Sir Spank's and Heatwave's Skyfire grenado Purifier - ~550k crits unbuffed/unbannered

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
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GT link: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/DV9Qe3aV
As requested by bevdogg: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EB-QewOoniI&feature=youtu.be

As with all my builds, this is 100% glad 170 certified with 4x buffs and banner. Though I am certain it can be done with 4x buffs alone. This would however require Fluff-like level of piloting.

My thanks to: Mad_lee, ptirodaktill, Ch’thon, Fluff, x1x1x1x2, Marzuk, Heatwave, Cryoo, Strukto, Seriouscomedy

Preface:
I’ve never made a build revolving around grenado/ulzuin’s chosen before, and wanted to see how that’d pan out.

It exceeded every one of Heatwave’s and my expectations.

Crits occur consistently in the 300k ballpark, and has once spiked to 550k with no buffs/banners. And I have once managed to throw 9 grenados in succession and melted kuba in under 2 seconds.

In addition, this build stacks approximately 150% lightning resist reduction, and has incredible survivability.

The only real downside to this build that I can see - and it’s a slight one - is the relative inconsistency of its damage spikes as it is largely dependent on ulzuin’s chosen for grenado spam.

Itemization

Set items: Light defender set + Cataclysm pact for their incredible bonuses

Lightning conversion:
(i) Cindertouch gloves - 25% fire to lightning conversion
(ii) Kymon’s badge - 100% pierce to lightning conversion for grenado
(iii) 2x gargabol rings - +6 to grenado

Necessary suffixes (most important to least important):
i) Anything which fixes your resists.
ii) Energy regeneration (shouldn’t be too big a problem however. Pots are more than enough to keep it up).
iii) OA/DA suffixes like aggressive, stalwart, of readiness, of the dranghoul, aren’t necessary at ALL. While I do use them in my build, my OA and DA values are high enough for me to be willing to forgo them. They are nothing more than icing on the cake.

Offence

  1. Drop seal. Cast thermite mines and FLASHBANG (10/05/18 edit: Dropped stormbox for flashbang per mad_lee’s suggestion for far more consistent 170 clearance)
  2. Spam chain lightning from seal of the skies (have arcane bomb bound to it)
  3. Smash away at the button you have grenado hotkeyed to (have elemental storm bound to it)
  4. Pot, heal, and kite when you have to - which should be rare given our GENEROUS defence (%damage reduction from aura of censure, HUGE HP pool, nice armor and DA, arcane seal, blast shield)
  5. Melt faces.

Devotions

  1. All crossroads except green
  2. Jackal, viper, quill, sailor’s guide, eel, watchtower
  3. Behemoth (N.B: I hate behemoth, but it’s needed to offset the HP drain from dying god)
  4. 3 nodes into crown, widow
  5. Dying God
  6. Spear of the heavens
  7. 1 point into aeon’s for +40 to all stats.

Leveling
Stun jacks + Grenado

Attachment: damage.png

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Saved for further testing

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Nice build Sir Spanksalot.

Interesting you just went just Grenado. And have to love the Cataclysm set.
Any chance of the build in action?

I’ve similar, although only theory crafted, builds based around grenado/canister/BWC.

BWC spammer: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/YZeaMMvZ
Nado/Can/RoK Bomber/burner: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/a2EjvqlV
I don’t normally play crucible so DA a little on the low side, which is fine by me.
I haven’t had time to test these either. Will get round to it soon.

Anyhow, well done :slight_smile:

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Nice! Ulzuin’s Chosen is a really underrated skill but it could easily be a monster in the right setup.

A few things I would do if I built this cause I recently love more risk: drop seal to 12/12, remove storm box (btw, how’s that skill doing in that setup? Im curious) and get flashbang/searing light and 10/16 thermites.

Also, I know Ignaffar is a very good relic, but what do you think about getting Eternity instead? You lose the +skills and the RR but you gain a lot more grenado spams. I use it in my stun jacks sorc but it’s a natural fit there. Curious how it will perform in a non arcanist.

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Any chance this build could be done with an Elementalist too? I’ve been wanting my Elementalist to be able to be a decent chain lightning spammer.

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A Grenado build, nice to see someone finally appreciating the skill. Devotion looks good as well, I expected to see Meteor + Ultos setup but DG + SoTH surprised me. Nice

I did something using Stung Jacks and Grenado in vanilla using Elementalist. The problem was sustain, Word of Renewal is a much more reliable sustain when compared to Wendigo Totem on a kiting build

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So good spanks, congrats!!!
Didn’t know grenado could be that insane.

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You can’t mention me in credits and then post a grimtools link with Augments all over the place, you know you are going to trigger my OCD!! Damn!

Your chest does not have an augment, and why are you overcapping pierce and poison that much? Imo, overcap Aether as much as you can. Also, agree with previous poster, it’s better to drop Lightning Tether/Storm Box and buff that Flashbang. It’s a greatest CC spell ever.

