[1.2.1.2] Servant of the Secret Fire: Chaos Flames of Ignaffar Deceiver

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
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Introduction

My first ever Grim Dawn character was a Deceiver. She’s still in my character list, even though I long ago came to understand that Deceiver just has too many weaknesses and not enough itemization to compete with the more popular “meta” classes for Grim Dawn’s Next Top Onions.

But I never gave up on the dream of finding a Deceiver build that was strong and fun to play. I tried pets, I tried dual acid guns, I tried dual chaos guns, I tried Rah’binger, I tried Runebinder, I tried a weird physical FoI build that I made up, I tried Voidsoul chaos FoI. I theory-crafted some other builds that I thought would be OK but I knew would be just straight-up better on another class. None of them felt good.

Then, one day, I took a good look at Solael’s Devourer. I’ve long thought you ought to be able to make something out of Occultist’s ability to stack a lot of flat chaos and Inquisitor’s chaos resist reduction. Maybe this was it! With that and a Conduit of Runic Whispers, we could get 128% weapon damage to Flames of Ignaffar…

║ GrimTools ║

Build Discussion

Build linked above has 4 craftable items; craft to cover holes in your CC resists, and then for energy regen if you can. You’ll want a high roll on at least resists for your conduit, too. This is not a budget build.

Mana sustain is a problem for this build. I find myself needing to chug energy potions. An earlier version dumped as many points in Spirit as possible, which made mana less of an issue. But Physique’s returns in survivability outweigh Spirit’s returns in damage, and this build likes to stand still and tank, so I prefer Physique. You may wish to invest more in Spirit.

The build isn’t going to be cracking the top 20 builds, nor setting any speed records. But it can reliably do Crucible 150-170 and SR 75-76 in 7-8 minutes — even with me piloting!

How does it do on Celestials? I honestly can’t say — I haven’t killed celestials other than Lokarr much at all, with any build, so I’m not the right person to test what this build can do there at this time. If you’d like to, I’d love to see the results! (Edit: Lokarr is face-tankable, though.)

How to Play

Keep Word of Renewal and Blood of Dreeg up. Put down an Inquisitor Seal. Stand in it. Drop Word of Pain on whatever you want to die, and hold down Flames of Ignaffar until everything is dead. Cast Solael’s Flame against tougher targets. Keep an eye on your mana.

You probably don’t need to move, most of the time. You have a ton of absorption, good resists, and easily applied “reduced target’s damage”, “chance of impaired aim”, and “chance to fumble attacks”. You have two heal buttons. You also have enough life leech and enough weapon damage to keep your hp topped off as long as there’s something in your Flames of Ignaffar — when you stop channeling to reposition, that’s a vulnerable moment, so you need a very good reason. Sunder is often not enough of one. You can facetank a lot of them.

One weakness is a lack of circuit-breakers. The build can tank a lot. But you need to react quickly when you get into trouble.

I find positioning can be finicky. Sometimes I can only tell whether something is actually in my FoI by whether its health bar is dropping rapidly. And you really want to get as many enemies in the area of effect as possible, but that can be hard as they run around you. These are just FoI problems, not unique to this build.

You really really really hate nullification. If you get nullified, you will likely die.

Videos

SR 75-76
Crucible

Alternatives Tested

I tried the build with the Chaos Word of Pain conduit. To do this, I also moved some points from Second Rite to Word of Agony, to keep the Impaired Aim debuff. Damage felt similar overall, maybe slightly worse. Comparing Zantarin kills from videos I took of both versions, it took the same amount of time (10 seconds) in both cases, and damage numbers were similar (crits in the 220k range, mostly, some as high as 240k). All else equal, I prefer the weapon damage conduit because it fits the build’s theme.

A previous version used Anasteria’s Legguards, which gives us net 6 skill points. But we need life leech for sustain, so I ditched them for the current pants.

I also tried using Haunted Steel as my weapon component, which is a big trade-off of damage for sustain. However, I found that I actually was relying on the energy absorption from Symbol of Solael. Maybe if my suggestion is accepted and some energy sustainability is added to the weapon itself, I can try this again.

Previous version used Spider & Scholar’s Light + Crossroads Red instead of Raven & Fiend, for more casting speed & health. Both versions perform similarly, but I find I like the Fiend version better.

