I’d like to become more active. I have finished elite and am playing on ultimate, but I KNOW my hps are not right to tank even for a little. I’m running up against stuff that is doing me in pretty easily.
Any suggestions? And please if this is not the right etiquette, please let me know. I’ll be happy to fix whatever I need to.
Plus the numbers didn’t match up accurately and I know I have 4 devotions unused. I figured I’d fix them when I got to 100.
Well first of all you need to max your resistances. 21% bleeding res isn’t going to cut it. In ultimate, you’re going to want 80% for all of them with some overcap. It looks like most of your gear is leaning towards physical damage as well as some devotions. You’re going to want to find a new belt though, the chains of anguish apply a debuff to you, not to enemies. so it’s making things more difficult for you. Also if you want to focus on 2 handed weapons then the kraken constellation is a must. Or if you still need more survivability, you can go 1 handed weapon and shield. Then focus on devotions that boost your shield stats like shield maiden.
Targo’s hammer will proc a lot more often with a shield as it’s 50% chance on block as well as if it’s bound to a different passive then Menhir’s Will. Menhir’s Will only activates at or below 33% health and THEN you have a 50% chance on block to proc Targo’s Hammer.
I would suggest a blitz warlord build to be honest. It’s got great damage and survivability once you get the specific MI’s that boost blitz. This one for example by grey-maybe is solid and should still be really great in the current version.
Thank you. Yes, I wanted to go to one hand at some point, but I was really liking the damage. Can you make any suggestions to increase bleeding resist, augment/component-wise? I’m sure equipment-wise it would be a whole lot of stuff that you couldn’t even begin to list out.
what Giver says is right
you need 80+ all res except physical, resists is your main mitigation
Health is relatively low, which can be boosted with some component/augment, skill point tweaks too
it will only proc when you wear a shield 
you cannot block in GD without a shield equipped (currently)
So that devo is currently wasted for you Gilmer, along with Stone Form(obelisk proc)
Which leads into the next comment, you’re focusing a lot on retal, without focusing a lot on retal, so you’re not really getting a lot out of it (Messenger, counterstrike etc etc)
And in either case you’ll get a lot more dmg boost getting Celestial presence in Oathkeeper, - and you’d get more healing+phys dmg boost taking Dire Bear for maul proc too
And you have no maxed main dmg skill, so you’re not scaling/focusing your core dmg application that well, which reduces dmg and healing via lifesteal (you actually have decent amount of lifesteal - minus Anguish belt that should probably be swapped)
ex being RF with just 11pts, which also scales on WPS you have 0 points in (smite/markovian/zolhan) - and if you were going retal (which you have low amounts of) maxed Retribution.
faction items and MIs (greens are not bad when the issue is base resist)
you can use GT search to easy see a lot of available items Grim Dawn Item Database
ex with bleed res Grim Dawn Item Database (when you use the advanced search you need to put in a min value of 1, and tick the right boxes etc - otherwise you can use word search)
Ahh I see! For some reason I thought there was still some blocking going on without, only less frequently. Thank you for the correction!
Component wise I usually go for bloodied crystals in my rings. And keep an eye out for MI and Rare equipment like Gnomish suggested. Sometimes they roll insane resistance values. I tend to keep anything that rolls over 60% to a single resistance.
Thank you for your replies. I know I need to do a lot of work. I’m also working off a build from 1.98 so that is also part of my problem, I’m sure.
Yeah, that character… kind of needs to go back to the drawing board.
The steps to make a character go:
1] Find a skill and damage type you want to use and invest maximally in it with skills and items.
If you want to use Righteous Fervour and auto-attacks, that means maxing the first two nodes, getting a lot of WPS skills to 100% proc chance, and getting items that add damage/improvements for both.
Currently you have invested a low amount in your main attack skill and have not taken any of the 3-4 WPS skills (Zolhan’s, Markovian’s, Smite, and Shattering Smash if you use a shield)
Unless you’re going for a retal build, then you won’t need the WPS, but in that case you haven’t taken the Righteous Fervour upgrade (Retribution) that adds retal damage to your attack…
2] Get your base stats up to snuff.
You need sufficiently high resistances, hitpoints, armour, offensive ability, defensive ability, attack speed, and sufficient sustain like life steal. (Caveat for linked stats: they’re for older patches and no longer apply 100%, but they give an idea. Get more hitpoints and OA than the guide recommends, and less armour/phys resist)
You have plenty of armour, and your OA and DA are acceptable-ish (you really want much more OA for a physical build to trigger your RR devotion) but all else is lacking, as others mentioned.
