Build idea: Cold Reaper Caster

Hey all,

As a fan of cold builds and always wanting to make a reaper and having just made my first caster that I love, I was toying with this idea of a new build and wanted to see if I could get some feedback / thoughts.

Concept: Close range cold caster converting as much damage as possible to cold and running around / kiting

Updated Grimtools: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/r2BGLdKV

So main abilities would be phantasmal blades with 100% convert to cold, bone harvest with a lot of the damage converted to cold, ravenous earth for debuffs, shadow strike for burst damage / gap closer and mostly converted to cold, lethal assault for buffs, and blade spirit / ring of steel for additional aoe damage.

What do you guys think? Could this work for crucible? If not what would you change or is the entire theme bad? I haven’t seen a build like this for reaper yet so I wanted to play around with it. All suggestions welcome. Sorry if the devotions aren’t all bound to abilities as I haven’t actually played this yet.

Thanks in advance for feedback.

A smattering of things.

  1. Soul harvest should be maxed. It’s giving you a ton of damage much like lethal assault.

  2. Silver sentinel mask is not worth using unless you are going for 3piece set. Get a +1all hat.

  3. Crescent moon is pretty bad, use olexra’s chill for OA or a well rolled Ugdenbog Chillstrife for flat damage.

  4. Chausses of barbaros in pants slot are pretty much the only legendary I’d consider, greens otherwise.

  5. Seal of annihilation is pointless here, you don’t need the attack speed. The spirit is outweighed by other potential things in this slot (even a runebound topaz for instance)

  6. Armor absorption should be at 100% 2 of (sacred plating or living armor) + scaled hide in the pants.

  7. Frostdread cuirass might be more damage given how lightly you are invested in shadow strike. Though DM jacket probably is ideal given resistances.

  8. Iceskorn >> hagarad here. You are already fully converting PB. +2 bone harvest more than makes up for the loss of conversion, +2 lethal assault lets you cap LA. the 12% chance of straight up reset on bone harvest is useful and pure gravy here. Shadow strike isn’t going to be a ridiculous source of damage given you don’t have the points to pump it to adequate levels AND you’re not dual wielding.

  9. Seal of the night should be used ONLY if you have absolute GARBAGE OA. coldstone gives more damage otherwise.

  10. On devotions…

  • Viper and jackal aren’t doing that much, you’re going out of your way to pursue the OA in torch when chariot of the dead is closer.
  • Amatok is only good if you’ve got star pact or hourglass
  • consider restructuring devotions to nab hourglass, all your damage is cooldown based.
  • toad does little for you, the adcth will be minimal. Take empty throne for stunres, you’re well above your needs on green affinity.
  • dropping ulzuin’s torch you can pick up oklaine’s and drop scholar’s light.

A smattering of things.

  1. Soul harvest should be maxed. It’s giving you a ton of damage much like lethal assault.
    agreed, but i cant currently get it maxed. even after switching to iceskorn, it will only be 22/16 which is still good

  2. Silver sentinel mask is not worth using unless you are going for 3piece set. Get a +1all hat.
    disagree, the flat damage is great and the 2 piece bonus does wonders for resists if you aren’t using double rare MIs. also the pierce conversion is nice

  3. Crescent moon is pretty bad, use olexra’s chill for OA or a well rolled Ugdenbog Chillstrife for flat damage.
    i agree crescent moon isnt my favorite and i tried putting the olexra’s but this build is spread really thin skill wise and the + to skills helps a lot here and the build isnt lacking OA

  4. Chausses of barbaros in pants slot are pretty much the only legendary I’d consider, greens otherwise.
    this build needs spirit to use the offhand and weapon and these pants help… also will be kiting a lot so slow resistance is really nice. OA and resists also nice

  5. Seal of annihilation is pointless here, you don’t need the attack speed. The spirit is outweighed by other potential things in this slot (even a runebound topaz for instance)
    yeah maybe, was using it for cost reduction, cast speed, and spirit

  6. Armor absorption should be at 100% 2 of (sacred plating or living armor) + scaled hide in the pants.
    i fixed it. using the iceskorns allowed me to shift resists, but 100% at 1533 is still pretty squishy which is what i am really worried about

  7. Frostdread cuirass might be more damage given how lightly you are invested in shadow strike. Though DM jacket probably is ideal given resistances.
    DM jacket for resists, damage, and skills

  8. Iceskorn >> hagarad here. You are already fully converting PB. +2 bone harvest more than makes up for the loss of conversion, +2 lethal assault lets you cap LA. the 12% chance of straight up reset on bone harvest is useful and pure gravy here. Shadow strike isn’t going to be a ridiculous source of damage given you don’t have the points to pump it to adequate levels AND you’re not dual wielding.
    agreed.

