- [Melee] [1.2.1.5] Beginner-Friendly Elemental Infiltrator Hardcore, SSF (Cripptid)
- Damage: Elemental, Fire, Cold, Lightning
- Active Skills: Word of Pain, Ring of Steel, Inquisitor Seal, Pneumatic Burst, Word of Renewal
Introduction
Hello everyone, today, I’m excited to share one of my unconventional GD builds with you. These builds are often labeled as weird, bad, unoptimized, or unusual by others, but I have a deep appreciation for them nonetheless. Not every character needs to be an overpowered Conjurer or Warlord. I enjoy experimenting with different builds and classes to see what unique outcomes I can achieve. If you consider that you can improve the build, then you can recreate it and modify it as much as you want.
Today’s topic is Elemental Infiltrator that uses Word of Pain.
This time my attention was captured by the Bargoll’s Heart, i am a big fan of Word of Pain skill, it has an insanely large area of effect, with one click you can hit half of the screen.
Additionally, I decided to make the run slightly harder by making in SSF, HC and Beginner-friendly. That means that in my final LVL 94+ build I will not use any random dropping Mythical LVL 82+ items on purpose and just use items you can get from monsters (MI’s).
The Build
The class is Infiltrator, Nightblade+Inquisitor.
Short Build Explanation
The WoP is perfect to cull large number of minions, not every Hero type monster can survive the full duration of one WoP, but it is a bit lacking when it comes to killing large bosses with 30+ million hp like Callagadra or Ravager, it still deals decent damage, and you can kill them if you don’t mind running around for 20 minutes or so.
The tactic is simple, use Word of Pain debuff all enemies in view, usually it takes two uses of WoP to debuff everything you see, the ones that survive you just kill with Default Attacks.
The build uses two Bargoll’s Heart, which empowers the Word of Pain skill, the 12% elemental resistance reduction it grants is very welcomed because the Nightblade class is not really an Elemental oriented Class, it mostly deals Cold, Piercing and Acid damage.
Having extra Elemental Resistance reduction greatly benefits us, additionally to further empower the Word of Pain (shortly WoP) i also used the Wendigo Eye , the +3 to Death Sentence, flat elemental damage and -50 DA is a good modifier which increases the damage to WoP by quite a bit. Or just use the Mythical Gildam Arcanum Commendation.
The Bargoll’s Heart has unusually high flat damage, and we are going to use that to mitigate our lacking single target damage, yes its Physical, but we can still make use of it, when farming the maces from the Bargoll located here Grim Dawn World Map try getting an elemental Prefix, or any Fire/Cold/Lightning Prefix, what we care about is the global %Physical conversion to an Elemental damage type, combine with Shard of Beronath and Seal of Resonance we can reach 50-60% global Physical to Elemental damage conversion. Additionally, try to farm for affixes which grant Attack Speed, it’s not difficult, many affixes have elemental damage and attack speed bonuses.
Skill Selection
Nightblade:
With proper weapons, our character will have solid flat damage, to further exploit it we are going to use the 4 Nightblade’s Techniques, Belgothian, Amarasta, Whirling Death and Execution. It’s sufficient to invest just one skill point into each.
The Ring of Steel is also perfect, it’s flat Piercing damage will be converted to Elemental thanks to the Bargoll’s Heart bonuses, but the reason why you must use it is not the damage but because of the Circle of Slaughter debuff, it has a 20% chance to inflict Fumble, Fumble is an excellent debuff, enemies under Fumble will miss 50% of their attacks, i don’t think this needs any further explanation. Just 1 skill point into the Ring and 2 into the Slaughter is sufficient.
Pneumatic Burst is a must-have for any build that incorporates Nighblade class, it grants Offensive ability, total speed, Defense ability, chance to dodge attacks and some damage from the Elemental Awakening, try to keep the PB and Shadow dance at level 12 to maximize its usefulness.
Veil of Shadow is truly optional, i have invested some points into it and the Night’s Chill because the AoE damage it grants is quite decent, you can omit it if you want to.
Blade Spirit is just for Devotion/Constellation proc, i have linked Leviathan constellation to the skill, we can use them to stack DoTs on enemies, for example the Leviathan whirlpool deals Frostburn damage, when the two Blade Spirits trigger the constellation the Frostburn will stack.
I have leveled Phantasmal Armor in hopes to stack some Armor, so my character will not become a total wet noodle, but even with maxed Phantasmal Armor and Vigor from Inquisitor, the armor of this Infiltrator is quite lacking, and he remained vulnerable to physical attacks.
Inquisitor:
We are going to use the Word of Pain, investing as many skill points as we can into WoP, and the Word of Renewal, the most important node is the Vigor, the bonus Health, Armor and cc resistance is exactly what we need.
The Inquisitor Seal is optional but highly recommended, the Flat damage absorption will make you highly resilient to Dots and attacks from multiple sources, it does limit you that you must stay on it but i think it’s worth maxing out.
