How do you approach creating builds?

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
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Hey there, wanted to discuss the title.
I’m at the point when I’ve leveled quite a few builds found here on the forum, ranging from the top20 to the silliest memes someone put in the comments to a random thread not even in “classes, skills and builds” forum category. And something in-between.

Also I believe I have at least somewhat okay~ish “reading comprehesion” to the point that I can tell what’s going on by just looking at grimtools of a build.

I even shared my feedback on a couple occasions here and on reddit when people asked for advice, and they later responded that it had positive effect on the build performance.

And now I came to the point that I would probably kinda you know maybe a little make a build myself.
But I feel quite lost and confused. I don’t even know where to start.
Well, maybe I have a vague idea on the process, let me share it and please do make corrections from your experience.

The way I see it is:

  1. Pick the core element.
    Might be a skill, an archetype, even just a damage type. I guess a single core item (MI / Legendary) would work really well as an anchor here. At least from what I’ve read here and there, it’s quite common that people see an item and go like “I wanna build around that”.

  2. Pick the masteries that support given core.
    Some interesting purples that caught my eye recently support 3 masteries, usually in a way of +all in one or two masteries and then +N to certain skill of another one or two masteries.
    So that gives us on average 3 masteries that can be supported by a given item, which in turn makes for 3 classes to choose from.
    That is already a lot of room, and I’d really prefer to have less options than more options due to analysis paralysis. But suppose I could manage the choice.

  3. After I have the core idea and a class that supports it, I guess I open grimtools and start working on skills and devotions? The latter is a bit scary, but I know the general drill of “pick 1-2 T3 devotions and fill in T1’s and T2’s to achieve needed points, ideally something useful and not Blades of Nadaan on an axe build (that’s a real example from a YT build I once saw)”.

  4. Figure out the rest of the gear, components and augments. Try to find the purples that provide bonuses for needed skills, hope to patch out the main resistances, hit OA / DA thresholds, then there are secondary-but-not-really things like slow, freeze and stun res, energy regen, health sustain, and a whole three different ways to lower enemy’s resistances. Oh and maybe some OA / DA shred.
    Trying to keep all that in my head is quite overwhelming.

Any hints to streamline the process?
Is my idea of it somewhat coherent, or should I use something fundamentally different?

On a side note, I have no ambitions in making crazy powerful stuff or fighting celestials.
Something that could reliably farm SR 28-29 in HC is the bar I’m setting for myself.

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  1. I pick an item/skill modifier that looks interesting to me and then build around that.

  2. When I’ve found an item that looks interesting, I snoop around supporting items to see what other masteries they best support.

  3. When I’ve decided on two masteries to use, I 1-point everything except my main skills, which I max. I then take items to max out relevant skill modifiers to my main skills, followed by relevant +skill support.

  4. When I’ve slotted all my items in, I spend the rest of my skillpoints on auxiliary buffs/debuffs.

  5. Then I do Components.

  6. Then Devotions.

  7. Then augments; weapons and accessories first, to see where resists land. Only then do I do armor augments to shore up the final needs of my build.

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Thanks for that!

#3 is mind blowing.
Do I get it right that you literally one point everything and then remove the obviously unneeded skills as you figure out the gear and the playstyle you’re going for?
That sounds like quite a clever approach.

Regarding #2, how exactly do you go about “snooping around” for supporting items?
Let’s take a Chillheart for example.
We can see +1 all Demo, +1 all Inq, and cool mods on RoS (Nightblade) and EoR (Oathkeeper).
So we’ve got 6 total classes to choose from (if we wanna utilize the item to the fullest).

Suppose that we’re sold on a cold conversion to EoR as an anchor point. According to your #2, what’s your next step from here? Pick Inq or Demo second and the look for other items that have +all to that mastery? If not and you’re looking for other items, how do you know what to look for?

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Use advanced search to check what other items have bonusses to EoR. Like so: Grim Dawn Item Database
You can limit a bit more, if for example you decide to go for cold damage, you can select only items that have at least 1% cold damge (and then you also check elemental damage separately).

Then when you get to devotions you already know you need -%rr for cold, so you figure out how to get to murmur and then fill in the rest with more cold/elemental devo’s or and fiddle around till it makes sense.

