[2H ranged/Caster] [1.2.1.5 - 1.2.1.6] The lazy luminari - Beginner pierce Infitrator - Super fast leveling + easy endgame farming

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
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Greetings, GD community!

Tbh with you, i began leveling this char like a “meme build”…

But fortunately this turned out to be one of the most enjoyable and fast leveling experience i had lately!

The skill rotation and gameplay are very simple: debuff/destroy a entire screen of mobs with one button, using word of pain, place your inquisitor seal on the ground and shoot the f… up of the hero mobs/bosses that survive from the WoP damage, while your blade spirits tear them apart.

This build melts down most of game content very fast, it’s very mobile and can facetank a lot of stuff even being a 2H ranged char.

Our build uses only monster infrequent items (MI’s) and faction gear, so don’t be afraid on depending on your luck for dropping legendary or epic items.

Again, this char was leveled from scratch didn’t used leveling items, potions, merits, mandates or lokarr’s set.

Char current stats:
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I’ll show you how i leveled this char:

Lvl 1-10 Inquisitor, Level 10 (GD 1.2.1.3) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator

Started as inquisitor. Spend your first points word of pain, storm box of elgoloth and on the mastery bar, these are great skill for melting down mobs and hero mobs on the early stages of the game.

Lvl 10-20 Inquisitor, Level 23 (GD 1.2.1.3) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator

After getting your 6 first devotion points, complete the tsunami and bind its proc to word of pain.

After defeating warden Krieg and Cronley in act 2, don’t forget to farm our first leveling item, you will farm Ulraprax in the swarming hive, for his Ulraprax’s sting.

hive
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Next step i did was getting to the Forgotten gods DLC, because we will get our main weapon there, the Messenger’s repeater, you will farm it from Okaloth in pit of atonement, near the korvan city rift.
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Lvl 20-30 Infiltrator, Level 30 (GD 1.2.1.3) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator

Time to get back to the vanilla campaign. Start spending points on the nightblade’s mastery bar. Spend a point in amarasta’s blade burst, go on the devotions and remove the tsunami. Complete the tortoise and assassin’s blade (bind the proc to ABB).

Lvl 30-40 Infiltrator, Level 40 (GD 1.2.1.3) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator

I took out some points from the inquisitor’s mastery bar and spend them on the NB mastery bar and the reason is that we must rush to the blade spirit skill.

Complete the behemoth on the devotions.

After you take side with kymon’s chosen or order of death’s vigil, be sure to get respected with the faction ASAP, i chose kymon’s and got respected fast by doing their quest of killing master ravok over and over, it took me 4-5 runs. The reason for this is to be able to shop the blessed whetstone blueprint. Craft one and attach it to your weapon. You’re gonna use it’s granted skill “behead” now as your auto attack replacer for now.

:star: :star:Since i leveled this char before the new 1.2.1.6 patch, i couldn’t use spammable phantasmal blades (frenetic throw converted all the pierce to vitality damage) so now you can use phantasmal blades as your auto attack replacer!

Lvl 40-50 Infiltrator, Level 51 (GD 1.2.1.3) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator

At this level you should be defeating or even have defeated already the loghorrean. I chose to be enemies with barrolholm, and the reason for this is to getting access to exploring their cellar, it’s full of wendigo mobs, and we need another precious MI that drops from them, the wendigo eye.

On devotions, complete harpy, owl, ulzaad (bind the proc to ABB), kraken, panther.

Lvl 50-60 Infiltrator, Level 60 (GD 1.2.1.3) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator

Started elite at lvl 55. Upgrade your gear, check and cap your resistances and buy factions writs when you become honored.

On devotions, complete the azrakaa and bind the proc to word of pain and complete the unknown soldier and bind the proc to behead.

