[FoA 1.3.0] Beginner's Pre-Ice King Werewolf Mystic [Lv 100 reached]

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
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The Ice King set is a very neat Mystic set that combines the Werewolf transformation from the Berserker class with Hellhounds from the Occultist, leading to a very neat army of wolves ready to chow down on the enemies of Cairn. As promised, I am setting up a leveling guide that will also introduce people to the new areas of FoA.

NOTE: This will NOT be on a completely wiped save with no recipes and blueprints, but will be SSF. No twinked armor, but I do have the right to craft low-level items like beginner relics as needed.

Grimtools links outlining skill allocation and devotion pathing will start at level 20.
For the OP, I’ve begun leveling as pets. My aim is to get Harbinger's Dominator Blade - Rare One-Handed Dagger - Grim Dawn Item Database & Salazar's Sovereign Blade - Rare One-Handed Dagger - Grim Dawn Item Database as Berserker allows me to DW both of these. Once I have decent weapons, I’ll start putting points in Werewolf and go the hybrid route.

*Recent Note: The user Gargobolo has made a leveling thread for a hybrid pet / Werewolf playstyle as well; that thread can be found here: [1.3.0.6] The Fire King - SR26 - Leveling Ice King as hybrid pets from level 1 - Beginner Guide [vid]

The way that my thread differs from the one above is that my leveling threads aim to be as close to Solo Self-Found (SSF) as possible assuming a completely new player. That is harder to accomplish in FoA since recipes and other items take from the Shared Stash instead of your inventory, so you have to be careful what you have earned with this character vs having earned them with other characters.

Mystic, Level 20 (GD 1.3.0.6) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator - Mystic, Level 20
Mystic, Level 30 (GD 1.3.0.7) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator - Mystic, Level 30
Mystic, Level 40 (GD 1.3.0.7) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator - Mystic, Level 40
Mystic, Level 50 (GD 1.3.0.7) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator - Mystic, Level 50
Mystic, Level 60 (GD 1.3.0.7) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator - Mystic, Level 60
Mystic, Level 70 (GD 1.3.0.8) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator - Mystic, Level 70 [Fully finished Veteran]
Mystic, Level 80 (GD 1.3.0.8) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator - Mystic, Level 80
Mystic, Level 90 (GD 1.3.0.8) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator - Mystic, Level 90 [Ultimate + strict summoner focus]
Mystic, Level 100 (GD 1.3.1.0) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator - Mystic, Level 100

Nov 11 Edit: After taking this build to Level 100, the next step would be trying Ascendant mode. If you’re looking for an answer to: “Should I be trying to build Cold pets Mystic from scratch,” as shown from the hybrid playstyle in the earlier levels to the complete dearth of Cold pet items, my honest answer is no.

The Fire King hybrid posted earlier in this post will give a much more satisfactory hybrid Werewolf + Hellhound leveling rush. If you want to play Cold pets specifically, Conjurer would be a much better fit than Mystic, as you have plenty of faction gear that benefits Cold Briarthorns and Cold Primal Spirits. You can also play Cold Cabalist using the Cold Raven + Skeleton Archers off-hand.

Needless to say, out of the 5 or so pure leveling from scratch builds I’ve done over the years, this one felt the worst to play by far. I honestly feel more relieved that it’s over than excited to bring this character to Ascendant and beyond.

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I couldn’t get the image right as it happened, but this is the first time I’ve ever gotten the “I was not expecting you, human” achievement. The most painful part was that one of the Heroes walked right into the Warden’s Lab and it took numerous tries to get the Hero away from the Warden and kill it before focusing on the Boss Battle. As always with this achievement, the hardest part is getting to the Warden’s Lab without gaining so much XP that you reach level 11.

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As for the fight itself, if you really want this achievement and fighting the Warden at such a low level, I used the Evade when Krieg uses his Aether wave attack (it applies Slow, which is basically a death sentence for the Werewolf) and only attacked during the window between Krieg charging towards me and doing his stomp attack. It was slow and methodical, but fighting Warden at Level 10 is no easy task.