Here is my little upgrade version:

  • Swapped Seal of Might for Seal of Blades, imo armor bonus outweights physical resist and 5% leech is something since you gonna be using Chain Lightning, a skill with weapon damage.
  • Removed Storm Box, useless without modifiers and proper investment, trimmed few unnesseccary skill points here and there to get us 10/16 thermite mines and 6/12 Flashbang with 3/12 Searing Light. Great source of CC plus raises our effective OA by 130
  • Blazing Ruby in a medal - destroyed that noob trap component, then crafted it at Angrim, then destroyed it AGAIN, because it’s a shite component and nobody should use it in its current state.

What you have lost - bit of hp, useless Storm Box. What you have gained: around 150-160 effective OA, 5% crit damage, proper aether overcap, life leech, monster CC boost

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Also, I know Ignaffar is a very good relic, but what do you think about getting Eternity instead? You lose the +skills and the RR but you gain a lot more grenado spams. I use it in my stun jacks sorc but it’s a natural fit there. Curious how it will perform in a non arcanist.

I did consider eternity, but I really wanted to stack RR as high as it could. Intuitively, I would do a CDR based grenado sorceress if I wanted to use eternity. Right now, the CD is 1.2s for grenado. Would want to cut that down to 1s or less to eke out the most from eternity.

Any chance of the build in action?

Sure, I can post a yt video some time soon. As for your build, I personally don’t like canister bomb - I think it’s terrible single target DPS.

Chain lightning and grenado already offer enough crowd clearing effects. Would therefore concentrate everything to do more single target DPS.

Any chance this build could be done with an Elementalist too? I’ve been wanting my Elementalist to be able to be a decent chain lightning spammer.

As Ch’thon mentioned, elementalist lacks sustain. It’s definitely more offensive, but you lose DA + an on-demand heal from word, and you lose out on seal. In addition, not having deadly aim seriously hinders your ‘nukeability.’

A Grenado build, nice to see someone finally appreciating the skill. Devotion looks good as well, I expected to see Meteor + Ultos setup but DG + SoTH surprised me. Nice

Means a lot coming from ya ch’thon! Again, couldn’t have done it without all the insight from you, mate.

@thejabrizone - thanks man! Couldn’t have done it without heatwave. He was invaluable in deciding on the itemization.

@Mad_Lee:

Firstly, fuck you too bro. (Just kidding, mate :P)

In all seriousness, you’re right. Crap. I must’ve lost the augment when I slapped on the titan plating! ><
Lost pierce resist when I gave up crab for DG. Will DEFINITELY fix that tf up.

As for poison overcap…is it really that unnecessary? I’ll definitely try lowering it in favor of aether res.

I initially rolled with flashbang. But after talking to seriouscomedy, we both agreed that the skill point investment for flashbang and searing light was just too great. Given the huge +skills to stormbox, 1 point bumps it up to 9/16. It also does relatively decent single target DPS (hitting about 3 times a second). The DA shred it gives is adequate especially seeing that I have 3.6k OA with deadly aim up.

Lastly, CC isn’t really needed as we are already vaporizing mobs with monster crits, and nems have HUGE confusion resist.

Thus the real question is this - is it worth putting more points into flashbang for fumble? Or to save points and have more dps with stormbox?

All in all, still VERY undecided on the flashbang/stormbox conundrum. I personally think both are viable. I had initially went with flashbang but felt that stormbox was also a nice source of damage.

Totally agree with 10/16 thermite mines. Have NO idea why I didn’t do it in the first place - must’ve been an oversight. Will correct that immediately

Was also undecided on seal of might vs blades! But I felt that the 10% ADCTH from restless remain was good enough and opted for more hp and phys res. (Also, fyi, 5% adcth only works if you have it equipped to the weapon. Minor adjustment, but we’d have to swap the weapon components with each other). I should however test my findings, and post it here.

Also…is blazing ruby THAT bad? Would swapping it out for topaz be better?

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Insight? I didn’t do anything

Anyway, need to correct you about one thing. Elementalist is not more offensive than a Purifier. The crit on Elementalist should be barely higher than Purifier. But since you lack % Lightning Damage in Shaman your overall output would be lower on an Elementalist

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Your contribution to this build was very indirect. I learnt a lot about mechanics, and theorycrafting from reading up on builds done by the veterans.

Which is why ya’ll get an automatic thank you in every build I post. :stuck_out_tongue:

Would include the greats like JoV, and jajaja, but I don’t know. Makes me feel a tad bummed to include their names knowing that they’ve already ‘retired.’

P.S. Wouldn’t stormcallers pact, and eye of the storm result in more %lightning damage?

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Using EoTS just for the sake of getting % Lightning damage seems weird to me. On an Elementalist I’d prefer Korvaak (movement) or Pyroclasm. Eye of the Storm only brings in flat Spirit to the table but not much to DPS.

