Belgothian' vision to damage reduction

my pierce build for small reference

So what I am furious about here is a pretty simple thing. Damage Reduction is pretty important in late-game and everything is going according to plan until u stumble on where to get this thing from.

Options are pretty limited:

  1. from lodestone component but needs to get hit which my build avoids to
  2. maybe warborn set for war cry but I wear belgothian helmet
  3. perhaps “Tyrant” prefix weapon on the other hand but I really love that malmouth slicer (could be any other similar legendary too)

What I got rn as for placement is, “Oleron’s Blood” which is itself nic but in hordes it gets to the point where it’s hard to use. perhaps I missed something important that is self-explanatory and easy to use but I would like a small DR buff to anywhere it could have been, like an aura on amu similar to “Avatar of Chaos” or something similar. Ofc I would like other opinions about this idea. If i had to guess it might get too overpowered but lik 10% DR wouldn’t hurt.
4.

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Ulzaad or Ishtak rune should help in this situation if you’re fine with disengage rune

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Personally I’m using War Cry and Belgothian’s Carnage relic to reset its cooldown. Doesn’t yield full DR uptime but gets fairly close. Also, keep in mind that there are mastery combinations that don’t have access to DR at all, like Spellbreakers (though those have %absorb) or Archons (like, maybe you get %DR on Wendigo Totem from Dark One, that’s about it…Archon also doesn’t have %absorb unless going for Primal Bond). So it’s not the end of the world, I think a lot of Belgo builds don’t even use War Cry cause they can’t keep it on (cause they don’t want Belgo Relic).

BTW I think Redeemer of Malmouth is a bit of a trap, I too was thinking about using it on my Belgo but with it having only 30 % base Pierce, you can’t fully capitalise on its base damage cause the % armor piercing increase doesn’t go high enough. I think you’re missing out on like 15 % of it plus the fact it has flat physical on it instead of pierce is also kinda meh.

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Finally farmed a Tyrant’s of Alacrity Derma slicer for my Belgo BM and it’s so much better. Allows me to drop warcry and put the points somewhere else; also I can go a little more aggressive in the devotion layout.

I think you’re right; it seems to have very good stats but a decent Derma (sinister of spines or smth) slicer outperforms it so much better

Judicator’s Seals? Work good for me :thinking:.

You don’t even have to go that far. A second Belgo Slicer or something like Mythical Reaver’s Claw will do the job better than Redeemer.

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poor belgothian set won’t be able to use belgo ring then or any other ring in that regard.

I guess, if it truly comes to this, dropping my beloved redeemer and going for tyrant… the only way.

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Nah man redeemer isn’t that good, Derma slicer is way better.

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Redeemer is honestly just an awkward weapon. It has a phys-focused item mod and flat phys on it, while at the same time having 30 % armor piercing, so if you’re trying to actually go down the phys route, you’re losing damage to the piercing conversion and can’t do anything about it. But then it’s also sucky for pierce because while it does have armor piercing, it doesn’t have enough of it for comfortable conversion to 100 % armor piercing, and the flat physical damage on it and on the item mod is then wasted. And it’s bad for dual-typing (phys + pierce) cause phys damage specifically just isn’t good for dual-typing because of the way armor works. If you’re gonna be doing phys damage, you want to go all out. If you half-ass it, a good % of your damage gets eaten by armor.

If you don’t feel like farming your life away for a Derma Slicer (I know I didn’t) just slap on a M. Reaver’s Claw or second Belgo, take Belgo’s Carnage relic and War Cry and you’re set. No affix farming, mostly reliable 25 % DR on demand. Works for me. And you free up the ring slots for a Belgo Ring and a Bladetwister for % RR if you want.

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So quick update for ya guys if interested: went with tyrant route

I could go with war cry too, doesn’t sound too shabby or bad at all but skill points for me feel too scarce even then with an in-built attacker.

I’m sad that my redeemer idea sucks butt but oh well case closed for now, got ravagers health to like 5% too without a few problems except mini-heart attacks and died but still a great feat without any additional buff potions. :stuck_out_tongue:

EDIT: btw I appreciate the input you guys gave me, helped a lot.

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You should always play a Pierce dw melee build with a Tyrant’s prefix, second best option is like miles behind that.

