I’m going to level 2h Pierce caster. I like Chillspikes skill. Which of the two following devotions would you choose?
I don’t want another devotion proc, i.e. Blades of Wrath from Assassin.
(Minimizing number of skills used + wanting to proc on single targets well).
Damage is not the top priority, should have decent damage anyway.
I’d probably gonna go with the second one, especially if not using Aura of Conviction. I also think that Ulzaad is not too useful on levelling new toon 
I also incline towards the 2nd one but thought that perhaps Living Shadow is super good, I haven’t played it yet.
I slightly like the 2nd one, but taking both Harp and Scales I think a bit redundant for energy management. Living shadow has life steal. Have you tried Bull or Assassin?
I didn’t take it Harp for Energy, just for stats (from proc too) + affinity. Fit well when I was doing it.
Bull seems kinda bad for a Pierce build.
As for Assassin I guess I could bind it to Inquisitor Seal (I use Chillspikes + BS + HoG + WoP + Inquisitor Seal) although on single target bosses it probably wouldn’t proc well. But a devotion looks pretty nice (although 7% Phys res lost I think and some casting speed) so I’m adding to my my list. What do you think?
Bull can be used to stack more cunning on a pierce build. That is about the limit of it’s usefulness there.
ditch harp and go soldier 
Make me a full devo and I’ll criticize it for losing some important things / say why I don’t like it 
I have Unknown Soldier devo in the OP but I prefer the 2nd or the 3rd devo.
something jank like this Level 100 (GD 1.1.9.2) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator very rushed draft, but gets the important stuff
That’s a very good one and I think I had it at some point but the problem with it I have is that it’s hard to bind 5 skills I use in a good way Infiltrator, Level 100 (GD 1.1.9.2) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator
Start with Living Shadow - has to be bound to Chillspikes to be useful because proccing on Crit devo with HoG on a boss… Come on.
Now Assassin’s Mark - Blade Spirit is the only good option.
And now to Bat - we’re left with Word of Pain or Inquisitor Seal.
But on a boss it’s 20% chance per 1 second which is whatever (1 proc per 5s), why bother with at all then.
Whereas in my other setups it’s 67% chance 3 times per second which means very consistent Bat shooting on single target boss.
has no more skills than the one you had using Assassin ;), and it’s (4 not 5 as i’m counting, AM, Bat, Azrakaa, Soldier)
also, plop twin fangs on chillspikes or something, and use ring of steel for shadows, or something else
The thing with Assassin is that it can be bound to Seal which at least gave me one chance per second
Wheras RoS (don’t want additional button) or Hog one chance only couple of seconds doesn’t seem to good, especially that I’m not planning for it to be a 3000 Cunning build with 7 of the Wolf Greens or something like that and play Crucible where it’s easy to proc anything with anything ; )
i have soldier on RoS on all my blademasters, regardless of 3k OA or 3500 OA, it triggers pretty fine even on single targets
Assassin you can also get more than 1 trigger chance per second if you toss more than 1 seal out, since it seems they will each do application per second it will just only do 1 instance of dmg, but multiple seals = multiplying the crit chance
could also just ditch the left side devos and go assassin + soldier 
Yes I actually tested it with Bat and like 8 Seal some time ago and it was proccing like crazy
but thanks for recalling this because I completely forgot about it.
Yeah, that’s what I’m wondering about what gives better leech, those Soldiers or Bat. Maybe I’ll have to calculate it / test it but I’m kinda lazy
[doing some calculation atm]
bat leech is way better than soldier
even on my high dmg blademaster soldier leech feels like a drip-feed rather than something “substantial” unlike player dakka heals, reeeeaally noticeable on Gargabol when you have like 5% HP left and let 6 shadows go to town while you run in circles, compared to you hitting him once and getting full health 
Hmmm… it’s weird, maybe these Soldier don’t proc it every time? Because look at the calculation
Bat (assume 1 proc per second) = 2 x (165 + 0.22 * 300) * 0.4 ~ 180 WolframAlpha
[exluding Life Leech Res and % damage for simplicity]
2 - two projectiles
160 - Pierce damagee
300 - assuming such weapon damage (might be a bit too low)
0.4 - acdth
Living Shadow
3 * 200 * 0.25 * AS = 150 AS
(number of soldiers x average Pierce damage x ACDTH * Attack_Speed (?)
Seems comparable even if Soldier attack once per second?
i think it’s more a matter of player dmg just being way higher than shadows, so they might hit fast and a lot, but it’s like 25% of 10k dmg or less i think(dmg base off memory) - even the pierce part alone for bat without vit conversion or factoring in WD should heal more i think
Ya, just ask for diversity. Bull proc quite nice. For pierce build, especially caster, I think only if your build manage to survive one shot hit, otherwise health bar fills up in second. 7% more physical res utterly good. But 3 points to Obelisk is even better, that’s more than 300 DA + 300 armor.