You can of course go back a few steps at any point. And when you see another cool item while making a build you get distracted and start making another build, and then an hour later you forgot what you wanted to do with the first one :rofl: And before you know it you’re spending more time in GT than in the game. :sweat_smile:

I assume he only picks the relevant skills. For example if you want to try AAR with a spellbreaker, you do something like this: Spellbreaker, Level 100 (GD 1.2.1.6) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator
Then add items, then fill out your skill points based on the bonus points you got from your items.
Something like that. At least that’s what I do.

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5

Well guess that’s the true endgame of any decent ARPG.

Thanks for your inputs, appreciate it!
Will definitely give it a try.

Can’t wait to come up with my 100% unique build that was totally done a dozen times over the last 5-8 years or so :smiley:

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To prevent that from happening I always search for the weapon I am using with the grim dawn forum search first, you can easily get a good idea how many builds there already are. You will be surprised that some items still have very few builds (or only some very outdated ones) after many years. While there are also items that have a huge amount of builds and many similar ones.

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Thanks. I’m aware of the technology, not actually sure if I want to do that.

If I do this preemptively that could just discourage me from going the route I wanted.
And if instead I just do it all blindly and than it turns out that somebody already did like 95% same build — that would actually be reassuring in that if I’m not the only one than the idea is probably worth it.

All that not to disqualify your suggestion, don’t get me wrong. I really appreciate the input and suggestions.

Also, a bit besides the point but while we’re here, one thing my FOMO isn’t happy about is the fact that not all builds in existence end up on grimtools “builds” category. I guess only the ones that are posted as a post on this forum or have a youtube video end up there.

But a good chunk of my bookmarked GT links collected from replies on the forum or on reddit.
For example the very your’s Sentinel we talked about recently is not there for the key item:

If only there was a place that got all the builds that were ever posted to grimtools :crying_cat_face:

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yes a GT search is not a complete search, also there is something with the indexing of the item search feature, that seems to not work for certain items.

The GT admin only wants to collect builds with a full guide, either text guide + gameplay video or full video guide. I don’t know why, probably as a quality filter.

yes that was a quick one, i know how to post it for the database to pick it up, but this is obviously a lot of additional work, so currently it is in pile with other build concepts for which I might later decide to make a full thread or not.

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This is of course if you care about that kind of thing. I personally find it more fun to tinker away on my own and only check other builds when I’m not satisfied with the end result.

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Would you mind sharing the knowledge, please?

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None of the builds I’ve posted ever gone to grimtools.

I also never made a video about them.

So this is the reason? I don’t know the website works.

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I don’t know the exact parameters, you would have to know the website code, it is basically after it picked up this build from me

Arcaneweaver build

I started to post all builds i considered worthy to be picked up, in a similar format

I know there are some very old builds from me in the database that were picked up then, but would not be picked up now, because the rules got more strict, like for example:

hades build

EDIT: I should probably add I have seen recent builds added with significantly less text than that arcaneweaver build, (and also having both a beginner and endgame build is definitely not required), so the minimum is lower.

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So my takeway from that is that at a minimum we need a forum post with GT link + video posted.
Probably the amount of text has something to do too, but not sure about that.
That’s gonna be helpful, thanks.

Also, just bookmarked both GT’s from the examples, might wanna try them out later.
Cheers :cat:

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yes but I recall seeing that happen (but with very few text) and then it got not picked up, so maybe it counts a minimum of words or wants additional links to items to test the existence of explanatory content.

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15

Since I’m a somewhat new player (started playing in 2024), I just recently tried to come up with my own builds.

It’s a task both enjoyable and dauting.

My workflow is something like that:

  1. I start with a concept, I try to frame it in just few words. Sometimes I try to replicate an ingame enemy, or mimic a character from other media. Sometimes I just randomly look at a piece of gear on my stash, and build around that.

  2. Then, I look for classes and skills that support it.

Examples:

  1. Then I pick gear

  2. Then try some devotion routes

  3. And last not least, I do Augments.

  4. Then I level the character to 100, do a SR32 run (to test the build and get the last attribute/skill points)

  5. Then I post here to get feedback from the community and improve the build.

This my usual cycle.

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16

Thanks mate, appreciate the routine!

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17

I see an item/set that looks cool, i make a build around it.

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18

This isn’t always the case. GT picked up one of my topics here, which was only intended to be a bit of a showcase. It had no guide whatsoever and the videos were a couple high SR runs +Ravager kill.

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19

As Bas said, I don’t 1-point the whole mastery, just what I think I’ll use.

Words time? Words time.

