[1.3.0.3] SC- Cold DW Onslaught/RoS Korba Reaver

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
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As expected, build focuses on holding right click to stack up to 15 Onslaught stacks and paying off with a chunky cold RoS, both of which are heavily supported by the Korba set and our other legendaries. The new relic Amatok’s Grip has an insane effect on crit, granting (among other things) a whopping 22% attack speed for even faster onslaught stacking.

The mastery is quite squishy-HP wise and ascendant DLC mobs hit like a freight train, so we mitigate this by dumping points into physique, and using the new dual Covenant of Sif rings for +6 total to dual blades. The belt and pants with hp increasing affixes helps a lot as well. The ‘of Landslides’ suffix is extremely strong since Amotak Pact is so stacked, giving flat Cold, DA, and armor, so getting one on at least one of the greens is strongly recommended. Thanks to the new ascension alter and affix rerolling, getting a good one is pretty reasonable.

We are far from invincible face-tanking, but the armor and CC + reduced % target damage from RoS helps a lot when getting swarmed by dlc mobs. The potion granting 33% armor and 44% current health as absorption gives a nice safety net and grants almost ~3.9k armor with 100% uptime.

This build is capable of farming both sr 30-31, and ascendant mode skeleton key dungeons and tempest totems w/ modifiers up: i had 4 of 5 ascendency modifiers going on any given farming run and was relatively safe, never died while farming up Nokutori rep in port valbury like 7 times.

SR 30-31 is generally a cruise, as long as you dodge sunders of course. I didnt do extensive testing since I find SR quite boring, but the only real danger is getting hit by sunders from the new nemesis bosses, as they can be quite obscured by all the visual clutter. Most mobs in SR are completely harmless, especially with armor potion up.

The main issues with the build are (aside from the mastery’s native squishiness relying on greens to fix) : awful freeze res of 8%, which makes tempest totems a little sketch without a hoarforst ointment

and

being very VERY skill point starved. Even with green boosting my skill point investment, I was not able to invest in many of the things I wanted to make this build more convenient, like points in Avalanche for faster stack generation, blade spirits for easy devotion proccing has to be skipped, and i really would have liked more points in Dual Blades or Phantasmal armor for more tankiness (and freeze res!). I really think this build relies on having some Rare affixes to help boost relevant skills (amatok’s pact, night chill, RoS, etc). Thankfully the affix reroll system and alter make this way easier than before.

Build has killed base game celestials + Dread on Ascendant. Ravager, Dread, and base game Mog were simple. Callagadra was an exercise in kiting for over 8 minutes, would not recommend it. And Crate was an absolutely awful exercise in RNG and blind luck, would DEFINITELY not recommend it.

Anyway, this was my first time making a build (mostly) on my own after 1k hours, as i have spent most of my GD playtime copying things from this very forum. So I appreciate any (gentle) constructive criticism :slight_smile: I did have help with mr Rektbyprotoss to fix my devotions and spec, since even after 1k hours I did NOT know % damage reduced doesn’t stack, making Yulgol completely useless with this set up.

Im sure there are some improvements to be made, so please let me know if you have any thoughts.

Thanks for reading!

EDIT: Changed original spec to account for 15/10 in nights chill :slight_smile:

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Some damn good stuff here. I had a similar idea for my first FoA build, but I went a bit harder on trying to fix the secondary resists and being a bit tankier. Still missing the gloves to fully test the build, but this is what I had: Reaver, Level 100 (GD 1.3.0.0) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator

I’m thinking your medal choice is better overall. I used to use the same amulet you did but Kaisan’s Eldritch Eye fixes a bunch of secondary resistance issues. Serenity also gives a bunch of survivability, and if you can hard-cap Endless Rage, then having a 17-stack RoS will be devastating.

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Love me some Korba action baby!
Now here is a question, why not go all in on Night’s chill? Free passive RR, I know build is skill point hungry but surley there is a way to min-max it

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I actually completely forgot about Kaisan amulet. If you could get one with a skill suffix it might even be better, especially since the resistances from another green might free up affixes on the greens for more damage or augment slots for HP% stuff

as for the medal, yeah I was originally using gear that boosted onslaught over RoS, but i found the damage of RoS without the medal and arms to be kinda underwhelming as a payoff.

Although i will say I used to have the Scarmaker gloves as well and taking them off was REALLY painful, since it gives soo many skill bonuses + avalanche is probably the best WPS for onslaught stacking. But ultimately the RoS damage is more important imo.

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You could definitely ditch the point in Fault Line, and probably some out of Shadow dance and untamed rage for a little more RR out of Night’s Chill. But ultimately I found the damage was good enough for what I wanted, and I wanted to have more survivability.

This is the first build i played where i really wanted just a smidge more skill points though haha

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I spent an ungodly amount of time trying to theorycraft onslaught ROS Reaver last night. I ended up scrapping the idea because I couldn’t get onslaught, ROS, and any of the WPS to line up well. That left a handful of options, all not great, imo:

  1. Deprioritizing WPS - Time spent building stacks would feel really bad and that’s most of what the build will be doing.
  2. Deprioritizing Onslaught - Feels really bad investing in onslaught just to get the max stack number up, especially when the build is already skillpoint starved.
  3. Deprio ROS - The crazy big ROS stack dump is the entire point of the build. Having ROS feel like a dud is a non-starter.
  4. Sacrificing in all 3 by not converting anything, relying on the base pierce and bleed. Requires an even heavier skill point investment while doing less damage and nuking survivability.

