Good class/build for Hardcore?

What is considered the best class for Hardcore?

Depends on so many things. But you can not go wrong with Conjurer - vitality caster or summoner. If you are more into melee - warlord.

Kinda also depends what is meant by “best”

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Having tried both pets and Retal, have to say Warlord Retal is the best at surviving.

Don’t know about Vitality caster though, never tried it

There are ton of builds for HC here [HC] Build & Guide Collection by RektbyProtoss

No class. Only the strong survive.

HC Classless or bust!

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Probably not the best choice for someone who’s only just finished the game for the first time.

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Best build is the one that never gets hit :slight_smile:

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and what would that be?

Nightblade with tons of fumble and avoid of course!

(the “dont get hit” is a hc streamer meme :slight_smile: )

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Great advice, right up there with “just get it” for farming :slightly_smiling_face:

In all seriousness, though, there are a couple of things I’d look for in a first hardcore build:

  1. Good survivability/safe to play. Basically I want something that performs consistently and is relatively forgiving of the mistakes that I will make.
  2. Easy to assemble the gear. I want leveling gear and at least some serviceable version of endgame gear to be at least mostly farmable (monster infrequents, target farmable sets) or purchasable (faction items). Beginner build guides on the forum and, more centrally, the Beginner build guides compendium is a nice place to look both for clear leveling paths (gearing, skill point allocation, etc.) and for easy-to-assemble build ideas for endgame. Keep in mind that the endgame versions of the builds here are going to be held back a bit by the fact that they are only assembled with easily accessible gear and thus may not be able to tackle some of the game’s toughest content yet, but they can eventually be upgraded or rebuilt entirely provided RNG blesses you with the right gear. Also, a warning: depending on your skill and playstyle, not all beginner build ideas will necessarily be suited to a smooth hardcore experience.
  1. Fun to play. My personal picks for a first hardcore build, for example, are vitality caster Conjurer and forcewave Warlord, but these guys play very differently. There are a number of good options out there, so you should certainly be able to find something you enjoy playing. Don’t get too attached, though— it is hardcore after all. :slightly_smiling_face:
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I’ve spent thousands of hours playing Diablo 3 on Hardcore so you don’t have to warn me about not getting attached lmao!

Hardcore can be really frustrating but also extremely rewarding plus it incentivizes playing the game very differently. Usually in ARPGs you aim for things such as fastest possible clear time and so forth. With hardcore you have to consider other things such as survivability.

In my mind Hardcore is much more fun and an overall better experience when it comes to games such as Grim Dawn but again, this is all very subjective. Once I went Hardcore in Diablo I never went back.

I managed to solo kill Malthael on highest Torment difficulty as the first Crusader in the world, it happened like less than a day after the first season went live. The fight took me 10 hours. Did it in full yellow gear, making one mistake was the equivalent of losing half of my HP; had to keep that up for 10 hours. I’ll never forget that experience.

Made this post as a starting point for having a discourse, was curious to see what more experineced players have to share on the matter.

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Fair enough :smiley:

I think I misunderstood your initial question a bit.

It also depends if you intend to do say SSF every char, or you wanna have some kind of “account wide” approach. If you are fine not doing every char 100% SSF you “play for your stash(es)”

Best Advice :slight_smile:

In all seriousness, though, I got couple of beginner guides/playalongs in my [HC] Build & Guide Collection that are suitable for first char without any prefarmed gear. Probably the best endgame build for HC that I’ve played so far was the Avenger Warder with focus on HP regen which also facetanked Callagadra without a single HP pot (I did use other ointments though) and clears SR90+ consistently.

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I dont know about endgame, but if im gonna play HC with classes, the build i enjoyed the most (at least initially, from levels 1-90 as an MC farmer and to unlock majority of blueprints/faction vendor items such as XP pots) was the original Immortal Army by @Contragor ontragor
ontragor

…lol okay, i dont know what the hell happened right there, but the build is by Contragor and its amazing. Fastest leveling build i ever played, though that could have changed since i played it last (which was before 1.1.9.0).

