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; I crafted for mostly slow resistance, to cover that gap. You also want a high roll on resists for the conduit. Not exactly a budget build. But, Deceiver forces us to beg and scrape to get something workable without sacrificing too much damage.
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, so we want to avoid this as much as we can. 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 (especially with me piloting!). 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 a couple circuit breakers, and 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.
Reposition mostly just to get more guys stacked up in the flames.
You really really really hate nullification. If you get nullified, you will likely die.
Videos
I would note that in recording the videos above, the build was not at MAX POWER — my devotion procs weren’t fully leveled up, including Eldritch Fire. I was also using Fiend constellation and Anasteria’s Legguards at the time, so I had significantly less life leech. See below for a discussion of the trade-offs involved.
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. I did an SR75-76 run and got Zantarin in the boss room on 76, which was fortuitous because I could compare directly to the similar Zantarin kill in the video linked above. 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.
I have gone back and forth on whether to use Fiend or Bat. They’re the same cost and are a 1-for-1 swap. Former is more chaos damage, but the latter gives more life leech. So it’s a question of damage vs. sustain. Currently, I’m happy with Solael-Sect Legguards for life leech.
I also tried using Haunted Steel as my weapon component, which is a similar trade-off of damage for sustain, but should be a more dramatic swing. 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.
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.
Revision History
- 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. Also 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!
, praise the faction shop 