When you are NOT crazy and going on a achievement hunt, everything is easy so far. Just make sure you find a Cold Heart to apply to one of your rings before trying any totem fights. Freeze is lethal when multiple Heroes are attacking you.

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I am looking at the level 100 posted earlier as a guide… So far I have leveled as Berserker werewolf and am through Cronley. I plan to max out Berserker progression to 50 and then start Occultist with Hellhounds, Curse of Frailty, etc. I have never been much of a melee player in GD but this is going okay so far. Equipping a 2 hander blue item (Gutwrench Eviscerator - lucky drop?). I have noticed the damage is falling off somewhat but I intend to stick with it. Facetanking most everything and hasn’t been distressing which is a good thing.

I have never had too much luck with hybrid builds because it seems like you get the worst of all worlds with them but I am hoping that changes to FOA plus the new items available will make this viable. We’ll see…

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I’m sorry to tell you, with your current plan that will likely happen again, at lvl 50 your skillpoint gain is much slower than early, so if you start to slowly invest in hellhound at that point with your fully specced out player-build, the pet will just be baggage, unless you do major re-speccing.

Since you are already on a fully player-scaling path, it might be recommended to stay that way and indeed wait all the way until you actually have the set to respec.

However if you are interested. I wrote an extensive guide on how to level hybrid pet occultists from level 1 as really hybrid, it is written in generic manner (but for elemental dmg, single or tri-color) so a lot of it also applies to other builds.

Hybrid is all about stat sharing (aura skills, blood of dreeg, staff of rattosh, behemoth etc) and keeping that in mind constantly as you levelup and choose gear.

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It turns out that Grimtools cannot upload FoA savefiles at the moment, so here are the milestones for Level 20:

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So far just focusing on getting enough attack speed - you can make the case for placing as many points in Solael’s Witchblade as possible before putting more points in the Berserker mastery bar, but Mastery points and stats in general are very useful for ensuring that you have the OA to reliably crit things.

As a general aside, the HP buffs that bosses got makes boss-fighting a bit of a slog, so it’s hard to have a true comparison of Werewolf vs other leveling skills since buffs like this make the early game much harder than its impact on the endgame.

Devotion-wise, I have enough to start leveling the Flame Torrent constellation. I’m gunning for FoA content as soon as I can, so I’m only getting the devotion shrines that are convenient to my path.

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Grimtools links now work again, so here is the progress at Level 30:

A few notes (mind you, I’m a pet player through and through, so doing full melee is a bit of new ground here):

  1. Purple bosses are much harder on Veteran than they used to be. Since Zaria guards the Darkvale dungeon for Karroz, it’s not recommended to try to advance there before Level 30. Her crystals simply hit way too hard when you’re well under her level. Bolivar also brings you down easy if you’re not paying close attention.

  2. The MI drops always being max level has been a pain in more instances than one, but you get so much loot between totems and the number of viable areas you can farm in that even if I couldn’t equip that specific MI yet, an upgrade wasn’t too far away.

  3. To get to level 30 and get ready for Karroz, I ran the FG content up to the Vanguard of the Three and sided with Solael. There’s a devotion shrine filled with 3 Hero Wraiths - they kept healing each other and was a war of attrition until I had the right spacing to attack all of them at once and damaged them enough that a domino effect would eventually take them down.

So TLDR? Lots of growing pains, and definitely wished I had more DPS at times. Getting enough devotion points to get Kraken with my 2H weapon is my goal atm. Rallying Cry is everything you want in a leveling build and should be focused on ASAP.

