I am vastly underwhelmed, frankly, by performance in what I consider minimum-standard SR 65. My two main observations are as follows:
Very slow throw speed. Similar to throwing an air-filled balloon; by the time it hits the designated area, your target will have moved off the spot. This is perhaps ameliorated by cast speed, but the build has a not-horrible CS of 162% so I wouldn’t think that would be it. This makes it very hard to do the classic cooldown kite, and trying to facetank isn’t an optimal solution either in practice.
Despite the amulet’s back-conversion of pierce to fire, Grim Internals on a target dummy shows that it’s about a 9:1 cold:fire ratio in practice after the dual Crescent Moons take effect. Note that while the proc cannot stack, the conversions and more importantly the %WD do stack.
Pure Grenado alone seeming insufficient, I experimented with the very energy-expensive Chillspikes, as well as interleaving both BWC and Canister Bomb. That helps some, and the Chillspikes do give you a decent single-target attack at point-blank (i.e. aggressive boss) range, but still. I’ve also tried putting on different pants (Rimestone Legguards) and Fateweaver’s Raiment, but they don’t really make much difference. Multiple deaths in SR 65 with all these variations (Grava, Reaper, and high danger from Fabius the latter not unexpectedly so).
What am I doing wrong here? Should I be moving West in the constellations to try to leverage the high WD for ADCtH on the main skill? I haven’t tried the Barrelsmiths to compare, but it would seem that a lightning-grenado purifier would be way more tanky, not to mention having respectable autoattack options, then trying to pull out every trick I can think of for a cold grenado without GD-stashed insane MIs… but I just can’t seem to make this work and it’s frustrating. Perhaps there is a reason why there is no cold grenado included in @thepowerofmediocrity’s MOAR GRENADO list?
Thoughts, observations, recommendations most welcome.
Why not Rimetongue? Gives you 0.5 cooldown to Grenado too, doesn’t give you bad Pierce / Phys → Fire conversions and 2 Cold RR. I fail to see any advantage of your non-set setup over it.
I’d always keep Veil of Shadow on 10/10 for the Radius increase which is very low otherwise
For more ACDTH I’d use Bat on Chillspikes and/or Blade Trap if playing Rimetongue on top of Scales you have already
Don’t forget you have much lower %Fire and Fire RR. Obviously Fire damage is going to be low no matter what for that reasons.
It’s about the Cold damage lost. This unconverted Fire damage value would be considerably higher if it was converted.
maxed out Shadow Strike (buffed by Spectral Blade)
Mines + Blade Trap for support
Chillspikes could work too depending on your playstyle / rotation or simply Melee as a filler? Or no filler.
one should find Reduced Target’s Damage somewhere but probably not BWC as it would be a waste of point and unnecessary skill to cast something from this category: Kymon’s Will / Attuned Lodestone / Boot procs / Alkamos Rings etc
or changing Devotion to include Black Blood of Yugol which would also allow to take Ghoul
Good catch. I think I just noticed “Blade Trap” and assumed it was garbage
Yeah, my point being that there’s a much higher ratio of phys to cold than phys to fire. Agreed though that I don’t like the amulet “swimming backwards” and the only fire (well, elemental) RR is from Thermite Mine. That won’t be a problem with Rimetongue.
I’ve only played Blade Trap once or twice and briefly but it’s been used recently with Rimtongue Builds using Blade Trap skill - Grim Dawn Builds definitely a support skill but for example 22/12 + 22/12 in a Cold Spellbreaker from the list.
) obviously its a defensive devo 