Hi all, been browsing the forums for a bit and decided to join and throw this out there to see if anyone has advice they’d like to share for a build I’d like to take to high SR. I started playing about 2 months back. After a bit of hemming and hawing and taking a few class combos to 100, I settled on trying to build a Death Knight with skeletons around Mythical Guardian of Death’s Gates. I’ve cleared SR40 and am having some trouble with avoiding deaths on higher difficulties. I don’t know what the standard for Crucible is, but I am able to clear 150-170 with no buffs/armaments in about 7 minutes. I believe a faster time and higher SR would be possible with better piloting, but I’m still getting used to the number of buffs and making sure I get Cadence strikes in to trigger the CDR devotion. Here’s what I’ve come up with so far:
I’m not sure that extra points in Rotting Fumes are necessary, and the proc on attack package is sort of a holdover from wanting the build to work without skeletons so I could avoid making the screen too busy when playing with friends. I do have some spirit that could be reallocated to physique, I’ve made some devotion changes since last respeccing attributes and no longer need to hit >600 spirit.
As far as gear, I settled on this armor package over the Lost Souls/summoner sets largely due to a few of the sets requiring changing my weapon. The Ascendant Cowl is also hands down the best “survivability” item I’ve found for skeletons as mass resummoning is much more forgiving than kiting and waiting for the cooldown. I played with Necrolord’s Gaze a bit, but I believe the mass resummon is more important than better uptime on Mark of Torment, and the Cowls can provide pets with some very good elemental resist numbers - which are needed with the current augment/devotion config. I believe Cursebearer and Symbol of Solael are necessary due to the build’s relative lack of RR, but maybe I’m missing a better way to up that number.
For devotions, I opted not to take Shepherd’s Call (which is probably a cardinal sin in some peoples’ books) and instead tried to build around Time Dilation, Hungering Void, and a few of the more defensive tier 3s that could get close to/100% uptime with Time Dilation in the mix. I think Dryad is probably necessary for upkeep while Healing Rain is cooling down, but I’ve also played around with Ulo + the last Dying God node + Lion, and alternately Staff of Rattosh + Lion over Viper + Dryad.
Anyway. Apologies for being wordy. Appreciate any feedback you may have.
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.
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.