[1.2.1.6] No-Button Chillwhisper Dervish - So many cold invincible minions

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
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More than anything else I’m just surprised that it’s possible to take things this far. This build seeks to answer the question of “just how much can I get away with not actually doing anything?”

If you prefer to be lazy, like invincible minions, and can
-remember to keep pneumatic burst active, AND
-run away from strong enemies
then this may be the build for you.

I’ll admit when I first saw the possibility of the skill elemental conversions, I didn’t think the idea could be taken this far. I started this idea initially thinking it would be a joke build at best. But it turns out that it is entirely possible to get 26/16 for both blade spirits and summon guardians, along with some decent flat boosts to each, somehow without utterly gutting our % cold damage. I was really expecting a prospective build to inevitably favor one or the other, given that there is no equipment that boosts both, especially with using cold as our favored damage type. Needing equipment to focus on skill levels instead of damage or defense means your devotions need to go all in on damage to make up for the lack, leaving the build pretty fragile, though. Crucible 150-170 with extra spawn capable, if nothing competative. Around 11.5-12 minutes, with no towers or blessings active.

Pros:
-8 invincible minions passively deal damage for you. Only ascension as an active support skill, which I mostly keep in reserve for entrapment resistance as needed. Basically no button pressing other than running around, and clicking pneumatic burst once a minute or so. There is an emergency teleport augment, and you can use chillspikes to attack if you want, but it’s hardly a requirement.
-Basically invincible if your blade spirit’s life steal can outpace damage.
-Absolutely no reason to directly engage enemies, so kiting if the above is not true. Blade spirits are exceptionally good at damaging enemies while you run away from them, since they attack just by overlapping the enemy and don’t need to stop for attack animations. Anything you can reliably kite, you can eventually kill.
-Has both a good amount of AoE, and a good amount of damage, depending on whether or not your minions spread out or focus. Multiple instances of whirlpool stack. Makes for a surprisingly good crucible farmer, considering its fragility.
-With relic, 3 different pet types means you can passively proc 3 different “active” devotion skills. Proc resistance reduction and whirlpool entirely passively!
-Lots of crafted gear for completion bonuses (helm, amulet, ring, medal, relic), which you can (relatively) easily keep crafting until you get good rolls. It’s faster than relying on random drops, anyway.

Cons:
-Fragile, at least against end game high tier enemies.
-Since the only defense comes down to life steal and running away, forced to invest in stun/slow/freeze/entrapment resistances. This detracts a bit from offense, but not enough to stop it from doing surprisingly decent damage.
-Enemies with strong area denial effects, like Callagadra or Moosilauke, are going to be your biggest problems.
-Extremely gear dependent. Due to needing extensive elemental conversions, you pretty much require the crown and amulet, at a minimum. You lose at least half of your damage without those conversions. The full chillwhisper set is needed if you want your life steal to work. I wouldn’t exactly say that the build is nonviable as a leveling build without it, but I definitely wouldn’t take it into shattered realms or the crucible.
-While I generally consider crafted gear a positive, the amulet, and especially the medal, well… good luck with that.

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I’m bookmarking this to one day level it as HC character.
Yes, I’m a bit masochistic :smiley:

Since we have a few crafted pieces, which blacksmith would you recommend for each of them?

Also, could you explain what’s squishy about this?
I’m a simple man: I see almost 2.9k DA which is quite good; 18k HP which is not fantastic but fine, and then 83% for most resistances, which is ~15% less damage taken compared to 80% if my math is ok.

Is it something about lack of sustain or capacity to withstand nukes?

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The medal is (1/54)^2 = about 1 in 2500 chance to obtain :slight_smile:

I am thinking Blazseer set + ring mythical signet of the runefather instead

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2 points in Resilience for 2 max res and other stuff would definitely worth it

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@Noksion
I’d say this build is entirely hardcore capable… for the base campaign. Summon guardians are already one of my favorite leveling skills, but without the elemental conversions, you’re probably best off using the vitality/acid damage modifier so they synergize with night’s chill. Which would also let you grab the attack damage converted to health vitality devotion procs for survivability and sustain.

I call the build squishy, but that’s really only in relation to end game content. This is more than capable out outhealing most bosses in campaign mode, with only nemesis or super boss tier enemies requiring any real degree of caution. On the other hand, I have also been one shotted by the Moosilauke nemesis, routinely lose half my health to stray shots and will die in under a second if I get cornered in the later stages of the crucible. I don’t actually like shattered realms much, so I don’t know what the limitations are there, but I imagine they’d be similar.

