Inspired by the “Top 20 SC Builds - Dawnbreaker Warder” by @mad_lee, I wanted to change it a bit to a tankier version for HC. It cleared SR39 and facetanked* Calladagra with ease. It should be strong enough to clear SR40 but I didn’t want to risk it in HC since it wouldn’t be without danger.
It focuses more on survivability at the cost of a small loss in clear and boss damage, since it is intended for HC.
We take Markovian’s Defense, which results in almost full uptime on Overguard for %100 block recovery with %70 chance to block 13000 damage. This gives us a decent amount of extra survivability. The damage penalty is negligible due to higher Overguard uptime combined with Ikrix medal synergy.
DEVOTIONS: Devotion build is flexible, feel free to comment alternative devotion builds! I just took the constellations I liked.
LEVELLING: I recommend levelling with 2H Forcewave until 94. If you want to level as Retaliation, you can switch to Perdition set at lvl 40 and max Counter Strike / Menhir’s Bulwark. I don’t recommend levelling as Retal before lvl 40.
The only mandatory items are the Dawnseeker’s Light set itself, everything else is just optimization. You can switch as soon as you get the full set.
*I only dodged Sunder attack from Callagadra, %60 more damage taken is too much
What is the point of one pointing Wendigo Totem and dropping Vines entirely? As well as stripping the build of its RtA Blitz medal? I am not sure if those moves contribute to build becoming closer to being “Hardcore”.
Build was already deemed perfect for Hardcore by RektbyProtoss. Imo, if you want to tank it up you just take Obelisk devotion and sacrifice some damage by increasing DA. Also that shield component is straight up inferior to Mark of Myrmidon for both “Hardcore” and Softcore specs.
Wendigo Totem provides nice %health healing with %100 uptime with 1 only point, so I think its worth taking. Vines could be good for clear in lower SRs but I felt like they weren’t doing much in higher SRs so I dropped them. Could spare 2 points here for personal preference, similar to Wendigo Totems. They don’t make or brake the build.
You are right that Mark of Myrmidon is slightly better than the one I used, I forgot to change my component after switching to full uptime Overguard and no longer needed extra %5 shield recovery.
Blitz medal is better for clear, but Ikrix medal provides more raw stats, especially since we have almost %100 uptime on Overguard. For deep SR I consider Ikrix medal to be better, since most of the time is spent killing bosses anyway. But I agree that I should have listed it under the gear alternatives, so I added it.
Obelisk of Menhir has some good nodes, but I couldn’t manage to get the devotion requirements to unlock it without wasting too many points, so I went with this version. If you can link a devotion tree that utilizes Obelisk Menhir, I would be interested.
If you look at Health/DA/Armor values, this build is significantly tankier than SC Top 20 version, and leans more heavily on shield mitigation in skill tree. So I think they are meaningfully different enough to be considered seperate builds. I am not claiming my build is better, or that I invented the build. My personal opinion is that this version is better for hardcore, since the other one is almost perfectly optimized for softcore farming. From what I understand, when RektbyProtoss said the build was perfect for hardcore, I think he meant the general idea of the built, not the min/max optimizations of the softcore version. You might disagree and that is fine.
Then why not overcap Overguard if you took the transmuter and medal for it?
DA - sure, Armor - going from 4k to 5k would be only relevant versus specific mobs like Ravager/Callagadra/couple of SR bosses. Your version has much less damage and will be fighting dangerous fights for much longer which negates any armor/da gains you made.
No, you are wrong again, he meant the build itself. How do I know? Well for once I am the one who tweaked this build for top20 and I am the one who sent it to Rekt and discussed it with him.
Geniunely asking because I am not as familiar with game mechanics as you are, does Mend Wounds from Wendigo Totem not heal the player? From the wording I assumed it did, but its hard to tell since the build has so much sustain.
I didn’t overcap Overguard because I felt like the diminishing returns were too heavy past 12 pt and were better allocated elsewhere, but overcapping can also be possible. I can’t really tell if it is still better to overcap Overguard despite diminishing returns, maybe if someone can run the numbers?
As for the RektbyProtoss comment, it seems I misunderstood what he meant. I can remove " (HC version of Top 20 SC builds)" part of the title to avoid confusion if you want. My personal opinion is that this build is still better for playing safer in hardcore, and due to very high sustain it doesn’t matter if the fights last a little longer as long as you don’t die. I think it is perfectly fine to have different versions of the same set, so that people can choose the version they like.
It does but 2/12 Totem is just too small to bother. This build has incredible healing scaling off Healing Effects plus huge hp pool (so every % healed does a lot) so if you want Wendigo Totem it makes sense to invest more into it.
My problem is that you took someone else’s work, made some (questionable at best) tweaks to it, slapped “HC” label on it (despite build already deemed perfectly Hardcore viable) and then put “HC version of top20 builds” in the title which makes it looks like you improved our build or something. So please be so kind and remove “top20” from the build title.