The Aura of Censure is another must-have for any Elemental build, the elemental resistance reduction and damage reduction debuff inflicts upon enemies highly increase our damage output and survivability.
And one single point into the Deadly Aim, it’s a temporary buff so maxing it out doesn’t really make sense, also it doesn’t really scale well when maxed out, we can already squeeze enough out if it with just 1 skill point.
When leveling pick Inquisitor as your first class, max out Word of Pain, Word of Agony and then the Death Sencence, max out the Mastery, the Word of Renewal, Inquisitor Seal and Aura of Censure. You can pick Nightblade and invest one point into dual-blades to be able to wield two weapons, you just need two points into the mastery and the passive. After you leveled Inquisitor Class proceed with Nightblade, one point into the techniques, lvl 12 Pneumatic burst and the class Mastery.
Build Pros & Cons
Pros:
- High Self-Sustain, thanks to the Bargoll’s weapon our PB restores 48% max hp per use
with a moderate cooldown of 5 seconds, its a reliable source of healing together with Word of renewal. - Great AoE damage, very few enemies survives 3-4 ticks of WoP, even on high level SR 28-32, you only have to deal with Heroic Enemies or Aether Hulks, even Heroic enemies struggle to survive the full duration of WoP. (Regenerators are your nemesis
) - Great CC resistances thanks to Vigor and Pneumatic Burst.
Cons:
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Lacks single-target damage, i have used the Beronath’s Fury Default attack + Techniques so the single target damage isnt that bad, but you can still feel it vs enemies like Lokarr and other Celestials.
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Average armor and Health, requires farming for HP oriented affixes, even with 20k HP i didn’t really felt secure at all times.
The Itemization
As mentioend befire i used two Bargoll’s Heart you can farm the mace here Grim Dawn World Map its near the Ugdenbog Rift, so its easy to farm, you just have to reset the game and kill him repeatedly.
The second item that empowers the WoP is the Wendigo Eye, the drop chance of the item from the huge wendigo’s is small, you can progress the Barrowholm quest line, they will ask you to bring 3 hearts of great Wendigo’s:
Handarroth [Map]
Ollivioth [Map]
Yuvolloth [Map],
they have high chance to drop this medal.
I think one of the best ring slots are the Living Ring, it grants +3 to Word of Agony, WoA is a rare skill bonus, you can either farm the ring from blooms in the Ugdenbog or you can buy them from the Grim Dawn World Map merchant in the Ancient Grove.
As for the pants, you can get a really good pair by farming the Solael boss during the The Hidden Path questline, Solael-Sect Legguards the damage to health conversion is a good addition to the character self-sustain, you can farm it here Grim Dawn World Map to reach him you will have to first kill the Dreeg Guardian in the Devil’s Crossing located here Grim Dawn World Map.
As for the helmet, i decided to use the Horns of Korvaak, the debuff it applies is similar to the Viper constellation, with this helmet i can cut the Viper and complete the Blind Sage and the Leviathan. You can farm Korvakk to get this helmet, usually it drops from this chest Grim Dawn World Map on Ultimate, i have tried to farm it one Elite but without success.
Before Horns just use the Fettan Mask from Elite located here Urn Cluster (Korvan Sands) [Map] or its Ultimate version Fettan Mask located in the same spot on Ultimate.
The Ugdenbog Waistguard is a perfect belt for you, it has Aether to Elemental conversion, the Blind Sage and Attak Seru constellations both deal Aether damage, by using this belt you convert it damage to Elemental, you can farm it from spectal crabs in the ugdenbog or from this boss * Naxen Shade [Map].
As for other items it doesnt really matter what you pick, for exaple these are the items i finished the game with Infiltrator, Level 100 (GD 1.2.1.3) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator i used the Fleshwarped Platemail because it had Vigorous of Viality affixes which greatly increased my HP, the Loghorrean’s Corruption for its Physical resistance OA and DA.
The gloves and boots i used are craftable items, you need the blueprint first (drops randomly) and then you need to craft them, but they are just average, any legendary Elemental/Fire/Cold/Lightning Gloves and Boots will perform better than randomly crafted Stoneplates/Plagueguards. I’m not even talking about the costs, crafting a good pair is a pain and it will cost you at least 4mil coins and tons of scrap.
If you dont want to bother to farm Kaisan’s Eldritch Eye from the Kaisan, the Eldritch Scion nemesis you can just craft Nightstalker Pendant the blueprint can be bought Faction: Cult of Bysmiel
Components
When choosing the components, it is important to raise your Armor Absorption to 100%
You can use either of these combinations:
- 1x Scaled Hide (Pants) + 2x Living Armor or Sacred Plating (Shoulders + Helmet or Chest armor)
This way you have 100% armor absorption and you have 1 free slot, either helmet or chest armor, you can go more defensively and insert a Prismatic Diamond into the helmet to have a safety net when hp drops below 50% or you can go more aggressively and insert a Kilrian’s Shattered Soul into the chest for extra attack speed or Chains of Oleron for OA and entrapment resistance. - 3x x Living Armor or Sacred Plating (Shoulders + Helmet + Chest armor) + Ancient Armor Plate (pants)
This version fits characters that lack resistances.