The grimtools doesn’t actually rely on any of the craft bonuses, so the answer pretty much comes down to whatever you feel helps patch whatever issue you’re seeing. I see 3 major possibilities. What I did was craft for offensive ability (the smith in Tyrant’s Hold). The grimtools OA either has the number without pneumatic burst, or with ascension, and either way it’s wrong to my normal playing, so the extra was useful. The second option (untested, because like hell am I doing all that crafting again for this character) would be to craft for slow resistance (Forgotten Realms, Shrine of Azaleon), which would allow you to shift what I’m currently doing for slow resistance to some other use. What I’m currently using also increases HP and entrapment resistance though, so I’d be careful about changing it, especially for a hardcore character. And the last option would be increased movement speed (also Shrine of Azaleon), just because extra run speed makes kiting that little bit easier.

For crafting the badge of mastery, you should just take whatever you can get. I’d almost prefer to try and farm double rare MIs than craft this thing. Because…

@GIJW
Yeah, that’d definitely be easier, though at the same time, the blazeseer items don’t increase cold damage, and we’re already short on that, since our amulet and lifegiver ring don’t increase that, and the badge of mastery barely does. That being said, if you shut down the game from the system processes instead of normal methods, you can avoid saving the game and wasting materials for mass crafting. I made badges in batches of 5, and then shut down the game and restarted until I got what I wanted. It still took far longer than I really wanted to spend on a character that really only exists because I found the idea to be a fun bit of whimsy as opposed to something genuinely good. But it at least is an option.

@tqFan
On the one hand, you’re definitely right that resilience is great, and it would help for very little investment. On the other hand, my experience with this character says that attrition isn’t something you need to be concerned with, and you’re either dead nearly instantly, or you’re fine and don’t need it. Personal preference, in the end.

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Easier to just GD stash it.

You will loose about 150% cold damage, which is about 5% less cold damage multiplier.
The biggest lost is the proc from eternal hunt ring.

Also, one can use a green nightblade belt with juicy stats

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To be fair, unless you just have your heart set on a dervish, you can reach nearly the exact same end state with the same playstyle with far less effort with a chillwhisper trickster blade spirit / wind devil build.

Hell, the two are similar enough I was able to throw this together in just a few minutes.

Edit: Actually, now that I’m looking at it closer, this is probably the better build by a noticeable margin. Better damage, more life steal, more health regen, slows enemies, no highly improbable craft requirements…

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Raging Tempest damage doesn’t stack with multiple devils so they are not doing any damage only debuffing. No comparison to Guardians damage in your first build.

Maybe try converting Storm Totems to Cold / get them to high level but probably not possible / worth it with Chillwhisper

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and, no need to go that high on stormcallers pact for crit dmg since the OA is so low. Same with elemental awakening, that flat frostburn will not be added to the player scaled pets so it is waste of points

The eternal haunt debuff does not stack either so no need to use 2

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really? no stacking damage? i wouldnt expect the rr to stack, but no damage?

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afaik it is like word of pain

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Or like Guardian aura. It’s quite intuitive if you know Grim Dawn mechanics / how it’s coded (debuff damage not stacking)

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damn. welll, there goes that idea, then.

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As I said, you can make Cold Storm Totems / Blade Spirit build if you want (might be somewhat fantasy). I did sth like that in the past. Although that wouldn’t be passive / no button I suppose.

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Isn’t there a was to convert all wd phys dmg to cold?

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the conduit is to acid, there are some ways to do vitality i know off the top of my head. wouldnt solve the issue though, since that quoted post says its base damage as well as raging tempest.

and now that im thinking about it, i do remember a test run of a morgoneth set wind devil user didnt do nearly as much damage as i thought it should. maybe thats why.

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Inquisitor Seals’ damage also doesn’t stack.

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yeah, the devs change this all the time…

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The medal is (1/54)^2 = about 1 in 2500 chance to obtain

Hey, I wonder where the numbers are coming from?
I only checked grimtools and saw that it can be sold by the trader in a bog key dungeon.

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thatd be the blueprint. the medal has a random prefix and suffix of +2/+3 to any active skill for any class. getting them to match for a +5 on the skill you want is a trial without gdstash.

1 Like