[1.2.0.5] HC Cadence Beronath Battlemage

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
1

Introduction

This is my take on a pure physical cadence BM build. It’s a big meme to be fair (The idea was to have fun and converting as much things to phys as possible but turns out, it sucks hard).

I rarely saw Beronath Reforged being used in an attack build, so I tried to do one. I kinda love this weapon, the theme is cool and it enables many things.

The Build
Beronath Reborn

Grimtools : Battlemage, Level 100 (GD 1.2.0.3) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator

Gameplay

SR 65-66 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCv_EezAW_E
Mogdro : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yca7vmNxzQY
Callagadra : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Fr7IIGaE-c (clean fight KEKW)

Since we are arcanist, we have access to the single most broken skill in the entire game (hello MoE), and arguably the second most op skill in the game : nullification. The former is what enables this build to exist in HC pretty much, the later is our counter to Reflective ennemies. Just nullification the hero when his shell is active and murder him.

We have no circuit breaker whatsoever, so we only have one shot, if we fail we will die miserably.

Pros & Cons

MoE Abuser
Decent Damage
Good OA (3700+)
Krieg Set
Kind of fresh start viable

Clearing speed is atrocious
Full Melee
Not so tanky
Only circuit break is Turtle (a.k.a if you play as bad as me against callagadra you die, except if you’re lucky :slight_smile:)

Leveling and Fresh Start

I leveled this character with the Lokarr set, but I also fresh started with this build once around 3 months ago. I played forcewave, then swapped to cadence when I reached Smuggler’s Pass and got a decent Voldrak’s Crusher. When fresh starting, I vendor reset AG to get a hand on non-Mythical Beronath Reforged’s blueprint. Then I swap to this build at level 75 basically, and it is decent enough for my taste. Most of our gear is target farmable, so there is no struggle at all (but the build isn’t that tanky :woozy_face:).

Thoughts and Conclusion

When I started theorycrafting this build, I first wanted to go with the SR set. I’m pretty sure it would be much more suitable to HC this way, but the thing is I really believe this helmet is BiS by far. Even without any affixes, permanent warcry + 6%OA/DA and some phys dmg feels too powerful. So I went for 4 Pieces Krieg and for the lore accurate beronath’s amulet (kidding just couldn’t be annoyed to farm a good enough Kaisan’s). The problem now is that Iron Maiden cut through me like chicken, so idk maybe I’ll go back to the SR set.

If you all have any idea and/or improvements I’d be happy to hear it. I really like the build and only wish to make it better !

2

I tried something similar a while ago. Elemental conversion isn’t really worth leaning into imo, and Warborn set + Crimson Claws are too good to skip.

Easily cruises through SR, but a little low on sustain for superbosses.

Berserker is good but Blades of Nadaan isn’t. It doubles the phys to pierce conversion on your sword and gives you very little in return.

3

I don’t believe Nadaan is that bad. It spares us some point, gives us much needed attack speed and doubling the pierce ratio of Beronath = loosing 5/6 flat phys, which is nothing when you have that much flat in the first place.

Going to warborn means changing the entire build. So I won’t do that. (The char is dead anyway LEL)

4

But I do believe blind fury is kinda trash when DW so I should remove it and take something else, but I don’t know what. We would be able to skip Nadaan, which was here almost only as a filler. Maybe going for a more defensive devotion setup, 'm not sure.
Also, removing blind fury means removing some clear speed and the build already struggles on that very note, so I’d have to compensate somewhere else (crimson claws for instance xd). But that means changing the build very significantly.

5

curious what you mean by this (just so i get it right) because it’s not peanuts
*if it means what i’m reading it as then no; you’re not just losing 5 to 6 flat phys, that’s not how the AP works

6

Beronath has 10% AP base and 42-64 base physical damage. 100% increased AP will result in 20% AP instead of 10%. Which means we will lose another 10% of 42-64 which will result in a 0.1*(42+64)/2 flat phys dmg loss. It also has an effect only on the off hand, since the cleaver doesn’t have a pierce ratio to begin with (and isn’t even a sword ?).

Now our overall flat phys is :
((42*0.8)+(64*0.8))/2 = 42.4 from MBR physical damage
3*(20+30)/2 = 75 from MBR elemental damage converted
(85+133)/2 = 109 from Deadly Momentum
37 from IEE
22 from fabric of reality
(9+12)/2 = 10.5 from Ulzaad
0.1*((68+111)/2+(102+165)/2)/2 = 11.15 from Blademaster’s Talisman 10% of X to Y physical damage
(11+16)/2 = 13.5 from krieg gloves
(11+16)/2 = 13.5 from combustion band
((9+10)/2+(12+15)/2)/2 = 11.5 from Mark of the Dreadblade
12 from MBR augment
13 from MBR Seal of Might
12*3 = 36 from Rings + Amulet augments

For a total of : 42.4+75+109+37+22+10.5+11.15+13.5+13.5+11.5+12+13+36 = 406.55.
Now without Blade of Nadaan this would be 411.85 instead of 406.55, a difference which I consider to be completely negligible.

