Have you considered 4-piece/full Krieg or Sorcerer? Defiler wouldn’t be my first pick for Dreadscorcher.
I tried Sorceror with it and wasn’t too impressed with the results either. Lack of WPS really dulls out the benefits you get by choosing Arcanist, and it really sucks that the shoulder piece that gives you a WPS and +4 to Brimstone converts Aether damage to Chaos. Removing that conversion would be a big help in making Dreadscorcher a better option.
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i did tried that concept few days ago. https://www.grimtools.com/calc/O2GE74jZ. cannot get full Krieg set since i lose too much resis, and for some reason outside of Crucible with buff, build’s mana regen is a minor problem - and thats where Fateweaver came. Cru with 4 buff + 3 banner around 8 mins (i’m nowhere near “skillful pilot player”), and mostly because has close to zero AOE (Imp devo can’t help it). Go to SR 65 and problem appear since i cant kill things fast enough before i die LOL
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Same experience when I tried with sorc. The neither single nor aoe damage felt like it was keeping up, you get swamped, brimstone doesn’t save you.
Tried out Nar’s Arcane Destroyer
Tactician: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/8NKo7LON
Does elemental cadence have the worst support for a built in transmuter? The scion series should have helped melee recently, but when I went looking for elemental damage guns with + soldier or + cadence, it’s phasebreaker or this. Ran a couple SR75s, boss rooms are awful. IM needed careful heal management, Reaper I couldn’t actually safely kill (armored, but also shattered and afflicted mutators).
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I know this is probably a design choice, but high rolling attack speed items, double attack speed class, jackal + spider, and my in game speed is 180%, capped isn’t possible without temp procs. In theory you can get a bit more on rings/medal/neckalce but they become basically throw away slots to do it. I gave up on a couple runs with aethermarked because ADCtH sustain at that chopped attack speed feels awful. I don’t actually understand why ranged in general deals with apparent speed penalties.
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Tank is middling to bad. If I kept tweaking this is probably fixable with more leech, or heaven forbid ghoul. OA is also very fiddly. Biggest issue with grabbing more here is…
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Damage is lackluster. Kind of odd for ranged crossbow, but AoE is actually decent thanks to seekers + currents, which I believe is also going to be the highest DPS potential for devo layouts. Single target is not up to snuff, and leads to things life aforementioned Reaper or IM struggles in boss rooms.
On one hand, it’s a blue crossbow, soldier/tactician doesn’t actually get an elemental focused set, so what should I have actually expected. On the other, it’s a built in transmuter with very limited options and “everyone” seems to dislike ranged cadence so that’s automatically a challenge to find a working setup.
Final 2 cents: up attack speed bonus if gun base speeds aren’t adjusted in 1.1.9. Change +2 inquisitor seal, which is very easy to find on elemental items, for deadly momentum, which is impossible to find on elemental items (for that matter it’s non-trivial to cap cadence on elemental items, and the elemental/aether cadence pants block kuba pants).
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I made an Oppressor using Sandspitters and it was basically like Gargabols with passthrough. Which made me realize how problematic the Dagallon set is.
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Indeed, lots of great ranged changes to test in this patch, and sadly so little time right now to do it!
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I’ve made a relatively cheap ‘n’ cheerful oathbearer pierce paladin that does SR50 fairly easily. I haven’t tried further as I’ve found i enjoy grimtools much more than grim dawn at the moment, but maybe someone has some thoughts on how to make it better, for a more robust evaluation of the oathbearers.
https://www.grimtools.com/calc/bVA7Kv4N
My thoughts:
- Overall pretty easy to play, just dump a seal down, play the vuvuzela when it’s off cooldown, and shoot. AOE is ok due to the horn. Surprisingly sturdy with seal, 30% DR, and impaired aim.
- Lacks CC res.
- Devo map: maybe dropping ghoul/revenant and going for more purple/yellow (e.g. living soldier, scales)?
- Itemization: mythical pack of deadly means might be better than the cord of deception here, and watcher of erulan could also make this significantly more survivable without losing too much dps? I’m also on-the-fence about the pyroclasm mark, but I threw it in for 100% wps.
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Perfect place to dump my own Oathbearer paladin I guess.
This build used to be overly tanky so the idea was to shave as much defence as possible, here’s the result :
Pretty decent for a gunner, and it’s quite consistent for SR75 and Lokarr. I wouldn’t try anything harder though
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Nice, that weapon damage and devo map is strong. Is there any source of -RR?
