[1.3.0.6] Cinderborn Shieldbreaker - Fire Retaliation Build

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
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Greetings!

a man and a woman are sitting at a table with a caption that says i will burn this place to the ground

Have you ever found yourself feeling like the gentleman above? I have a way to help!

…Help the burning, not to get you to calm down.

Introducing CINDERBORN SHIELDBREAKER.

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You will notice that this character floats. That is because you’re basically always playing a game of The Floor is Lava.

[CURRENT GRIMTOOLS LINK AS OF 8/12/2026](Shieldbreaker, Level 100 (GD 1.3.0.6) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator)

Leveling

Start off focusing heavily on maxing out BWC and Thermite Mines and getting Oathkeeper maxed for the guardian RR. BWC is very strong early especially with how much you can invest in it, so it becomes an easy leveling experience. The guardians can also have their base node invested in if you want to take advantage of their flat damage while it’s still decent, but you’re taking them out later if you do so. Along the way, put one point in all the things you gotta take anyway.

Personally, in mid-game I decided to lean into the RATA part early. I had done the legwork to have max devotion points early and so my retaliation was solid even before gear caught up.

My Grimtools at Level 64 featuring the OG devotions

The fun part about using GDIA is you can look through all the blue items you’ve gathered and not worn and find some real treasures. As the devotions were still ultimately being shaped around retaliation, I decided to lean into it with some items like the Empowered Flamebreaker.

Turns out that as long as you have the devotions spent, Ulzuin’s Wrath from Demo and Retribution from Oathkeeper do pretty great work at low-to-mid levels.

Assuming you’ve farmed the gear on another character like I did, you get to 94 with whatever you can and suddenly you become a deity of fire.

I assume there are some good items in particular for the build along the way but have not done my research yet. I’ll see if maybe I can come up with some setups for along the way.

How it Plays

You ensure your Guardians are out and run into a pile of trash, swiping to get Onslaught to 4 (a gift given to Righteous Fervor via the set bonuses) and then toss a transmuted BWC (with 23% retaliation added and Onslaught boosts) onto the floor. Things melt.

Things which do not immediately melt (indicated by a star or skull above them) also get Thermite Mines and a use of Ascension for that extra RR push and multiple reps of RF spam into BWC.

And that’s it! It is remarkably easy to play.

What I've Accomplished So Far And Plan to Accomplish
  • I killed Ultimate OG Mogdrogen at Level 99 for fun and with little sweat
  • I have defeated The Dread in Ascendant numerous times as well as most roguelikes (I don’t think I’ve gotten to SoT yet)
  • I have ground out up to SR 32 to get the stones. I plan on trying to push SR soon.
  • Unfortunately I sided against Barrowholm in Ultimate so I can’t comment on Ravager.
  • I’ll also try to get New Mog and Calla done soon. UPDATE: I have slain Ascendant New Mogdrogen and Callagadra. I sort of have videos for this because Discord cuts off clips at 2 mins.
  • Also I think I haven’t quite earned all available skill and attribute points yet so I gotta figure that out.
Changes I've Made Along the Way
  • 8.10.26 Swapped out two Mythical Hellfury Band and an Impervious Kaisan’s Eye in an attempt to get more health and defensive coverage with Gollus’ Rings. In that same swap, moved around my devotions and am not sure I’ve arrived at a final setup for those.
  • 8.12.26 In dialogue with the illustrious AngmarDT, I have moved devos around again and procured some enhancements I forgot to update.

Videos

Y’all I am so sorry, but I use Discord Clipping for my videos so it’s the last two minutes of these fights >.>

Ascendant Dread (who immediately was upset that I slew Mogdrogen)

Ascendant New Mogdrogen

Not going to make a dropdown for this next section because I actively want y’alls help.

MOVING FORWARD AND ADVICE

I am actively seeking advice from those of you who are build experts. I know that this is the first time Fire Retaliation has had a real set, and I was very excited to try it once I got a piece. This is also the first retaliation build I’ve ever seriously played, so there’s been a lot of vibes here.

A few questions I have in particular:

  • Would it be better to just run Okaloth’s Visage and Final Stop in order to maximize WPS retaliation damage and reallocate points from BWC (leaving in the points in RR) to more defenses/RF enhancement? I’m not sure how much trash packs would stay up without the ease of BWC AoE, but I feel it has to be asked.
  • I feel bad at devotions. My first pass of the build was me just searching out “fire retaliation” and then “retaliation” in general and filling things in. I think my damage was higher with that one. This current setup is instead based on the old lightning retal warder from pre-FoA because I was looking at the GT link for that and was wondering if that devo setup (which had some real overlap with mine but with significant swaps) was more likely to survive the hardest content. Is there a better way to set up my devos?
  • Is there a best way to set up defenses in 1.3? Should I be doing something differently to survive?
  • General question about how to most efficiently component/augment my way around.

Shout outs!

