I’m less than a week accustomed to GD so still wrapping my head around concepts and mechanics.
I’d like to make a character who primarily uses the explosive skills of a demolitionist, I don’t know the basics of supporting such skills so I’d appreciate your insight. Advice on a supporting mastery, devotion points and gear stats would be very useful!
If y’all are so moved, I’d also appreciate advice on whether to make a dual AA pistoleer either a pyro or a sorc too!
Sorry to bump but I’m still eager to find out if anyone has a build that works through the Granado and or Canister skills.
I’ve literally no idea how to properly make a build so I just threw this together as it seemed to match damage types, it’s a Commando:
TURNS OUT I CAN’T POST LINKS YET, fail.
If anyone has a better version please do offer advice! I’m very eager to hear it!
Arcanist goes nicely with Demo as Olexandra’s Flash Freeze not only CCs a whole screen worth of enemies at 12/12, but it also debuffs their fire resist by 100% - something that cannot be underestimated.
Occultist also goes nicely as it has a heal (Blood of Dreeg, which also gives health regen and Offensive Ability), as well as a resist debuff (Curse of Frality) and an attack speed buff (Solael’s Witchfire). If you go for a firestrike build, then the chaos damage from Brimstone will synergise with the buff in Occultist, and attack speed is always fun
Soldier can go with Demo - if you opt to focus on physical/pierce damage over fire. It gives lots of nice survivability skills as well as War Cry, which is nice as it reduces their damage, always a useful skill to have.
As for Shaman/Nightblade, these aren’t so good if you want to use Canister Bomb/Grenado, but if you want to use firestrike instead for an insanely powerful build, Saboteur is a good way to go (look around this thread for details for that build: http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/showthread.php?t=33991&page=5)
Gear stats: Just go for either fire damage or physical/pierce, depending on what you want to focus on, and skill accordingly.
P.S. if you want to post your build, re-create it on http://grimcalc.com/ and then click save in the top-right corner and paste the URL here.
Thank you very much for the advice, I find myself struck with indecision when it comes to the second mastery to shore up the demolitionist.
I’m aware of the advantages of the Arcanist when it comes to the passives, Maiven’s and Flash Freeze.
Also aware of the Occultists positives when it comes to Blood of Dreeg, the various Chaos abilities and Frailty-Vulnerability
*I do find the Soldier appealing in that it seems to have significant bonuses to physical, buffing the physical elements of Granado/Canister with things like Field Command-Squad Tactics, Decorated Soldier, Oleron’s Rage, War Cry-Break Morale in addition to many defensive options.
I think I keep talking myself into preferring a Commando for those physical buffs. I just don’t know how to build it for efficiency as opposed to a shopping list of ‘Ooh I want that and that and that’ such as this build http://grimcalc.com/build/YFUsCd
Again, thank you very much for your reply Flying Potato! It is very much appreciated.
Military conditioning should be maxed
I saw that you took squad tactics but it’s no good for a caster
I love vindictive flame total speed, with oleron you have 27% base run speed which is really cool
Flashbang gives you some crowd control and insane crits
Devotion: elemental storm on flashang for -resist
Meteor shower on canister bomb
I can’t test it right now but i will give it a try this week end.
I totally agree that you should pick some flashbangs.
The spell “velocity” is really good, so it works instantly ( not like canister bombs which are really slow)
They saved countless lives.
Military conditionning is also very good : +10% health almost for free is really valuable and will give you the 0.5s you need to activate a potion.
Have you found gears with cooldown reduction ?
Otherwise, i think you DPS might be quite low given the CD on canister bomb. I did something similar on a pyromancer, but i had the molotov cocktail and the demon’s breath in the spell rotation !
Personally, I find it strange that no-one is using Mortar Trap - I’ve never really used it properly, but the animation is just so cool I find it hard to resist Also, since you are going 50/50 in Demo, I would have thought that you may as well pick it up for the Big One - but then again, I have little experience in that area.
Blast Shield, in my opinion, also deserves a little more love - it scales really, really well when leveled up, with each point increasing the strength of the shield by 50/100/150/250 if you level/overlevel it enough (800 at 12/12, 2250 at 22/12!). It’s got a short cooldown but will just give you a little extra tankiness when your health starts to drop.
Another surprise was the lack of Flame Touched - Temper. Temper ends up giving 100% Physical AND Pierce AND 75% Internal Trauma damage - that just seems perfect for a build like this. I know points are limited, but you should at least have 1 - 1 in this tree because you will get + to skills and so that’d increase the potency of your build nicely.
And, I agree about Squad Tactics - the only useful stat to you there is the +% all damage, but 12 points in temper would give you WAY more damage than 12 points in Squad Tactics.
Here’s my attempt at a build of this style, again I’ve never really played a demo caster but here goes: http://grimcalc.com/build/cw7bRx
I’ve left some skills unmaxed - some don’t scale well into ultimate levels, and so if you get + skills, take points out until it’s at the point of good scaling again. Also, 1 point in passives that could be helpful is good.
Thank you all for the advice, I’ve not been able to get back to playing the character for a bit but I shall give it a go.
I will say that as far as I got with the Commando (only low level so far), with points in granado, canister and mortar trap the energy was consumed fast. Possibly with this approach it is wise to invest in Spirit, or even ditch the soldier approach and opt for the arcanist for more spirit for more frequent casts opposed to bigger, synergised casts?
My character is only low level so gearing hasn’t really come up as a specific issue yet Khalanos. As for the molotov option, I really wanted to focus on the more physical explosive approach ‘as advertised’ on the Demo mastery portrait of the toolkit as opposed to pure fire.
I have added a point in Mortar Trap just while I’m levelling and like I said above I found it very energy intensive to use it, grenado and canister on cooldown. Also I found that unless you’re facetanking, the mortar has a fair chance of not tracking its target efficiently. Between the two factors then, it might be that the mortar only comes out for special occasions.
As I say, I’m barely even an amatuer at making builds. I don’t know all of what to look out for in stats and how they work together. My suggesting squad tactics over things like Temper for example. I’ve even less clue when it comes to considering the devotions. So I appreciate your help!
If mortar trap doesn’t work, then don’t use it - I just thought it looked cool
If you have energy problems, you don’t have to get loads of spirit - you can just use as many Ectoplasm components as you have on your gear (although if you don’t have many, that can be a little bit of a problem of course).
If you opted for Arcanist, I’d recommend that you focus on the elemental aspect of all your abilities, as Arcanist complements that more.
I think either mastery is viable, again depending on what you want to focus on. Energy problems tend to go away in later game in my experience, so I wouldn’t worry about it.
Also, since you are going 50/50 in Demo, I would have thought that you may as well pick it up for the Big One - but then again, I have little experience in that area.