Fire AAR (pure offense - only slight tweaks left)

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
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Hey everyone!

Welcome to my second “guide”.

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Grim Tools Link

https://www.grimtools.com/calc/lV7GMpaV

Why Oathkeeper? Why so offensive?

  • Permanent bonus to Resistance Reduction
  • Permanent bonus to Energy Reagon and Offensive Ability
  • Permanent bonus to massive crit damage increase
  • Almost permanent effect from Ascension

The oathkeeper is just a buff mastery in this case. I don’t want anything than my intentional pure offense stats.
The permanent pets will offer me great ResistanceReduction. Presence of Virtue gives me energy sustain and another dmg layer.

Rotation - How to deal damage

  • Cast Ascension --> Damage boost and decent damage absorbtion

  • Cast “Olxexra’s Flash Freeze ” --> Reduce target’s Fire Resistance --> Keep distance from heavier enemies --> Proc devotion

  • Cast “Stormfire” (granted by Component) --> Good way to proc devotion --> decent damage absorbtion (Phoenix Fire)

  • Cast “AAR” --> Main damage source --> Proc devotion.

(Cast Trozan’s Sky Shard whenever you think that enemy needs that additional RR)

That’s pretty much it.
We use Eternity, so we want to make the best use o fit to maintain Ascension as long as possible. I am keeping an eye on the last proc, so i can time my further steps a bit better.

Who can use this build? What content can you do with it?

So far, i am just trying to optimize it as best as i can do offer AAR the best damage output it can have.

But i guess, campaign should be ok with that. Due to the mechanic of fire resistance of fire enemies, this build will have its problems on some enemies.
Some enemies will die in parts of a second, some will stay for 10 seconds in your beam, due to the resistance mechanic.

Farming main campagin and cruicible in the group is your way to go. Superbosses are another thing and should be done with toughness, a 3rd piece of the Virtues Set and with all points spent into physique, aswell as the use of MSoP.

Gear Choice

You need…

  1. Hexlfame
    https://www.grimtools.com/db/items/7716

  2. Pulsing Shard
    https://www.grimtools.com/db/items/2191

  3. Conduit of Arcane Whispers
    https://www.grimtools.com/db/items/11248

  4. Mark of Ulzuin
    https://www.grimtools.com/db/items/7817

This is basically the “must have setup” you should allways have. This gives your AAR all it really needs. You can gear around it and you are fine for your fire build!

Devotion - Allocation

If you want to build as offensive as i did, use the following step by step guideline, this includes a step backward to gain back points.
This click-through should be as easy as possible, without many claculations, some points might look and are wasted in the first place.

  • All Crossroads
  • Viper
  • Panther
  • Hawk
  • Vulture
  • Owl
  • Scholar’s Light
  • Rhowan’s Crown
  • Magi
  • Solael’s Witchblade
  • Alladrah’s Phoenix
  • Remove all crossroads, keep green & yellow
  • 1 Point in Dryad
  • Ulzuin’s Torch

Devotion Binding

  • Eldritch Fire --> AAR
  • Fissure --> Summon Guardian of Empyrion
  • Phoenix Fire --> Stormfire
  • Meteor Shower --> Olexra’s Flash Freeze
  • Elemental Storm --> Trozan’s Sky Shard

Video Section

Damage test

This should be it!

I hope it contains the most important stuff and makes it easy to understand! This build has a TON of potential, believe me! Fun guaranteed :smile:

Edits:

Added “Mythical Aethereach” into the setup. (thanks to Norzan, for the info)
Removed “Lotus” from devotion to get the missing “Torch note” and a point in “Dryad”
New Video that reflects the recent changes thanks to feedback

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this post is also mine… :wink:

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But not this!

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By the way why you are reserving posts,before posting even one detail from your build?

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videos plz :slight_smile: thx

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lol he didnt post only videos, all details is there grimtool link and other information

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I would recommend trying out your build versus at least AoM Roguelike or 40ish 50ish Shards before presenting it in such a raw state. I would also recommend exploring build section and looking at working builds an learning why and how they work.

Your build unfortunately is riddled with very simple mistakes: lack of flat resist reduction (Elemental Storm from Rhowan’s Crown or Revenant’s skelies), very low DA (gonna die a lot), lack of Maiven, Mirror, Nullification, Resilience - all the basic stuff that is a must on any Templar. Olexra’s Flash Freeze without additional Freeze Resistance reduction won’t work on bosses so it’s pretty much useless here.

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This build is supposed to be easy to handle…

This means:

Not much clicking, not much escaping, the most damage out of a few actions.

@mad_lee

Mirror, Nullification, another skill to activate crown. That’s 3 more skills i have to use while channeling my only main source of damage.

Next time i will create a text block that repeats 10 times that this build is supposed to be “pure offensive”.
Of course i have low DA, low life and nothing defense related is optimized. For what reason?
This build is designed for me and for people that just want to shred some normal bosses, the campaign and the cruicible in group play.

The only thing i am ok with, is the Rhowan’s Crown star. I was totally focused on the left side that i totally forgot about the crown.
I think the best solution would be:

Drop Oklaine’s Lantern and Spider notes
Fill Owl
Fill Crown

This way you make sure, the Torch has everything it needs.

Although, it requires another proc and interrupts our beam and with the amount of -%RR we allready have, for the intended content, it isn’t necessary at all.

I respect your general needs of defense and “basic meta picks” but there are also people that want easy and strong “straight forward” builds, that will deal with most of the stuff…and this goal i achived!

