[1.3.1] The Celestial Assassin - Boltthrower Runekeeper Beginner Guide + Endgame Bossing - 7s Ravager, 4s Crate, 16s Mogdrogen, 1:37s Uber N'erf

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
85

Well I would recommend to play as a werewolf, of course you can also take other routes. But in these couple of months since the release of Fangs, I learned that if I was to choose between Inquisitor and Berserker and I would want to play on Veteran in the first acts of the game, I would def choose Berserker. I don’t quite like Inq as a starting class to be honest, it’s not that strong early on (in august, I also started fresh on Xbox Inq + Demo and again in my humble opinion it’s just better to start Demo on Veteran and play sth like cocktail).

I would choose werewolf because it’s a strong skill from the get go, good damage early on, MIs as early as act 2 whether you want bleed or chaos and very fast across maps if you stack movement speed + attack speed from the skill tree. Not to mention insane leech that can save you from quite certain death otherwise. I recomended those weapons just to be in sync with the build - pierce/bleed - and to avoid to respec the devotion tree, you can comfortably use the order OP gave (avoiding the obv constellations like Kraken which require a two-hander or Hydra which requires ranged weapon). You can put points there close or once you switch to the Boltthrower build.

I finished the base game aka killed Loghorean when I was lvl 40 so most likely you will be under lvl 50 when you will arrive to Barrowholm and murder them. And NO, no going back to werewolf, it will be useless since you will use onslought (werewolf and wereraven can’t use default weapon attacks like onslought!!!) and some range-weapon procs from the Inq mastery. Just look at the lvl 50 snapshot OP provided be sure to respec and max storm speard, aura of convictions and close to maxing ranged expertise, farm the other necessary items (belt + amulet + medal) and trust me, in no time, as an average human taken, you will delete everything towards the end of veteran difficulty. From that point on, follow OP guide and delete what’s in front of you with ease.

86

I’ll update in a few days. Still a top tier spec, just not as insane tier as it was before. Honestly, Harbinger got the short end of the stick lol

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87

Are there planned nerfs incoming? Where it is documented and are the nerfs coming to this specific build? I’m hoping that Crate does not follow Blizzard’s very poor example of bait and switch like what they did with the D2R RotW expansion.

88

The playtest will go for several weeks, so none of those changes are really final yet. Things will likely change so we don’t know for sure until the patch goes live after playtest. Right now the devs are considering a global nerf to all wps builds by lowering/removing increased activation chances, so you can’t reach 100% for one wps in so many builds (like storm spread in this one). Considering how insanely strong it was before, even after a heavy nerf this build will likely still be very good.

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89

Thank you.

90

Still top tier? Inb4 getting deleted similar to Onslaugh next patch :frowning:

91

I’ll give a build update after the patch is done, I’m confident they will make some form of changes copium

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92

Thank you Kaine for:

  • sharing this build with the community, I’m having a blast with it on Normal mode
  • committing to keep community members and followers of this build updated

I did not pick this build because it was super OP so-called, but because I was looking for some 2h ranged Runekeeper action. Originally I figured cold would be the way to go, without knowing enough about the game, but alas pierce is the case that they gave us. I didn’t find another detailed Runekeeper guide with a beginner/leveling section as a part of the guide, thus I jumped into this one. I didn’t know how strong it was until I started reading the guide and the damn Google AI described it as very strong.

My hope is that the devs don’t run the builds, the skills, and the game into the ground and certainly I hope that they do NOT re-scramble the game’s mechanics to the point that it is a completely different animal. Following Blizzard’s moves is a good way to ruin the relationship with the player base and lose future revenue.

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93

I maybe stupid but what is Blizzard example? Since I decided to play d2r very recently so I did not know

94

When blizzard released warlock for d2 he was incredibly overpowered and some of his skills were bugged which enabled him to farm endgame content on the hardest difficulty with really bad gear. Blizzard nerfed/fixed many of his skills to bring them more in line, which made some people think blizz released him overpowered intentionally to generate hype/sales.