  9. Seal of the night should be used ONLY if you have absolute GARBAGE OA. coldstone gives more damage otherwise.
    yeah i know coldstone does more damage… since i havent actually made this character yet i was thinking i mght need chillspikes as filler

  10. On devotions…

  • Viper and jackal aren’t doing that much, you’re going out of your way to pursue the OA in torch when chariot of the dead is closer.
  • Amatok is only good if you’ve got star pact or hourglass
  • consider restructuring devotions to nab hourglass, all your damage is cooldown based.
  • toad does little for you, the adcth will be minimal. Take empty throne for stunres, you’re well above your needs on green affinity.
  • dropping ulzuin’s torch you can pick up oklaine’s and drop scholar’s light.

agreed jackal, but not on viper. the viper gives RR and OA and energy management - very good.
no idea what you mean on amatok, just all around good for cold builds
there are so many actives in this build i dont know that it really needs hourglass, also you cant get hourglass unless you sacrifice leviathan and ulzuins which is a lot to lose
3-4% ADCTH does a ton actually. i have a similar build spellbinder that uses 4% and bone harvest heals to full
yeah idk about dropping torch, gives so much offense, but maybe

i am mostly worried about either doing too little damage, having 0% PR, or being way too squishy. not sure what else i could do to get tankier being a cold reaper caster tho.

maybe dropping ulzuin’s for fiend for the chain on ravenous earth and adcth and getting more frostburn damage and really great pants to compensate for the loss in hp?

https://www.grimtools.com/calc/d2jOkArV

Saw your post in my profile but thought I’d post here.
That build can definitely clear Glad 150 assuming you got basic kiting skills, especially if you optimize it a bit.
I wouldn’t use Foul Eruption for example, those points fit much better in Soul Harvest.

Another thing you need to pay attention to is the energy usage, your build has many high cost skills. With the caster offhand you have a decent amount of regen but you could still use a bit more for QoL.

If you haven’t made the build yet, you could also try an Acid Reaper with 2x Deathguard Blades. That way you can convert all the Vitality damage to Acid and a good chunk of the Cold damage on Lethal Assault gets converted to Acid too.
The DG weapons are ridiculously good.

You also get to use Bat devotion thanks to the conversion. You can put it on Ravenous Earth which essentially turns into large range turrets that lower enemy damage and also keep you healthy since it makes good usage of the low CD on Twin Fangs.

Another build I’m thinking of making when I find the time is a Cold/Frostburn Infiltrator caster focusing on Rune of Hag. With the massive buff to Beacon of Winter’s Veil and also Frostdread Cuirass in the latest patch, Frostburn builds got a lot better. And they were good to begin with.
With an optimized build you could probably get 400-500k Frostburn ticks after a while but also get decent initial burst from RoH.

Lots of stuff to try and not enough time. :slight_smile:

Going to repeat

  1. https://www.grimtools.com/calc/M2g0xygV
  2. Contact Ptirodaktill

Thanks for the input guys. Weyu funny you mention the energy cost and bat devotion. I have been playing with the build today in grimtools and came up with an updated version. I know the grimtools damage is not necessarily accurate but i got the damage up from 14k to 21k while maintaining similar hp/oa/da/armor and using bat devotion. Also, the reason for the pants is I was thinking if I am kiting I am going to need some good slow resistance.

https://www.grimtools.com/calc/62aOvxmZ

My only other worry is 1500 armor and 0 PR lol… but I guess I am kiting and have ton of slow / slow resist.

One thing this game needs…actual cold spells for a caster.

I’d kill for ice spike to be viable, not sure why they add these skills into the game when they’re not even utilized.

Dude
Drain Essence, Chillspikes, Trozan’s Sky Shard and Rune of Hagarrad are all end game viable cold spells

Everytime i bring up drain essence… i get laughed out of the building on discord.

I LOVE DE and ive wanted to build around the DE transmutor but i just don’t see how it’s possible, it’s literally my favorite skill in the game.

http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/showthread.php?t=64470

so i am trying to decide between a caster with conversions and slightly less weapon damage with 1h and book like this:

https://www.grimtools.com/calc/wV1GwynN

or cooldown hourglass 2h soulrend build with higher weapon damage with less conversions like this that also uses 26/16 shadow strike along with bone harvest and phantasmal blades:

https://www.grimtools.com/calc/eVLBJgMN

What do you guys think? Does the higher weapon damage and crit damage make up for the loss of conversions? I kind of like the idea of hourglass resetting cooldown of mark of torment and using shadow strike as a burst and phantasmal blades / bone harvest as additional damage in between CDs / AOE abilities… not sure which would be better.