Hi all
Picked this game up yesterday and been playing it ever since. I’m at the point where I have a vague idea of what I want, but there is still some (alot) of stuff that i’m unsure of.
I use Firestrike and have upgraded that
I picked up a 2h Rifle at the beginning of the game, and it felt really good, so I decided to try and make a build around that. My plan right now is to use Fire strike, and basicly pick up the skills down that line. So far it works good, but I know it’s still early in the game.
In Devotions i’m working towards Kraken and after that maybe Hydra. I’ve down the Eagle and doing the imp right now.
I’ve tried researching what works, but alot of stuff seems a bit out of date and I’m not sure how relevant it is any more. But I’m afraid of making my character too squishy.
Right now i’ve put most of my points into Cunning, allmost all of them, 3 in Physique and one in spirit. But i’m not sure about this at all. Cunning seems to be the ranged main stat, and spirit does not seem a problem now since I dont have much skills. My biggest worry is that I put too few points into Physique and gimp myself later down the line.
My other worry is my 2nd class. I’ve boiled it down to two choices:
Soldier seems like a good choice. There does not seem to be any active skills that are that usefull for me, but some good passives which could help me survive and boost my physical damage as well.
Arcanist: Iskandras Elemental Exchange seems really good with firestrike, since it boost all elemental damage, and later down the line firestrik will be upgraded to do all kinds of damage. There is not much survivabilty, but maybe Sphere of protection could help along with Arcane Will.
What do you guys think? Right now i’m most tempted to go with Arcanist.
Someone told me that you would never use more than 5 or 10 points in Cunning or spirit, and the rest on health, no matter what, because else you’ll not be able to survive on hard mode. Is this true?
Physique is the main stat you want to increase regardless of build. There are some builds that put points into the other two stats, but Cunning and Spirit stats increase are too much unnoticable to be really worth it. The extra health and Defensive Ability from Physique is far more useful, specially in Ultimate.
And you pretty much can get a bunch of cunning and spirit from the mastery bar and devotions. So yeah, i suggest you put a big portion of the stat points in Physique.
To me personally, Occultist is the best mastery for ranged Demolitionist. Curse of Fraility is one of the best debuffs in the game, Blood of Dreeg is a pretty good skill for healing and Solael’s Witchfire and Possession are great buffs if you are going to use Brimstone in the Fire Strike line. It is rather squishy tho, so if you want something more tanky Soldier is the way to go.
Definitely put the rest of your points into physique, it’s not that it’s an absolute necessity for survival but it helps a lot and benefits of cunning are just too small to invest into it compared to the extra health and ability to wear heavier armor from physique.
For a rifle char I would go for Soldier or Occultist as a second class. Arcanist is very squishy. Occultist has more synergy with the Chaos damage on brimstone and Solaels Witchfire is great for attack speed and flat bonus damage.
Soldier on the other hand offers a ton of survivability, but not much for damage for a rifle build. As a first char I recommend going for a Commando so you’ll have less trouble surviving later on, squishy characters can be frustrating on your first playthrough when you’re still learning about the game and die a lot.
Almost everything has been mentioned, but will drop some more.
I got both a 2h ranger commando and pyromancer. Both of them have min 40 point in physique. The only thing you need cunning is to take new rifle (Hawk constellation helps with that, a bit), when you focusing on Fire Strike it’s better to drop more points in Spirit than Cunning. Spirit not only buffs you energy regeneration and energy pool, but also magic damage, like fire for example.
I recommend sticking to physique, not spirit. The damage gains with spirit are additive with the %fire from gear and thus basically worthless. You’ll get enough spirit from filling the mastery bar and your gear to keep your energy up.
Belllow you have part of a quote from another thread where I posted. The discussion was about both two handed and dual guns. I deleted some of the post for what you are looking for. Hope it helps and it’s not too confusing:
Devotion and skills: Falcon swoop on Fire strike and Solael’s malice on Cocktail with Meteor shower on flashbang. Abomination on : Shadowflame Mantle proc IF two handed-more on this item below- (not sure if it works…if not) Mask of infernal Truth Ability for both builds. Just cast on trash and let them burn.
To answer the questions:
Yes Brimstone is great for leveling. Max that before anything (having a couple of points in Blast shield and Flashbang to make progression smoother)
On to two handed. You will need Hellborne rifle. it’s just the best. the main advantage to using the rifle is this : Shadowflame Mantle. These Legendary shoulders are good for either dual guns or two handed because of +3 to Brimstone BUT, it has a proc dedicated to two handed that gives a change to do theree shots in one go and some extra fire and chaos damage added. Pretty amazing.
This item brings both dual guns and two handed on even ground kind of. You decide what you like most. For two handed you will need to switch devotions because you need Kraken (build with devotions included): http://grimcalc.com/build/bAutOiR We lose some attack damage converted to health from revenant. If you don’t think that is ok then you can lose falcon swoop and rearrange devotion points to get the %6 damage converted to health from Revenant back. (Keep in mind it doesn’t help much against bosses). You can also put Abomination devo on Shadowflame Mantle proc. If not, you can put it on Mask of Infernal Truth skill and let trash burn, for both types of builds.
Stats. You are doing most of your damage from Fire lighting and Chaos so NO cunning. There are two ways you can do this. 10 Spirit for amulet and rings and all Physique (This will let you wear Empowered Legplates of Valor which you will need in ultimate and will also give you plenty of life and devensive ability. If you are doing Hardcore then DO THIS. If you are not doing Hardcore then go 2:1 physique:spirit.
http://grimdawn.com/forums/showthread.php?t=33268 -commando (no need to go hybrid melee/ranged like him if you don’t want. You can play like the pyromancer above which pretty much sums up all the advice i’ve written.