I guess they’re comparing that to crate reverting some of the wps modifiers post release of FoA. Personally the warlock nerfs didn’t bother me, he was still very strong/fun last I played. Easily top 3 or top 2 class. And I didn’t buy him for a pay2win/easymode class anyway :woman_shrugging:
That said I fully expect crate to change some of the wps nerfs before playtest goes live, there’s simply too many average/underperforming builds suffering collateral from a blanket nerf when only outliers like this one needed attention

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95

@Critical_Miss, @minh_pham:

Critical_Miss is right about the release and subsequent changes to the D2R-RotW game. However, we have to also take into account that the devs purposefully used input and testing from D2-LoD/D2R streamers. It borderline was designed around what would benefit those streamers and their playstyles like always speed leveling/rushing to certain points in the game. Many players like to go through the game at least once doing full clears and not skipping content. The streamers have little patience and their audiences have little patience so plenty of content is skipped. In addition, streamers will often twink their play through with gear, currency, socketable items, etc. This means that they skip suboptimal play to keep their audience’s interest. There is a time and place for that kind of play style but some folks play SSF thus there will be suboptimal periods while leveling/farming.

Blizzard devs/management had to have known that the Warlock was way overtune to the point that it was beta-ware. The damage junkies hopped on the hype train due to overtuning the class, and the hype ballooned and swallowed up the entertainment starved and their money. What was advertised as an expansion or mini-expansion really was a shallow DLC with quality of life aspects that should have been free.

Imaging playing all the way through the base game of GD and AoM. A new DLC for $25 becomes available several years later. You get 2 free bags just for buying the DLC and a 3rd mostly free bag for doing a simple quest that is only available to those with the DLC. Of course folks want the extra space thus the bags are a selling point. What I just described is not exactly what happened in RotW, but it basically the trick that Blizz used to sell more copies of the game. RotW really deserved to get:

  • much more content and substance
  • more testing and proper balancing before release
  • a good chunk of the DLC should have been QoL stuff provided in a patch for free

To make matters worse, Blizz did a PTR setup some time after release. Folks joined in the PTR, tested and provided feed back. A good chunk of the feed back was ignored and a bunch of changes went live that should not have. The result was players would farm in groups by bringing mobs to a single spot as Warlock pet, release the pet, kill it, and loot the corpse, this resulted in massive piles of corpses to loot some of the best gear and with a Barb those corpses could be tapped a second time after looting for an additional chance at top loot. Of course this floods the online econ with some of the best loot making some teams in-game rich through trading. Something similar happened in WoW many ages and expansions in the past.

When Blizz just ignores balancing like 2 or 3 times, I’m not going to give them the benefit of the doubt and say it it wasn’t intentional. Blizz release the Necro DLC/expansion for D3 in a similarly overtuned fashion. Necro was left overtuned for like 4+ years and across several PTR cycles. It worked because folks gobbled up the Necro expansion thus pushing up sales.

No product is perfect, but there is a vast chasm between oops X/Y/Z slipped by our QA testing and turning a blind eye to obvious imbalances and overtuning.

96

No idea what this means tbh. I’m not a streamer and nothing stopped me from playing through the whole game at my pace when warlock dropped :woman_shrugging:

Not arguing this, but also not surprising, since it seems to happen with new char/class in every game, from mobas to fighting games, small or large dev teams. ARPGs are especially vulnerable to it though, you can’t test even a fraction of the possible gear/skills combos. Oathkeeper was busted on release and now Berserker too. While blizz probly knew Warlock was going to be insanely strong, I think it’s less certain that they knew the full extent of how far players would push it due to new mechanics like binding demons which add even more complexity. In the case of crate nerfing wps, I highly doubt it was part of some malicious plan to help advertise dlc. Yes they likely knew 100% wps would be very strong, but again, the full extent of it probably not.

You’re talking like blizz advertised act 6 and pulled the rug on you, it was never advertised as more than what it was. And honestly a new class in D2 adds way more depth than any new area could imo.

I’m not usually a ‘blizzard defender’ but come on, why should stash upgrades be free? They weren’t for Lord of Destruction. D2 is not live service, it doesn’t generate money by existing. If anything $25 seems like pretty good value considering blizz themselves and the general state of games nowadays, with skins/emotes packs being $25 each or more :melting_face:

You could say it’s pricey compared to FoA, but in that case, I think FoA was rather underpriced for it’s content :sweat_smile: Despite blunders with warlock release, the game overall has been amazing value over the years, which also softens the price tag for me somewhat. And honestly we already got shitloads of free updates preceeding RotW, blizz paid staff to make them but they were free. Stuff like skill buffs/new runewords/terror zones/sunder charms all helped the game’s build diversity and farming options instead of being stuck doing 2000 effing baal runs for exp in endgame etc.

