[1.2.1.2] Ghost of Aether: 4:00 Crucible Gladiator 150-170, Shard 90, Ravager, Callagadra - elite melee performance on a budget - Aether Reaper

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
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*Credit for doing a better AI tweaking job of choosing the image goes to @Ceno

Foreword

Between being burned out by the top20 project and testing stuff in the test patches, becoming a parent and not having any desire to do a write-up that constitutes another guide I haven’t posted anything here since forever. Hell, is there even a point if you can’t even make it part of the Build Compendium anymore. And I cobbled together quite a few potent specs (all of them you can find on my Youtube), don’t get me wrong, I am still enjoying Grim Dawn. But none of them were up to my self-imposed standards of being guide worthy (those standards kinda changing depending on how I need to justify my procrastination towards posting this or that build to the forum).
What’s next, am I going to say “But this build is worth posting”? Well…

The Build

<<<< GRIMTOOLS >>>>*

*Craft for slow and freeze resistance

Ghosting all the questions

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Or is this build really that budget?

Absolutely. It has three target farmable Krieg pieces, 5 target farmable greens with the common affixes, epic rings and a medal that is a faction blueprint. Top end performance doesn’t come much cheaper than that.

Shouldn’t devotions with Rattosh be better? What about Scales?

From my tests current devotions are optimal. Converted Scales are great but build is not lacking in sustain department and freshly buffed Revenant is a really strong devo nowadays. That said it would work with the Rattosh/Scales devotion map as well.

Why not use Theodin Scepter for stronger AA? Or maybe Mindwarp?

Both were tested and Blaze Heralds came out on top.

Gear/Skills and Devotions/Leveling

Most of the gear is relatively easy to get: I made to sure to use affixes only from the biased affixes pool for each green item in the build (except pants which don’t have strongly biased affixes). Those affixes are not set in stone and are somewhat interchangeable. In fact all of the armor slots can swapped by different items (as long as you find Vitality to Aether conversion in chest or shoulder slot). I just chose the items that were optimal, in my opinion, and also easy to get.

Devotions are the new old Aether meta devotions that have been buffed in the recent patches.

Skill distribution is standard, nothing to add here.

For leveling please check beginner guides, this is an endgame build

Gameplay

Point and click and don’t forget to keep up your Soul Harvest buff up. Use Ill Omen as a backup against big clusters of heroes or against multiple bosses or/and Celestials, otherwise damage reduction proc from rings will cover most of your needs. Mark of Torment can and should be used offensively to reflect Sunders back at bosses.

Celestials fights: Ravager is somewhat easy, just dodge his Sunder and use MoT/Cluster in case things are going south. Callagadra is a hard fight (if you are facetanking the winrate would be about 50-70%) on this build (because it doesn’t have naturally high Physical resist and armor) but possible, need to dodge her Sunders and time your potions/Clusters/MoT well.

Watch the videos to learn how to play the build.

Stats

General (taken with Soul Harvest proc up)

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Videos

Aether melee Reaper vs. SR 75-76 4:37 run

Aether melee Reaper vs. Ravager 44 seconds kill

Aether melee Reaper vs. Callagadra 1:09 kill

Aether melee Reaper vs. Crucible 150-170 “naked” ex (no buffs/no banners) 4:38 run

Aether melee Reaper vs. SR 90 3:44 run

Aether melee Reaper vs. SR 90 3:55 run

Aether melee Reaper vs. SR 90 3:47 run

In Conclusion

It’s great to see Aether builds finally competing at the top end.

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In the end I started it. Let’s see how it will take to find (again) those rings.

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Wait, was it your comment (I’ve blurred your name there)? :stuck_out_tongue:

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It was ahahah. I foolishly got scared by greens and underestimate the real threat: the blue rings

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it’s an epic set, so that means you can random set transmute it from another epic set item that drops more frequent, ex perdition or such
*atleast i’m told that random epic set/“not same set” transmutes for epics are relative cheap enough to be ok sometimes (unlike legends)

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Never tried with blue, have no idea about the cost but definetely worth trying.

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ye i legit never confirmed it myself, just looked at the initial cost and seemed like it might hold up, but can’t say for certain other than what i’ve been told :sweat_smile:

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This happens, somehow there is this idea that is still prevalent in some parts of the community, the idea that green items means build is hard to put together. This can be true if build uses double rare green items with unrealistic affixes. But also it can’t be further from truth if build uses single rare monster infrequents with affixes from the biased pool like here for example.

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Any particular reason you picked Impurity over Uroburook’s Reaping? With the flat vitality converted, Uro seems superior with the HP and AS, or is Impurity skill that great?

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It rolls twice as much damage + some extra damage from Spirit and the converted proc is pretty useful. Aether resist and racial reduction are not lost on it either.

While extra adtch from Uro relic doesn’t scale that well on this particular build (because it already has plenty) and then attack speed is already capped or even overcapped with good rolls. HP is nice but not enough to outweigh Impurity’s benefits.

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Thanks for your insight!

EDIT: congrats on your fathership, the first months are though and will make you feel like challenging Crate for the 1st time, but it is great!

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Lvl 94 and I already found decent gear with no great effort. Thanks to @Gnomish_Inquisition because the trick of transmutation worked fine (I spent a thounsand scrap to get both rings, but still A LOT more affordable than legendary set).
Leveling was pretty good, I played the build while growing up and was quite simple. And ofc thanks to @mad_lee for sharing the build.

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Do post your progress here, I am curious about your journey from “zero to hero” with this build. I can also help you fine tune it with the items you have.

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Here you are: Reaper, Level 94 (GD 1.2.1.2) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator

Belt is the first that I got with one single run, I’ll farm a better one after ultimate completion. For pants, I prefer to farm them with this char even if it will take extra time for the nemesis rep with barrowholm (so I used a pair of solael with similar affix). Also chest is just the better that I got in a few tries. I think that I spent about 40 minutes to one hour for all the greens, so very few time. I already had the complete Krieg set (and that’s why I decided to do this build, to use it) but need a better roll of physical res on boots. Despite my initial scepticism, it is the fastest build that I ever assemble, for now.

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Looks really good out of the gate already. I would recommend finding a better Blaze Herald than warped of Aether (something with more speeds and ideally with Aetherfire prefix) and probably a better chest.

Those Solael Pants are BiS for so many builds, definitely keep them after (if) you find good Reaper pants pair.

Try putting more points in Soul Harvest - it scales your damage pretty well.

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Yes, I borrowed that paints from another char eheh. Definitely I need a better sword and chest. With the points left I’ll max out either soul harvest and ill omen. The belt is a bit annoying because Im not a fan of port valdbury (it takes time to get to Yngraad) but I’ll make for sure some trying to improve also that piece.

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Why essence of Ch’thon on the off hand ?

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Because of a really high total -rr% build has %rr scales the damage more than 50% damage augment against most enemies, but it’s actually still surprisngly close between two augments overall. At least from my tests.

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Recorded more videos of the build testing it in more harsh environments (for a melee at least):


Aether melee Reaper vs. Crucible 150-170 “naked” ex (no buffs/no banners) 4:38 run

Aether melee Reaper vs. SR 90 3:44 run

Aether melee Reaper vs. SR 90 3:55 run

Aether melee Reaper vs. SR 90 3:47 run

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Very impressive timer. By the way here’s a small update of my clone: Reaper, Level 100 (GD 1.2.1.2) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator

I “only” need a vitality somewhere (ideally the pants) and a dreadlord, maybe.