Legends of Cairn Build Challenge #1: Hrothgar

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
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Hey everybody! So over the past few weeks I’ve developed an unhealthy obsession with Grim Dawn and the aspect of creating builds. There are a LOT of really great ones that have been created, and continue to be created. It’s a treat to see what you guys cook up.

Now, I LOVE the lore of this game. The creators did a great job of coming up with an engaging, dark story line with cool characters, and I love the little touches that they made by adding characters referenced by different powerful items. It just makes the world feel more rich and deep.

So, I wanted to try combining these two loves of mine, and sharing this idea and seeing what you all think. The idea is to brainstorm possible builds/gear choices that will take some of these characters and make them come to life in the most optimal, flavorful way.

You guys are very good at coming up with optimal DPS/Gladiator clearing builds, and that’s cool. But I had something slightly different in mind. Here are the restrictions of the challenge…

  1. The build has to use as many pieces of gear that reference the character as possible. If it’s a legendary set, every piece of the set needs to be used.

  2. The core damage types of the build have to be the ones that are buffed by the gear.

  3. If a particular skill is buffed by the gear, that skill needs to have minimum 1 point in it, but preferably be a core part of the build. If skills from two different classes are buffed, your character has to be those two classes. If a particular active skill is GRANTED by the gear, that skill has to be a core part of the build as well.

  4. The build needs to be able to clear all campaign content (including hidden content, but not Crucible/Mogdrogen) on hardcore ultimate. This is a legend of Cairn after all! They only lived once, and so should you.

So basically, I was thinking we can share and discuss ways to make the optimal build given these restrictions. These threads will be theorycraft, but if someone wants to take these builds and play them then maybe we can do something fun, like put a list of people who have taken a build that meets the requirements through ultimate/hardcore in the OP as an “Avatar” of that character.

And to show you an example of what I mean, without further ado…

The Winter King

Gear
Bane of the Winter King
Crown of the Winter King

Son of the great northern white wolf, King Hrothgar ruled the wilds of the snow and ice with his animal companions and his giant sword. BotWK was the first legendary that ever dropped for me, and so this character holds a special place in my heart. That, and the fact that the stats seemed so wonky made me so intrigued to figure out what this character would look like. I’ll recap what the restrictions would be with this character…

  1. Must use both Bane of the Winter King and Crown of the Winter King.
  2. The core damage types of the build must be cold damage and pets.
  3. It must be a Trickster with at least 1 point in Veil of Shadow and Primal Bond, and must use the Crown’s active skill as a core part of the build.

And here is my take on the Winter King.

Skills and devotions: http://grimcalc.com/build/1007-7biLJV
+Skills and devotions: http://grimcalc.com/build/1007-yqlUST

LMB: Scourge Strike (Bysmiel’s Command)
RMB: Winter King’s Might (Acid Spray)
Key 1: Amarasta’s Blade Burst (Blizzard)
Key 2: Circle of Steel
Key 3: Shadow Strike
Key 4: Pneumatic Burst (Tree of Life)
Key 5: Blade Barrier

Other Gear
Sword - (Coldstone) (Potent Outcast’s Bastion)
Helm - (Runestone) (Outcast’s Warding Powder)
Amulet - Heart of the Mountain (duh) (Focusing Prism) (Survivor’s Ally)
Rings – Band of the Eternal Haunt / Light Bringer’s Bloodsworn Signet of the Gildam Arcanum (Ectoplasm x2) (Rhowan’s Wisdom x2)
Relic – Scourge
Medal – Light Bringer’s Ikrix Scale of the Gildam Arcanum (Aether Soul)
Chest – Frostdread Cuirass (Chains of Oleron) (Outcast’s Warding Powder)
Feet – Stonehide Adept’s Greaves of the Wild (Mark of Mogdrogen) (Outcast’s Warding Powder)
Legs – Deathwhisper Leggings (Ancient Armor Plate) (Outcast’s Warding Powder)
Shoulders – Stonehide Zantarin’s Shoulderguard of Insight (Scaled Hide) (Outcast’s Warding Powder)
Hands – Iceskorn Talons (Spellwoven Threads) (Mankind’s Vigil)
Waist – Blade Breaker Sash (Antivenom Salve) (Mankind’s Vigil)

So I figured flat damage would be important since the Crown’s active skill, when shotgunned, does 165% weapon damage. The energy required for this skill is ridiculous, so I went Tree of Life with points into Mogdrogen’s Pact with a couple points in Owl for skill cost reduction. I’m hoping that would be enough to spam the skill. Acid Spray because the reduced all resists helps the pets physical/bleeding damage too. This build is just asking for Scourge relic as well, which is cool because it’s such a nifty relic that sees little use in other builds. The build obviously needs to have very high survivability, and I’m hoping ToL + Emboldening Roar + Primal Bond + Shadow Dance + little bit of fumble from Circle of Steel will be enough for him along with some armor augments.

