Build plan for my HC shieldbreaker (1h melee firestrike with beronath reforged)

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
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Edit: Update after tweaks

So I was leveling a shieldbreaker to use barthollem’s warmaul on a build and on the way I tried out 1h firestrike with beronath reforged (non-mythical) and it was super fun and tanky.

I tried respeccing for 2h firestrike, all my resists went down the drain, my hp total went down the drain, and farming for a BIS warmaul I ran into the Iron Maiden who RIP’d my character at level 98.

For my new shieldbreaker I am pursuing the 1h firestrike path that was so much fun and I have 3 goals set.

  1. Boost damage percent through the roof to scale tier 3 devotion procs (such as converted light of empyrion) and the annhilation relic which hit very hard fully converted to physical.
  2. Avenge my fallen shieldbreaker and defeat the iron maiden
  3. Be tanky and not die lol

Alright here is my (original) build plan:

3 piece Justice set is kind of the core with the bonuses to temper and flame touched. I fell in love with the triple tier 3 phys devotion setup, a couple tweaks here and there to fit in resists, cc resists, and reflected damage reduction.

Most of the greens should be relatively easy to farm and I do have half the legendaries already since I did swap builds before dying on my other dude.

Some Pros:
Over 3200 physical damage %

Very good physical resist and high armor to counter my ~Nemesis~

20k HP total

Very good OA and DA

Lazy 2 button build, where stuff just blows up around my dude

Cons:
I have to enter port valbury for the belt lol, need that stun res though

Right now I’m cruising through AOM veteran, just took a break to actually try and plan out the proper gear and devotions to aim for. This is the best I’ve gotten it in grim tools, I figured with beronath reforged a high damage percentage is also the best way to scale past enemy’s armor, while also being the only way to scale stuff like annhilation’s meteor.

I have given up on 2h melee firestrike, all hail 1h firestrike!

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Good luck … :zantai:

Anyway, I do not understand why you don’t use brimstone for more damage on fire strike.

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I really only have the skill points for either brimstone or static strike, static strike is more dps, plus it has the stun. I opted for taking stuff that boosts everything my character is doing over prioritizing just the left click.

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You are gonna be having problems with this one if you wanna tackle SR 30-31 consistently.

There is a way to play Physical snb Shieldbreaker, but it’s not like this. Your attack speed is too low and you are never getting that Gollus ring and that Ordas belt. “Imposing” is very low in Gollus ring prefix pool, same with Ordas belt (and getting of Ruin on top of it = forget it). 1H FS is not doing much here.

Here is how me and @banana_peel solved this snb puzzle:

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You can not stun bosses

converted damage into physical no longer by pass armor…

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Sorry I was not clear lol, because it does not bypass armor, I figured I’d go for a high phys value to better scale the converted damage past armor

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you mean you well in love with the idea of it.

Enjoy the ride, do not plan builds for which you do not have gear for is my advice :slight_smile:
also, you will not have enough damage to kill stuff before they kill you, so better pick up some defensive procs and such too

I can not stress enough how much melee fire strike sucks, compared to R fervor…

So? what does that mean here? Who cares, it is not relevant

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Darn, I was hoping that gollus at least would have imposing in it’s pool since it’s health focused.

There is a little leeway with the green affixes for me though, really only a combination of resists is needed. That shieldbreaker’s affix is kind of set in stone since the medal is the only spot I can roll it, but of the wolf works nearly as good as of ruin, stuff like of readiness or of attack aren’t too terrible since I’m stacking crit and otherwise more general affixes should work as well.

The imposing stuff can work with an extra devastating thrown in, or maybe stonefaced on the ring or amulet instead of using that belt, there is leeway with augments it’s just imposing is the tankiest option that also solves resists while giving damage.

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I’m not sure what the shield is accomplishing here, other than enabling shattering smash for which you don’t have any modifiers. Block chance is very low, it doesn’t boost your damage significantly. I feel like safeguard is probably a waste here, since it only applies to shield damage of which you do none other than shattering smash.
Attack speed is painfully slow. I’ve got a 1h dude with 10% higher attack speed, but it already makes me sad. This is not going to feel good :frowning:

The gollus ring confuses me as you have no health regen to speak of. There are better options that get you more.

Might even be an idea to go dual-wield instead of mess around with a shield.
I was messing around in this direction: Shieldbreaker, Level 100 (GD 1.2.1.6) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator (not sure if it’s any good either :smiley: )

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No, it is a globabal weapon damage bonus which applies when you have a shield.

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:face_with_monocle: oh, I swear it didn’t work like that when I tested it a while back. I must have been mistaken then.