It’s your version of Dawnbreaker Warder, you can play it however you want, you can mention that your build is inspired by a top20 build. But saying that it’s “better” for HC when you clearly don’t understand some mechanics and nuances (like for example effectiveness of shield block in Grim Dawn) while piggybacking of someone else’s work/renown is not cool imo.
In that case 12 point in Wendigo Totem doesn’t even heal twice as much as 1 point Wendigo Totem, so I think it’s still worth to put 1 point in it without investing further. Skipping it completely is understandable, but I don’t think its worth investing more points.
I removed the “Top 20 Build” mention in the title and added “inspired by the xxx” somewhere in the post. My intention was to make a build that lean more on defenses at the cost of damage and clear and I think I succeeded in that regards. It wasn’t to make a claim that I invented the build, but I can understood why the title could lead to that misunderstanding. I still think you criticized most of my changes unfairly without providing a solid reasoning despite me explaining why I made them, but that was probably because you misunderstood that I was trying to steal credit for someone else’s build or sth so it is understandable.
SR42: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtejsmUD7oI
У меня тоже страж на хардкоре, но я советую лозы качать однозначно.
Чешуя Икрикса как дополнительное лечение - понимаю.
3100 навыка защиты как по мне - много, 2800 оптимально для Ящика или для SR40+
Лично я иногда надеваю кольцо с характеристикой защиты вместо атаки.
Твоя сборка классная - разогнал характеристику атаки до ~3400 и феникс стал неплохо работать по той же Келли, порядка 8-9% шанс крита, но я не рискнул играть в хардкор, кстати Rekt тоже не на хардкоре играет - видно по видео)
Block happens before resistances&armour in calculations. So for non-phys, non-ele it gives you 13000 * 0.2 = 2600 flat damage block, for ele its 13000 * 0.13 = 1690 flat damage block and for phys its 13000 * 0.58 - 5567 = 1973 flat damage block. By flat damage block I mean how much you gain from having blocked the hit all, not comparing it to lower shield block value.
Let’s assume damage distribution is the same for non-phys damage types (it’s not, ele is dominant) and take the average = (2600 + 1973) / 2 = 2286.5 and phys hit value remains the same. Those two are maxhit values. Then for ehp purposes, build has 70% block chance and 100% uptime, so thats 2286.5 * 0.7 * 1 = 1600.5 and 1973 * 0.7 * 1 = 1381.1. We’re not interested in calculating builds’ total maxhit and ehp, only what block mechanic gives you.
So:
Block_maxhit(phys) = 1973
Block_maxhit(nonphys) = 2286.5
Block_ehp(phys) = 1381.1
Block_ehp(nonphys) = 1600.5
Now lets do the very same calculations for the original version:
Block_maxhit(phys) = 11000 * 0.72 - 4700 = 3220
Block_maxhit(nonphys) = (11000 * 0.2 + 11000 * 0.13) / 2 = 1815
Block_ehp(phys) = 3220 * 0.56 * 0.72 = 1300
Block_ehp(nonphys) = 1815 * 0.56 * 0.72 = 731.8
Conclusions:
Stacking block for phys is worse when you have higher armour & phys res (duh)
Stacking recovery 100% recovery only doubles your block_ehp for nonphys and thats the only thing your build gets out of it (defensively). The problem is you sacrificed damage to get there, and lower damage also means less leech → less ehp.
Block provides low maxhit gains (duh), which are the things that get you in HC.
I used Google Translate to understand your comment, so I hope it translated correctly! Wow, SR42 is pretty impressive, I couldn’t dare that high
Maybe I underestimated Vines, I will respec into it and give another shot.
I agree that my DA is too high while OA is too low, my belt and rings suck, but this was the best I could with the gear I farmed while not dropping resistance overcaps, MIs are definetely not optimized
It does look less impressive when you put it like that I changed “This gives us ridiculous amounts of survivability.” to “This gives us a decent amount of extra survivability”, hehe. I had a lot spare points from dropping vines, so the opportunity cost of leaning heavily into shield was actually much lower for me. Due to Ikrix medal, the damage penalty is roughly %6 or so? instead of %10 and we get to proc %12 healing almost twice as fast. That is why I think it is still worth going Markovian defense, however the heavy investment is probably not optimal as you explained. @phoenix_witcher already linked a version of the build optimized for HC, and his version looks quite good considering he put video proof of clearing SR42 easily. I think I will still leave my guide as it is and put his GT link under mine as “optimized” version, because I think the build explanations are still helpful for less experienced players even though my GT could be optimized better as shown.
Thanks for the detailed explanation regarding block mechanic
and I got bored of farming them. Other good rare affixes are “Of the Dranghoul”, “Of Scorched Ends”,
