I made a Ring of Steel build that isn't too bad

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
1

So like the title says, I made an RoS character. Like many people I had used RoS and it’s transmuter (Ring of Frost) as a 2 point wonder for great AoE CC but I had never thought about using it as a main skill.

One day I was on my DW poison/acid Witch Hunter which uses Amarasta’s Blade burst and thought, ‘ABB and RoS are pretty similar’, and so I went off to respec my Blademaster. After a few hours of shoulder farming here’s what I got:http://www.grimtools.com/calc/nZo8PvNA (Contrary to what the link shows my cold res is above 80% do to apparantly getting good rolls.)

Now I’ll be the first to say, this build isn’t the greatest. It has crazy attack damage converted to health, but it really needs it considering how often the HP drops dangerously low (as it stands I don’t know if I could recommend this to HC players).

Ring of Steel is fun. It has a decent AoE with no target limit, the cool down isn’t that long and both the main skill and the modifier have some nice CC. Additionally the bonus crit damage on Circle of Slaughter means the when RoS crits, the damage can be pretty decent (around 60-70k).

But boy are there issues. The energy cost is insane. With my 3 buffs on I have 1595 energy available. This for a non-caster melee build is no big deal… Except it is! At 26/16 in the main skill and 14/12 in the modifier, Ring of Steel takes 158! I’ve only got 12.08 energy regen :cry: I don’t think I’ve ever had to chug so many energy potions on a build before. Usually you come out of a dungeon with more pots than you had going in. Not with this build.

This kind of confuses me. It’s clearly not for casters (I mean I don’t think it is). And building for energy regen while building to make a strong Ring of Steel is nigh on impossible as far as I can tell. If the energy cost were like 50 or 60 percent of it’s current amount, then the skill would be much better.

Another thing that confused me was gearing the character. A lot of the gear with RoS and CoS bonuses seem way more focused on bleed damage than pierce damage. It’s not like there’s anything inherently wrong with that but then you’ve got to wonder, ‘Isn’t Ring of Steel inferior in every way as a bleed skill to transmuted Blade Arc?’. I dunno :rolleyes: I mean it’s not like I would make a BA/RoS blade master. A bleed focused BA Warder just makes more sense. Conversely RoS makes more sense as a pierce damage focused skill, but I feel that most of the gear doesn’t reflect that.

I’m a fan of builds that don’t use full sets or sets that aren’t immediately apparent for a build, so I’m not asking for a pierce damage focused ring of steel set (although I wouldn’t mind ;););)). I just kind of wish it’d be a bit easier to gear up flat piercing damage and points into CoS slaughter at the same time is all ((we’ll see if RoS gets any love in the xpac) probably won’t :cry:).

Anyway, I don’t really remember what else I was going to type here (sorry about this mess of a post and all of the parenthesis). And so with that being said, I’d like to see some of you forum folk make RoS builds and share them here. I might have sounded a little negative, but the build gets work done and can take punishment pretty well :smiley:

2

Yeah I have a Ring of Steel character also but I still grabbed the transmuter. Also went spellbreaker for the added CDR.

http://www.grimtools.com/calc/D2pyMBVq

I also had a crit pierce 2h riffle RoS build I enjoyed back when level cap was 60.

3

There are two things that came into my mind (with constructive intent oc):

  1. An Arcane Spark and/or points in Phantasmal Armor could ease your energy problems to some extent.

  2. Do overcapping pierce resist that much with those Silk Swatches really worth the loss of armor absorbtion from a Scaled Hide on the shoulders and the OA/DA/Attack Speed/whatever from one of those excellent chest armor components?

4

I had actually changed right after I saved that calc link:eek: (need to change that).
As for Phantasmal Armor, I completely forgot about that. I so rarely use it that I forgot it had energy leach and absorb. Good idea:D
It looks like I can skimp out on a bit of cold res for the Arcane Spark as well.

5

How would you say this compares to a similar build using ABB instead of RoS?

6

I haven’t done a full ABB build yet. Only used ABB for leveling so far.

7

Why not using both skills on rotation? Cold based ABB/RoS spelbreaker?

I would also definitely go for 2H weapon to maximize dmg output.

Something like this http://www.grimtools.com/calc/O2GYAXZd

8

I like this idea a lot. :slight_smile:
I’d put a few more points into CoS to push the Crit Dmg and Fumble Chance of RoS even further and gear a bit more offensively for Vanilla only purposes.

But I think I will give this setup a try.

9

http://www.grimtools.com/calc/a2d0LL2J

how about something like this?

10

Yep, Soulrend CDR and 2h damage Should weork very well with maxed ABB and RoS. I do like ABB maxed with it:p

11

I made more glass cannon version here: http://www.grimtools.com/calc/p25LeEN5

12

How do you feel mana-wise now? 210% weapon damage on RoS plus an Arcane Spark gives 31 energy leech per second per target so you should replenish your energy bar everytime you attack a pack of mobs.

13

It’s certainly better but the energy cost is still a little high.

14

Energy leech is nice in theory but the target needs to be alive for it to work. I’d imagine that level 26 RoS murders trash, don’t think leech is a valid solution here.

15

I think we need more interesting sources of energy leech, aside of IEE (very good but reserved to Arcanists) and Arcane Spark (too expensive :p).

16

Excuse my negativity but I doubt it can be salvaged at this point. Never works on bosses, trash dies before you can leech much (if any) of their energy. Adding more sources does nothing to address these issues. I don’t see boss resistance to it getting lowered since it opens up energy burn possibilities that frankly make bosses far too easy. So, meh.

17

Yes something like this… Awesome build. Thanks =)