It’s simple to play, with two movement skills, two buffs (Wendigo Totem and Ascendance) and the SPIN.
I would rate the survivability as decent to high. It can do SR31 with no thoughts head empty, and SR36 and Ascended altar 5 with decent piloting.
1.3.1.1 update: Added a video! The build is definitely stronger with the addition of EoR magic rings as suggested by @cmphx . It’s at least a 10% damage increase over the previous rings. I’ll add some altar 5 videos when I have time.
1.3.1.1 update 2: Improvements from @cmphx and weapon prefix from @TheNex are significant. This is a very green heavy build now, but if you’ve got the time the results are worth it.
This is the original build I posted. The improvements from this to the current build are large but the time investment to get the greens legitimately is no joke.
GEAR
When I found the Tempestborn Spear I knew I wanted to make a build around it.
The build in it’s current state is very MI and Ascendant Bonus heavy. The original is a lot less demanding, and is capable of Ascendant and SR31 farming with no Ascendant bonuses and suboptimal affixes.
ASCENDED BONUSES
Ascension is doing a lot for the build, so the bonus that extends its uptime is amazing. Definitely go for it on the weapon, and consider aiming for one more on an accessory (amulet/medal if using EoR rings) to guarantee 100% uptime.
Only the weapon and accessories are worth going for class specific ascended mods. The rest of the armour I recommend moving to a classless alt to get defensive ascended mods. Health, attack speed, lifesteal and phys res are the best.
I have no idea why you didnt get any replies. I tihnk builds here get ignored that don’t post any videos. I would be interested in seeing how you pilot the build in SR.
Actually I came up with a very very similar approach by myself and only found your post here after searching alot online.I guess the build somewhat puts itself together automatically almost.
I like it alot, the AoE feels great after the buff in 1.3.1 and the 100% stun res is also very good. overall the clear feels great and single target damage is also not the worst.
I am broke now but I finally got myself a Skyfallen Spear of Ferocity. what a beast.
I also want to note that with the buff to preserver rings, I think they are now BiS for this build with the ascended bonus to EoR.
This is the version I am playing right now: Archon, Level 100 (GD 1.3.1.0) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator
its over 620k dps while spinning, slightly more than you have. Devotions are a bit different. Would you say spear of the heavens is actually good damage? I have never played with it.
The ascended bonus for Ascension is actually really op,…, somehow ascension cooldown starts the moment you activate it, so with the bonus you can get almost 100% uptime on it, which is really op.
Your thoughts and tips how to improve it further would be greatly appreciated.
It takes a lot of effort to put together a full build post. This build isn’t doing god-destroying numbers, and it doesn’t have the kind of in depth leveling guide that makes it attractive to someone with no experience so it’s not unexpected that it didn’t get lots of discussion. Over a hundred people were interested enough that they clicked on the link, and I think that’s pretty cool.
I’ll see what I can do about putting up some videos! One of my most fun things to do is spin in circles around a boss that has heavy hitting directional attacks and totally avoid them while keeping full DPS uptime.
I agree with you on the preserver rings. Looking at your build, I’d definitely like to replace at least one ring. Although I’d want one accessory with the Ascension bonus because that makes it a lot easier to have 100% uptime.
I think spear of the heavens is putting in some work, but I’ll have to get a DPS calculator and check. I’m no expert on devotions and skills. Yours ticks all the critical boxes and I’m a big fan of figuring out my own thing that works. So stamp of approval there!
Comparing yours to mine the big thing that stands out is that your DA and poison resistance are a bit borderline. If you’ve rolled high on those compared to grimtools I doubt it’s major. One of the big struggles I had was the Dread popping me at altar 3/4, so I went hard on DA until it was only my own piloting errors causing me to die. Apart from a couple of runs of Crucible 200 I haven’t played this since the 1.3.1.0 update where enemies were toned down a bit, so it’s entirely possible mine’s more defensive than it needs to be now.
the thing is, the 20% attack speed on the spear are not reflected in GT. it only is active while spinning. so its not that bad actually. but I agree, attackspeed is hard to come by in this setup. in game while spinning my attackspeed is actually 186%, close to 200 with diamond up i guess.
more attack speed ascended bonusses would help but I don’t see why not capping attackspeed is a problem for the build? It’s still more dps than your vitality EoR I suppose and its easier to pilot because you dont have to cast bone harvest every 8 seconds.
Do you have another suggestion for the amulet? I am also not sure about it. the extra resist shred seems nice and it was a new item, so I just went with it. but I never tested if overall dps is better with something else.
about the poison res on my build- I figured this must be a legacy item? somehow grim tools doesnt recognize it. the ring is so old I found it in stash of one of my oldest characters. poison res on the prefix is 99% which according to grim tools isnt possible anymore. so I guess this is one of a kind anyways one could just replace one wendigo powder with more poison res.
and I somewhat agree on the DA - I can’t facetank dread, which is a bit annoying, but apart from dread I don’t really have problems with dying at all. I am comfortably farming totems with 5x ashes altar and its pretty safe and fast. overall I like it alot, just that DA problem and more single target damage would be nice , so I am looking for suggestions.
You gonna get slowed down a lot. It’s worth capping attack speed and raising max speed too. You can just open second tab during intense encounters when you are debuffed and look at the attack speed.
Idk why you are comparing to a pre-FoA build of mine that’s also a completely different platform/damage type, what’s the point of that comparison?
Since DA and survivability seem to be the main weak points, would Crab + Tortoise be worth it in the devotions, replacing Hyrian and Ultos?
Edit: here is a quick GrimTools showing the devotion path. Since Dread seems to be the main issue, this might be too defensive for general farming, but it could help for pushing higher SR, especially if capping attack speed as mad_lee suggested offsets some of the damage loss.
Also, I would rather play with Ixall’s Blaze as the amulet.
is EoR’s animation and movement scaled by attackspeed? even with 100% AS it already hits 6 times per second. I have never noticed being slowed down, what do you mean? What I want to say about attackspeed on this build is while its a great damage scaling vector, it is not as important as for builds that use alot of procs from WPS skills. if you have to sacrifice too much to get to 200% I think it is not worth it, unless I am missing your point.
Sorry for the random comparison it just came to my mind. even unascended the spear I think is now the EoR build with the highest damage potential. 78% crit damage and high OA on the build also is huge.
Also I think y’all are underestimating the Celestial eye amulet. have a closer look.
+1 all skills is very “meh” for this build. at least in my version I already capped all skills that would give me damage. I don’t really benefit much from +1,it gives what? 2% health, a bit OA and DA, 2% resist shred, 2 skill points freed up. look at the skill distribution again. it is rather boring. this is not a WPS build with DAR where you get 3 extra points on your DA tree and 4% proc chance and damage from your WPS skills. also pre- and suffix on amulets are really mediocre, there is no attackspeed.
celestial eye on the other hand has 100% damage, almost 100 OA and 5% DA. important resist, max aether res which is cool and +2 to stormcaller pact which is crit damage.
I’m not sure about the granted skill but if it has 100% uptime, according to my calculations it roughly is equivalent to 10% TDM. so I think the amulet is hard to beat actually
I did something similar using Worldbreaker Spear on a Shieldbreaker, essentially the fire version of the build:
Managed to get base attack speed to 189% (plus the same 20% from the spear for EoR specifically), getting it any higher is difficult. Ended up with a bit less health then I would like, I normally want to get at least over the 20k mark and this one was struggling quite a bit to get there. Also, it is weirdly awkward to fully convert EoR to fire given Soulfire counts as a different skill, I see now why most EoR builds go for lightning.
More time in the oven is a kind way to put it. I’ve tried changing up the devotions and the amulet but the most I could get it up to was 172% without messing up something else or losing lots of damage, defence or both. Trying for attack speed ascended bonuses on everything is an option I suppose.
thanks for the input! was good inspiration. for me the play was to replace owl+sailor with hammer+tower, then replace the missing movespeed/CC res with different boots.
I did some more cooking and spending alot of ashes iron bits and farm time now I think it is finished. I sacrificed some phys res to get DA into the 3200 - range with no temporary buffs. Dread fight is easy and fast now, I only have to dodge the sundered attack.
You can cap that with a single change to the spear affix. OA stays the same, flat phys gets all converted, all you lose is a small additional damage percentage (which is already pretty high):
thanks @Elfalpha for crediting me in the guide I guess so while I still havent updated the spear to what was suggested, I ran SR up to 36 today, and it felt quite goeod - will see how far I can push it. with my latest setup the high DA now lets me push that deep I guess. The damage still is there, bosses take a bit but if you move back and forth while spinning, they actually miss alot, making the fights quite safe. had 2 valdarans in the last boss rooms but they were no problem.
anyways one could just replace one wendigo powder with more poison res.
so while I still havent updated the spear to what was suggested, I ran SR up to 36 today, and it felt quite goeod - will see how far I can push it. with my latest setup the high DA now lets me push that deep I guess. The damage still is there, bosses take a bit but if you move back and forth while spinning, they actually miss alot, making the fights quite safe. had 2 valdarans in the last boss rooms but they were no problem.