Hello @orion_epsilon can you please list some pros and cons between Occultist and Berserker?
This build looks so cool, I know which zerker Iâll be leveling next after Iâm done with my Dreadnaught!
My only disappointment is that the wereraven form doesnât use its chaos skin to match itâs theme, enough so that Iâm considering deliberately making the build slightly worse by moving a skill point over to Talons of Châthon in the name of the fashion endgame.
Thanks a lot for posting this; the creativity of the Grim Dawn community never ceases to impress me. =)
Occultist is a more defensive setup with Blood of Dreeg/Possession so if you want to build tanky or youâre playing in hardcore, thatâs probably the better choice.
Berserker deals more damage than Occultist though even after the FotB nerfs because of the massive crit damage (~120%) that it gets. It is a bit squishier, but as shown in the videos, it can still clear all content with ease.
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Awesome build !
I got the most of it but Iâm still getting one-shot here and there, even in Ultimate⌠can you help me ? I donât see how the original build gets to 23% phy-res
What do I need to reach the clear-all-content level ? Thanks !
Stoneplate Greaves and Aurora add about 10% Physical resistance with average rolls. Looking at the build though, there are some other issues here.
First, you donât have augments on all of your gear. Even if youâre just leveling and donât have all the factions at Revered yet, you can for example put on Kingsguard Powder (which youâre already using) on your shoulders/gloves/boots for an extra 36% Acid resistance. That will then let you take out some Slith Venom in the rings/amulet or drop points in Icebound. Later on, youâll want to use Wendigo Lifescent Powder (or Solaelâs Bloodbinding if you went hostile with Barrowholm) for more health once your resistances are covered. Ideally youâll want to have around 25-27k health later, which helps a lot with the tankiness.
Second, you skipped out on Rallying Cry and Bonechilling Cry which are very important to this build. Take points out of Battle Surge and Untamed Rage and put them there. These two skills are mostly one-point wonders anyways and donât scale well with point investment. Youâre also 3 points overcapped on Bone Harvest, so you can take some points out of there too. Instead, put a point into Mark of Torment as a defensive cooldown and Ill Omen (for now) since you donât have a source of damage reduction.
You also went 3 points Behemoth instead of Korvaak/Dying God/Hourglass which I donât recommend. However, if you really wanted to do that, you should bind the effect to Untamed Rage for a higher activation chance. It will also make sure that you only get healed while the circuit breaker is up, instead of being wasted when youâre at full health.
Here is a modified version of your current setup with some easily doable changes: Veilwalker, Level 94 (GD 1.3.0.8) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator I would also recommend trying to craft the conduit and Aurora if you have the recipes for them.
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Thanks for the review and the grimtools !
Yeah Aurora was crafted already and not on, due to reassigning attributes (spirit was too low for chest piece) 
As for the one-hit wonder itâs because I donât like having too many skills, my favorite chars are a retaliation warder and apocalypse werewolf (one button). But if theyâre essential to clear Superbosses Iâll go for it.
Jesus man, you werenât joking when u wrote thisâŚ
I have killed that bastard more than 300 times, and havenât gotten a single drop, not even with at least one of needed afixes. managed to get 500+ tainted meat just along the way 
still going strong though, i will not give up.
It will be very hard to get even one of the affixes normally since itâs a Physical damage base. Instead, I would recommend rerolling each axe with a rare prefix or suffix a few times to try to hit either Plaguebearerâs or of the Abyss. Rerolls arenât subjected to affix weight so itâs easier to get it this way, and the first few rerolls are cheap.
Once you have a suitable base (or several), you can reroll for the other affix. Double rares canât downgrade affixes while rerolling so itâs just a matter of time and materials.
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Hi, Iâve linked your build to a self-made compendium Iâm working on, if thatâs alright.
If you prefer your guide to be accessed solely through your post I can remove it. I always like to confirm and inform people Iâve linked their posts to my own.
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figured iâd give a (hopefully fairly brief) overview of my experience so far just to help confirm how good the build is for any curious readers.
tl;dr: swapped to BH wereraven after elite with epic Folly, farmed elite for awakened Folly, skipped ultimate altogether and cruised through the last campaign run on ascendant. only things i couldnât face tank were Dread, Beronath, and the dude in Black Citadel with the damn dogs.
this is my second char in grim dawn, played one previously in 1.2.8. i forgot i had hoarded gear on that char so basically played this one from scratch until late elite where i thought to check what my first char had. i leveled werewolf and not really knowing what i was doing throwing almost all points into zerker and picking up gear off the ground.
wolf did start falling off a bit in late elite, likely due to me not understanding what i was doing and having a bad weapon, so since i had gotten the epic pieces of Lokhorâs i just swapped builds to test and it worked great. luckily after checking all my stashes on my first character (i now use IA to solve my hoarding problem) i had the combustion band, voidheart, and the Gholâs items which helped a ton with the swap
after farming elite for ashes i awakened my Lokhorâs and was cruising with a decent Grulâs and the first chaos convert Undying i hit. decided to skip ultimate entirely to gather my last skill/att points while doing the last campaign run and only had the minor inconvenience of not being able to face tank the few bosses mentioned in the tldr while on Ascendant.