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Unlikely greens is not the biggest drawback here tho, biggest drawback is wrong approach in terms of picking aa, set and weapon/shield

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Smite and stormtitan’s charge also uses shield as well, I think for specifically what I’m trying to accomplish shattering smash is necessary for flat resistance reduction to pull off the triple tier 3 devotion setup, as well as it’s another wps I can fit in which makes it more consistent with wps procs. (though dual wield like in your link there’s also korvaak’s brand to make up some of the lack of wps). Shield also gives up to 17% physical resistance so much tankier even with lack of block investment.

Basically the idea is trying to boost light of empyrion and annhilation relic meteor proc to deal the most damage I can with those converted to full physical. It’s kind of a run past and enemies just blow up type of build. Everything is chosen to boost those (and the other two tier 3 devotion procs) to the maximum.

Firestrike I personally think is great synergy with beronath, and since the Annhilation relic is kind of core to the experience I figured giving the demolitionist side something more to boost would be a bit better, and scaling crit damage with oathkeeper’s exclusive skill the extra 15% crit damage synergizes as well.

The gollus ring is chosen mostly for health, skill points, and resists. Cronley’s signet would squeeze a bit more attack speed out of it while still providing pierce res, but you’d lose some hp, and since I’m playing HC I really wanted to hit that 20k hp threshold. Plus I feel much more confident fighting kupacabra (who I already have been able to face easily) vs fabius while farming.

I think your setup is good as well though. Beronath firestrike is just enjoyable to play for me in general. Just I really think you should try it with the annhilation relic since you can already dual wield from the medal. It hits HARD

One thing I’d like to test is full justice set, because the proc will be converted as well. It might be hard to compete with maybe the strongest gloves for physical shield builds in the game, when the justice set gloves don’t have any damage bonus at all, but it could free up a bit more resists, add hp, and maybe let me fit in a gargabol’s ring (which should have the affix weighting I need, though a longer and more dangerous run), as well as add attack speed both from the gloves and the proc.

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I just don’t know what to do for the belt, I would just love to not have to farm port valbury. In my experience ancient grove is ten times an easier farm. Valderan, loxmere & the aether pools & tornados everywhere plus its low chance i get the rolls = nightmare lol.

I might just settle for stonefaced on the ring, amulet or belt and use a malmouth arcane girdle and run out of scrap again lmao or a stoneguard girdle… there’s no physical damage demo belts

the other option would be to take throne in devotions over owl and use a titan plating (I would prefer this), if I dedicate a different affix to resists, a single prismatic would probably work or maybe an extra devastating affix and use a gargoyle waistguard. Hopefully a devastating of ruin is more weighted for oathkeeper belts.

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Okay I think I have come up with a much more feasable and better setup with the titan plating and empty throne, added a link to my original post linking to this one at the top

Can even supercap resists and still be above 20k hp for extra security against even the most rare resist shreds/option to side against barrowholm:

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Still fantasy greens. You will spend hundred of hours to get them. And die anyway in SR26 :stuck_out_tongue:

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Ascension and Clarity are worth one point. That trap res (or lack of it) might put you in some sketchy siutations. Titan Plating in helmet is an absolute waste of a component here. Attack speed is still low (probably gonna be the main reason of build’s problems).

Also I see that most players didn’t get the memo that incoming physical damage has been reworked, so stacking a lot of phys res/armor won’t help as much as it was helping before.

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I indeed did not get that memo, or if I did misunderstood it.

All I noticed in the last few patches is that monsters now deal less physical damage, but players can stack less physical resistance.

But I’d concluded from this that armour would be MORE helpful (smaller hits → bigger impact of armour) and physical resistance less important. Do you mean that the damage level is so much lower armour is also less needed now?

Or were you referring to something else altogether?

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I meant that before stacking physical resist/armor helped a lot with overall survivability, nowadays it only helps against specific cases like Callagadra fight or SR 36+.

Armor is more valuable in SR 30-31 than phys res that’s for sure but your build’s bottleneck is sustain and stacking more armor won’t help it.

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Thing is my with my goals for the build and playing hc, I might actually attempt some superbosses if I feel confident but shattered realm is so rng and just suddenly spiky I probably won’t go for more than maybe the achievement and then dip outta there lol.

I think if I get fumbled at the wrong time in SR (or if I fumble IRL lol) I’m just dead.

If and when I go for SR I’ll probably respec my setup to be more regen focused like maxing out vindictive flame and taking tree of life bound to blast shield, playing it really safe.

I guess this setup would be more for farming stuff on the level of skeleton dungeons and totems, but I didn’t really have that as an idea in mind… more just I want to see how it plays for myself pursuing that idea of scaling some cool converted procs and pushing that as best as I can. I just want to see if I can get the meteor to like one shot bosses or get light of empyrion and vire’s proc to just take out groups of heroes in the time for maybe like one autoattack.

I think the titan plating might be necessary, there is a lot of internal trauma damage from the converted procs when they crit, when that gets reflected back with my first try at this it did enough to set off my circuit breakers if I don’t use a potion and thats before I really started to ramp my damage, that was using watcher, owl, and rebuke.