Anyway, I hope that at least a couple of you are interested in this idea! We can do other characters/sets if there’s enough interest. I’m curious to see how some of the veteran builders would try and attempt this challenge.

Thanks for reading!

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Winter King’s granted skill is meant to be used with Spellbreaker :eek:

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That skill certainly is “meant” to be on a Spellbreaker from an optimization standpoint, and there are probably builds that focus on that, but it goes against the idea of my proposed challenge because the Winter King was clearly a Trickster and I’m interested in recreating him.

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Primal Bond is one hell of a joke for a build that just screams “plz convert me to cold”

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I had just started my Winter King Spellbreaker. I am not playing the Winter King however, I am playing Eira, Daughter of the Winter King, so that may explain the class difference. I have thought about making Beronath though.

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well bane of the winter king concept is a concept which is ‘hybrid’ pet melee&oskill oriented build;
and primal bond is only exclusive skill benefit his pets so it suits perfectly what he is trying to do actually.

@ryzel : in all honesty, i absolutely love the trying to create concept build around this… but i guess oskill is medicore and scales from cast speedcorrect me if i am wrong here if it scales from aspeed all gucci…

for devotions for the sake of concept : no rhowans crown? its one of best constellation you can get for -resist reduction and for concept :smiley:

king without crown ? seriously ? :smiley: kidding

  • get ring of frosttransmuter for ring of steel, cold damage : king of winter

  • i dont think you need max points in primal spirit… 1-10 might be nuff. tho i never used this thing so no experience but there are more valuables points imo

-shepherd crook is just awesome i wouldnt miss that…

  • i dont think you get so much benefit from manticore, am i missing something? you deal cold damage and leftover gonna be pierce mostly due to sword… and you have nights chill already… i dont think its necessaryps edit*

  • i dont think elemental aweekning worth that much investment… but your call. for the sake of concept i am fine with it

  • i dont like hound constellation you can get something better imo…

  • you are so close to get obelisk of menhir, at least 3 buttom pts of it might be super usefull…

  • i find crane super weak constellation even its good on paper to boost many resist but i guess you need it for 5 order pts so dont know…

  • your relic must be NEMESIS there is no other way around… suits concept more than others, 1 more pet, looks sick… period…if you cant craft whisp me i can help

love the concept man, hope you finalize it i am curious and excited ! gl man

ps: i just saw why u take manticore, its fine but i am still not %100 convinced about it but we are talking mantiocre, one of my fav devotion setup…
i would gladly join your journey to make this char , and lvl 1 similar with you but have no time these days, real life things job + gf + dog :frowning:

ps2: also Hrothnar is son of mogdrogen for sure, at least thats what i am thinking from GD lore… so you can throw some mogdrogen concept in it

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Winter king’s might scales with casting speed and cannot be linked to LMB.

I tried using ABB every 4 seconds to upkeep the buff, but in the end I decided it was just way to annoying to use that way. The skill is also terrible to bind devotions to against single targets imo, so it couldn’t free a spot in the rotations. But that may be because I already have crown proc on blade spirits + necrosis debuff + situational ring of frost spam to maintain.

I’ve found blizzard to be a relatively poor devotion skill on my TSS druid. On the winter king spellbreaker I can only get close to 2.3k OA so I didn’t even consider it, and it looks like you will end up with less OA that that.

Winter king’s might is gonna steal aggro from the pets instantly, I really hope going Tree route in devotions will leave you with more survivability than I have on my spellbreaker.

Never took time to theorycraft pet builds so I can’t help on that part.

I’m curious to see if the cold + pets trickster concept hinted by the legendaries you’ve chosen works, just I’m not a big fan of pets myself. GL to the people trying :slight_smile:

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I find this troublesome, even on your Obsidian Pyro. Mainly cause on my Physical Forcewave build, Forcewave is LMB and we know it scales with cast speed.
Imo, this should be addressed.

