[1.0.6.1] The Ice-Breathing Demon - DW Cold WPS Saboteur

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
,
1

screenshot04.jpg471×722

Thanks to Ptirodaktill for giving some initial input.
Update 1: More Slow Resist, adjust devo a bit, adjust WPSes
Update 2: Adjust Devo omitting suboptimal procs, back to 2x seal of void. The WPS is just too good with fire strike

The Build

https://www.grimtools.com/calc/4VxYoalZ
with all permanent buff + Pneumatic Burst and Lethal Assault.
DPS shown is fire strike.

Build Feature

  • DW melee, Fast Killer
  • Awesome AoE and Single Target Damage
  • Auto-Attack Build with 100% WPS, fluid gameplay
  • 3 Circuit breaker + 1 emergency button
  • Yes, the build is using 4 MIs :stuck_out_tongue:
  • Even with that much circuit breaker, multiple deadly nemesis can still kill you, full concentration is needed in 160 and 170 cruci wave.

Build Overview
This is cold strike build. Utilizing some of the new equipments for cold conversion and Nightblade WPS + Seal of the Void for 100% WPS. I haven’t even thought that it will be this powerful. and I honestly doesn’t understand the build fully because of the complex interaction between fire strike skill line to the WPS.

What I feel from the build, only nightblade’s WPS that have nice synergy to fire strike is amarasta quick cut. It hits 3 times and trigger explosive strike, brimstone, and static strike along the line. This build exploded when I try double seal of the void for maximizing the WPS. It seems that burning void hit max 3 enemies, then they each proc explosive strike, static strike, and brimstone, shotgunning each other. Thus, group of enemies and bosses drop even faster.

For Defense: good life leech by almost 200% effective AS, ±3400 effective DA, 18% reduced physical damage by BWC, Fumble & Impaired Aim by Flashbang, blast shield & Mark of Divinity as hard circuit breaker, ghoulish hunger as soft circuit breaker, and blade barrier as panic button. Also aether cluster as another panic button :p.

Equipment Choices
Most of the equipment is core, try to have good rolls on the conversion and +% attack speed. Also, craft any equipments in Arngrim for+% armor or +% physique

Core Items:
Helm: Rimetongue Mask. Plus to both masteries, converting max 36% fire to cold
Chest: Mythical Frostdread Cuirass. huge flat cold and % cold damage (something that this build lacks), also good resist
Shoulder: Kra’vall Shoulderguards. Only use for its chaos to cold conversion, use any prefix/suffix you like
Alternative Shoulder: Mythical Silver Sentinel’s Shoulderguard. Usually Bis for any cold nightblade build, but not for this build. It can still act as a good placeholder for this build though. As a bonus, it make it easier to cap lethal assault
Main Hand: Ugdenbog Chillstrife. We use general dagger for cold build. Mainly because the build lack of +% cold damage. Get prefix/suffix that boosting cold damage. Also the suffix must have +% attack speed, so “of alacrity” or “of shattering” is a must
Off Hand: Mythical Chillflame Evoker. Build defining item, converting all fire damage in fire strike to cold. Also have general fire to cold damage (max 54%)
Amulet: Ellena’s Necklace. more RR for Veil of shadow and physical conversion to cold. “of Alacrity” suffix is a must. For prefix, using kra’vall shoulderguards make it harder to cap lethal assault, so the assassin prefix with +3 lethal assault would be nice, otherwaise use whatever you like for prefix.
Alternative Amulet: Mageslayer’s protector. even more RR for Veil of shadow but harder to cap attack speed.
Ring: Elemental Harmony set. No contest. The best ring for this build

Supporting Items:
Gloves: Mythical Chilling Grip of Hagarrad. Converting max 30% piercing to cold and more RR with +Night’s Chill.
Alternative Gloves: Mythical Iceskorn Talons. For easy capping of lethal assault
Pants: Kubacabra’s Chausses. For capping lethal assault. Use whatever prefix/suffix you like
Boots: Stoneplate Greaves. to cover resistances, get any prefix/suffix you like
Belt: Mythical SpellBreaker Waistguard. +Nightblade, +flat cold, good stats overall
Medal: Mythical mark of divinity. hard circuit breaker and in line plus skills to the build
Alternative Medal: Mythical Undying Oath. If you want to be more offensively-oriented, unbeatable for cold nightblade build
Relic: Mogdrogen’s Ardor. Plus all skills and total speed, get %DA as completion bonus

Devotions
Update 2: just realized that whirlpool is horrible in this build because AoE is already excellent. Blizzard would be nice, but it is hard to gather enough OA for this build as the proc is on crit. If you can rack up about 3000 effective OA, take it. Update 2 devo version only take the 4 necessary procs, while the rest of the points are used to take good stats nodes.

