First post here, been playing Grim Dawn for about a month now. My first character, a Primal Strike Warden, just hit Ultimate last night! I also have a level 30ish rifle using Cadence Commando who has been a ton of fun.
The thing is though, both of these are essentially auto attack builds with a few support skills. I think I want to branch out to a pure caster style for my third character. I’ve read some builds but can’t decide on anything. I’d love recommendations from the forums. Here are a few things I am looking for:
Preferably doesn’t use masteries I have in other characters or if it does uses totally different skills.
Can be played while leveling up. I don’t like builds that are only really playable at high levels or revolve around a specific item or set.
Cruicible viable is a plus - it’s a fun change of pace for me.
Is somewhat noob friendly. I’m still far from a GD mechanical god.
I really like the concept of a shield bearing, fairly tanky caster! Is there any way to do this that isn’t Physical or Commando? Just trying to add some diversity in my characters and I already have a physical/pierce commando.
Keep in mind these are my hardcore characters, nothing fancy, just solid performers. Dps could be higher changing devotions, gear or both…Mark of Divinity would be the first thing to change.
On the PRM build the only really important piece of gear is the helmet for the free Devastation on critical. I’d pass on Calidor’s Tempest without the Agrivix Set though.
For the Trozan’s build a good chunk of damage comes from the gear procs so endgame dps probably wont be very good without the weapon and amulet at least.
On the poison build you just spam all your skills and then kite everything while your DoTs do work. Nighblade instead of Arcanist would be a big damage boost.
All 3 can take a beating but none can facetank everything so keep that in mind, only my temporal arcblade/caldor’s tempest battlemage can do that :P, but its really similar to the build you just ran.
The Trozan’s Druid build really interests me. While it does use Shaman, it’s mostly stuff I don’t have on my Warder. What’s the general playstyle of this builds for clearing and boss fights? I’ve never used TSS, but I assume you are trying to clump packs together, hit them with a TSS, then kite while on CD? Use the flash freeze and mirror stuff if you’re mobbed?
The Warlock also looks fun to me - two totally new Masteries and I haven’t touched DoTs really at all.
Pretty much, but you can stand in the Wendigo Totem aura to heal so you don’t have to kite all that much. Also with decent gear the CD on TSS is less than two seconds so its not too big of a deal. The CD on the gear proc sky shards is around 4s. In the TSS down time is when I cast Wind Devils, once you get all 3 rolling they add some decent damage.
Oh, and on that build you probably don’t want points into the Iskandra’s Elemental Exchange line, I’m just screwing around messing with some stuff on it lol. Its kinda funny to see Oleron’s Might crit for 30k on a caster.
For the Warlock build, if you switched to Witch Hunter, are you mostly looking to take Night’s Chill, Merciless Repertoire, and Justifiable Ends? I assume you went Arcanist for the defensive stuff due to playing HC?
Yeah in HC not running soldier or arcanist can get dicey, but a battlemage can almost be asleep at the wheel lol.
For skills you’ve pretty much got it–shadow strike in, blow all CDs and run like hell lol.
Don’t forget Pneumatic Burst on Nightblade, +total speed is gold. If you go full glass cannon burst n’ kite you’re looking at 80k-100k DoTs, my Warlock does 50k easy.
Can no-one make a pure caster build, which does not uses melee attacks? I checked this site and really cannot find one that uses Panetti’s missile, for example, or Aether Ray. I am checking for skill combinations but it seems that most toggle skills just increase weapon damage or turn physical damage to elemental, nothing that would add to a skill’s damage. In Titan Quest I could go with a build that had no physical attacks and only used spells. I am still checking the skill trees to find myself a combination that works well - I am definite on Arcanist for one tree but unsure what the other should be. Shaman has a nice Lightning Ultimate skill, but other than Storm Totem, not much else for casters until than.
I have both Chthon physical forcewave commando and Tomodak DEE who is wip.
Chthon forcewave caster is amazing, tons of fun, not much gear dependant with extreme cc and survivability. It is like caster Conan
DEE is more of a mage type atacking atm from afar and kiting and running like my daughter when chased by a wosp
im doing campaign mostly but who knows…
im still on the fence as to 2nd mastery for my dee toon who is finishing veteran.
Nightblade offers nice total speed boost abd malee / ranged avoid chance that would go nice with eel. Plus merciless rep for flat poison boost which now lists for my toon +295 poison dmg.
otoh this idea of a soldier or arcanist is still at the back of my head so…
soldier woul mean shield and way more toughness although missing on caster offhand or secon deeeg weapon.