Thanks for the feedback!

Maybe my upcoming small videos will accentuate my intentions.

Peace :wink:

Latest EDIT:

Changed Devotion to contain Rhowan’s Crown to proc “Elemental Storm” to further increase RR. Remove one point of “Overload” and put it into the “Trozan’s Sky Shard”.
(thanks to mad_lee)

Trozan’s Sky Shard fits my purpose of quick action, i throw away my “pet attack-button”

Added Video

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I really like offensive builds so this caught my attention. Killing dummies within seconds says nothing about the real performance though.

I don’t care about Crucible at all and not much about SR, so for me the real questions are:

  • Can you survive the dungeon bosses, most importantly Shar’Zul (128% fire resist)?
  • Can you survive Nemesis monsters? Kaisan for example has some nasty spells which can hurt you badly even when kiting or leeching like crazy.

One more thing, I see you bound Meteor Shower to Olexra’s Flash freeze. That’s a waste imho, Meteor Shower won’t trigger at all when fighting bosses. Have you tried Judgment instead of OFF? That should work fine for Crowd Control, and I think 102% fire RR is not really needed for most mobs.
Also I’d take points out of Overload, Mental Alacrity and Clarity of Purpose (softcapping these should be enough) and put them into Judgment or even Resilience altough I kinda doubt it will help much at only 2200 DA :crazy_face:

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@Volek

Putting every single point of attributes into Physique will result in 2.500 DA and about 1300 more health.

By removing some points as you wish and swapping them into Heaven, MSoP/Conversion will result in even more toughness what should give you, what you want.

About 11k health, 2,5k DA and 20% DamageAbsorbtion while having more stun resistance.

This char for me became just an elite killer. Everything thats not haven stupid amounts of resistance will melt within the first 1-2 seconds, i promise!
This is basically everything i want.

Iam out for a few hours, so don’t expect anything from my pet now :wink:

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Going all out offense is fine, but was there no way to hard cap AAR when going fire? I don’t have any suggestions, just wondering. :wink:

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Not putting a single point into Arcane Will, Resilience, Haven, Rebuke is like shooting yourself in the foot here, mate. Those are all passive skills/passive activators that will make your life much much easier, same goes for Maiven. Mirror can be a one-pointer “oh shit button” that lets you facetank for 3 seconds and not take any damage.

You are saying this build is all about offence you take inferior Arcanist’s Exclusive skill, when you should take Divine Mandate for that juicy Crit Damage and get casting speed elsewhere (like better gloves and restless remains component).

Another thing - Eternity is useless here since you are not even using Mirror, take Iskandra’s Balance if you want offense, currently it’s the best offensive elemental relic in the game.

And everyone keeps pointing you towards Olexra’s Flash Freeze - it’s just a useless skill that does not work on any meaningful enemies. All bosses don’t get frozen and they don’t get Fire resist reduction because of that.

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Some guys just wanna get that joozy dummy kill time :slight_smile:

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I suspect you could swap one ring for this one aetherlord signet
at ~3k % global bonus, each 100% is ~3% damage increase. Increasing skill by 2 gives more flat and possibly more overall damage, even with a slight loss in cast speed.

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Aetherreach gloves are BiS for any AAR build regardless of damage type. Flat damage, energy cost reduction, energy, energy regen, biggest amount of cast speed (21% i believe), +2 to AAR and Disintegration.

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Greetings!

Just wow…

Why do i really have to have the feeling that iam being offended in here?

I never claim to be the best of the best, i never said, that iam the most expirienced player in the web, i never said, that THIS IS THE VERY BEST WITHOUT ANY DOUBT.

Can you please relax and calm down a bit?

This round up has been written in my spare time and should give some players a very first and tiny look of what AAR is capable to do. I see a forum has a place to share thoughts and views, to poke a specific direction for specific things, nothing more.
Sorry, i can’t gurantee perfection!

There are allways ways to improve anything, nothing is perfect in the space of web!

The way you, the generality, are writing things, really gives a bad feeling when i have to read the comments in here. :frowning:

I haven’t made a single character with the “Oathkeeper” mastery yet, this is the first try. When i was hovering over those skills, it seems i missed the “Divine Mandate” skill in the very end of the tree.

In terms of screen dps i made a 10% dip but could gain a HUGE boost in edps, thanks for the information here.
This will make my enemies explode even faster, thanks! :blush:

The thing with eternity is pretty simple for me. Due to the non-existing toughness, this at least gives me a flat removal of dmg.
Paired with the Phoenix i feel quite save in a massive amount of enemies. The damage increase for Ascension speaks for itself.

The cc part of OFF brings me, as mentioned in my opening post, the range i need to stay save, to handle bigger enemies, or groups of enemies. The more it is available, the better.

This build isn’t designed to be a superboss-killer, and i don’t aim for the hardest of nemesis ones.

I guess, some in here underestimate the healing of AAR when simply staying in stuff, like bosses, or groundeffects+ enemies, of course i can’t freeze the bosses, OFF is useless here, iam aware of this.

I will try Aetherreach gloves when i got them in good. They could also losen the pressure of capping Aether Resistance for me, thanks for pointing out!

Iam glad for every nicely written input, suggestions or help in general, if some guys feel offended, when something isn’t perfect from the start, there is no need to use harsh words to heat up this discussion, better hold your words on your own then.

Peace! :sunglasses: