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
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.
I’m currently trying out an alternative devotion route that drops Spider & Crossroads Red for Raven & Fiend (proc bound to Inq. Seal). It feels good, but I’m not quite ready to recommend it over the spec shown above. Definitely pretty close in terms of performance, though.
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
- 2024-09-30 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!