Many of us have spent 2,000+ hours in this game and still have the “i know nothing” moments. Thats the beauty of this game- theres so much depth! Dont let it get you down, though, weve all been there, i have these moments all the time.
I just noticed that you didn’t take any “default attack proc” skills, wouldn’t it gives a bit more damage here and there while we’re waiting for Shadow Strike cooldown?
Sure if you have spare points. Prioritize Execution.
After spending some time rerolling spectral longsword until I got all ice damage bonus, it seems that auto attack is not necessary.
At level 42, the forgotten gods final boss dude died in 4 Shadow Strike. The damage output is insane!
Although it seems that its quite squishy while it waits SS cooldown, can’t keep up with the lifesteal. Hopefully, inquisitor seal would helps it a bit. Is it wise to just completely remove Ring of Steel and pump more inquisitor level? Because I barely able to use it anyway, since everyone melts that fast.
Leave 1 pt with transmuter for freeze just in case.
Does the freeze affects bosses?
I still don’t know what ailment doesn’t affects bosses n stuff
Bosses have huge resistances to most forms of crowd control, but them aside there’s plenty of enemies like aetherial hulks that could gangbang you.
So I tried to alter Yugollan devotion setup so I can get Rhowan’s Crown with it. This is what I came up with:
https://www.grimtools.com/calc/M2gmkeYZ
For a price of 22 DA compared to the suggested Tidehunter devotion setup we gain:
- +150 OA,
- +10% crit damage,
- +3% life steal
- +191% cold damage,
- +340% frostburn damage,
- -wayward soul.
Compared to Yugollan:
- +46 OA,
- +151 DA,
- +8% crit damage,
- -9% life steal,
- +210% cold damage,
- +270% frostburn damage.
There is no Bat so there is one skill less to cast and belt can be replaced with easily craftable faction one from Black Legion. I don’t know if Bat is truly necessary (at least in softcore). I don’t like it mostly because you have to use a separate skill just to proc it.
You also loose all benefits from Revenant but gain more RR from Elemental Storm (it also deals decent damage).
There is some wiggle room:
- you can replace Eel with any 3 star blue devotions: lizard for life regen or hound for armor,
- Quill can be replaced with Toad for more life leech and dmg to beasts,
- if you are dying too much, you can sacrifice 3 nodes in Ultos (5% crit damage, 70 OA, 80% cold damage, 120% frostburn damage) and get Giant’s Blood proc+one additional star in Behemoth - this should be a nice compromise between Yugollan and Tidehunter setup when it comes to survivability.
I just made an alt following your build and I have a few questions.
- Since we are using AAs between SS casts, why not use WPS even with just 1 point in them?
1a. If I add some WPS whichs ones should I use? Are there any that are a DPS loss? e.g. because of slow animation.
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In the video you linked the devotions are different. Are both setups viable? What’s the reasoning behind the change? Was something nerfed?
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What content can I farm with this build? (I am playing softcore)
3a. Will this build be able to farm the Morgoneth set?
- Should I farm Loxmere’s daggers or stick with the spectral longswords?
Thank you in advance for the help and thank you for making this great guide!
Good point and endgame SS builds do that. I just thought it’s not going to be worth it back then, but I can be wrong sometimes too. It’s not a thing that makes or breaks the build though and the difference shouldn’t be much.
The general consensus is Amarasta’s Quick Cut isn’t worth it. I’d probably just get Execution if I were to redo it.
Can’t check from mobile but it shouldn’t be much different from the Yugol setup I have in devotion section of the guide.
Any campaign content and maybe even some shards, but it’s not really that optimized for doing shards on budget. I did it at the time when MIs receive a huge overhaul so I wanted a campaign build that could target farm the MIs.
It really depends on how do you feel about the build. Loxmeres should pay off in the long run because that’s what high end cold SS builds are using normally.
Thank you very much for the reply!
I missed that part of the guide. Now that +% damage to Undead is removed from Revenant is it still worth it using that setup? Or should we just stick with the Tidehunter setup?
What are the ideal affixes for Spectral Longswords? I know that of Frostbite and of Alacrity are very good and easy to get, but if I were to farm for BiS affixes what should I be looking for?
Revenant is still very much worth it.
Tidehunter is great for AoE, but AoE is relevant for levelling and game modes like Crucible and SR. The goal was to make a build that could farm campaign by ignoring trash enemies and only killing bosses. For that Yugollan setup is better due to better lifesteal. The 10% reduced undead damage on Revenant actually helps quite a lot. Not only it makes Steps of Torment easier it works against THREE nemesises in the game - ones from undead, death vigil and barrowholm factions.
Frostburn/Glacial/Rimefrost of Shattering.
But as I said before if you’re willing to get invested then it’s better to farm Loxmere daggers. To begin with undeads don’t have that great of a drop rate. Best way to get Spectral Longswords is either abuse the secret shop in Blood Grove or the shop in the last level of Steps of Torment.
I spent hours trying to get decent Spectral Longswords via secret shop with relevant affixes and IMO it’s waste of time. It’s good for leveling when it barely matters what you get but once you get to Elite, it’s better to just farm Loxmere. Time investment is probably the same but you are at least killing monsters which means getting XP, drops, mats and iron bits.
Tbh, Yugol has decent trash-killing potential if you bind Blizzard to Blade Spirits. You can focus on heroes and bosses and most trash will die anyway. It’s not as efficient on low levels but once you get nice OA so Blizzard gets procced on CD, it’s really good.
Thank you both very much for the replies!
I still need to farm reputation with several factions and it would be nice to be able to farm Normal SR for items, since I don’t have any other character capable of that yet. Should I swap to Yugolan now or wait a bit? I am lvl 99 atm.
I understand that and I will definitely try to get Loxmere’s. However I can do my thing farming whatever and jump to the Blood Grove merchant to check the items and then return to what I was doing. While with Loxmere I have to exit to main menu and return to the game. It’s just a matter of getting decent Spectral Longswords without focusing on it.
One last thing. I can’t get Stormserpent set and I don’t have maxed Barrowholm rep yet. I have most of the other items you suggest and came to these 2 possible Yugolan setups:
I would really appreciate it if you could please check them and tell me which one do you think is better and what I can I do to improve them.
Doesn’t matter that much. I’d swap to Yugollan because it’ll allow you to go deeper in SR, albeit the speed is probably going to be a bit slower. The biggest downside is you’ll have to level some devotion procs from level one, which will take time. The exp rewarded for SR will take care of it though.
If you have iron you can use transmuter NPC to get Stormserpent pieces out of any other blue set pieces. Unlike all other kinds of transmutation the blue set into random blue set is relatively cheap. Still if you want to save iron for whatever you could use some faction pieces.
The one with Chillmane Mantle.
Your setup suffers from low stun resistance, but there isn’t an easy way to fix it, except sacrificing boots for green ones.
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.
Hello.
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.
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Nice! I’m almost level 80 and cruising along happily. A few questions:
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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.
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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.