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97

im half exhausted gdstashin part of the rings… is this build still good for maybe 1 week?

98

It will be good no matter what, even post nerf.

Wait until 1.3.1 becomes live though.

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99

alrite i shall endeavour on like a openai agent

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100

Hello. I am gonna try this setup on the beta version, both the leveling and the endgame to see the changes. i think adding points in bloodfangs and avalanche to cap the 100% would help, the big nerf would be the % weapon damage on onslaught but is still good enought and around what the other attack replacer had. I gonna level with wolf until Barrowlhom then swap after i got the bolthrower.

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Even with all the nerfs planned, and even assuming they nerf it more somehow, the least you can expect from this kind of spec is “A tier” at the very worse.

The synergy is there, regardless of the overall tuning.

(Unless they absolutely GUT bolt thrower and turn it into something completely different)

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102

The following is the first leveling playthrough video ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UW4263tqDwE ) from Llama, to level the warlock using the Chaos tree and the right side vertical skill path. The above video was made during the initial release of the overtuned RotW expansion. Llama starts out on /players 8. Miasma bolt was so strong that it allows the player to mostly ignore the very early drops outside of boots that might have some move speed. In addition to ignoring most weapon and armor drops he ignores most of the gold and gem drops.

What makes the game very much designed around streamers who are speed runners is:

  • picking up loot eats up time
  • stopping to fight mobs eats up time
  • going to town to turn in quests, buy/sell items, store items, crafting/socketing equipment, and repair equipment eats up time

So, what would be the dream for a speed runner? Killing while running away from mobs. Let mobs kill themselves while trying to tail behind the player character. At level 12 Llama unlocks Miasma Chain (the lasso). Miasma chain does not require one to stop and shoot at the mobs. This is a drop-it-like-its-hot and hustle forward playstyle. Miasma Chain is mana efficient when one can drop it at one’s feet and run forward. Mobs chasing behind the player char are hit by the DoT from the chain and the DoT from the Miasma smoke surrounding the chain. Mobs can be affected by 3 to 4 chains and the smoke connected with each. This means one does NOT have to attack mobs to kill them and absorb EXP. One need only aggro mobs > drop a chain one’s feet > and run away from the mobs. To continue the efficient killing of mobs drop additional chains every 3-4 seconds while continuing to run away from mobs. The gaps between casts of the Chain supports the mana efficiency. The Chain is unlocked at about time point 11:40. Later on the Enhanced Entropy and Abyss skills will be unlocked. Abyss drags mobs to its center (crowd control) and damages them, and can be combined with Miasma Chains to efficiently kill clusters of mobs on /players 8.

All of the above is a stacking set of benefits for speed runners that exists in an overtuned environment. In the above video Llama says that “we” are learning the class as “we” go through the leveling process. In another video within the 30 days from the release of the video linked above, Llama says that he participated in the early designed and testing of the RotW expansion, but was restricted from discussing it due to a NDA. Llama could churn out the leveling videos and the written guides on Icy Veins so quickly because he was intimately involved the expansion’s development. Its not hard for folks to figure out that the involvement of other streamers and Llama led to the resulting overtuned product that catered to their speed runner playstyle. This is an example of Blizz catering to a tiny minority of players (streamers/influencers) while ignoring the rest of the player base. As long as the product gets praise and favorable views from the streamers and influencers there is a strong chance of product success in terms of sales. The streamer/influencer approach is very different from making a game that a broad section of the player base will enjoy, and enjoy it for extended periods of time (think decades).

The speed runner playstyle does not prohibit one from leveling, it demonstrates a hyper efficient leveling playstyle. The problem I have is:

  • the streamers and Blizz devs + management knew that the game was overtuned before it was released (done purposefully to sell copies)
  • streamers like Llama are going to do their streamer thing which pours gasoline on the fire that is the hype train (done purposefully to sell copies)
  • Blizz management and devs knew that they would be scaling back the damage output of the Warlock class at some point after release and they knew that there would be cries in the official forums about the overtuned state of the expansion

Blizz devs/management rescrambled the game and expansion’s mechanics to the point that it was a different product than what one purchased. This amounts to a bait and switch move. I prefer that the game be release in much more balanced state that is fun. Nobody wants to be tricked/deceived into buying a product that is other than what was advertised. Steamers do their thing like its a job/business. For the rest of us we play to enjoy the game and the challenges it presents. I get that folks are likely to dismiss the overtuned product that caters to a tiny minority of the player base as an “ooops”. However, when Blizz does this 3, 4, and 5 times, its a clear pattern.

