[Cold Caster] Gravechill Spellbinder - Cold based Drain Essence Necromancer

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
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Currently Gravechill is lacking item support. The only legendary that comes to mind is Mythical Deathbound Amethyst and it sucks.
This is a Drain Essence build for its transmuter Gravechill.

Character Sheet-

GrimTools-

http://www.grimtools.com/calc/YZeYk4YZ

This is a non-MI version of this build - http://www.grimtools.com/calc/vNQ98KXN

Concept-

I’ll try to summarize everything that I deem important:-

-Spellbinder was preferred over Reaper since it brings Damage Absorb, energy management, CDR and a Nuker to the table.
Alternatively Apostate can also be considered its energy management isn’t too shabby and Rune of Haggard is pretty solid if used right.

-Since sheet DPS abysmally low I had to compensate for it through a nuker i.e Trozan’s sky shard. The second modifier of TSS isn’t worth it unless you have Frostburn damage to work with which we don’t so we get remaining points in the final modifier
Alternatively you can go for Bone Harvest for nuke as well

-Since we lack Night’s Chill for RR we have to resort to using Crescent Moon and Necrosis for more RR

-The Off Hand was selected for Vitality to Cold conversion, aim for the highest possible conversion value. If you’re lucky enough then you might get max rolls on Life Leech resistance and Energy Leech Resistance

-Gloves and Amulet have been chosen as they restore whatever ADCtH was gutted from our main skill through the use of the transmuter

-The MIs help us cap cast speed and resistance. Don’t look at me like that we have no gear to support this build. These are level 75 MIs minus the boots. I don’t think MI drops have been increased I seem to be finding more double rare affixes on redeemer pants than on MIs

-For devotions you can get Crab for more defenses through Arcane Barrier but with ADCtH on our main skill, two defensive skills and one Circuit Breaker I thought the shotgun from Blizzard is a much better choice (in fact I enjoyed it so much I’ll update all my cold builds with Blizzard if I can squeeze it in)


In Conclusion-

Gravechill has a cool animation (no pun intended), it’s hard to build around due to lacking gear support
In my opinion the devs should do what they did for Tainted Power and make dedicated set for it.

Anyways, I personally enjoyed this which is why I posted it even though I was uncertain whether a guide was needed for something with little to no item support
The cool animation, multiple cold projectiles flying at the screen and whirlpool easily make this one of my favorite Cold Casters. Hope you guys enjoy this

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(Reserved)

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Reserved for future

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Cool build Chthon! :cool:

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Not as cool as my significant self. :cool: :cool: :cool:

#deadbuild by the Dead God. Hah!

1 out of 10000. I do hope you’re just warming up, err, cooling down.

Nice attempt, actually, but would had made more sense as a topic in ideas and feedback.

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Thanks

[QUOTE=Lokarr;583435]

Nice attempt, actually, but would had made more sense as a topic in ideas and feedback.


Well its not too shabby against the end game bosses and some were showing interest in Gravechill so decided to post it here for anyone looking for some tips on how to build it.
As for ideas and feedback section I already brought up the topic of lack of item support for Gravechill along with Uroboruuk Set being underwhelming for Drain Essence builds.

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How’s the updated Deathbound Amethyst to you?

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It’s just ~15% extra vit > cold convention. Small buff.

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^

It’s 25% actually.

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He had 45% from offhand and now he has 25% from amulet modifier + 45 % from offhand which is 25% + (1 - 25%)*45%=59%

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Spellbinder is probably the most versatile class combo because of how much cdr/circuit-breakers and damage absorption (plus cc res) it can muster.

Since it’s Chton’s build I am pretty sure it’s working well, but I would love to see some videos of it in action (like one video against AoM nemesis and maybe one video of Crucible).

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IIRC it’s an experimental build and Chthon said that Cold DE is actually the worst kind of DE and Spellbinder was indeed taken for tankiness and energy management. On the other hand he’s left without any kind of serious RR.

I’m at loss though why Chthon said that DE’s DPS is abysmally low, 100k sheet DPS is a lot.

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Sheet dps does not mean that much

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Channeling skills have high dps sheet numbers but that’s not an actual representation of its actual dps. My DE Vitality Ritualist has around 150k DPS sheet and it has actually less dps than some of my characters with like 70k sheet dps.

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People keep telling me that :smiley:
The discussion on that topic usually ends up with me saying that RR can be approximated as multiplier on top of it and OA’s effect isn’t that big of a deal if %crit isn’t stacked high enough, so unless you have an evidence that something is inherently wrong with how it’s calculated sheet DPS is still a useful metric. Actually I suspect that it’s the case for DE and FoI - their DPS seems to be inflated by DoTs.

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Nope
Still sucks. I can see why they made the change to it, as they wanted something half decent item for this transmuter till they come up with more items for it.
I’ve already pointed out that the best part of Drain Essence is the ADCtH and Gravechill guts it so any item designed for Gravechill should return some of that lost ADCtH back for this to work well.
Vitality and Aether are already strong damage types as one has ridiculous ADCtH through devotions and the other one has Devastation so them retaining ADCtH while poor old Cold damage type having it gutted doesn’t make much sense imo.
Conversion on Deathbound is good but Ravager’s Amulet is still BiS

Call me old fashioned but I still prefer Sorcerer over Spellbinder. Maybe I’m too used to Blast Shield

I don’t do videos but Kuba is doable (i move around to keep the divided forms off the pools), Aleks is tankable if you can Mirror at his Meteor and lastly Grava straight up murders me for a single mistake.

Not exactly an experimental build.
Cold DE is the best one for the animation but it INDEED is the worst one for damage potential
RR is an issue against Cold resistant enemies, fortunately no one too strong is resistant to this damage type.

Sheet DPS below 150-170k DPS for DE builds is very low imo. Especially considering Gravechill is supposed to increase damage by 20% our sheet DPS is very low as non Gravechill builds have 150k-200k sheet DPS

Pretty sure AAR isn’t any different as you have Electrocution in the mix now (or was I high when reading the patch notes)
All lasers now poses some sort of DoT component

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I really like the idea of this build, the animation is too good not to get some love. Would particularly love to see a reaper variant.

The latest Grim Misadventure shows a shield that offers some support for this. Hopefully it cover some of this build’s weaknesses when it goes live.

Here is my take on a cold DE version for a reaper with the gear that is currently available. Ideally something like:

www .grimtools.com/calc/4NOAlxXV

It will have better RR than the spellbinder but output will probably be lower.

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I have tried out Cold DE Reaper, it sucked. It is MUCH more effective just to spam cold Phantasmal Blades with Speaker for the Dead.