Lvl 60-70 Infiltrator, Level 70 (GD 1.2.1.3) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator

When you have all the crafting materials needed, craft one bloody whetstone and replace it in your weapon, it’s a fine upgrade. I finished elite vanilla campaign and the DLCs around level 77. on the entrance of the maw of enaht,near the rift of korvan sands. You should be at least already honored with most of the factions, so buy a bysmiel nightshroud chestguard and a Solael combatant spaulders from their shops.
Before entering ultimate, be sure to get the lvl75 [fettan mask] on a urn near the entrance of the maw of enaht (Fettan Mask - Items - Grim Dawn Item Database)
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Lvl 70-80 Infiltrator, Level 80 (GD 1.2.1.3) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator

Don’t forget to cap your resistances and upgrade weapons and armor! Now you should be on a rush to get to malmouth and become revered with the factions.

Lvl 80-90 Infiltrator, Level 94 (GD 1.2.1.3) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator

When you get revered with malmouth, buy some potions of clarity to speed up the leveling from lvl 90 to 100. It’s time to begin your endgame gear farming.

You already know where to buy the chest and shoulder armor elite versions.

Farm a nice lvl94 weapon from okaloth.

You can buy the amulet nightstalker pendant blueprint from bysmiel’s shop.

If you didn’t dropped a better armor for gloves, you can use elite harvest grips (homestead) or elite rhowari grips (rovers).

I used a elite harvest footpads for now on boots. Buy them on homestead

Buy your rings from malmouth’s faction shop.

Your belt can be farmed from the gargoyle mobs on the FG dlc. But you can craft one malmouth bladed girdle too.

Your medal can be farmed on ugdenbog/forlorn cellar.

Go farm a good dreeg-sect legguard from the guardian of dreeg near devil’s crossing.

About the head armor, just get the lvl94 fettan mask on the same place, near the maw of enaht entrance in ultimate.

My actual char: :arrow_forward:Infiltrator, Level 100 (GD 1.2.1.3) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator :arrow_backward:

:thinking:" Allright i hit LVL 100 and i’m fully geared… now what?"

This char can easily and quickly farm all skeleton key dungeons and proved to be a good and reliable SR26-27 farmer. You can always check grimtools builds section for another pierce infiltrator focused endgame build too, if you wanna a different playstyle or even a build sturdy enough to face celestials with some legendary items/sets.

:zap: Obs: Ty @tqFan for reminding me about the seal of the night skill chillspikes that can be also used as your auto attack replacer when you drop its blueprint.

:zap: Obs 2: With the changes on the phantasmal blades mutator, you can use PB as your auto attack replacer now, boosting even more your damage. You can try using another items for boosting the attack speed like the plagueguard grips (craft looking for attack speed suffixes, like OF ALACRITY)

:star:Some video proof:

Rashalga

Kra’vall

Gargabol (full run + kuba fight)

Morgoneth (full run)

Korvaak

Theodin Marcell

SR26

Ty for reading!

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  • I leveled Messenger’s Reapeter Infiltrator too and others players as well, everyone does it differently. I played Pierce Rune of Hagarrad and Silverbolt cooldown skill from component (no longer in game) I think. Blade Spirits and WoP too of course. It’s nice to finally have a guide for it

  • Shadow Strike skips are great to get Messenger’s Repeater quickly in Normal. IIRC there are 3 skips in FG which can greatly speed up getting to its end.

  • Are there any other new filler spam skills like Decapite? I see in 1.2.1.3 it lost recharge. I missed this change. It’s like Reaping Arc but can be also played with ranged, right?

  • I see 1 clear mistake (?) - no 1p in Ranged Expertise at least? For Max MS / Attack Speed / a bit of % damage. Or am I missing sth?

  • I like your devotions and bindings to skill because I do them like that myself, Azraaka to WoP or Assassin’s Mark to Blade Spirits, etc.

  • Box + WoP and Tsunami is indeed very good start, I like to start with these skills and devotion as Inquisitor myself. Very fun.

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yeah, well i didn’t noticed another attack replacer better than decapitate until now, it would be nice having a better option on the new patches to come, if i’m not crazy, i remember someone saying that the phantasmal blades mutator will not convert the dmg from pierce to vitality anymore on the new patch, so the build DMG could be boosted HEAVILY.

yeah, i forgot ranged expertise, but tbh the dmg output feels great even without it, but ofc its a good idea spending some points into it.

