[Cold Caster] Phantasmal Blades Cold-based Spellbreaker

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
21

Sorry i had missed out on the Keybinding section :stuck_out_tongue:

22

Wait, you say you can easily freeze the nemeses?? I thought they have 500% freeze resistā€¦

23

I also believed this until i saw Sober and ed chain freeze Green bug

24

Finally managed to cap my resistances and revert back to buildā€™s original setup of using - Manticore + Leviathan

All hail RNGesus

Update-

  1. Devotion changes

  2. Gear changes - Resistances seem to be in a decent spot now (compared to before itā€™s a huge improvement)

  3. OA increased, DPS increased, Increased HP as well

  4. Minor skill tree changes to adjust to the new devotion setup

  5. Added a cool looking scenery screenshot :cool:

25

Nice screenshot :slight_smile:
So other char pictures are also new?? There are no cap resistancesā€¦ And still Phantasmal Blades on 25/26??

26

Oops. I should edit the previous post.

The previous setup had shitty gear and hence had three resistances (chaos, aether and vitality) lingering in the 40s. I had to drop Manticore and Whirlpool to cap my other resistances.
Those awkward devotion choices affected my OA and i couldnā€™t take advantage of Crits
This setup has much more balanced resistances

Thanks for pointing it out

Thanks :smiley:

27

Can u make a video of this character and grimcalc without item+.

28

Hey, man, it`s time to update a pics)

29

Hey nice build mate.

I remember asking jajaja to make a cold/pierce-based PB build but he never did. :stuck_out_tongue:

FYI Bloodfeast the Ruthless is also immune to freeze once heā€™s in his enraged state at low health. I think he should be nullifiable.

30

hello im kinda new to the game and playing spelltype char, can u tell me some simple guide how to leveling skill,devotion and stats distribution when im starting the game? and also the combo of the skill, thank you so much for the build :smiley:

31

Canā€™t shoot videos, shit computer. Even high resolution screenshots fail sometimes.

No major update to the build from my side :wink:

I only update when the build receives a major update from my side.

Per patch changes effects donā€™t concern me. Fair enough, right? :smiley:

Hey thanks.

Cold/Pierce isnā€™t easy i had to settle for pure cold. I went Pure Pierce on my Blademaster but recent nerfs (thanks Crate :rolleyes:) killed the build and i deleted that character and used the items on this build to cap resistances

Are you sure about Feast?

Hmm, see being an old player i have the liberty of having stashes of starting items so leveling guide isnā€™t my specialty.
I will try to add something to the main guide. Let me know if its useful and i will change accordingly

32

Added leveling guide. Not the best guy to give out leveling tips so let me know if it needs changing

33

I like your suggestion of component skills to level.

In that vein, I suggest cracked lodestone as one that merits consideration. Its AOE is pretty solid. I often put that on my melee toons and find that the added aoe and lightning dmg speeds up the process significantly.

34

Nice, yeah i remember it. Itā€™s like CT

35

Yeah you can check on grimcalc. In most cases it doesnā€™t really matter since he has relatively low health for a boss.

36

Lol, yeah i still added him. Thanks

37

I like the build idea, I wish game designers would allow more cold builds since theyā€™re my favourite in all games. But they seem to think freezing is such a big advantage that they need to make cold almost unplayable in other ways. Sad.

But anywayā€¦ reading this I didnā€™t understand the quoted sentence above.

  1. If the %weapon-damage on Blades (presumably Phantasmal Blades) is lowā€¦ AND thereā€™s no high amounts of flat damage availableā€¦ why is that a good thing? I read both of those things as problems. Hope that makes sense.

  2. PB has high innate pierce and bleed and some %weapon-dmg, so why not stack some of those damage types? Yes, bleed is a dot (not sure about pierce) but is cold essential for PB?

I also realised that Iā€™m not 100% clear as to how %weapon-dmg works. If I have a stick that says ā€œ100 physical dmgā€ and a skill does 50% weapon dmg then I get 50 physical per cast?

But then if I change it to a stick that says ā€œ100 cold dmgā€ then I get 50 cold dmg per cast instead?

If thatā€™s true, then a cold-based spell user should have a weapon with cold damage in their hand?

38

  1. Bad phrasing on my part. Lethal Assault does add to good amounts of flat damage in a shotgun situation (which is 90% of the time)
    But flat damage per blade is too low.
    But we drop Lethal Assault cause keeping it up is a chore

  2. Well this is a Cold Caster :stuck_out_tongue:

  3. Cold based weapon is the key.

See flat damage added to per blade is low but during shotguns it all adds up and is hence good. But this build already has too many things to cast so we drop ABB all-together

39

Cool, thanks for clarifying :slight_smile:

Sorry to ask in dribs and drabs, but a couple of other questions occurred when I was re-speccing my old PB breaker:

  1. Is the playstyle of the final build to stay at range or to SS into a pack of mobs?
    Since PB has a fair bit of range, it seems a bit suicidal to use SS as the normal method. Is SS just for escape? (when in trouble SS a mob and get 500% speed and run like hell?)

  2. The skill bindings section doesnā€™t seem to have Elemental Storm attached to anything? It mentions binding it to PB in the levelling section (pre-Leviathan) but it doesnā€™t seem to be bound to anything in the finished build, although it is in the final devotions setup. RoS?

  3. Also, where do you assign wayward soul - Star Pact, VoS or IEE - does it matter as long as itā€™s up 100& of the time? Therefore not P. Burst.

  4. You have a couple of points in the crossroads that donā€™t seem necessary (1 Chaos, 1 Order) - not sure if there are better options.

Edit: removed question re Oklaineā€™s - I failed to spot that the +3 green is needed for Leviathan.

40

While I was looking to see if there were any answers to my previous post, I got to thining about the Build Concepts of this this buildā€¦

One is that itā€™s a pain in the donkey to keep ABB/Lethal Assault up, so it made me think about some crossbows I found that had +4 PB. Maybe the game designers are telling us that the way to keep ABB up and stay ranged is to use a crossbow first, get ABB/Lethal Assault running, then use PB with the xtra cold dmg loaded up - and still at range.

Would that work?

It could have a xbow on switch but weapon-switching is just another form of painful, so maybe it would be necessary to use the xbow all the time.
Are there any good xbows in the game that could do this?

EDIT: Or a pistol with a shield or offhand?