Acknowledgements

Shout out to @grey-maybe who helped me squeeze the last little bit of juice out of this idea, and who pointed out that I had forgotten the component in my hat. And thanks to @AngmarDT for proposing an alternate devotion route.

Revision History

  • 2024-10-04 accepted @AngmarDT’s suggestion to swap Scholar’s Light, Spider, & Crossroads Red for Fiend & Raven.
  • 2024-09-30 redid devotion map. We lose Fiend/Bat and Ghoul, but pick up Hydra, for a nice boost to run speed and more life leech. With better defenses from devotions, I was able to recraft some items for energy regen. With that plus the energy leech from Viper, the build’s energy issues aren’t as bad (but I still need to drink energy potions frequently). Old version. Also recorded new videos with the updated build.
  • 2024-08-23 swapped in Solael-Sect Legguards, replacing Anasteria’s, for an increase in ADCtH at the cost of some OA and a some skill points. Allowed reworking resists to squeeze in a little more health. Also went back to Fiend constellation, instead of Bat.

Conclusion

I’ll caveat again that I’m not a very good player: I’ve played top20 builds and I can’t get the same results with them that their creators can, because I’m just not the best pilot. But this build, for me, is as fun as those and not terribly slower. Dare I call it the best Deceiver build? It’s certainly the best one I’ve personally tried, and I’ve tried a few. And it has the virtue of making use of Deceiver’s unique strengths, rather than just being a weaker version of a build that works best on another class.

I can finally call my search for a good enough, fun Deceiver build concluded!

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Very well done! I like how you optimized it.

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i like that after 5 years, the crossbow finally sees decent use :smile:, praise the faction shop :grava_yes:

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Looks great @modal!

I haven’t seen any builds use that crossbow since @sir_spanksalot did it 5 years ago. His build was lost to the winds of time when the forum was hacked right after he posted it and we lost a few days with a forum revert. Thankfully I had his post open in a tab and was able to save it. :muscle:

I agree though that the weapon could use a buff like in your other post. :sunglasses:

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Updated: I found a better devotion map!

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have you considered adding Fiend to your devotion map? It can be bound either to Word of Pain or Inquisitor Seal and should help clearing trash and dealing extra damage along the way, considering ~75% of fire is converted to chaos.

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If you look at the previous version, it has Fiend. There’s no points for it in the new devo map with Hydra, though. Would be nice to squeeze it in if possible.

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Here it is with Fiend and Hydra:

Edit: you can drop Scholar’s Light and green node and get

  1. Raven for more OA
  2. Fox for another 6% adtch - sounds tempting considering it’s a weapon damage build.

Thoughts?

and here is banana_peel version using Voidsoul Helm for additional weapon damage:

have you considered to use this helm?

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made me wonder, have anyone ever actually tested if wd modifier does add effective effect scaling, like the flat RR/wd applied RR here :thinking:

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I think I’d rather have the 5% casting speed from Spider than Fiend, but it might be worth a test. Edit: I am testing the Fiend + Raven instead of Spider + Crossroads Red path. It feels a little bit better to me! But it doesn’t seem to actually be improving my clear times at all. And a bit sad to lose that 5% health from crossroads. Gonna keep at it for a bit.

A straight swap for Voidsoul Helm sacrifices the +120% Chaos damage from 2 piece set bonus as well as -10% Chaos RR, as well as some OA. We also lose the reduced target’s damage debuff, and a chunk of health. Doesn’t seem worth it, tempting as the weapon damage is.

I see the version you linked makes many different choices, and manages to min/max more overall weapon damage. But it has less life leech, substantially less Chaos RR, less OA, uncapped CC res, less crit damage, way, way lower HP, and is missing chaos resist overcap. I don’t see a source of reduced target’s damage. And I think it’s not converting any of that Vitality damage from Second Rite, unless I’m missing something – so overall weapon damage is higher, but much of it is unconverted and chaos weapon damage is basically the same. On paper seems like it will definitely have weaker defense/sustain, and I suspect worse or at least no better damage. Edit: Just noticed that it does get reduced target’s damage from Horn of Gandarr. But the cost in skill points seems frankly too high – gives up Inquisitor Seal!

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