Now if I missed something/my reasoning is false please let me know.

7

not how it works
you are correct in this

^being a sword is not a requirement btw, base AP, doesn’t matter if it’s an axe if it had base AP

now for the math it’s simple
you take all you non converted global phys dmg, all of it, sum it up; then you take 20% off: that’s the dmg lost to AP on left hand strikes, it’s not just the base dmg of the weapon itself, it’s the full combined phys amount (right hand strikes wont matter nor will cleavers own base dmg)

you have 2 other issues too
one being, regardless of hand; your AP affects all your procs (with unconverted base phys dmg+weapon dmg) in full, in your specific case would be Oleron devo proc and Dreadblade, you lose 20% of the weapon dmg and 20% of the base phys on the proc

the biggest dmg loss however will be your Cadence and wps, granted AP (aside from procs) is hand specific, but Cadence alternates hands: so roughly 50% of your cadence strikes will be with the sword, losing you 20% physical on the entirety of the dmg (not counting elemental/aether/chaos dmg that was converted into phys but just vanilla phys)
^that’s 20%, or rather an additional 10% of the 500% weapon dmg and 350 native phys that turned into piercing

it will also count for 50% of your wps; the left hand striking portion of your wps.
20% (10 extra because nadaan) of Zolhans 1/2 170% wd, markovians 1/2 151%wd +90 phys, and 1/3 Mutilate 110%wd+144 phys (pretty sure mutilate always follow the same strike pattern ie right hand left hand right hand, but if it alternates to it would be 1-2/3 strikes where AP plays in)

i apologize if i garbled stuff or muddied the waters for you/didn’t explain proper, head is in zombie mode, so please to say if you want specifics or other elaboration

*super easy way for you to see the AP affect on cadence is slot cadence to LMB or RMB, unequip the cleaver, mouse over Cadence up top char sheet page 2 and it will show you how much is pierce
**this amount would technically be slightly more impacted because cleaver does have some global bonus, but should be enough to see a phys dmg loss with/without nadaan (or just en general by reverse counting the pierce into phys +bonuses) - which also lets you estimate how much the 10% loss then is from just beronath itself vs another non AP cadence weapong

8

The fact the AP applies to the 350 flat phys from cadence (among other things) is something I quite litteraly left out. That indeed makes Nadaan a very dubious choice, (the 350 flat from cadence being basically as much as all the flat converted also makes me realize how pathetic MBR is here XD).

Will update the build and get rid of that devo (prolly will change blind fury as a whole since I said, only main hand damage is meh).

9

big impact will really be the 500% wd too,
losing 20% of your total left hand strike wd should be quite a bit too (since you have a very decent amount of global vanilla flat phys too)
There is an axe (no AP) with a smidgen ele to phys
Aside from that there is individual pieces that lets you convert ele to phys; but it will ofc break up your krieg set tho
Other alternative is to ignore the ele conversion (it’s jsut 27 from iee and 14-19 from chaos) and use the cadence weapon Aetherwarped Cleaver - Items - Grim Dawn Item Database (or another iee cleaver)
Mess around with the numbers a bit, see if you feel the 10-20% loss to pierce is worth for roughly 50% of your cadence hits, even if you decide to keep beronath you can easily replace nadaan devo atleast :+1:

10

Char is dead as I said so I won’t have the chance to experiment anything. But getting rid of Nadaan is mandatory. Won’t get rid of beronath tho since it’s the entire idea of the build (even if it sucks LEL)

11

This whole thing makes me wonder why MBR has AP in the first place, since it clearly is design to play phys not pierce. The meme is bad sadge

12

2 “reasons”
one is “thematic” because sword :crazy_face:
other is to mess with players head: GD is a big troll deviceOCD simulator after all

1 Like
13

OCD simulator indeed Gnomish.

I posted a similar build shortly after you. I’m curious about your use of the boots. Does the conversion of blitz to aether not matter for some reason? Or are you just not relying on blitz for damage?

Here is my version, since I should have probably posted here instead of making a new half-ass thread!

I have an aether damage version of this build that plays very similar. Also would benefit more from the elemental conversion to aether, but sadly I never could find the magelord ring set. Would have been a great benefit to my devotion procs I think.

14

Yeah I use blitz just for the mobility, I went for 4 pieces krieg and since I wanted to use Fleshwarped Casque (since I believe it is very good) I had no choice but to use every other slot.

To be fair, the build is bad. It’s a meme as I said. MBR is worse than a cleaver and Crab Turtle’s version with warborn set is way better.

15

Interesting. Only played a couple weeks now so never know when I’m missing some mechanic or another. All my builds are memes :smiley: - 12 battlemage builds and they all are junk except this one.

Thanks for clarification. I like the casque too, so makes sense to me.