Jon Snow (The Winter King) Build

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
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Dependent on Crown of the Winter King Legendary Item Skill. Another glass cannon fun kiting dps build; and just like my other warlock build, don’t try to facetank.

Hi guys my name is Orion and I’ve been playing Grim Dawn for over 350 hours and this is my 2nd guide. I have 2 level 85’s and am enjoying some fun other builds on other lower level characters. I’m not a total expert at the game yet but getting there so please ask me any questions; I’ll be sure to ask you if I don’t understand something. Thanks for stopping by and I hope you enjoy the guide!

GrimCalc Build

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Videos
Beating Clone of John Bourbon in Edge of Reality

Pros
Great AoE. Also, Cold damage builds are rare, so you can feel special with this build.

You use the whole skillbar at all times.

Cons
Squishballs, unless u have max resistances; even then low health, so squishballs.

Runs out of energy at times with skills, unless you have good gear and use good energy regen/energy leech materia, such as Arcane Spark.

Need to spend all augments on resistances or you die.

You use the whole skillbar at all times.

End Gear
Crown of the Winter King, Bane of the Winter King, and whatever else you can find.

Fun skills with cold devotion actives that proc off them:
Grasping vines to Proc Guardian’s Gaze.

Devouring Swarm to lower vit resistance for storm totem (with vit dmg) and proc Leviathan.

Winter King’s Might (on crown of winter king) to proc Rhowan’s Crown. A crown to proc a crown!

Blade spirit to proc Tsunami.

Phantasmal Blades to proc Amatok the Spirit of Winter.

Defensive Skills:
Blade barrier for invincibility when you almost die.

Conjure primal spirit for damage mitigation.

Shadow strike for dashing out of situations where you are swarmed.

Auras and Passives
Mogdrogen’s Pact, Frostdread Presence, Heart of the Winter King, Veil of Shadow, Primal Bond

Devotions
Refer to grimcalc but here’s the order I got them:

-Crossroads (Eldritch)
-Guardian’s Gaze
-Scholar’s Light
-Raven
-Owl
-Empty Throne
-Leviathan
-Rhowan’s Crown
-Crossroads (Primordial)
-Tsunami
-Amatok the Spirit of Winter
-Kraken
-Eel

Leveling Guide
Annoying to get to level 75 without Crown of the Winter King skill, but max out blade spirit first, then Storm Totem and Veil of Shadow/Night’s Chill. At level 70 you need armor augments to play on ultimate and not die all the time. Just get augments for your lowest resistances, usually poison and pierce.

Conclusion
I love this rare build but if you don’t like the challenge of a squishy hero I wouldn’t play it. I play this a lot on twitch – http://www.twitch.tv/parashara

Also, there are many twitch archived videos of this build if you want to check them out.

Thanks for reading!
–Orion

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Interesting to see so many Winter King builds popping up lately. Hopefully not too far off writing up my own.

I think you could pump your resistances with well rolled green boots and hidden path MI pants. No Wendigo totem? How is your character faring against Nemeses/The Sentinel/Mad Queen and Gladiator Crucible? I’m not seeing it with those resists and health.

Also interested by the use of Phantasmal Blades and Storm Titan, what’s your reasoning behind taking those?

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Long time ago, I post a build that I use character name “Jon Snow” in it as a spellbreaker.

I’m here to claiming that it is not the same Jon Snow of mine :stuck_out_tongue:

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Jon Snow or John Dough or w/e you are to low on HP, DA/OA, armor, resistances,…

P.S. Plz put some components in rings.

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wowwowwow :slight_smile:

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another glass cannon… nice build.
now u just need the heart of the mountain yeti to tank for you :rolleyes:

looking forward to the elementalist one:p

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Thanks Xavier. Yeah the elementalist lightning dual wielder should be fun.

As for people complaining about low resistances, etc. – it’s level 76. Of course I’m not gonna have maxed out gear and resistances yet.

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Why not? You can wear all the gear at level 75.

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And what exactly is stopping you to do that on 76 lvl?

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Your builds always seem to spark some debates i hope it won’t be the case this time :rolleyes:

First of all i want to start with videos. People put videos as a reference to showcase how a build performs. You put an Edge of Reality video cool but you weren’t really doing anything at all. You pretty much never critted, your damage numbers were quite low and it seemed other people and mainly that Cadence Witchblade seemed to tank and dealt most damage to John Bourbon Clones.
In cases like these you are better off not putting any videos at all :wink:

Another thing i noticed about you is that you think you need to have least a couple offensive devotion procs every time and completely pass on any defensive procs to boot despite having really low DA, survivability and hp in your builds as your signature.
I first fully watched the video before glancing at your grimcalc and found out that you had Spirit of Winter much to my surprise. You haven’t procced a SINGLE Blizzard whole fight because your OA is way too low to crit in Ultimate despite you had BoD and FC buffs from other people and your build doesnt really have any DA reduction like how we put emphasize on your previous build, then what is the purpose of getting SoW if you can’t crit to proc at all?

Phantasmal Blades is leveled 1-12-1, why? If its to proc Blizzard which it doesn’t, is it for the ADCtH? How much do you think you are gonna benefit off it without leveling the main spell?
You opted for not investing one of the best buffs in the game, Mogdrogen’s Pact line for who knows what reason.

