First of all, i have to say that i am quite new to this game, although most of the mechanics follow TQ logic. My top level character is 65 level druid, using Trozans Sky Shard+Blizzard, Wind Devil+Tsunami and Storm Totem+Reckless Tempest. From defensive devotions im currently using Turtle Shell and working to unlock Tree of Life. Skills, devotions and stat points are included in link bellow. Please review and comment.
For Lightning/cold build, Widow and viper are good constellations too, because of the resist debuff. I also really like Rhowan’s crown, because of elemental storm.
Usually I use Widow on my main damage skill (trozan for you), Rhowan’s crown on storm totem, to have plenty of elemental storm running and reckless tempest on wind devil.
With these devotion, it’s easier to get behemoth as a defensive constellation instead of Tree of life.
The key in grimdawn is to debuff the resist of the damage you’re using as much as you can as most of them are cumulative.
Not all, if I remember well, flat isn’t cumulative with other flat resist, but it’s cumulative with the other debuff resists.
Not such great advice on resist debuffs there. Elemental Storm from the Crown devotion won’t stack with wind devil resistance debuff (wind devil is vastly superior). Also the resistance debuff on viper requires you to hit your enemies with a 100% weapon damage attack every few seconds to apply it. Not the easiest thing with the number of cooldown attacks you’ll be juggling.
i dont think the weapon % rule still applies, they changed it recently so that any %weapon will apply the full debuff.
on wind devil vs elemental storm. i almost always choose elemental storm in shaman builds because wind devil needs alot of points AND an extra cast animation, while elemental storm is automatic as long as u got a decent slot to bind the proc to. having to interrupt ur offense to cast debuffers lowers your dps so its not a free debuff like elemental storm is.
on top of all this, rohwan’s is quite easy to reach and the rest of the points on it give really good bonuses, like 18 ele resist and 70% ele dmg? for 4 passive points its pretty good.
finally, wind devils move around randomly while ele storm stays in place, this can be a downside to it as well.
i would argue the other way around on elemental storm being quite a bit superior to wind devil overall.
You seem to be talking about a very different build. The cooldown build outlined here uses Storm Totem, Skyshard, and Wind devil almost exclusively to deal damage. No weapon damage attacks at all - and very few direct player attacks. So there is no ‘interrupting’ your offense to cast wind devil as wind devil - specifically Maelstrom - is an integral part of your offense.
Also to the OP with your original build. More than 1 point into Frozen Core is essentially worthless. You can do far better with those points either picking up devastation (useful for big targets like Moose) or getting more defensive passives. A higher ranked flash freeze (the better to crush trash) or grasping vines (very useful for applying Widow -lightning res) are both good options. Also if you have much in the way of +shaman skills tossing one point into Oak Skin could prove useful.
Have wind devil proc with reckless tempest due to unique proc of it
Reckless tempest act as a self buff for it’s duration and will rain down lightning around the buff target, in this case is the wind devil so it will be abit of a waste when it proc on storm totem because it doesn’t move around
Also wind devil deal DOT which make it quit fast to proc activation when crit.
Oh that was another thing. If you are going with Reckless Tempest and Blizzard devotions I’d put those onto Storm Totem and Wind Devil (which one gets which isn’t such a big deal, but they all have their own cooldown timer!)
Putting Tsunami onto sky shard can be fun as with the cooldown of skyshard you’ll have a 100% chance to trigger a tsunami every skyshard.
Wind Devil’s dps is pretty atrocious damage on it’s own, but can proc multiple tempests with it so it ends up being okay especially since there’s nothing else really worth while to put the points into
I may be wrong, but I think the recent change was in regards to % total damage. It had the problem with blade arc of going over the cap and giving you extra resist reduction etc and on stuff like primal strike it the -35% total mod would drop things like lifesteal, weapon applied resist reduction to 65% of their original value even though you were still doing 100% WD
Probably youre right - i havent been experimenting with devotions. For now the eeffect is mass lighning storms and tsunamies. Sky shard casts Blizzard almost every time due to huge damage and critical strikes.
Its one of my damage skills - i didnt see any reason to max the basic skill, but i have maxed its synergies. Im currently in Homestead on Epic and can say that the character i s doing pretty well. I havent yet maxed my damage buffs - they have only a few skill point invested.
I have considered the option to max Flash freeze but most of the time i rely on storm totems and wind devils. I use Sky shard mostly in cases when monsters are too near. So i think it will be kind of waste to put 12 points into this skill because too little monsters reach me. In this matter i use Flash freeze as a last skill for defense. I have no experience with Grasping vines but i think that i have to rearrange devotions totaly in order to get Widow. Besides shouldn`t Grasping vines be maxed in order to be effective, should it? Please correct me if i am wrong. Is Devastation OK without any damage buff?
I’m going for a similar build right now, though I don’t rely as much on the storm totem or wind devil. I did go for Olexra’s Freeze, actually hard to imagine beating monsters without it.
I went for Elemental Storm, but then read up that it doesn’t stack. I was thinking about Leviathan, but couldn’t really come up with a good devotion set up to get there (I’m at like 43 dev points out of 50). Instead, I am trying out Elemental Seeker, I wonder how much success this sees. So far seems kinda meh other than the fact that I throw more crap at the screen than normally. It doesn’t seem that good other than the explosion at the end. Then again, I haven’t put in the points into some the stars on it, like the 100+ to lightning, fire, and cold damage (went straight for the skill). I had to lose Turtle Shell.
Regarding Flash freeze - i dont use it much because i move a lot. I have used to play all my casters this way since Titan Quest. I dont like the idea to face any monster, i would rather kill them from a distance. Don`t have any experiense with Elemental seeker and Leviathan, but on paper Leviathan looks cool.
In this case devotions have to be reconsidered - 20% elemental resist is too good to pass. Probably will lose Tree of Life …
Maybe the build will look something like this:
Worth noting for future builds the XX% reduced is a little different, it’s not a flat value subtracted but rather it it multiplies their resist (after the flat reductions) by .8 or 1.2 if they are in the negative. This makes it not that great necessarily if we leave an enemy with a tiny amount of resist after our other debuffs. Still a really good overall devotion though and often worth taking