overall a really great build with easy to understand item choices.
next steps are a RR Grulâs because jesus Dread takes forever to kill, getting a good pair of Reaper pants, maybe better belt and boots, ascending gear randomly for shits and giggles mostly, and adjusting my augments. i wasnât really sure what the benefits of overcapping were or what resistances should be overcapped and didnât want to stop to figure it out so iâll likely do that and add some Bloodbindings. probably should reallocate my attributes too and take some outta Spirit at least.
anyway off to keep farming and keeping an eye out for other builds to work towards that pique my interest (open to suggestions!), thanks orion!
Got it, and ended up with some decent rolls as well after 2x rerolling ranges
Maybe i will try my luck for higher rolls at some point again, but damn, it feels nice to finally have it 
2 Likes
Overcaps are there to protect against enemy RR effects. You donât need as much of them anymore because a lot of those effects on bosses got turned into sunder attacks, but there are still some sources of it like wraiths, as well as reflective enemies reflecting your own RR back onto you. I like to have ~20-30% overcap on everything for safety, but you can easily get away with less than that nowadays.
Congrats on getting the axe!
Really want to play this build but i cant find a leveling guide for this class combo. Can anyone help me out with a link that i can use? Even if i have to ignore the secondary class as long as i can level using one of these.
That build levels for a while using Shaman which wonât work here.
@Ach2244 I mentioned it in an earlier post, but for leveling, try to pick a skill that you can get early that also has decent damage and/or AoE. For Veilwalker, that would be skeletons or werewolf. Then find some MIs that help support your skill. For skeletons, you have Wight Frost Channeler for cold and Harbingerâs Dominator Blade for chaos, and for werewolf, you can try using two Gruldirâs Tainted Cleavers.
After that, make sure you take supporting skills and devotions that help your current skill and damage type. Remember that you can always respec later so you do not need to follow the endgame devotion tree setup and you can instead run something completely different. Also keep your resists capped or as close to capped as you can get, make sure to replace any old gear that has much lower armor value or weapon damage than current level gear, and so on. The only exception to that last one would be if itâs a key MI that you donât have a current level replacement for just yet.
To add my two cents, you can do the vitality version with a Reaper. You do miss out on some damage and I was only able to kill a few celestials with it and not in super competitive times but then again I am not great at the game.
This is with the buffs from hitting something.
Here is my in game build Reaper, Level 100 (GD 1.3.0.8) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator
The benefit to this version is you get much more support from nightblade than from berserker for vitality and you can do it from essentially the beginning of the game if you can farm up some bonescythes.
Also cast speed has a weird relationship with the skill due to a bunch of weird interactions going on. As far as I can figure the cooldown follows this expression 0.184+0.38/S where S is cast speed. I was thinking about doing a full build guide for this but didnât think the build was strong enough to warrant it especially in comparison to builds like this one.
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This was one of the easiest and most fun builds Iâve ever levelled!
For Veilwalker (Berk + Necro) levelling, set Loot Filter to Cold and go Cold Onslaught & use BH on cooldown until you can get the MI. You can get it as early as Level 20, and with a Merit you can get pretty much just teleport to GrulâThunn and get it immediately on normal. Any Prefix/Suffix will work whilst levelling, this MI trivializes all content in Normal and Ultimate.
Once you have the MI, you unlock BH spam, so put all points into BH, set loot filter to Physical and play Physical BH until Level 94. Fill out your stats as per the OP skill spread, particularly Spectral Wrath as it also gives Phys RR. Most skills go unused until 94, but trust me, you wonât need them. Get a new MI every 15 levels, again Prefix/Suffix doesnât matter whilst levelling. I kept the Lokarrrâs levelling set on from 1-94 without issue because the DPS was so high.
At Level 94 without any components/augs I beat Mogdrogen (Old) on Ultimate which was a nice indication of the buildâs performance (the range feels so nice).
FYI you donât need both Plaguebearer prefix and the Abyss suffix for this build to function. Just get Plaguebearer for flat RR and any suffix, and use Potent Essence of ChâThon augment on the weapon, which is a weaker version of the Abyss suffix, until you can get both prefix/suffix combo. Regardless, I beat the other celestials on this build without the suffix or augment on the weapon anyway, it is plenty strong enough.
10/10 Build!
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Have you considered ritualist by using 2x bone scythe instead?
Has there been any nerfs to it on 1.3.1.0 and beyond ?
I did my levelling and testing in the 1.3.1 Playtest and itâs still just as good. Form of the Beast TDM was replaced with All Damage, so it should have slightly less damage output at the highest level but otherwise still just as good, crushing Celestials.