Best caster aoe skill/build HC viable?

Grim Dawn Gameplay Discussion
1

Hi

I’m thinking of starting an HC or maybe SC Caster, and wondered what good aoe skills there are - I quite like Olex Flash freeze but it has a timer.

Any other good AOE skills out there?

Thanks for any responses.

Happy to go pure caster or +soldier if I go HC.

TYVM

Turnip

and on a side note - whats a good health stack for level 45-50 atm most of my toons are sitting at around 4K.
Will higher level items offer more health or should I grab it from Devotions - trouble is I use devotions for resists.

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If you’re like me, I kept wanting something like Frozen Orb from Diablo 2 in GD – spammable mass AoE, no cooldown, so much AoE that we don’t even have to aim so much. I don’t think there’s anything really like that.

I’m not a fan of cooldowns so much unless I got something I can spam on the way. PRM sorceress might be the closest bet, though its AoE is a bit limited and its damage isn’t so good unless you’re combining it with other stuff like procs and frequent devastations.

A weird one is Quick Jacks which was one of the very first builds I made and I was having fun shotgunning lightning bolts all over the place (felt a little bit like Charged Bolt) but it was hard to scale the damage (maybe I could do it properly now that I know the game mechanics much better). I made it using demo and shaman (Elementalist – lightning, duh!) which seemed the most obvious choice for a quick jacks build but in hindsight I think sorcerer (demo+arcanist) might work a little bit better.

My gripe with Quick Jacks is that it aims weird. It’s not like charged bolt that only pays attention to the angle of the attack. It’s also affected by proximity. So using it effectively at range often requires moving your mouse cursor to the edge of the screen before casting it, and that’s really awkward to do rapidly and in a relaxed kind of way especially given the game’s enemies often charge at you really fast and don’t give you time to kind of stop and shoot so much.

There it’s far more awkward to control to me and aim than Charged Bolt from D2, and I no longer like Quick Jacks very much just from a control standpoint. I would actually like Quick Jacks 100x more and maybe revisit a build using it again if it just aimed like Charged Bolt from Diablo 2, not caring where your cursor is precisely, just paying attention to its angle from the character. Nearby enemies would still take a shotgun blast to the face with that control scheme, while enemies at range would still get hit if you aim from afar without moving your cursor way out to the edge of the screen. It’s arguably a very interesting skill with possibly very effective builds emerging since it can shotgun single targets and multiply its damage in those cases, while delivering mass AoE from medium/semi-far range. And it should be a pretty effective way to trigger some procs. Yet I don’t see many builds using Quick Jacks published on here at least (not sure there’s a single one actually, but haven’t checked closely) and I’m wondering if it’s also because other players find it so damned awkward to aim and not just because it’s an ineffective skill (I think it is actually effective, though I don’t know for sure).

OFF is fun even as a nuke if you start amassing cooldown reductions enough, but I don’t know many builds that would be able to buff it up enough and debuff enemies enough to make it a viable damage source in ultimate as it is for normal/elite – maybe with some very special gear I don’t have. It becomes more CC than damage for me later.

To me the most mass-AoE skill that comes to mind is actually not in the caster realm – primal strike, which feels kind of like chain lightning from Diablo 1. You could use it with a gun or crossbow and then it really starts to feel like chain lightning. Somehow it gets boring to me though – something about Shaman just bores me quickly… maybe just me but he feels weird – super tanky, ultra-high HP guy wielding two-handed weapons with lightning (typical Shaman) – just weird… like is he a barbaric kind of muscle-bound brute? But he wields lightning better than an arcanist and gets less physique than a fighter… Caster? But he uses two-handers even better than a soldier… Then you got the Wendigo totems in there and I just don’t like Shaman very much, kinda grimace each time a build wants to synergize with him. That’s probably just me, I just don’t like shamans very much.

You can pick up a lot of AoE independent of your character skills from item skills, component skills, and procs as well. I didn’t really like playing some of my WPS characters that much focusing so much on single target damage predominantly (felt slow and boring even though they were strong, solid characters) until I started getting stuff like Blind Fury which started tearing stuff up around me without stopping to attack them. Meteor from Ulzuin’s Torch is pretty fun too if you bind it to a spammable skill – it has a cooldown but just 3.5 second CD with 3 second duration which makes it feel like it’s constantly triggering with only half a second lapse from one meteor shower to the next. Proc cooldowns don’t bother me as much either as skill CDs since they are implicitly triggered by something I can spam. I don’t have to watch their progress bar filling up or see “Skill not ready” on the screen if I try to use it too early.

3

Phantasmal blades spellbreaker
PRM or Callidor’s with procs as a sorcerer.