Best way to do this is to get some legendaries you want for point 1 (stuff that supports your main damage skills) and then farm some useful greens to cover any gaps in your stats. And don’t overlook crafted level 90 items like boots and gloves. Even though they’re yellow items in the blacksmith menu, they can roll green affixes and can be very strong options to cover gaps.
3] Cover the remaining gaps
Getting things like CC resist, abilities that have “reduced enemy damage” on them, making sure you have some circuit breakers. But those only really come into play in endgame scenarios, in the campaign you’re mostly fine without them.
Others have already mentioned how to search for items. In your case you may need to make some hard decisions, though, as there really isn’t very much to support physical righteous fervour. You could consider swapping for a different melee damage skills like Blade Arc, Cadence or even Blitz. You could also consider using a different damage type, but for warlord physical makes the most sense.
Oh, and the upcoming patch should help you: it is set to greatly reduce monster armour and should make physical damage builds much more effective.
Maybe I’m just getting old but most of that flew over my head. I know I have to understand it to do better, but whoa. I think part of my problem is I don’t know the why. I have a build I have read was good, I do that, but I have no clue if it really is good or not. And then I learn it isn’t.
Does CC mean crowd control? I played Everquest, so I am familiar with the term for that game. I assume it means somewhat the same, only it is all in my hands and not another character (I always played a warrior).
I obviously need to learn the abbreviations as well. I am not sure they would be “hard” decisions because I’m not married to whatever I am doing. I can leave it behind with no issues.
I thank you very much for all that and I’ll try to digest it. I’m not saying I’m too old to learn. I like learning. Moreso than when I was younger. It just seems like a lot of interacting parts and moving parts.
Yes CC means crowd control. On the third page of your character sheet, it lists out stun, freeze, slow etc and those are your CC resistances. They aren’t as important as your main resistances, however, neglecting them can lead to frustrating gameplay.
Some common abbreviations used are:
OA: offensive ability
DA: defensive ability
RR: resistance reduction
DR: damage reduction
CC: crowd control
CDR: cool down reduction
sometimes people abbreviate skills as well such as DEE (Dreegs Evil Eye) or AoM (Aegis of Menhir)
Apologies for using too many abbreviations. Joelker kindly explained them already.
Yeah, definitely.
I first played this game years ago and eventually just quit when I started running into Nemesis bosses I just couldn’t beat, or only barely beat. And that was despite having played this game’s predecessor, Titan Quest. (which likewise was a process of trial-and-error-and-lots-of-deaths. )
I’d be playing and doing fine, only to suddenly start dying with no real clue as to how. And that was despite having guides and the occasional question on this forum.
Years later I came back and gave it another try when I really wanted to play an ARPG. Found a guide that promised me I could beat stuff even without skill and it was true. Strong enough to do just about everything, no issues.
Then I went back and revised my old sorcerer from before the hiatus. New cool legendary items! I easily doubled my DPS. Kubacabra no longer stood a chance!
A few hours later I ran into the Chtonian nemesis Grava’Thul on the way to Malmouth and got stuck again. Died four times in a row and could not make it through.
That’s when I started reading those other guides I linked above and trying to understand the mechanics. And finally managed to tweak my character to a point that COULD beat Grava without having to follow someone else’s build guide. (Even if the build I came up with was still… pretty dumb.)
All that waffling is to say: You’re not alone here, and Grim Dawn is an obtuse and confusing game. But it’s worth it to understand it, I find, and the guides on this forum really help there.
In that case I would personally recommend using Blade Arc like the guide I linked here, though obviously as a warlord the regen strategy that guide mentions doesn’t really make sense. The items and devotions should still work, you just need to max the Oathkeeper mastery bar for Guardians of Empyrion with maxed out Celestial Presence to reduce enemy physical resistance, and get some Ugdenbog leather augments to compensate for lost poison resistance.
Blade arc is A] pretty simple to understand, B] very satisfying to use, and C] great at dealing with crowds. Certainly a lot easier to understand than retaliation, which uh… I still don’t get. Can be done with a shield or with a 2 hander, the latter gives much nicer damage.
Blitz is also an option, but I personally found it a lot more frustrating when I tried it. Because of the cooldown I never managed to get damage up to a decent level when I tried.
The guide I link here is really nice because all the variants helped me compare and contrast and understand why certain skills worked or didn’t. All credits fo @anon91300220 for helping me begin to actually understand the game.