The game changed so much that Llama revised the written leveling guide on Icy Veins ( Warlock Fastest Leveling Build - Diablo 2 Resurrected - Icy Veins ). The current leveling guide does not follow the build used in the video linked at the top of this comment. Maxroll has a version of a Chaos Warlock leveling guide on their site that closely resembles the build used in Llama’s video. Maxroll guide ( Abyss Warlock Leveling Build Guide for Diablo II: Resurrected Season 14 | Maxroll.gg ).

Of course due to the streamed play through leveling video, Llama ends up with a high level Warlock. Within 1-2 days Llama would be farming end-game content solo with sub-par gear. Efficient farm teams would be swimming in top end-game gear within days and flooding the online econ during the same time period.

No. Once one gets a little time to play and interact with the expansion, it becomes abundantly clear that some of the features of the expansion was asked for in the forums and should have been free QoL items released as a patch that would be available to all players and not limited to those who purchased the expansion. The expansion split the player base into expansion and pre-expansion camps. Of course Llama and other streamers spewed their elitist rhetoric about how they could afford to buy the expansion and the price is no big deal to them. However, there are people are struggling financially in western countries like the US (college students come to mind). I find that elitist attitude to be highly disrespectful. I could afford to pick up the expansion, but I don’t like paying more $$$ for less content and less quality. I stopped consuming Llama’s content and content from other elitist like him. Others are welcome to consume their content.

103

I sided with Barrowholm and got the boltthrower in a drop from The Dread. :slightly_smiling_face:

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104

Who cares? :sweat_smile: Seriously, this means nothing considering the game was already full of overpowered skills that delete the entire screen in fewer steps than miasma chains. Holy fire clears the screen without even clicking mobs for all of normal/nightmare p8 while you walk around. Holy shock does the same in endgame. Summons and corpse explosion are afk mode. Hurricane? Chain lightning? If anything miasma was more honest than most leveling skills. Do you also think OG d2 was designed for speedrunners then???

When FoA came out do you think I let some random streamer ruin my enjoyment because they played op Berserker, got to lv100 in 5 hours and didn’t pick up items? Of course not. You really need to stop caring so much about how other people play games, it’s not healthy. Nobody forced you to play like llama, nobody forced me to play like protoss.

I think everyone would prefer that, but honestly you can’t call it a bait and switch since blizz never actually advertised warlock’s capabilities did they? There was no promise of being able to solo p8 hell naked and if you assumed a new class would be released with no further balancing, you have only yourself to blame. If anything you should be happy that warlock got nerfed, since you didn’t like him being op. If anything crate is about to be more guilty of the switch, since zantai specifically hyped up 100% wps before FoA release and now talks of reverting it :sweat_smile:

Completely false, as thousands of non streamers including myself have enjoyed it. The fact that warlock was nerfed completely dismantles your assumptions, since they would never want to diminish his click-bait youtube status if all they cared about was using streamers to advertise.

Also false, since warlock went from being one of the most overpowered classes to being…one of the most overpowered classes. Nothing changed, he just went from being a rocket launcher in a medieval setting to being an ak47.

Again, who cares? As if the exact same thing doesn’t happen every ladder? The same people will boost to endgame in 2 days playing teams of sorc or pally, getting gear dropped by viewers the whole time. This has nothing to do with warlock

This is levels of entitlement I’m struggling to comprehend. You think stuff should be free because people on the forum asked for it? Because someone somewhere can’t afford it? Brb making a topic for zantai so he can read all the stuff I want for free. The playerbase would’ve been split between expac owners and non owners anyway, so that point is moot.

Mate you need to get over yourself. $25 is not some crazy amount of money assuming you have a job and actually want the features included. The dlc had basically everything I wanted in terms of qol and if you take into account the months or years of playtime it adds, that’s insanely good value. Anyone who can’t afford it has bigger problems than games to worry about, and the people not willing to pay for it obviously didn’t care enough/value it in the first place, cos otherwise they would buy it. Also I like how you just ignored my point about all the -free- content/qol updates given to the game before rotw came out :smile:

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