[1.3.0.6] Look ma no legs! Zakull Spellbreaker - Shadowstep & TSS nuker

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
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Meet Joe.
Grimtools
Explainer & SR 30-31 (Ascendant) video
(sorry for the audio, was talking off my laptop)

Joe’s very much a work in progress, and I’m sure there are lots of opportunities for someone more experienced to optimize this further. But I just want to share the bones of the build since I haven’t seen a spellbreaker version of Zakull’s yet, and I think the set actually is designed perfectly for what I find a very fun playstyle.

Zakull pretty much tells you the way to play it: Shadowstrike & TSS nuker. Pierce converted to cold, +1 max charge to SS, Cooldown triggers for TSS, etc.

I had always envisioned a hyper-mobile Shadowstrike nuker but there wasn’t really a set that worked for this class combo other than reverse engineering 3 pcs morgoneths, etc, but once I saw Zakulls in this expansion it basically unlocked the vision I had always hoped for. Hypermobile assassin locking everything down. Still glass, but a little more cannon.

Basically the playstyle is you run around spamming shadowstrike, and dropping skyshards on everyone’s heads. You can skyshard the mob first and SS in, or SS in and skyshard. Often thanks to the set you’ll get skyshard reset, as well as a second charge to Shadowstep, and a chance to immediately reset Shadowstep. Meanwhile you run 2 Loxmere’s which gets your base SS down to sub 1 second, which is basically as fast as you can spam it anyway.

It plays to me like a strategic, positioning class, using SS as the hypermobile positioning as well as nuke, the more mobs the better so you can pop around, when it gets dense, you pop over to another group and let your frostburn whittle them away, then you revisit, most are dead and you can clean up the rest.

My frostburn dots when placed properly get up to 500-600k/ tick and I’m sure I can get this higher. I’m not even taking advantage of the onslaught bonus for the set. Again, I’m not the most experienced Grim Dawner so definitely open to suggestions.

Pros

Makes ascendant mode campaign easy
Tremendous flower picker
Strategic
good if you like dots
hyper-mobility
Fun
No legs

Cons

Need to kite certain bosses
You can definitely get one shot if you’re not paying attention

I’m continuing to work on this guy, and try to push SR and more endgame content, so open to suggestions or improvements, things I might have missed.

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It is Zantais own set, to celebrate his own favorite playstyle :slight_smile:

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Looks really cool! Thanks for sharing.

So it is a better version of the Morgoneth build in a way (which was Infiltrator i recall)?

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It feels way stronger to me

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Very similar to what I was playing, except i opted for the spear.

I’m hoping to add awakened tainted swamp grips at some point for yet another shadow strike charge, but i don’t have them yet.

Keep messing up when fighting dread and getting one shot though. feeling the glass part there even if i do take the bastard down to 50% health pretty quick before messing up.

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Dang those swamp grips are killer - hadn’t seen those - we’re looking at 3 charges to SS with SS <1 sec CD - fun times. That’s the next chase item.