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Yes, more beginner PB builds are possible / better with after this change now. Not mostly Vitality like in the previous patches but also Pierce and Cold (DW two Spectral Longswords or sth like that). Maybe you could also pull off Acid and Chaos with some items. And there’s Aether version too. Also endgame Cold cooldown PB makes less sense in comparison to spam Cold now.

Max MS on it would prolly be the most impactful. I remember you can feel even small changes from modding it in the past when 135% was the cap for all the builds.

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@S.E.P_Ralf
Imo it would be interesting to test how Chillspikes would perform in comparison to Decapitate (it was a common choice for this build in the past). Easier to proc sth like Shadows on single target due to 6 projectiles.

Also Elemental → Pierce MI shoulders.

It’s hard to classify this build in the compendium :thinking: I need to think about where to put it or maybe even make a new category.

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yeah i tought about chillspikes too, but since this is as total SSF char i didn’t dropped the seal yet, and since i tought about the auto attack replacer just as a source of extra dmg and mainly to proc the living shadow, decapitate turned out to be just fine, not so good but not so bad, either, but i surely will add the chillspike option on the guide.

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Thanks for this guide, it helped me get into the game and understand building around an ability. Normal and Elite were smooth sailing. I only needed to really fix my resists when transitioning to Ultimate, and running into Nemesis spawns.

I took the advice for 1.2.1.6 and started using PB at a certain point around moving to Elite difficulty. It has been pretty solid. Would you suggest Silvercore Bolts as the component in my Repeater if I don’t need Decapitate?

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Ty for the repy! Yeah you can use S.bolts, Seal of the night or vicious spikes

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Hello! First off, thanks for this guide! I’m having a lot of fun with the build. I’m a little confused by this section, though:

“Since i leveled this char before the new 1.2.1.6 patch, i couldn’t use spammable phantasmal blades (frenetic throw converted all the pierce to vitality damage) so now you can use phantasmal blades as your auto attack replacer!”

I don’t see phantasmal blades taken in the skill trees. What did you remove to get it, and which of the sub nodes off of it did you take besides frenetic throw?

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hi there! Well since i leveled the char using behead/decapitate, i had more skill points to spend in another skills, but now we that we can use spammable pierce PB, i suggest removing some points of another skills for investing on PB.

I suggest leaving PB on 16/16, 01 point in frenetic throw, heart seeker leave in 12/12, nether edge 01/12

You can try removing some points from deadly aim, aura of conviction, word of renewal, phantasmal armor, etc

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Hmmm, Pierce PB w/o Harp or Scales might be annoying Energy wise (but maybe not) :stuck_out_tongue: better test it

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well, i didn’t tested yet but build uses arcane spark😅

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Not saying that you won’t be able to manage (especially since -Energy cost on Frenetic was buffed thanks to Mad_lee’s whining and you have low casting speed + not many points invested in the PB skill line) but just FYI I think Spark will barely work with PB with Frenetic Throw due to its low Weapon damage which it scales of. And I don’t think it scales with the number of projectiles.

I remember using Spark when doing my Beginner Phys EoR (which has low %WD) and there’s was barely a difference when using it vs when not. Only movement skills were providing full Energy leech.

It probably works like a weapon damage DoT? :thinking:

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yeah, arcane sparks are really helpful on builds that aren’t energy hungry.

With spammable PB i think the build’s gonna suffer a lot from this issue, even more after the energy pot changes in 1.2.1.6

i tought about making these changes to test soon

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I noticed you reclaimed your points off of the storm box line. Approximately when did you do that, in this chunk of lvling?

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I did it to invest mainly on WoP, after farming the weapon. You can invest the points in WoP and Phantasmal blades

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Hello.
I am a complete beginner, but I am referring to this build. It is very helpful!
I am currently at level 30, but according to the Grim Dawn Build Calculator, I have not allocated any points to Cunning. Is there a reason for this?

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It really does not matter that much in the beginning, I usually spend attribute points just to wear gear since they are harder to respec than skill points.

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I see, that’s why! Thank you very much.

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Regarding The Messenger weapon. Is it fine (will the build be alright) if I want to play the campaign linearly and take it later on? Is it a mandatory part for the build or can I go with some other gun that has lightning dmg for example.

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