Another build thats probably even safer and also quick to level is @Nery’s Vitality Caster Conjurer. As others have already mentioned, Vitality Conjurer is a really stable and strong build. This build in particular may be a beginner build, but in my experience its VERY strong so do not be discouraged by that. Probably a great option for HC.

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Even though the post is quite old, and being a relatively new player, I can suggest few classes -

Arcanist - for mirror skill which gives you invincibility long enough to renew your pots or port out if you are feeling you are not equipped enough.

Soldier - good circuit-breaker .

The above two gets you to those skills fairly faster than the ones I am mentioning below .

Inquisitor - Inquisitor seal . Stand on it (and preferably shoot )

Demolitionist - Blast shield

Occultist - Blood of Dreeg

Nightblade - Blade barrier ( the skill is similar to mirror of arcanist but makes you immobile)

I personally played ranged PURIFIER (demolitionist+inquisitor) as my first HC character which is still alive .

A tip ( from a noob) play the vanilla+expansions over and over again and try to memorize the attack patterns of the nemesis bosses and heroes and Read the grimtool monster database BEFORE going for Crucible and Shattered Realm . Try rerolling the mutators too .

I hope this helps a tiny bit if you ever revisit this post. Cheers :slightly_smiling_face:
Correct me if I am wrong about anything in the post .

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I’ll see your two year necro post and raise you another year!

I’ve played so much grim dawn, cleared SR90 with builds, beaten all the crucible, haven’t beat every celestial yet (dunno why… I have weird compulsions), farmed so much gear, but all on regular/softcore. Eventually I think I’d played 20 or so classes in end game gear to SR70+, I just got kinda bored.

But wait! Crate released a major update! I was back in, and thought to myself, why haven’t I ever tried hardcore? I’m not sure if I’ll ever get all the celestial achievements, but how can I call myself a grim dawn junkie and not even beat ultimate on hardcore?

So I’m leveling up a Warlord, and it’s going swimmingly. I just got to homestead on normal (I think that’s act 2) and I haven’t been close to dying. I’m doing forcewave on a cooldown so it hits like a truck, and shield slams and blitz as my rotation. Everything dies fast and am still very tanky.

First I’ll say, prioritize your resists. This is a huge thing any experienced player knows, but took me a while to learn, that survivability is tons more important than a few more dps. Max out skills that give hp and resists. I also played a character from level 1 on softcore but started at ultimate difficulty and holy crap do you have to build resists fast or get one shot!

Next observation, Crate threw us a real bone with the new dodge skill. It makes a lot of early fights much easier to not die, like avoiding some of Krieg’s attacks and Voldrak’s hits. Voldrak is one enemy that CAN kill you on normal if you facetank. Most enemies cannot, but he hits hard.

Warlord, warder, blademaster are all good picks since soldier can provide a lot of survivability. Dervish is a really good class too with a mix of high damage and good skills to survive plus a ton of mobility.

I’m not as good at playing ranged classes, but I don’t like purifier for hardcore. Inquisitor’s seal means you have to sit still, and I don’t like that for a ranged dps class. Outside of that I don’t love a lot of the synergy with Demo. Yeah you get dual wield guns and procs, but with end game gear you are usually over the 100% proc rate, and some end game rifles are as good as the pistols anyway, or you can get dual wield ranged off gear. I like Infiltrator a lot more- Inquisitor’s piercing damage buffs and debuffs fit great with warrior and you can skip seal.

Sorcerer or Elementalist are both pretty easy to drop mortars and run around avoiding damage with big hp regen. I don’t think these are that capable of SR90, unless you are really good at twitch play and avoiding all boss hits, but for just finishing ultimate and some lower level SR they are a breeze to play and a lot of fun.

My closing thought, beyond dying, hardcore is like a game reset since you have a separate stash from normal. If you want to level a char fresh without access to tons of good gear and supplies it’s the way to go. I mean, you can just level one on normal and not use your shared stash, but, I’ve never been able to do that! Really you have two separate progression systems, so it’s like having a new game without deleting all your regular stuff. It’s a nice challenge, to build up gear and consumables again, instead of just speed running to 100 to do SR.

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