Unfortunately I am not rich I only have about 1mil iron which is less than 10 tries and I doubt I will get lucky enough to get the pieces I need.
How much should I aim for? It may take a while before I can get decent green boots.
In your setup from the video you have 30%. I now have ¬20% and I can get an extra 10% by swaping a ring component to a Runebound Topaz.
In case I need more, I have been looking at some Devotion variations to get either Empty Throne or Chariot and they all have their pros and cons, but they are doable.
For example in this setup I removed torch and blue CR to get empty throne and then swaped Sailro’s Guide with Eel and Scholar’s Light with Hawk to make up for the lost OA and crit dmg. I ended up with 200 less health and 30 less OA.
However since Yugolan has 24% life steal I was thinking if maybe I can survive without Bat or Ghoul and I could mess around more with the Devotions.
Not to necro this, but I’m starting off as a brand new Grim Dawn player and wondering if anything here has materially changed since this guide was written.
I’ve been following to level 40 and have been having some decent success in Veteran.
No need to worry about necroing it, the guide isn’t abandoned at all.
Even though some minor things about it might warrant an update it’s still a build that is alright to play and follow in 2021.
Nice! I’m almost level 80 and cruising along happily. A few questions:
What am I supposed to bind to Bat? I can’t tell from your screenshots. It seems like both Elemental Storm and Twing Fangs want to be bound to ABB. I’m alternating, have another one on Execution for it to be… somwhere, for lack of a better option.
What’s the cliff’s notes version of what updates might be needed, in lieu of actually doing them?
Thanks again, this has been a really great foothold for me to get started in GD.
I would had probably used Fettan Mask istead of Stormserpent helm now. Sure it would be a loss in %damage but you can use these points to get more stats from your skills and for example pick up some WPS such as Whirling Death and Execution. At glance the build could really use more skillpoints.
First of: Thank you for this build guide, and the many others. Without them this game would, frankly, drown new players in complexity. (I remember seeing the devotions screen for the first time and… well, know the cliché how looking up at the stars makes you feel small? Also applies to the devotion screen.)
Now for my concrete question:
What’s your thoughts on using Word of Pain as bat-proccer instead of Stormbox?
I’ve tried out both skills, and when I test it on a few dummies or something the Stormbox seems to trigger Bat MUCH more often. So case closed, you’d think.
But I find it very hard to use in practice. I target an enemy and since my mouse if over that one already I shadow strike it, it dies, nothing much gets procced. Or I manage to target a different one, but then I shadow strike or rush away and the tether breaks. AoE is very small.
Word of Pain seems much easier to use. Needs a few more points investment (but it’s not bad since I have more +skill items than this build at the moment) but then it has a 10 meter AoE and 0 cooldown. I can toss it in, charge. Or charge, toss it in. With no cooldown I can be sure to place it on any enemy that pops up. When targetting a big mob it’s just as effective at spamming bat as Stormbox is, and if I need to run away it’ll heal me all the same.
In practice I just notice that when I use WoP (ultimate forgotten gods, around level 90 by the way.) I have to heal a lot less.
So am I missing something? Is there a trick to using the storm box more effectively? Is it picked for better single-target performance? Or is just a matter how good you are at targetting and positioning?
If we’re talking about a big mob then it doesn’t really matter since mob is supposed to die Quick anyway. With Stormbox you get better heal when it matters the most - boss fights.
WoP is just a common debuff so it ticks every 1 second, so even if you debuff a crowd with it you can’t squeeze the most out of it’s 0.6s cooldown. Stormbox with at least 1pt in Tether on the other hand will have a tick rate from 0.3s and below, which means it’ll be proccing much better when dealing with solo bosses.
Interesting. I did get the impression the stormbox triggered more often, nice to see that confirmed.
But sometimes I see bat proc much more often than 1/second with WoP. Would that be because I used it twice at staggered intervals? I.e. if word of pain is in effect on two groups of enemies, can it trigger bat more often?
But I take your point about boss fights. I suppose I should pay more attention to what the storm box is doing there, though I’m mostly more focussed on staying alive…
It just has to do with the fact that you have more monsters being influenced of WoP. At least I think so. You can perhaps try on practice dummy. Cast WoP on them one by one (might be hard to controll) vs WoP on both of them at the same time.
I’ve tested it again on the practice dummies near Fort Icon. There are two clusters of dummies there, making this an easy test.
Whenever WoP is cast once, it will only ever trigger 1 time per second, at the same time the damage tick occurs. It’s perfectly in sync. Even if I cast it so all 7 dummies are hit at once.