Flame Torrent > to Fire Strike
Rumor > to Amarasta’s Blade Burst
Elemental Storm > to Flashbang
Ghoulish Hunger > to whatever permanent buff

Gameplay
Keybind:
LMB: Fire Strike
RMB: Amarasta’s Blade Burst
Mouse scroll up: Flashbang
Mouse scroll down: Pneumatic Burst
Middle mouse button: Shadow Strike
Keyboard 1: Blackwater Cocktail
Keyboard 2: Blade Barrier

Standard procedure:
Scroll up and down to activate Flashbang and pneumatic burst, triggering multiple Elemental storm
Shadow strike in, then Maul your enemy with Fire strike while right click for activating lethal assault and spreading rumor.
Make sure lethal assault and flashbang in cooldown. Always cast BWC to strong enemies.
Do not let yourself to be surrounded. Try to move around a bit or escape with shadow strike so there are no enemy behind you.
It is preferable to isolate one nemesis from the other, and kill them one by one. If you need to face multiple, just make sure that they are in front of you not behind. AoE is really good, when you kill one, the other will be almost dead, except kuba because he heals.

Build Performance
The build is tuned for crucible. It can farm 150 crucible even without buff. 150 with buff feels like cheating.

For 170 Crucible, screenshot with 3 buff (resist, damage, HP) (update 1 build):

screenshot37.jpg1024×640

As always, you can measure the clear speed from the remaining duration of the buff. For +151, the most dangerous enemy is kubacabra for its high cold res. Do not facetank him too long as standing in its blood pool make killing him longer. Kite every 1.5 seconds to avoid his blood pools. Also, kill him last.

The second most dangerous is Reaper due to its charge type savagery, just kite a bit every second. for Grava’thull, just avoid his chaos pool. The build has no problem inflicting damage to them, just need to pay attention. For this two nemesis, kill them first

The third most dangerous is moonsilauke due to high cold res and high burst damage. Dodge when it wants to do its overhead double hand smack something. For this nemesis, kill him lastest

All other nemesis and bosses is a joke for this build really. Other Vanilla nemesis got killed easy, even zantarin and mad queen because we have mark of divinity & blast shield.

Afterword
I originally plan this build with full rimetongue set. The concept is to trap the enemy and finish them with fire strike. Unfortunately the Trap resist RR from the set is not enough to trap all nemesis, so I scrapped the idea and chose to focus on cold strike instead.

I think that is all, I hope you can enjoy the build

2

N1 man. Have you considered undying oath + alkamos rings?

EDIT: Those greens though… o_O

3

That’s a good usage of Chillflame Evoker. Well done!
I tried to do 2*Evoker but DPS was low, your build is much better.

4

I mention undying oath as alternative medal. For Offense, it is unbeatable. I will try to test them more with undying oath again. For now I really like mark of divinity so I can facetank zantarin and MadQueen without worry.
Have consider the purple alkamos ring for its pierce conversion, but by seeing the number, I still don’t think that it can beat elemental harmony set. Almost all fire damage from set bonus and proc will be converted to cold, so it provides so much damage for the build.

And yes, 4 MI :p. I have provided alternative for the amulet and shoulder, Kra’vall Shoulderguards is BiS even with whatever prefix/suffix though.

Thanks Vere. Yeah, with Rimetongue mask, double chillflame is not needed anymore. Ugdenbog chillstrife complement the build well. Havent try it again with kilrian’s skullbreaker though. With 2x seal of void in the weapon component, I doubt if it can be better than chillstrife.

5

It’s not just the number, it’s the damage reduction it gives.

But yes…64 flat elemental damage is HUGE.

6

My god, don’t even realize that the proc give damage reduction.
Regardless, the build only have minimal OA, so the on-crit proc from the ring may not be optimal.

7

I think the alk rings give like up to 6% OA + 80 OA.

8

OA from elemental balance set and alkamos purple set is comparable. In mine, the OA still in 2700 range.
Elemental balance ring provide all beneficial plus skills to fire strike line and lethal assault, so I think overall it will still better than alkamos for the build.

9

I think you’re right. Forgot about the flat fire conversion.

10

Hm, the necklace really puzzle me :rolleyes: . And devotions choise seems weird.
I`d rather go for something like this https://www.grimtools.com/calc/RZR4M8x2

  1. Dropped %OA on devotions tree - with 15% base crit dmg is not worth the effort. You wont crit w/o a banner anyway and with banner OA is not needed.
  2. Switched shoulders for Silver sentinel - acid conversion provide better dps returns.
    3.I`m not sure if Blast shield is a good investment. With 4% CDR its never up when you need it. That’s, probably, the only instance when I would consider spending points intro Temper.:rolleyes: With 7 craftables you can push %Armor to commando level.
  3. dropped useless onepointers - Bergotian breath and BB. BB would kill you more often that it will save.
  4. Switched boots to arcane wind. Slow resist scale much better that attack speed :stuck_out_tongue: For same reason switched boots and gloves augments.
  5. Non - myth MoD is better cause you can add a crafting bonus to it. Stat-wise they are the same.
11

@Ptiro, I don’t see any silver sentinel on your link.

@jabrixone why not go something like good ol’ beronath ammy and have a bit more skill points to invest in maybe execution? 8% RR on necklace doesn’t seem that great, imo. Also silver sentinel shoulders, as Ptiro said. Adds you flat weapon damage instead of just converting part of brimstone.

12

Messed with the link, should be fixed now.
#No moar Owl abuse :stuck_out_tongue:

13

Hmm, I don’t see any difference in devotion tree and skill point distribution from your link?

  1. The build is designed to be able for 150 cruci no buff and banner, also good campaign performance. So I aim for minimal OA.
  2. Please try to compare flat chaos damage from skill and flat acid damage. We have a lot of chaos damage from fire strike, flame torrent, and burning void, which is all main damage source in the build. Flat acid is only from lethal assault.
  3. Will try temper. I honestly haven’t thought about it. Anyway, blast shield make me more comfortable in facing difficult wave, even with non-existent CDR. I just need to pay more attention when it is in cooldown.
  4. Belgothian breath is needed because the build doesn’t leech much. Blade barrier is debatable I agree.
  5. This is what need to be improved I agree. For some reason, the build still inflict so much damage even with low slow resist though. I prefer to have at least 50% stun res though, so the head component may need to be switched. It is a shame that cruci buff do not provide slow res :cry:

Hmmm, you think that my devotion choice is weird, is it because of ulzuin’s torch?
Previously I use the proc, but then dropped it for elemental storm. The reason is the same, I aimed for minimum OA. The third node should be able to be replaced for Leviathan’s flat cold node though.

14

Sry, messed with link https://www.grimtools.com/calc/RZR4M8x2 .:eek:

15

I know you usually design a build for using a banner cruci, but man, 2.5k OA… :frowning:
Also, do you still have doubt with “X% reduced target’s res”?
Without enough Cold RR, Kuba is really a pain to deal with.

I will try to check yours because it looks like you explore different philosophy now. Your previous idea utilizing racial damage in cruci is awesome, so I would like to give you the benefit of the doubt.

x1x1x1x2: Regarding amulet choice, I want to give as much RR as possible because Kuba give me a hard time in my initial testing of the build. Will try to check if blue beronath is good for current setup.

16

I know you usually design a build for using a banner cruci, but man, 2.5k OA…

Well its possible to push to 2700, but I dunno if its worth the effort. I mean your %crit multi is 30% and pushing base crit chance from 10 to ¬15 is hardly noticeable on total dps output.

Also, do you still have doubt with “X% reduced target’s res”?

Yes I do. =) I would appreciate if someone do dummy tests with and w/o this stat.

17

I think not soft capping Execution should be a punishable crime :stuck_out_tongue:

Overall, nice build, and it’s hard to say whether Sentinels are better or Kravablahablal shoulders are better from GT link, it needs to be tested imo, but I think Sentinels might edge it.

Also agree with Ptior on Devotion map choices. Hell, if you got first 4 nodes in Ulzuin’s Torch, squeeze in 2 more points and get Cold Meteors then, should be fun.

Also also, I would rather have 80% Nightblade’s wps pool + one Seal of Void + Coldstone for more flat or Seal of Night for more OA.

18

I got meteor shower in my very first iteration of the build. I drop that to have elemental storm, to free more skill points from agonizing flames.

I rearrange the prefix/suffix of the equipment a bit to have more slow resist, then have 80% NB WPS + 1 seal of the void + 1 coldstone like you suggest to balance the offense, then crucible got even easier:

screenshot05.jpg1024×640

EDIT: The build updated for slow resist

19

How would you recommend a build for normal and elite to get started?

20

Hi, for your first character, I would not recommend saboteur. The class synergy is quite tricky. Plus it is inherently squishy as the class defensive properties is not as solid as soldier, Inquisitor, or necromancer. Its viable build is also not that many. Only auto-attack dual wield melee with firestrike, and its damage type will only be either fire or cold. There are no other viable saboteur build unless you can design a new one.

I suggest you to follow stupid dragon’s thread for pre-krieg death knight for shielded character. If you want dual wielded melee, make an infiltrator. Reaper is also possible but I think it’s not for first timer. If you want dual wielded gun, make a purifier. For caster, spellbinder, purifier, mage hunter, and cabalist are all good for first timer.

I would also not recommend a pet build as a first character. That archetype has the most complicated mechanics and learning curve in this game.

Sent from my Redmi Note 3 using Tapatalk