Devastation on both to kill bosses/wipe screens, flash freeze for big cc/damage on mobs. If you go sorcerer take flash bang too (1 point in base+modifier even is a good cc), can also 1 point concussive bomb+max the modifier though I don’t think that is needed at all. The cooldown on freeze is pretty irrelevant you shouldn’t often need it twice for a pack of monsters nor is it a long cooldown if you do

Poison witch hunter (or warlock) have excellent aoe, but are pretty squishy. Not something I’d recommend for a newer player on HC

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I recently finished ultimate with my first character, a Lightning only Conjurer. Didn’t intend to make a caster, but that’s what happened, and it definitely excels at AoE. Don’t know how it stacks up to other AoE casters, but probably the most difficult part of the gameplay is trying to collect the loot with the constant screen shake, and the elemental hellscape around you making it occasionally difficult to see.

Maximized wind devils that trigger Elemental Storm is incredibly strong. The storms will proc at a constant rate, in distributed locations. Though you can choose the initial location by where you lay the first Wind Devil.

Curse of Frailty/Vulnerability boosts your damage extensively. But also CoF and Wind Devils both apply a stacking slow for great crowd control, and increasing the duration of exposure to Elemental Storm. Very synergistic.

Also used a Storm Totem, with Reckless Tempest tied to it, spreading DoT’s further, doing a ton of distributed direct damage, and adding minor stuns.

And the Elemental Seeker to top it off, which I could spam via Curse of Frailty.

Gear for %lightning, but prioritize boosting DoTs. Not gear dependent.

It’s a very lazy build, as nothing requires ‘aim’ - just lay down your wind devil, curse, and totem, and enjoy the lightshow. And heaven help them if the bad guys are moving through a choke point.

This came about from trying(but failing) to make a melee character, so the resilience is enough to take a couple hits.

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Thanks for all the replies to this thread. I really appreciate it. There’s a lot of interesting options here.

A lot of food for thought.

I’ll try out some of these build ideas.

Thanks!

Turnip

MOK - I hated screenshake too. But luckily in Options there’s a way to turn it off. No screenshake in options. Makes playing a lot easier.

6

A full-on TSS build, while technically cooldown based, can have so many meteor procs that there’s stuff falling pretty much continuously in combat. Search for “exiled starcaller” build. It’s a blast to play.

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A thing I find disappointing about many caster builds is that so much of their damage is not coming from their main line skills, but devastation nukes and procs from gear and devotions.

It’s like just intuitively if I didn’t understand that upfront and thought there’s one build which can rely solely on their pure skills to do damage without procs and nukes on top, I would have thought it was casters… only to feel like weapon builds have more of that going than most casters (not losing most of their viability even if they lost their damage procs, e.g.).

Is there a build that isn’t like that which isn’t pet-based, like a PRM build where PRM itself can be the ultimate-viable damage source? For some reason I get disappointed when I keep seeing devastation and procs going off for a caster and it seems like it’s as important for damage if not more than whatever they’re spamming. It starts to feel like spells like CT and PRM and Quick Jacks and so forth cease to become true damage sources, just ways to trigger procs and sting the enemy a little bit (in a way far inferior to those who just bash stuff with weapons) while the procs and devastation nukes are doing most of the work and the only reason their overall damage is good.

PB spellbreaker is one of those I’ve shied away from but maybe ought to try. Just aesthetically I didn’t like the narrow pierce AoE that much when I saw it in action, but maybe it’s closer to my ideals of gear, proc (espeically gear procs), nuke, and cooldown independence than some of the alternatives.

Reason I wish for a caster like this is that I like the cooldown-independent spammability, the maneuverability in gear and devotion procs when I don’t feel extremely dependent on them for damage output, and mostly just enjoy that kind of gameplay (loved frozen orb and charged bolt in Diablo 2 with sorceress, not so much hydra, blizzard, things like that). Cooldowns were never my thing but especially for damage since at some point I start to feel like my clearing speed is tied to the cooldown which I’m waiting to recharge all the time.

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HP isn’t that big problem. You can always find the way to raise max HP.
4k HP is fine if it enough for not get quickly killed by 1-2 shots. (I’d say yes for veteran, ok for elite range and no for ultimate)
Having full/high resistance is good but if you can’t have all at that lv or gear you should know what will you face in each area and prepare only necessary resistance.

If you don’t wanna died, just don’t get hit. If not, you should know about how somethings can kill you then prevent it at any cost.
Like I can be stunned by Iron Maiden then get hit so damn hard then died by didn’t get my quick heal skill or run away, the easiest deal is to have reduced stun duration or don’t fight him unprepared(it can be deal with physical resistance in 3rd character sheet, high armor rating with 90%+ armor absorption, have incoming dmg reduction aura).

I died many times in aggro even wear good gear with max most resistance by unawareness and don’t know what that enemy is good at. And some times I learned nothing because it happen so fast. ex I just standing shoot cronley’s mobs then 2 tiny stone golem throw magma rocks on me then I died. wtf I don’t know that this skill of those shitty is pretty fatal.

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Hi what does TSS stand for pls?

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Arcanist’s Trozan Sky Shard