OK so we’ve decided on a Chillheart EoR build. The next thing I’ll do is search other skill modifier slots (offhand, head, medal, amulet, hands) for “to Eye of Reckoning”. Chillheart provides EoR flat Cold Damage and Phys->Cold. So if I can find some Physical Damage to EoR or more Cold Damage to EoR, that will look to me like a worthy item for consideration.

Searching the offhand for EoR bonuses, we do have the option of another Chillheart. So at baseline, we need to find something on the level of Chillheart or better than it. Most weapons, for Cold EoR, are not better than Chillheart. However, we do find that Mythical Gravetouch (shield) provides 40 more Cold Damage than Chillheart does, as well as Fire → Cold conversion - a Conversion type we still need. This seems like an obvious choice. The DE mod on Gravetouch doesn’t look appealing because we’ll be channeling EoR as it is, but the Veil mod looks pretty juicy. Oathkeeper + Nightblade seems like a reasonable call for this build now.

There aren’t any Heads, Medals, or Amulets that will provide something for EoR directly.

For Hands, Mythical Sandreaver Braces provides a small amount of 24 Physical Damage to EoR that I could convert to Cold via Chillheart, so this is a viable choice, but it’s obviously not a Cold item so I’m not 100% sold on it. For the Hand slot, then, I’ll search “+% Cold Damage" and "+% Elemental Damage” and see what I get. Of the available options, I think I like Mythical Dawnshard Grips the most. +2 Celestial Presence is some additional RR, we have the possibility of getting 19% Attack Speed on a good roll, and the Pneumatic Burst mod isn’t nothing. OK + Nightblade is looking juicier. More on that below.

At this point, it can be worth skipping to step 3 to take a look at some skills and ask the question “What do we still want?”

The answer is basically just +skills. We have Physical->Cold via Chillheart. We have Fire->Cold via Gravetouch. And we have global Lightning->Cold via the two of them, assuming we get decent rolls. (cough Join my crusade against the evil empire that doesn’t want Conversion to be a static stat! cough)

So we could start shopping for some direct +skills now…

…or we can get greedy and keep looking at skill modifiers. We still have Head, Amulet, and Medal to fill, after all.

Let’s search “to Veil of Shadow” and “to Pneumatic Burst” and see if anything good comes up.

“to Veil of Shadow” doesn’t reveal too much that looks too good. It does tell us we could opt to take the Mageslayer set, but we’d have to sacrifice our Dawnshard Grips for that. That isn’t the end of the world, but is the return really worth it? None of the set bonuses really help us. But it’s an option if we want it. On the other hand, we could get 10% Cold RR from Mythical Crown of the Winter King as well as +1 Nightblade, as well as some flat Cold. Similarly, Night’s Embrace (Amulet) gives us 6% Cold RR to work with, as well as being a +1 Nightblade amulet. We kinda want some +Oathkeeper though, but it’s worth keeping this in mind regardless.

What about “to Pneumatic Burst”?

Not really. There are some options here and there, namely in the Medal slot. Ilgorr’s Eternal Vigil is an MI that would eek out some extra % Damage for us and, in conjunction with Dawnshard Grip, make PB last a laughable 5 minutes. Mythical Undying Oath, on the other hand, would let us use the skill more frequently and provide us with a lot flat damage, both passively and while PB is up. Undying Oath is probably better but I’d say either one would work here. For flexibility purposes, I’ll go with Ilgorr so we open a slot up to affix selection. In the Head slot, we could take Namadea’s Horns for more flat on PB, but is that really worth losing a +1All slot to? I have my doubts. But it’s worth keeping in mind.

In light of all of this, I think prioritizing getting our skill levels up is the most important thing. I think a Kaisan amulet makes the most sense in this case. And this is where the bad news creeps in. At this point, there are no more Cold/Elemental items supporting EoR.

But all hope is not lost!

Reaper’s Legguards and a +Oathkeeper Relic get us everything we need to reach 26/16 EoR. I chose Serenity for my relic, from personal preference. With this, the hard part is over. Look for Cold/Elemental Damage % items that provide +skills bonuses to specific skills we’re interested in and then round out our skillpoint investment itself.

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You’re a legend!
Can’t express how much I appreciate such a detailed explanation!
Exactly what I wanted!
Empyrion bless you and your kin!

A curious cause.
If not static then what? High spread random variable on each hit / cast / tick?
Or flowing state like Convention of Elements from Diablo 3 where it provides N sec buff, but rotating through different conversions so that we could say have 5 sec of “N% fire → cold” and the next 5 sec “N% fire → vitality” or aether to cold, etc?

Or maybe something entirely different?