Overall the sections Cons, Pros, gear need more details. Its really not fun playing with a character that haven’t remotely met the overall base stats for Ultimate unlike what its said on your build description.

If the builds aren’t the main focus and you are punching out these builds to mainly advertise your stream its cool with me i can do without giving genuine feedback cuz im not trying to talk smack and cause arguements on the contrary to your perception.

I think playing a HC character would help a lot to your perception of creating builds imho. Try leveling a character to 85 on your own, without power leveling or a full stash of legendaries at your disposal. It will most likely give you a quite solid idea about what are the overall base numbers to survive and kill stuff on Ultimate.

I can also post this on reddit if you don’t mind.

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Not having the best gear for this build farmed yet.

Hahaha I love how pyroscar argues with me on every single forum post. Not gonna bite this time, but I do apologize about only having one video, whereas my warlock has many. I should be able to post some more (solo videos) sometime, especially when I’m more geared out.

Thanks for reading guys, even though I get a lot of shit for my posts usually

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And what would be the best gear for it? And how much it would improve your stats since they are more than on low end? I mean you are almost full legendary…
Also you dont have any component to put in rings or?

Edit: I really dont mean to be rude, but that build you posted is a total mes in every possible aspect.

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You are not getting shit, you are getting well argued criticism. Don’t take it personally.

Just think about it, who is supposed to benefit from char build threads? I’m fairly certain any of the veterans commenting here can make a Winter King build that suites them without looking it up on the forum. I know I could respec one of my characters into a WK build that can reliably do all of the main game content (except Avatar and maybe Mad Queen) in around 20 min of testing, and I don’t have many godly MI/rares others here do.

The way I see it, a build thread has to satisfy at least one of two criteria:

  1. It has very detailed explanations of everything about not just this particular build, but the entire archetype. This way, it can be used as a blueprint by new players who have very little experience with the game and don’t have all of the end game items in their stashes.

  2. It is a highly optimised build making use of every possible item/skill to get the most out of this character type. It should at least be able to solo Gladiator 150 with potions. This way, even the experienced players can learn something new and know what MIs/rares they need to farm/craft. It also needs videos of all of the main endgame fights so people can compare the build to their own setups.

On 1.), the WK build fails by design, since it requires at least 2 lvl 75 legendaries to even work (technically only one, but there is no useful rare/blue caster 2-hander). But that aside, the post has dearth of information on things like playstyle, levelling scheme or possible alternatives to legendaries you use.

On 2.), this build is so far from optimised, it’s not even worth salvaging via community input. 1500 DA, 800 armor and 6000 health is just horrible. And no, saying that it’s a “glass cannon” build doesn’t solve anything, since you can easily make this build much tankier without losing any dps. Hell, you could even improve dps. 10k health, 1000 armor @81% absorption and 2000 DA is the bare minimum for any ultimate-viable build. You will not reach this by lvl 85, not by a long shot.

In conclusion, dig up the old 1.0.0.4 WK builds by jajajajajajajajajajajaja and start there. Right now those builds, as outdated as they are, outperform this one.

And if you can’t take criticism, why bother posting anything? The whole point of a public discussion is to improve yourself and teach others. If you want a circle jerk, post cat videos.

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I just said i dont wan’t to spark an arguement like before. If you still wanna insist that i am personally finding means to argue you (?!) you should also listen to what other people say.

I can also be frank you know, sorry but this build like your previous one is a complete mess and lackluster if thats what you want to hear.
Again i am not trying to argue, i am giving criticism but you insist on twisting my comment to your liking, you uploaded this on a public forum in the first place. As GeneralCash said if you want pages full of circle jerk should have done something else.

Assume i am biting your weak bait, can you please ignore everything else and give some feedback about the things i brought out about having a devotion proc based on crits… In a build that doesnt crit and obviously dont proc.

Reasons why you leveled such spells and buffs like PB and MP the way you did, based on what you allocated your points like this. Did you test and how much HP you actually gain from Heart Seeker modifier where the main skill is only given 1 point.
Especially fully leaving out Shadow Dance despite your DA is sitting on 1.5k…

Please do reply to these points from my post which you fully ignored :smiley:

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@pyroscar

i wouldnt take this guy or his guide so serious, either he is trolling so hard or he doesnt understand so much about arpg’s yetsad but true…

imo you are just wasting your precious lifetime… just saying :wink:

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Your dps tag is misleading. Just sayin’
Also, GC, JoV and Pyro are right. They’re not giving you shit, they’re advising you on how you can improve this build.

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I don’t mind all the other criticism, in fact I appreciate the criticism where they aren’t being dicks about it, but saying my other build is lackluster is just stupid. I clearly have a video of evidence of killing a nemesis boss in under a minute and port valbury in 25 mins solo. If a lackluster build can do that, give me more lackluster builds please.

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I don’t think that a video where you kill a I guess he got bugged out/cit. (stood still/wandered back and forth for 70% of his life) nemesis count too much

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parashara, GJ man you created the best build i have ever f**king seen on the forum. Can’t wait for more! :stuck_out_tongue:

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Thanks! Feel free to check out my warlock too https://www.reddit.com/r/Grimdawn/comments/5m4u5m/grim_dawn_massive_dps_fireaether_warlock_build/