That said, idk what I’m doing when it comes to theorycrafting in Grim Dawn, so I’m probably wrong. I’d love to be proven wrong, because ROS was the first thing to come to mind when I read onslaught. Regardless of damage type, too many critical pieces of gear overlap with sets, or item skill modifiers just aren’t there for it.

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my original spec had a lot of focus on onslaught and WPS, which left RoS feeling kind of cosmetic. I changed out gear with WPS chance focus in exchange for RoS damage instead.

Tbh this build does not have an issue with stack generation, although it sucks we cant pump avalanche % proc chance (unless you want to chase ascendant bonus on gear, boosting its proc chance). The build has capped 212% atk speed with the relic effect active, so you get to max stacks fairly quickly.

Im sure the build could be improved in some ways, but i think the results speak for themselves. Even without absolute perfect synergy with all items, it still feels quite strong

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Better places to find 5 point:
you have 3 spent in elemental awakening, you need 1
you have 1 point in implements of war, pretty sure you dont need that 8% chance not to consume stacks
you have 2 points in ice bound you need 1
and you can take one point in impule
there 5 points for 5% more RR the best damage multiplier in the game :slight_smile:

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That is right, Grim Tools is the real game! The build must look good in Grim Tools - regardless if it performs well in the Grim Tools simulator

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you are right, my resistance overcaps are already pretty good with the one pointers in ice bound and elemental awakening.

I did ditch the point in fault line over implements though, i think having base leap is actually better since the fault lines will trigger onslaught stacks, so leaping toward groups of enemies with stacks up get wasted.

Regardless, this spec is definitely better thank you :slight_smile:

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wdym leap deals dmg and thus eats onslaught stacks

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i meant the skill point in fault line will eat the stacks if leep hits an enemy, if leap and other movement skills dont deal damage, the stacks stay up.

So might as well remove the fault line skill point since it is actively detrimental

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Leap eats stacks if it his enemy too, regardless of fault line or not. But fault line makes it easier for it to hit something. Gottcha

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I’m currently leveling similar Reaver, aiming for smth like this. I have some points to spare, not sure where to put them. No idea how it will work, I don’t have any of the FoA items or blueprints either, but looks promising.
Devotion setup was the most interesting part to theorize. I found ways to have all 3 of Leviathan, Sage and Yugol , but I sacrificed too much. I’d also really like to have Rumor, but cant find a way so far, and not sure what to bind it to to make it reliable. Also the stats on other nodes there are meh.

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So, I’ve informed myself that I’m a little dumb. I guess the conversion to cold on Onslaught applies to the weapon damage portion of WPS procced while using onslaught. So while it’s still not fixing all of the WPS damage, it’s fixing most of the WPS damage.

That said, I still ended up a little farther away on some stuff. Alkamos’ set rings looked too good to pass up. Good amount of pierce fixing, flat OA and % OA is nice, same with flat cold damage and %, and both have total speed increase.

I dropped Night’s Embrace for Ellena’s Necklace to get more global physical to cold conversion. Over 80% global physical to cold conversion had me feeling like swapping the medal for Awakened Bloodmane’s, which lets you meaningfully invest in Blade Spirit a little bit. We’re already unavoidably investing pretty heavily in bleed, so purposefully investing in it a little doesn’t hurt. Might even be worth investing in 2 piece for the shoulder?

Pants I think are worth getting Redeemer or Preserver and praying for the Ascended affix for either whirling death or blood fangs.

For skills I dropped leap entirely, didn’t invest as heavily in veil of shadow, untamed rage, elemental awakening, or bonechilling cry (pretty rough diminishing returns). That freed up points to invest in blade spirit, execution, and either bloodfangs or whirling death depending on whatever ascended affix you get.

For devotions, they’re pretty much identical, but I have crab skill on pneumatic burst instead of rallying cry since it has lower CD. Rowan’s crown on a WPS that’s invested in more heavily and harder hitting - blood fangs, whirling death, execution

Overall, I think the blade spirits are a welcome and unobtrusive addition since they player scale and provide AOE to a build that needs more AOE. Between Amatok’s breath and shadowstrike, I don’t think you miss leap that much.

Really wish there was a good way to get avalanche as the star WPS with Korbas, but I don’t think it’s possible. I think melee onslaught avalanche is probably relegated to Chaos mystic with doombolt using warp’s edge, or Physical thane with forcewave using awakened tremor

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This is what I’d go with:

Because you only need 10+ over cap on the main resists, so anything over 20% is wasted. Or can be fixed by augment swaps when they’re needed. Also crit damage is massively important in Ascendant mode to deal with the giant health sponges bosses etc are made by it. Also got more health :stuck_out_tongue:

Oh and you don’t need to hardcap Onslaught really, not with WPS providing a lot more damage than you think. Add in the Relic’s proc and you can get away with shifting points out of Onslaught for other things, like Night’s Chill.

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I like all the builds discussed here, how does this heal though?

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Pneumatic Breath, Rallying Cry, and some procs.

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what The_Mess said.

Also Korba set gives 10% life steal on onslaught, + potions are op now. With a maxxed out flask and potion modifier efficiency, you can have 30 seconds of global 11% lifesteal, which recharges in 11 seconds

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This was my take on a similar theme - I wanted to put it here as the builds discussed have helped me in my own development.

The green’s I currently have - the purples are a Wishlist at the moment. I’m trying to farm phys → cold on weapons

I’d also pick up the legguards of crimson snow.

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