Glad to see i’m not the only one who found using ABB just for LA troublesome

Try farming Dreeg-Sect pants, maybe that’ll help. And yes Blizzard is a shit skill.

Doubt it, it’s like Nex and Ortus. Those swords boost ABB and Fire Strike. The only way i’d ever pair FS with ABB is with Warpfire, not Nex and Ortus.

Point i’m trying to make is this game doesn’t hold the player’s hands. We’re given items and we have to use our heads to figure out the optimal way to use these items. Which is the best part of this game. So a trickster weapon might be better for a different class-combo.

Not saying cold-pet hybrid wouldn’t work at all. It won’t be optimal. Good luck beating the Sentinel on Hardcore with it :slight_smile:

Btw, Sober. Does all of this mean your Cold build has been delayed? :frowning:

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Why so? I’ll post it this weekend or early next week when I’m done getting all the videos and screenshots I want.

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Ah, i thought the low OA meant a delay.

Glad to hear it, just make sure you add it to Build Compendium V. The people who visit it are made to believe that TSS Caster is the best cold caster in the game which is pretty sad.

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Calling her the daughter of the Winter King is a really cool idea. I wish you the best of luck! What do you mean by making Beronath btw?

Thank you for this feedback! This is exactly the type of discussion I was hoping for.

You’re absolutely right that the skill scales with casting speed. That does make it difficult to optimize given the restraints of the challenge, but fortunately the set does give some casting speed. The rings I’ve chosen also provide some, but perhaps gear could be switched around to prioritize casting speed over some other options I have.

Oh boy the devotions. Believe me I wanted to have the Crown SO BAD, but I knew I had to have Tree to offset the huge energy requirement and I wasn’t sure how to effectively get Crown with the Tree. I know Acid Spray doesn’t fit flavor-wise, but I already had the 4 chaos from Viper and Kraken and I needed the Eldritch for Amatok, so going Bysmiel’s Bonds and Manticore wasn’t too far out of the way. Night’s Chill reduces Poison/Acid resist and I’m getting a shitton of flat acid from LA anyway, so build-wise it kind of fits in. Bysmiel’s Bond gives me another pet, which is always nice. I totally agree that Crane and Hound are not great (it was either Hound or Lizard for Primordial points though) and Shepherd’s Crook is probably too strong to pass up, but I just wasn’t sure what to do. If you wanted to try sending your ideas for a devotion tree I’d love to see them.

Yeah, I might as well put in a point into the transmuter for RoS, although if I’m using it it’s for the fumble chance or maybe to proc a devotion. Primal Spirit I’ve actually never used, so I’m willing to take advice on that. If one point is still OK, I could do that. Elemental Awakening gives flat frostburn with +cold damage and elemental resists, so it seemed too good to pass up. Again, I would love to see what choices you make to compare =)

Nemesis I can kinda’ understand, whole shadows of the night in winter thing and +1 to NB skills is nice, but Nemesis scales with player bonuses and I don’t have much + to pierce. Besides, how can you say no to Scourge Strike?! It’s like that skill was designed for Bane of the Winter King. +360% weapon damage, 90% phys–>cold (with a Coldstone), and decent life steal. That was kind of my logic there.

Thanks for your feedback! I didn’t know that it wouldn’t bind to LMB, I’ll have to change that around. There are some +s to casting speed, but not much, but I guess I was hoping that Scourge Strike + pet damage would help offset that lack of DPS. It’s certainly not an optimal build outside of this challenge, but as long as it can clear ultimate content I’m happy.

That sucks about LA being annoying to keep up. Doing this challenge though I don’t see how a build can get away with not having it. That might just be a necessary evil.

I’ve heard bad things about Blizzard as well, but if I’m going Kraken and Tree of Life it kind of fits, and flavor-wise there’s no more Winter King-y constellation. That being said I still need to try this build, and if it ends up being garbage I might just accept that I can’t take that constellation and clear ultimate content comfortably.

OA and DA are definitely problems with this build. For OA I’ve got LA, a couple constellations, and that’s kinda’ it. For DA I’ve got Shadow Dance, Veil of Shadow, and a few constellations that kinda’ help with armor and DA but not really. I don’t know if not having enough of those values will make this build unplayable, if it does then maybe I’d have to swap gear around. And yeah, I know that pets will hold 0 aggro and I’m hoping the build can survive the abuse.