But when you stagger the casts on the two groups of dummies (aiming to the left and right of the groups) the damage ticks will also occur in a staggered fashion, and it’s quite possible to get the bat triggering every twice in a row in less than 1 second. (0.6 I assume, since that’s the cooldown.)
So moral of the story is that when fighting large groups and cast WoP multiple times, you can get more devotion procs than you’d otherwise assume. But ultimately Stupid_Dragon’s argument about better single-target performance for storm box still stands.
Can be a bit squishy for new players, but with some practice I believe anyone can manage to play it. Just don’t expect it to facetank everything, not this kind of a build.
So, unrelated question: How much does this build actually benefit from dual wielding?
Obviously it helps if both weapons boost shadow strike. And on auto-attack, the dual-wield line of skills could proc if you take them. But 90% of damage comes from the special attacks. (Shadow strike, ring of steel, blade burst, devotion procs.)
Reason I ask is that I found some pretty dang amazing two-handed weapons (bane of winter king sword and soulrend scythe from Steps of Torment.) And on the one hand it feels a bit odd to throw away the character concept of a dual-wielding blender. But on the other hand, those weapons seem in a whole different league than the spectre blades and even the loxmere dagger I found. (That one actually seemed pretty underwhelming.)
Downsides of two-handed I’ve found:
Slower cooldown on pneumatic breath
no boosts from dual-wield line of skills.
Dual-wielding looks cool
Upsides:
Faster cooldown on Word of Renewal
Couple extra skillpoints from not taking dual wield skills.
I do not think any single handed weapons come even close to the two-handers I found
Not sure if anyone ever used Bane of the WK for SS but Soulrend had been used in SS builds before, but Spellbreaker or Reaper rather than Infiltrator though. SS Infiltrators had been using Loxmere’s for ages.
The reason to use dual wielding is because SS hits with both weapons and the buff from Lethal Assault basically applies twice, while in case of a 2H weapon it would only apply once. Moreover if I remember correctly DW Loxmeres or Spectral Longswords will result in lower cooldown of SS than a 2H weapon with built in cdr. In case of Loxmere’s you can potentially have higher %damage than a 2H because it’s classified as a caster dagger. Lower base damage in this case is not a problem at all.
For “this” build though it’s not even a question what to use. Spectral Longswords and to lesser extent Loxmeres are budget weapons that you can reliably acquire, while Bane of WK and Soulrend are endgame stuff.
Thanks for the feedback. That would be the flat damage bonus of Lethal assault applying twice, correct? Percentages wouldn’t double. But the flat damage is pretty huge.
Dual wield does however allow you to put in two cold stones for +200% cold damage, so that is another big advantage. (Took me an embarrassingly long time to realise you could do that. With my sorcerer character I just assumed that you could only have 1 instance of a buff active and never thought to test it.)
Soulrend comes with cooldown and a Nidalla’s Justifiable Ends boost, so it gets cooldown down to 1.4 seconds which I think is pretty good. With Spectrals I get 1.5, spectral and loxmere 1.3. (But the loxmere I got is a weak version.) And the lifesteal is insane. 25% total. (Thinking of dropping Ghoul since it seems a bit redundant with that much life-steal going on.) I get a feeling I got extremely lucky finding it the first time I ever stepped in legendary Steps of Torment.
Hello. First of all thanks a lot for the build I’m having so much fun with it at the moment
I just wanted to ask a coupe of questions:
1- I’m currently still in normal (level 57, just got to malmouth, haven’t done any act 7), but i’m taking quite a bit of damage and i’m scared to switch to elite. Here’s my build atm. I’m relying mostly on lifesteal from Gluttony. I haven’t died a lot but got really close.
2- About devotions, which one would you recommend more, Leviathan or Yugol build?
also also, I noticed you take hawk over scholar’s light but idk why, they both cost the same and light gives 4 green, and also gives better damage boost (I may be underestimating bonuses that hawk gives)
3- Last, would you still recommend this build for lategame farming, or is there currently better versions of dw inflitrator that are better (like pierce or attack speed+wps cold)
Sorry for if I’m asking a lot (and also for necroing this post ) but i’m really excited to get to make my own builds and your insight would help a lot.
I levelled with Leviathan because extra AoE damage is nice on a SS build. Especially now that Nightfall isn’t a beast it used to be. Yugol was the more sturdy setup for rushing bosses while ignoring crowds.
Can’t comment on Hawk vs Scholar’s Light. The Leviathan setup has OA on the low side so probably that.
Um, sorry, I kind of retired from GD. Don’t even keep up with what’s in the patches anymore.
) but i’m really excited to get to make my own builds and your insight would help a lot.