It used to have Scales but right now it has no flat RR source which may be detrimental for SR boss rooms 
idk what to sacrifice nor what to get to fix this
You can trade out Assassin and instead use Ascendant Crossroads with Scales
I’m sharing my 2 Ranged Grim Tools I don’t think I’ll be testing soon (currently playing MC).
My take on Venom Launcher, hope it’s going to be more damaging
(but maybe it’s not even worth GDStashing without any pass through)
https://www.grimtools.com/calc/eZP80kjZ
- full Pierce conversion for all the flat
- almost full Chaos conversion for
- ~100 flat Chaos
- Guardian’s Eyes for AoE and Leech
- 18% more AS
- 400% more Acid Damage
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Aether Corruption (I may been thinking I got Aether to Acid conversion but I don’t)
Changed to Seal of the Void WPS proc after checking your build
For more ACDTH Corrosive on guns can be changed to Vampiric although that seems like cheating but maybe converted Eyes of the Guardians are going to be enough.
Also ~millionth iteration of meme Korvan Wyrm https://www.grimtools.com/calc/1NXQe692
This time without any greens, average attack speed raging from 179% to 197% (Ranged Exp. not displayed for 2h properly)
Could be made stronger maybe by using Storm Totems, gathering -%30 Physical Res to Devouring Swarm with greens.
But decided on Vindicator for the Yellow Inquisitor Seal.
Only -15% Phys Res (not counting Deathstalker and Black Matriarch) from Stormbox but what can you do 
Afraid to GDStash, maybe better to live with a hope it’s not going to be that bad and never test it.
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That’s basically the previous setup, Assassin added a lot of AoE for crucible and can shotgun bosses if the seal is properly placed, I don’t think reverting this change is for the better. I’m wondering about removing Ulzaad however
Please consider adding the Soldier mod to Bloodboar. I tried it on my DW Renged Goredrinker Tactician and the skill points are pretty tight.
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They are tight, but performance is surprisingly good. @romanN1 was about 5 minutes in our initial trial in CR. I don’t think +1 soldier would blow the performance out of the water though, so not complaining
Yes, +1 Soldier is excessive. Maybe a +3 to any of the Cadence trees is reasonable.
Going to have to hard disagree here. Havoc is a niche weapon for when you have elemental conversion as well on Inquisitor, alone it just doesn’t carry. Tried Tactician is 1.1.9 update with Havoc and while it’s tanky enough to do SR75-76, it’s slow. Was getting in upper 6 range in crucible when it finished.
Deathdealer on the other hand has strong options on either cadence or RF as warlord or oppressor (and maybe deathknight but losing smite would suck). The proc gives you a mini smite with full passthrough now, along with super powering smite, which is basically the best WPS tool pistols get.
Still need to fully test but my assumption/single nod to Havoc is on a paladin. One sandspitter giving RF and all WPS passthrough (with 2 piece octavius full for ele conversion), 1 havoc to complete pierce conversion with Unchained grasp, and you have full physical passthrough. Haven’t polished and finalized build yet but was already sub 5 in crucible and SR85 no death capable.
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Disagree. Mine can do 5:30 cru easily with 100% sucess. For SR I managed to clear 95 not a single death. May achieve higher but I’m too lazy :d.
https://www.grimtools.com/calc/L2JARW0N
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Unrelated, but I think it would be a great boon to GD balance if the Rutnick gun had pew pew sounds like the Thunderclap rifle.
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I would like to share my opinion on the following two guns.
Mythical Korvan Wyrm
Lightning%dmg and Electrocution%dmg are a distraction. Don’t waste slots on them. Most of the time, decent builds don’t intentionally separate attributes. I suggest changing it instead to physical resistance (around 15%), reduced reflex damage, extended trauma damage duration, 50% conversion from piercing to physical, etc. Statistics, especially on the defensive side, are very important for IT Build. Also, I hope you will consider adding a skill mod for Soldier.
Oathbearer
Compared to the RF mod, the Fighting Spirit mod is almost worthless. I won’t explain it because it’s tedious.
The Renged Pierce Tactician clearly lacks support in weapon slots compared to the Paladin.
No one will probably make a piercing build in Warlord. Therefore, I don’t think changing the soldier side to something stronger will be a problem.
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