Fun build. Tanky, good damage, but fairly CD heavy. You’ll probably hate life for a little while if you try to play with this on controller. This configuration does require an Ascendant Cowl of the Wild (Theurgist’s prefix would be optimal, still haven’t dropped one) to max pet elemental resistances, and an Impervious Wendigo Gaze with an Untamed suffix is preferred.
SR is smooth. 30-31 is fast, easy, and it’s rare that a skeleton dies, even with multi boss pulls. 36 is more challenging and skeletons will die, but that’s what the Ascendant Cowl is there for. 38-40 can be completed within the timer with good piloting, but they are not for the faint of heart. This build hits 79% vitality RR, which is not sufficient for easy Celestials - it’s possible to kill all of them with some kiting, but I’d recommend taking some Cursed Tinctures, binding Time Dilation to Solael’s Flame, and settling in for longer fights. And for god’s sake do not pick Ravager of Souls.
Wait - are you saying you cleared the current SR 40, which is the prior SR 100? I assume so because you’re saying you ran 150-170 “naked” in 7 minutes. These are honestly very impressive times for a build concept like this.
I’ll give a few pointers: There is already flat RR baked into the weapon and you’re running Ishtak, so as long as you’re casting Bone Harvest and Reap Spirit semi-regulaly, you have no need for War Cry’s transmuter. Additionally, you also have no need for Cadence and the WPS - you have more than enough skills to proc all the devotions you need. The biggest weak spot I’m seeing is the lack of pet secondary resistances like Freeze and Petrify, but outside of replacing your Osyr’s Guidance with Keeper’s Binding Dust, I see no way to remedy this considering how tight your devotion requirements are.
I see two avenues of improvement: one is replacing War Cry with Ill Omen so that you have a more controllable source of damage reduction (War Cry is instant and not lingering, so once you use it, monsters that come into your range within the 7.5 sec cooldown will not be affected by it). Secondly, I removed the unnecessary points from Cadence, WPS, and skills over the breakpoint (there’s no material difference between Master of Death being at 17/12 and 18/12) and instead moved them to the Soldier mastery tree so you can take Scars of Battle so that your Armor Absorption is at 99% instead of 84%.
Those things will make a difference, though how much I can’t say for certain. Just don’t try and fight Callagdra with this squad. I have a near exact set-up and it was 20 minutes of pure agony. It’s not worth it.
Yes, I’ve cleared the current patch’s SR40. I had no idea about the “compression” applied to the Shattered Realm in the last patch until last night, so I was trying to reach SR75. Was starting to wonder why Fabius had ~100m hp and a ~74k auto attack on SR75 in grimtools, building for that felt a bit out of reach. Haha.
I did start looking at removing the War Cry transmuter last night - it was primarily there as part of the build’s original “theme”, but I can still keep plenty of terrify cc around with Hungering Void. I did not know that Ill Omen was a lingering effect, so I will experiment with that and see how it feels compared to War Cry. I’m big on value points in tandem with + to all skills, so it’ll hurt me inside to take the WPS package off, but you’re definitely right that it’s one of the few remaining optimizations to make and that it probably isn’t adding much. Also appreciate the point about Master of Death, I did not look closely at the % OA change from level to level so I’ll make sure to do that in the future. I appreciate the feedback, thanks for taking a look.
Ok, so I like getting rid of Cadence. Solael’s Flame is a much more reliable trigger for Time Dilation if I’m struggling to remain in melee range and it’s also nice that it can proc on each tick - makes it less stressful to ensure I’m activating TD asap after each cooldown. As far as War Cry/Ill Omen, I think I prefer War Cry purely due to the massive aoe. Uptime shouldn’t be a big issue with the CDR I have going on and I haven’t had unmanageable problems with second/third waves not having the damage reduction applied in SR 30+.
I ended up taking points out of Rotting Fumes and the WPS skills (except Zolhan’s - I know bosses have substantial slow resist, but stacking it with the Cursebearer proc is still a fairly effective form of damage reduction). If for some reason ~3700 OA on the skeletons is not doing the trick I can always Ishtak a boss in a pinch. I was able to make the change to fit Scars as well as a point in Decorated Soldier to get my elemental resists to a spot that should be okay vs Mogdrogen. Here’s where I ended up: Death Knight, Level 100 (GD 1.2.1.3) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator
I know you advise against taking down Callagdra with this build, but I have to try I decided this was the build I was going to 100% the game with and Callagdra/Crate are the only pinnacle achievements left on my list.
Small update, trimmed some of the skill tree fat in favor of better DA and a little more regen. Build has nearly 30k hp now, heh. I did end up keeping Cadence as I like triggering Time Dilation or Dryad with autoattacks better than triggering with Solael’s, but that’s another skill point that could be allocated elsewhere.
I decided this was the build I was going to 100% the game with and Callagdra/Crate are the only pinnacle achievements left on my list.