The thing about pure caster builds is that the skills you need for those builds are attached to components. I am playing a very fun lightning/cold caster druid around the low level epic storm caller gear and she has destroyed just about everything so far in veteran. I put a coldstone on the dagger and deathchill bolts on the voodoo doll and use the Greater Ice Spike as the main casting spell. Then I just take all the caster skills that use ice and lightning for support skills (sky shard, wind devil, storm totem) , and a Squall relic for the storm spell. A couple of pieces with the “Of Squalls” affix gives plenty of lightning proc.
I did a similar one with a Pyromancer and greater fire blast and Devil touched ammo on heritics tome and witchstalker. The fireblast as the main cast spell and demons breath as the support aoe. Then there are Scorched ends and Of the void for extra fire and chaos procs.
The biggest frustration about the caster builds is that the item skills are unanimously, across the board, biased toward melee builds, and that is why you see people promoting melee builds so much. They are simply easier to build with less headache. You can be assured that if you get an idea of how to improve your character you will find most of the time the component restrictions are going to hedge you toward a less than desirable, less than intuitive build. I have the pyromancer using witchstalker because it must be a gun or offhand in order to get the fire blast ability, but a caster has no use for the gun and would be better served putting the component on a dagger or wand. But in every way, when building a caster, that which makes most sense is virtually never possible. To do in in the way that makes sense requires that you take the lesser of the cast item spell options.
There is no castable lightning skill like Greater Icespike/Fireblast, but you could probably come up with something similar with chaos bolts and aether tendril and the aether fire procs, etc. The caster builds are there, they just aren’t in skill trees necessarily.
Edit: Also, the tree passives are not where you are going to get your main skill boosts. That will come from the items. If you go with Panetti’s you just need to find elemental boosting gear. It you wanted to do a pure elemental arcanist then you might shoot for mavens epic set and if you want to add some aether in there there are plenty of Aether/Elemental pieces too, and components. And don’t listen to the noise about legendary gear, I promise you that level 20 Mavens set is just as viable at level 50. Pick the gear, note the damage types and what classes that gear will boost(check the empowered versions), build your caster around that.
Vitality Conjurer, Blackwater Cocktail Sorcerer/Commando/Pyromancer, Stun Jacks Elementalist, Phantasmal Blades Witch Hunter, Dreeg Evil Eye Witch Hunter/Witchblade. None of these use melee attacks and are currently some of the best builds.
“Skyfall” Sorcerer: http://www.grimtools.com/calc/lNkRqRZJ
Uses Olexra’s Flash Freeze to freeze/debuff mobs, then rains meteors and devastation upon them!
(Note: this sorcerer is still in development so is not an optimal build - for me anyway).
Phantasmal Blades “Nether Seeker” Witch Hunter: http://www.grimtools.com/calc/YZeRL6N8
(Note: this Witch Hunter is still in development so is not an optimal build - for me anyway).
Keep in mind that Phantasmal blade toons are difficult to level. Best to use Dreeg’s Evil Eye to level with and then make the switch to Phantasmal blades once you have acquired reasonable gear to support it. Eventually, your required gear will come around.
Side note: Since your fairly new, you may/may not have the gear shown in the links above. Juts make do with whatever you can find to support your chosen build.
Castable chain-lightning is available through the Aetherstorm set.
Similarly if you have the right combination of items you can make an AAR build that focuses on lightning damage etc.
There’s a lot of different niche combinations available but unfortunately they require specific items to work.
I’m doing a Chaos AAR Warlock build right now but I don’t really spam AAR as much as I thought I would. Technically it’s only used when surrounded by large enemies or enemies with large health pools. Otherwise I use other AoE skills to get past trash mobs.
I haven’t tried a PRM build personally but I’m not sure I like spam LMB builds. Was thinking of biting the bullet and just using the Invoker’s set. I have a lot of Nuker builds that use Mortar Trap, my latest is a Chaos-Mortar Pyromancer. It does use Chaos Bolt as LMB but that’s just supplementary damage. Not sure if I would put them in the caster category but they certainly don’t attack in melee range
That chain lightning is so underwelming. I was very dissapointed after I finally got the amulet to drop to complete the set.
I have no Idea why they decided to make the skill only castable if you have a target locked. Just makes the skill very clunky to use and not very fun.