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Upon learning that FoA content starts at roughly Level 40 and contains a lot of hard-hitting Physical Beasts, I was forced to backtrack and grab as many devotion shrines between Acts 1-3 and FG as possible before I was comfortable fighting FoA content without the fear of constantly dying. Sadly, it appears I can’t upload the Grimtools Checklist as a link to show which devotion shrines I focused on, but here is a Level 40 Grimtools link:

Things have gotten so much better since getting Kraken and focusing on Attack Speed. The FoA content is incredible so far, and I have a target weapon in mind while I’m doing the FoA questline:

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I was able to get the Voidcarver Blade and am now trying to clear the FoA content. As to keep with providing Grimtools every 10 levels, here is the Grimtools for Level 50 (Running 3 floors of the Shattered Realm gave about a Level and a half’s worth of experience):

Since the ultimate goal is to make a hybrid pet build, I’m working towards Mogdrogen the Wolf. It’s unclear which devotions I’ll take that will help guide me towards Mog while also not being a detriment to my character, but I still have many devotion shrines to go before that becomes a big issue.

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I take it that your playing on normal/veteran? Not Ultimate like the build planner is saying?

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It is always set to ultimate by default, one has to change that manually each time

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Ahh, I learned something new.

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It is kinda woky, perhaps it has been requested for a change. I could give the tool developer a msg

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You want to work towards a bleeding pet devotion, while being a chaos player scaling build, in order to prepare for a cold hybrid?

That makes little sense to me, why not stay on the chaos course, drink a devotion reset potion later and then go for one of those:

-Eye of Korvaak + staff of rattosh along the way
-Leviathan + Typhos the jailor along the way

This build is from Marcus and has solid devotion setup for cold hybrid:

Only thing i disagree with is ghoul, you should not go for Adcth on hybrids, since in late game you do 50% dmg of normal build and pets don’t benefit, if hybrid has sustain issues add behemoth, otherwise these points should go to offensive side of staff of rattosh.

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Hey bud, How would you set your loot filter for this build? Thank you!

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  1. This first playthrough is more of a first impressions playthrough where I’m playing (mostly) blind. I will be doing a second playthrough that is more refined and worthy to be a “beginner’s build;” the focus on that playthrough will be Acid since Rumor is shared between the two. I’ve left the OP mostly blank specifically for this purpose.
  2. Why am I going for Mogdrogen devotion and not Marcus’ setup? This is why:
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    This set is both a melee build and a hybrid pet build. As such, speed is king, and you need as much speed as possible for both yourself and your pets. Mogdrogen is not negotiable here.
  3. While I could take the Chaos route and respec later, you need to level up the devotions too, and having Mogdrogen at Level 1 when you could have had it at level 10+ is going to feel really bad when you actually get to the pets part.
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-On most auto-attacker hybrids you can max out attack speed on the player without needing Mogdrogen.
-Mog is stronger on pet builds since those are mostly offhand builds with CDR on the proc, hybrids mostly are not, ice king will block helm, amulet and offhand for CDR gain.
-I think we can trust the developer a bit more to actually make tier 3 devotions of equal value provided you benefit from all the bonuses. So with this much stat waste I’m skeptical.
-The first node of Mog is nice for any hybrid, but sometimes you can pick it up without the rest.

Overall I think you will still get a decent build with Mog, but I don’t think its the most powerful solution.

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  • Acid Werewolf
  • Cold Pets (mainly with Raven)
  • Chaos Pets
  • Fire DW Hybrid Werewolf + Hound
  • Chaos Hybrid, but do it right this time
0 voters

The first playthrough gave me enough info on what to focus on and which storylines I should streamline the leveling efforts. Since there aren’t any clear leveling gear that would make the transition smooth and easy, I decided to make a poll so that people have a say on what the pre-Ice King leveling process should be.

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Top pet builds have close to +2000% pet damage without temporary buffs. Having pets with +440% total damage is pure waste of skill points for the sake of style and thematic.

It would make much more sense if hounds turned into cold damage would scale with player damage (same as Eldrun set does to Familiar).

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That build is a theorycraft and not fully fledged out, the devotion doesn’t seem to have many issues, but the rest of the build likely has.

I can mostly get around +1000% all dmg on pets on my hybrids and that is without a special set for it. I expect a fully tuned ice king build can do SR32 at least.

EDIT: also the ice king sword adds a huge +cold dmg bonus on pets that doesn’t get listed because it isn’t all dmg

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also wanna know