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things i’ve tried
War Cry
movement rune
Judicator
Oleron
uh. i forgot
Tyrant prefix

Tyrant is obviously superior, but it’s also the peak hardest way to get DR legit
War Cry i actually hate, but mostly because i just hate how it pulls an entire screen in SR
Judictor, just sacrifices way better rings, not a fan
Movement run gets sorta clunky, doesn’t have as bad uptime as war cry tho overall
Oleron is single target, but probably way easier to weave in and the least cumbersome, except for the fact it ofc takes a better component/you lose lifesteal
Once again, a greate case could be made for lowering the war cry cooldown or increase the uptime of its DR
i still don’t understand how Gandar gets buffed, when its in everyway better than war cry, and costs the same skill points,
and War Cry the requires additional investment to make its RR active,
and the RR wouldn’t have to have 100% uptime without investments by buffing DR uptime. Say if DR got increased to 7-8secs, while cooldown stays the same at 7.5, and break morale RR has 5sec duration, then you still need Warborn helm as usual for the RR to be used as usual

anyways, TLDR; no good ways for belgo to get DR, ok ways, or grindy ways

doesn’t btw, i’ve got a redeemer belgo, in fact it’s my first Belgo BM, it’s fine, killed everything on it
it’s just not as "minmax"optimal as other setups is all

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Now that I understand, and of course, I kept in mind that I could use them but they are universal and works pretty much everywhere. The issue becomes clear why even put other pierce rings at that point in game if all we gonna use is those rings? Don’t get me wrong I see they doing fine but for variety reasons, I am kinda insulted. :melting_face:

Yea, I was definitely also thinking of a solution from this, although the problem is if u want 100% up-time u have to use it almost always making slaughtering un-easy. It’s not a bad solution that arivus gave but not a proper fix for me or what I was going for.

We could argue, 3 other guys already told me it lacks what others have better. Perhaps you are the first one and only who agrees at first on me with the primary vision I had. It has +1nightblade and some belgo mods and I did survive with “that” setup “decently” but felt something was missing and tyrant for reals might have made the slaughtering way easier.

It truly is weird how war cry is odd in this scenario, unlike Horn of Gandar. I use gandar on my infiltrator blade trap build and it’s alright no further thinking was needed there when I built it, had DR sources from alkamos rings, gandar, gun, and maybe even something else. A lot as u can tell unlike u can do with pierce.

Redeemer is good for fast/no farm and budget setup, the dmg drop from AP isn’t that big, again it’s a minmax thing, so for peak max potential you want something else, otherwise its fine, it’s been used before by others before/for a long time

Crittrain had a setup with it too
Banana used it in his levelling guide/budget BM
etc etc

my old girl from AoM days, Blademaster, Level 100 (GD 1.1.9.8) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator
you can see she doesn’t even have Zolhan since haven’t played this character since FG release/long before the patch that gave Zolhan dw hits

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You guys shouldn’t forget that War Cry means that some frames of your AA are lost on an autoattacker. And it’s especially bad when you have low casting speed (that’s why all Warborn setups should have above 160% cs ideally but something like 180% is even better).

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my biggest issue with war cry is it pulling an entire map and 3 nemesis from offscreen so you get 5000 enemies bumrushing you and gibbing you through aether clusters
losing couple frames/melee attacks on the cast is the least of my worries :sweat_smile:

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nono, he is on to something here :laughing:

Yea, that’s what worried me a bit. I want that unstoppable slaughter. The thing with budget building is all fine, however, I am leaning toward that min-max territory here. It’s more of a question if builds are more reliable to fight with or not.

Tyrant of Alacrity/Spines Derp Slicer is your answer then, unfortunately, there is no other way. Judicators are an inferior option (viable but still worse) as ring slots give good flat and vital wps ranks (plus one belgo sigil ring is just always nice to have no matter what) and 12% dr they give is quite a bit worse than 16% that max roll of Tyrant can give. Plus little extra adtch mod to whirling (and some flat to it so it doesn’t hit like a noodle).

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Coming to a Tyrant’s slicer… or even an of the Abyss for DR sake… how much time did you guys need to get one? :sweat_smile:

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