Thanks a ton again for the feedback! I’m curious to see how your cold build turns out.

I’m not arguing that this build is the optimal way to use this gear, and I doubt any build that accepts the constraints of the challenge will be. There is a lot of fun to be had taking items from different classes or damage types and using those items and skills in ways that one might not expect for the purpose of making an optimal build. I know you love to do this, and the builds you make are really cool (they’ve actually inspired me to theorycraft a DW pistol poison/acid build, I’d love to hear your opinion of that kind of build).

This is more for the fun of the lore, as well as trying to challenge the normal build making process by creating constraints from the lore. Yes using FS and ABB with Nex and Ortus wouldn’t be ideal, but if you HAD to then what would you do? Could you make something that could clear all ultimate content? Or Gladiator Crucible? It’s mainly about the fun of trying to solve different kinds of problems.

And thanks! If/when I try this build though I’m doing it on softcore first to test it before doing a HC run.

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well i am not the perfect person to give so much info about pet or hybrid builds at all since i started GD 3 months ago, and i would never ever play pet build even if you pay me 10 dollars per day :stuck_out_tongue:

but i saw 1 guy on youtube wolf***blablade dont remember his name trying to build around this set…

  • oskill is seems so bad to me :smiley: and i wouldnt stress myself while building concept build to fit something which is not so efficient.
    my advice is max ABB and use oskill on rmb to spam when ABB is on cooldown, with this way you wouldnt mess with whole concept and keep its efficiency imo,

  • therefore, i wouldnt worry about cast speed much + mana management, if you really desire mana harvestman sytche is the constellation you want imo…
    tho druid has good flat energy source from mog pact already…

  • ya crown is not a must be let both be honest :smiley: its just way to good to pass… dont know man hard call… :eek: + it suits concept perfectly aswell.

  • i even used shepherds crook in 1 of my build because oa was so good, but its not must at all, but again so good to pass… hard call mate

  • circle of slaughter is just plain broken with +%35 fumble chance, its not even funny…

  • still not sure about elemental awekening never think of pumping that skill, i guess there are many options that are better than it

-just an idea maybe even going pure SS spam build would be good idea, 2h wep has high damage, shadow strike has gg dmg multi + cold damage + frostburn on modifier…

  • scourge strike, dont know man didnt use it before, but if i remember correct nemesis bro has good flat cold damage and scale from your bonuses which makes it better as efficiency and concept wisemy game is not open so just pls correct me if nemesis doesnt have cold portion
  • you already have shadow strike i dont think you need this totally

  • also if you are familiar with GD lore , hrothgar is for sure mogdrogen’s child :smiley: at least what i understand from it… fitting some bleed dmg in build maybe baby suits concept*** not sure tho prolly not***

  • you should ask some1else about primal spirit, i have zero experience with that, all i see is people 1point wonder it…not sure tho

  • 1pt in ground slam might take aggro on briathorn would give you some room to breathe… taunt on pet might help in fights imo

  • and try to get as much as phys to cold convertion you can…

finally, i would just focus on aspeed part and use oskill as 2ndary tool of the build, you already gonna struggle a lot while trying to make concept build 1, 2 aspeed + cast speed dilemma gonna fuck it for sure and will lose whole efficiency, itemization gonna be bitch…

like i said i am curious to see this guy performance, glad you make it in the end…

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I’m working on something very similar at the moment, Winter King Trickster but I’m more concerned with optimisation than going full flavour. Unfortunately I still have a bit to go (just finishing the last of Ultimate now) before I can share my thoughts/experience.

For the most part it’s fairly similar to what you’ve got. I’ve been aiming for a full focus on cold damage and cast speed + capped resists and health regen. The pets are there but haven’t been invested into heavily. I’m running into low OA/DA which haven’t proved to be an issue yet, but this is why I’m need to finish up the build and really tackle the stronger enemies/crucible first.

That said if you want me to try anything/start experimenting with ideas I can show you what I’ve got currently and go from there.

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That would actually be really awesome and helpful! I’d still be interested in seeing how your build does even if it doesn’t meet this challenge. Knowing how a more optimized build fares will make it possible to know how much I could potentially sacrifice for flavor. I am a little worried I’m sacrificing too much.

Good luck!