Stormcaller’s Pact has %Lightning Bonus in short bursts (%Chance of X% Lightning Damage). I never liked that stuff, not very reliable in my experience which is weird cause I like %Chance of CDR on Ulzuin’s Chosen

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@Bevdogg: I uploaded the youtube video as requested!

Lmk if I can help in any other way. :slight_smile:

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Thank u for this awesome build , i am new to Grim Dawn and tried as my first char a Aether Spellbreaker … it was terrible but urs is a blast THX!

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1:07 that buttclench:rolleyes:

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I know right. :stuck_out_tongue:

Played carelessly there!

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UPDATE: I made some tweaks to the build to increase DPS and to make it even easier to gear for (swapped out stonehide stoneplate greaves of kings for stormbearer treads).

As you can see in the image attached, the damage of grenado peaks just below 1mil when buffed/bannered.

By no means a top tier crucy build, I wish to highlight the desperate need to buff grenado.

It doesn’t seem right to me that a toon built around grenado with a skill point investment EQUIVALENT to that of firestrike can only perform half as well.

The biggest problem with grenado is ulzuin’s chosen.

  1. It is impossible to hardcap ulzuin’s chosen unless you go for extremely awkward gearing options (I’m looking at you Mark of Ulzuin)

  2. The abysmally low X% chance for 100% CD on it.

I get that ulzuin’s chosen is designed in a manner to allow players to cycle through stun jacks, canister bomb, and grenado, however it is unreasonable to expect players to sink enough skill points into these 3 skills to make them viable.

Focusing on grenado alone exhausts 20% of your available skill points.

Another problem with grenado is that the only real competitive items benefiting this skill is the rimetongue set.

This is rather unfortunate as crate has clearly made an effort to try and make grenado a more diverse skill with the introduction of items like gildor’s pulverizer, mark of ulzuin, barrelsmith set, etc. etc.

HOWEVER, while these items look phenomenal in isolation, the majority of them are near impossible to include in a build. Notable exceptions include cindercore, ignaffar gloves, kymon’s medal, and the mythical adversary (I still have my complaints with these items, but that’s a topic for another day).

So what can we do to improve grenado and make it a blast to use?
Buh-dum-tss

  1. Give relevant items more +points to ulzuin’s chosen

  2. Reduce the %damage modifier on ulzuin’s chosen. While this seems attractive on the surface, it is the biggest stick up my butt regarding this skill. I find it personally annoying to see a 700k crit pop up on an enemy with a silver of health left and then have my main attacking skill go on a 3 second cooldown.

And of course, RNG works in a way where these fat crits only occur when attacking an enemy at death’s door.

  1. I suggest reducing or even removing the damage modifier on the passive, and increasing the X% for Y CD chance on it. In fact, I would go so far as to recommend a damage PENALTY to grenado for a 100% chance of using it.

  2. Increase the %energy cost reduction. Many of the weapons which buff grenado are 2-handers. As such, we don’t have the benefit of using an offhand to mitigate the energy drain of spamming grenado. This buff alone will make grenado far more accessible to many builds.

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Ulzuin’s chosen simply needs more items with a bonus to it. There’s barely any…

I have made a working barrelsmith build: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/0V0Pk0yV

But it’s really only viable for the campaign, it lacks defenses in the crucible. Do note that even with +4 demo skills and those boots I’m limited to 16 ulzuins chosen. Switching the medal would be a serious drop in grenado dps, and even then it’s not hard capped.

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Perhaps I should preface/rephrase my rant by saying 2 things:

  1. Being a crucible player, I tend to neglect MC in my posts - which I shouldn’t. So when I say impossible to squeeze in a build, I’m referring to the crucible.

  2. Grenado based items by and large cannot hope to come close to other items of the same level-tier (e.g. Evoker of egoloth, arcanum sigilis, Dagallon’s, etc.)

It’s not because these items themselves are bad, but rather because the design of the skill itself is poor IMO.

Meaning absolutely 0 disrespect - Focusing on canister bomb/grenado is clearly the way to go with the barrelsmith set, but it severely starves you of the skill points needed to get necessary stats like OA/DA.

EDIT: Therein lies the problem with ulzuin’s chosen. It spreads skill point distribution too thinly.

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I think a lot of the shortcomings can be fixed by itemization actually, the skill itself is probably fine. I mean in my setup, which is indeed seriously limited by its requirement to carry as much +skills as humanly possible, there are three (!) of the same modifiers to canister bomb. That’s just silly and it has been posted in feedback months ago, so what more can you do… Meanwhile, there is no phys > fire modifier for grenado available to this build, to name just the first thing that comes to mind.

I made that build as a sort of proof of concept, can I make that set work? Turns out, in a limited way, yes you can. But its limitations are what define it in my opinion, not its strengths.