Build Concept & Results So Far -- Ranged Retaliation DOT Stacker

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
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Hi all,

I have been working on my latest character, and I would like to explain the concept and ask for advice/feedback.

The concept is this: the game provides many HUGE sources of retaliation damage added to attack (RDATA), but most of the big sources have cooldowns of between 1-3 seconds. This prevents damage from flat retaliation sources like physical from going through the roof, but it is not an issue for DOTs!

So, we stack as much retaliation DOT as possible and as many big RDATA sources as possible. We then do lots of damage, at range, while kiting for significant portions of the time if needed.

Core items are Mythical Bramblevine (2000 poison DOT per second), Venomskin Legwraps (800 poison DOT per second), Mythical Scion of Burning Vengeance (600 fire DOT per second), Dreegs Affliction Relic (1000 poison DOT per second), and Mythical Ulzuin’s Torment belt (1200 fire DOT per second). In total, that is 5600 DOT per second. Note that most of the sources are poison, and the fire also gets converted to poison by Aegis.

Core sources of RDATA are Aegis of Menhir (51%), Dreeg’s Evil Eye (50%), Rune of Dreeg’s Wounds (40%), Dreeg’s Afflicted Spines (22%), Hyrian’s Glare (26%), and if we choose to get hit by melee baddies (100%). Four of these sources are actively applied, but we need only apply them once every three seconds for maximum damage! So in total, that is up to 289 RDATA!

My gearing is not yet done, but I estimate about 1500% retaliation damage bonus when fully geared. With that amount, our damage is about 5600315 = 252,000 damage per second before resists reduction or crits.

It is not hard to apply the four active ones on rotation every 3 seconds for the full effect. Alternatively, if we fight only at ranged while kiting, and use only three active skills, we still have 149 RDATA. If we do that, it cuts our damage roughly in half. But about 125,000 damage per second while kiting, before reducing resists, still seems pretty good.

For resists reduction I use Rumor, Manticore, Guardians, and Curse. All of these sources reduce poison resists. Two of them also reduce fire resists.

For healing, we have Dryad, Chariot, Behemoth, Blood of Dreeg, and potions.

Here is my current GT: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/Q2zLBBaZ

So far the build is doing great in the main campaign. It takes me two weeks to level up a char to 100, and I have not played high level crucible or gone past SR20 yet, but in theory this build should be able to do it, right?

Any suggestions/feedback? Thanks!

1 Like
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i made a retailiation archon (oathkeeper + shaman).

i used grasping vines because it does its RDATA every second to enemies in the AOE. Aegis for nuke.

it is very strong simply because you can have 3-4 instances of grasping vines active at once ticking for 100k+ plus to ALL ENEMIES IN AOE. Aegis was hitting for 500k+.

i used bramblevine shield pre-nerf (8%). it should still be valid.

in my experience grasping vines is the strongest RDATA cause of multiple instances and your build is insanely tanky from the correlation on gear between retaliation and tankiness.

my build killed crate and callagadra. you shouldnt have a problem

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Hey, thanks! Does grasping vines do rdata dot damage for each vine you cast? Or is it like regular dot damage in that 4 vines cast would still do only a single dot? Does that question make sense?

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I am quite sure DOT on RDAtA is treated like DOT on %weapon damage. Namely, only the strongest DOT applies, even if the RDAtA is coming from multiple different skills. The DOT from multiple instances of Vines doesn’t stack, retaliation or otherwise.

Have you looked at Daega’s set with Bramblevine? I discovered this in my builds folder. I don’t even remember when I made it. https://www.grimtools.com/calc/Q2zYY8LN

With Messenger of War up, melee enemies consistently get hit with a flat 80k poison DOT from retal, before RR. For ranged enemies, we use Aegis and Dreeg’s Evil Eye and hope for a crit. There is some additional flat poison coming from Aegis, Dreeg’s, and weapon damage. Frankly, it doesn’t look super promising to me, but perhaps you could improve it. The build in the link is definitely not optimized.

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it does rdata flat damage every 1 second for every active vine cast. it stacks better with non-duration damage imo cause %rdata dot damage can only have 1 instance per unique cast. i.e. 1 from vines and 1 from aegis. or judgement/righteous strike.

main thing is 1 dot per mob per unique ability. thats how i remember it. itd be nice if bloody pox could back-propagate though. its also why pure dot builds with 3-4 200% wpn damage skills can see ticks for 150k+.

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Thanks to you both. Seems like Aegis and dreegs eye is definitely the way to go for my DOT retaliation build. I will continue testing!

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Heya! A little while ago I was looking into similar and came up with this - It’s intended to be a support build, but I wanted to use DoT retal damage for similar reasons to what you mentioned (it’s nice to damage enemies when you’re not hitting them or they you :wink:

For a pure dot damage character, you can likely do better, but this might give you some ideas?

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…otherwise, this one may be more in alignment with what you’re looking for - A melee poison ret build :slight_smile: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/vNQX6zEZ

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Thanks! I am checking this out. I looked at Daega’s set but for the moment I have opted for some other non set pieces with better armor. My char just hit level 94 so I’m still working on it! :nerd_face: