my medal is not BIS affixes. Can’t remember the timing exactly but it was around the 5 min mark for Calla and Ravager (i might be wrong). I took some potions as i’m playing on Hardcore.

4

Your build is definitely one I’ve seen before. However, from what I remember, I don’t remember a Death Knight using your build being able to kill 2 or more superbosses. A lot has changed since version 1.2. To prove your character’s robustness and permanence, please submit a video proof of your character’s robustness and versatility beyond version 1.2 so that many people could be inspired by your build.

5

But why are you not using monster infrequents? Seems like you are just limiting your build’s potential for no real reason.

I am also curious why take Ravenous Earth? It seems like your melee build is struggling to get in damage because you are using all those low impact spells that interrupt your Cadence flow, did you try stripping it down to just Cadence and War Cry?

6

  1. Why are you not using monster infrequents?
    My answer : In South Korea, there is a strong aversion to using hard-to-get MI. Builds that use widely available equipment are praised. This may be a bias based on cultural differences, but builds without using MI also provide the added pleasure of achieving goals under very limited conditions.

  2. I am also curious why take Ravenous Earth? It seems like your melee build is struggling to get in damage because you are using all those low impact spells that interrupt your Cadence flow, did you try stripping it down to just Cadence and War Cry?

My answer: As stated in the text, isn’t the vitality damage of Ravenous Earth converted to physical damage by the belt and added to the cadence?. Shouldn’t it be converted to physical damage, like the Occultist skill “Second Rite” on Witchblade, to increase cadence DPS? I’m pretty devastated right now because of your point.

7

Ravenous earth is an attack spell not a buff, so it wont boost cadence unlike Second Rite
Second Rite is a regular buff adding global flat vitality dmg that is then scaled by the x% weapon dmg portion of Cadence, Ravenous earth is just a volcano type attack spell each cast effectively lowering your attack rate of Cadence and thus delaying your next Cadence charged strike.
The question would then be if the unmodified Ravenous Earth spell’s attack is adding enough dmg/dps to counter balance the delay into Cadence.
Also another important mechanical factor is to remember Foul Eruption does not trigger/apply flat RR or dmg unless Ravenous Earth specifically makes a killing blow to explode a corpse, which means those points could potentially be questionable as investment on top.

Should perhaps point out some MIs can be bought, thus vendor farmed, and in 1.2 boss MI drop rates got increased to 100%, and rare affix rate increased, making many/“most” MIs much less harder to get now than ever before

8

It is converted to Physical Damage, but it is not added to Cadence. Skills don’t add to each other except for Buffs (like Second Rite, as you mentioned).

9

sry i just realized
you might have mixed up Bone Harvest’s 3rd node Soul Harvest with Ravenous Earth
Soul Harvest provides a regular global buff, like Second Rite’s Vitality dmg, each time you cast Bone Harvest, which would be added to your Cadence directly

10

But reasonable monster infrequent greens are often easier to get than legendary items, because you know where to farm them, when legendaries are a random drop. Moreover a lot of monster infrequents are dropped by really easy monsters, like Milton Casque or Living Rings etc.

You can easily check that yourself. Like for example let’s say your build needs a Gollus ring with one good affix. Try farming that ring manually and see how long it takes you to get one.

It’s a seperate spell, not a buff. If you want to buff Cadence, you can (and should) use Bone Harvest with maxed out Soul Harvest - that will be added to your Cadence. No need to be devastated, you learn by making mistakes.

P.S. Funnily enough I am ~1/8th Korean myself, my alias “mad_lee” is just my surname (“Li”) with “Mad” before it.

11

I am very grateful for everyone’s input. I realized that Ravenous Earth’s vitality damage is converted to physical damage by the belt, but does not act as a cadence-enhancing flat damage.

  1. I replaced Ravenous Earth with Bone Harvest/max Soule Harvest to fight Kalagadra, but it seemed to trigger a behavioral change in Kalagadra rather than a meaningful time reduction, which put me in danger or killed me more often.

  2. no Ravenous Earth, no Bone Harvest & Soule Harvest, just cadence and WarCry, still resulted in more Calagadra behavioral changes and more deaths and dangerous situations than a significant time reduction.

While your feedback is certainly valid, it’s also true that this is what happened in practice. I think it’s worth noting that while Ravenous Earth doesn’t enhance cadence, it does continue to deal damage to Kalagadra independently while I’m attacking and even while I’m sliding.

I will need to do more testing to determine if I should replace Ravenous Earth with Bone Harvest/max Soule Harvest.

1 Like
12

makes no sense, Callagadra wouldn’t react/change behavior using RE or not :sweat_smile: , that’s not how she works/boss attacks works, their AI and skill usage doesn’t change dynamically or reactively to using an attack such as Ravenous Earth (or others like Bone Harvest for that matter)

1 Like
13

Is there a devotion path to follow? Making a new character.

14

When I first saw your pen name, I guessed that too. In Korea, lee is a very common surname. So, I even speculated that you might be a Korean living in the United States.

15

To defeat Kalagadra, I changed my devotion dozens of times. Honestly, at this point, I don’t remember the process exactly. Sooner or later, I’ll include a video of my devotion selection process in the text.

1 Like
16

New to the whole character save file part of the game.
If I downloaded that file I would have your exact character in my list of toons?

Nice build BTW.

17

Open the downloaded zip file and extract it to “C:\Users\csk0103\Documents\My Games\Grim Dawn\save\main” where csk0103 in the path is probably your different Windows username.

18

I just included a link to a video of the devotion selection process in the text.

1 Like
19

ok, thanks

20

Testing by replacing Ravenous Earth with Bone Harvest/max Soul Harvest shows that Bone Harvest/max Soul Harvest is almost 14 seconds faster. However, that’s assuming you’re successful at killing a Calagadra. I agree with @mad_lee that Bone Harvest/max Soul Harvest is stronger, but personally, I found myself in more dangerous situations with Bone Harvest/max Soule Harvest during the fight with Cala & SR75-76, oddly enough. I suppose it could be because I use Bone Harvest/max Soul Harvest too often, but I have a hard time fine-tuning the timing of its use. But I’m pretty positive about replacing Ravenous Earth with Bone Harvest/max Soule Harvest

21

I posted a video of my successful test with the skill swap in the comments.

1 Like