As for the rest of the comonents you can use Bloodied Crystal (rings) for armor, DA and bleed res, Seal of Annihilation (amulet) for attack speed, Arcane Spark for Disruption Resistance, Disruption is rare but if you like venturing into Shattered Realms then its a good idea to have atleast 24%.
The rest of the slots can be filler with Ugdenbog Leather and Spellscorched Plating for the resistances you lack.
My character had an abundance of resistances so i have used the Consecrated Wrappings for attack speed, 8% AS is solid, the Mark of the Traveler for 15% slow resistance, in the SR you will encounter tons of slowing enemies, Blazing Ruby for 15% slow resistance and Health.
Do not forget about the Shard of Beronath we need a Default Attack replacer for our Techniques. The second component slot for the second weapon is kinda free, you can insert whatever you want, i used the Seal of Resonance for 10% physical to elemental for my default attacks.
Constellations
Details
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I have picked the Chariot of the Dead for Slow/Stun resistances, as a melee character that relies of the Default Attacks having slow and stun resistance is vital, additionally the constellation grants Armor both as a passive and as a proc.
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For a long duration i have used the Viper, but the Horns of Korvaak applies the same debuff so once you get the helmet the constellation can be removed.
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Spider for 5% attack speed, Fox for 5% damage to health conversion, Wolverine for more DA and armor, the Throne for CC resistances and DA.
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The Rhowan’s Crown constellation is one of the must-have constellations, because we need Flat Resisntace Reduction it grants.
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Blind Sage and Attak Seru, both constellations grant a lot of elemental damage, OA, DA and cc resistances.
As an option, you can cut the Blind Sage and use the points more defensively, you can either take Phoenix for Damage Absorption or Hyrian for 18% Armor bonus. Both Phoenix and Hyrian are solid choices. You can go even further and take the Turtle and Crab constellations for even more defense.
- The Leviathan, tbf i am still skeptical about this constellation, its pure Cold and not Elemental, it does grant nice resitances like 5% phys. res and the Proc deals tons of AoE Damage, but if you dont like it cut it and take something like Crab or Turtle instead.
This grimtools link Infiltrator, Level 100 (GD 1.2.1.3) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator has the Constellation progression slider
you can use it to see which constellations to take first
GT/YT Links
Low level Grimtools
LVL 35 Infiltrator, Level 35 (GD 1.2.1.3) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator
LVL 50 Infiltrator, Level 50 (GD 1.2.1.3) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator
LVL 60 Infiltrator, Level 60 (GD 1.2.1.3) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator
LVL 70 Infiltrator, Level 70 (GD 1.2.1.3) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator
LVL 80 Infiltrator, Level 80 (GD 1.2.1.3) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator
LVL 90 Infiltrator, Level 90 (GD 1.2.1.3) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator
High level Grimtools
I have finished the game and the DLC's using this build: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/YVWMRjLN , it's rough and unpolished, i have prioritized Health Affixed and Aether/Chaos Resistances. I have tried to not use any mythical legendary items with level higher than 82+After finishing the game i have upgraded the build to this version: Infiltrator, Level 100 (GD 1.2.1.3) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator just like before i have prioritized Health, the game is difficult, having as much HP as possible is a good idea. (only MI’s, horns are an MI too)
with this build i have killed Lokarr, Clones and the Mogdrogen
Cleared the SR 1-28
got bored and took a Waystone to the 32-33, the SR 32-33 is tough but manageable with some bob-and-weave
But this is as far as a Non-Legendary MI build can get, trying Ravager and Callagadra is too risky, if you want to tackle them you will need powerful legendary items like Shattered Guardian and other, like in this link
With the Shattered Guardian and other Legendary items the build became much more durable and we can try on the Ravager and Callagadra, even with Mythical Hammerfall Girdle and 3.2k DA, 35% Physical resistance, 3950 armor the Ravager still managed to slap me for 16k damage, fighting him (even under fumble) wasnt as easy as i have expected. Fighting him with 80% max bleed resistance is too risky, one wrong move and he can slap you with a 30k bleed Dot.
Ravager
for a WoP build, 7 min kill, ain’t as bad as i thought it will be
Callagadra
The boss isnt as hard as its tedious and annoying, she constantly spams the wind devils and the tornados, they apply Fumble so our character misses 50% of the Default atacks, also with all the wind effects its difficult to perceive how many wind devils she summoned, they can stack and burst-kill you pretty easily