  • @MrTek, someone who is working on his Cinderborn Archon and with whom I’ve discussed our retal builds.
  • @RSnoomak, who posted the lightning retal warder guide from last season, the GT link for which I used in my initial build revisions to try out new devos and a pair of Gollus’ Rings.
  • @AngmarDT, who has engaged with me about the build since posting.
  • The fine folks on the Discord who keep me thinking about this game
  • Crate for being thoughtful and intentional about creating gear that certain builds desperately were missing.
5 Likes
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No Solael’s Witchblade in devotions?

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I had it early on in my devotions but in my swapping around lost it in favor of three pips in Rhowan’s Crown.

I am also capable of taking both, I believe, though it might hurt my ability to access certain desirable constellations. What do you believe the setup should be if I were to include both?

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i think you have to drop Anvil and take Solael’s Witchblade. They are non-comparable damage-wise.

Also your amulet is missing component so i put seal of annihilation there.

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Good catch on the amulet. I swapped it out yesterday and haven’t yet thrown a component on it.

I’m down to re-add Witchblade. Anvil has some nice passive defenses but nothing as strong as Obelisk which I lost in my recent shuffle.

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I am not sure what you mean here. Your damage scales with -% fire resistance so dropping Solael’s Witchblade is pure loss.

I personally like Targo’s hammers the most out of all devotions procs, it’s just a pity it barely fits in the build without needing to sacrifice something more important.

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I was just saying that while I might miss some of the defensive stat nodes along the way to Anvil, I’m really mourning the loss of the defenses on Obelisk of Menhir so losing Anvil for Witchblade isn’t so bad. I did make the swap (and craft a Seal for my neck). I have also beaten new Mogdrogen and Calla. I still don’t feel as tanky as I’d like to but I feel tanky enough, and the damage is still significant.

I did want to ask after being reminded of the various layers of RR: Am I even benefiting from the 3 points in Rhowan’s Crown for RR given that it seems to have the same type of RR as the third node on BWC?

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Elememtal Storm and Agonizing Flames are same type of RR and they don’t stack.

You may drop Rhowan’s Crown and two nods in Boar to get back the Anvil.

Edit: suggest to drop the points from Ulzuin’s Wrath and Demon Fire to hardcap Rebuke (you get +52% retal damage at 14/10), Retribution (13% rata at 19/12), Guardians and Thermite Mines for extra -% RR.

Edit 2: Shield in the GT is missing augment, perhaps another Primordial Ash would fit nicely there.

I shamelessy bookmarked your build with thanks to try this build at some (hopefully not so) distant future.

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Thanks for the bookmark! And for your help! You’ve been added to the Shout Outs.

I’ve added the shield augment (I literally had it in my bags and forgot to put it on x.x) and yeah, moved those points around. I think the 5-point investment in those were both while leveling where BWC was a bigger nuke and the heal from Ulzuin’s Wrath was more important.

I didn’t put the last three extra points in the Guardians RR but instead threw some in Presence for a little more retaliation and more importantly a little more Offensive ability. My hit chance vs The Dread is only 85% and I’d love to find a way to get that closer to 100 without losing too much.

I found out about and subsequently farmed up the armor potion modifier, which with 100% uptime puts me from 3k to 3.7k.

Thanks for confirming my suspicions on the Crown RR. Out of laziness to undo the dependencies in my devos and because I think it’s a solid use of three points, I went ahead and put them in Hound for more armor and retal. Jackal for the bit of Total Speed would have probably been solid, too.

I’ve updated the main post’s GT link and added some video clips of some kills I re-did today. Funnily enough, the Mogdrogen fight got a little awkward fighting on the cliff edge because cursor location is so important for using BWC.

EDIT: I am now also soliciting feedback on how to get GrimTools to pick up the build for the database.

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Hiya, just wanted to say this build slaps! Leveled yesterday, slapped on (most of) the gear at 94 and ultimate was immediately trivialized. Switched to Ascendant as soon as I hit 100 and it has been smooth sailing. Got a couple of Dread kills already, have also killed Korvaak and the Malmouth boss on Ascendant as well. Will work on the FoA campaign next. I really love BWC so was stoked to see you’d built around it and had to give it a shot!

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Glad you’re having fun!

I was also glad to see the shield and helm support BWC as our main attack and Onslaught sink. While the helm isn’t part of the set, it and the shield get a lot of work done there.

There is a version of this build that would focus on WPS (the gloves support Shattering Smash, the Okaloth’s Visage helm and Final Stop shield support Smite), but the flavor would be so much less fiery.

If you record yourself doing anything cool from start to finish, feel free to drop it by! My Discord clips are capped at 2 minutes x.x

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I still don’t have the hat + all my greens are dumpster tier - will def attempt some tougher content when I fix those holes and report back.

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can u share your cha file. thanks so much

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Inspired in your build, I came up with an Elementalist version.

A tad slower killing Neo-Mogdrogen (took me 3:00min) but it still excels on other endeavors like clearing SR37 and killing Ravager.

If anyone is interested I can share the toon file.

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ty for the build! shieldbreaker was my first char to get lv100
why haunted steel in mace?