Any tips for leveling as a Nightblade? My second skill is Arcanist. I’m about 20 levels in and having troubles using anything besides Phantasmal Blades(w/Frenetic Throw), but that really eats thru my energy quickly.
Here you go http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/showthread.php?t=65863
EDIT: Welcome to the forum!
Hi Bahnzo,
Malawiglenn’s link pretty much covers everything you’ll need, so I highly recommend reading that guide.
Spellbreaker (arc/nbl) is a very squishy combo at early levels and you need to be sure you’re using what survival skills you have effectively.
Pneumatic burst heals you and, with shadow dance, makes you harder to hit. Mirror of ereoctes gives you 3 seconds of invulnerability, which is HUGE. Use it often. Shadow strike may not seem like a survival skill, but it makes you very hard to hit if you use it as a mobility skill instead of an initiator. You can start a fight, wait for everything to target you, then shadow strike past the tanks to hit mages and archers. Ring of steel (with the frost transmuter) is very effective for trash mobs because of freeze and stun. Blade barrier gives you invulnerability but immobilizes you, so it’s a little tricky to use effectively. It can help with a potion cooldown or waiting until shadow strike is ready so you can get away. Olexra’s flash freeze can freeze enemies and clear trash. Maiven’s sphere is amazing at high levels because it gives % damage absorption at the cost of damage output, but if you overcap it the damage output reduction decreases.
When it comes to killing things, you can try using olexra’s flash freeze and ring of steel with the frost transmuter for crowd clearing, shadow strike for single targets, and the dual wield WPS skills for general awesomeness.
As for equipment, you need resists, armor, and health bonuses if you want to survive longer. Try to farm up some items with defensive ability bonuses too, such as the Stalwart prefix or the Of Readiness suffix.
I used flash freeze in tandem with Ring of Frost for crowd control and shadow strike as mobility skill (like explained in the previous post). Get Mirror and Sphere of protection up and pick your fights. Once you get some nice frostburn damage, you can do quick hit and run tactics on heroes and bosses and just letting that frostburn “melt” them away
It takes a while before spellbreakers actually have a respectable amount of frostburn for chipping away at hardened targets. The first devotion you’re realistically going to encounter with flat frostburn is leviathan, and it is the largest damage dealing devotion proc by far that a cold leveling build is likely to consider. I strongly advise against taking Amatok during the leveling process because of its dependence on crits and lackluster performance in the absence of large quantities of CDR, not to mention the baseline stats it grants are somewhat underwhelming. Elemental awakening is not something you tend to invest heavily in for leveling, blade burst sits at very low values and is thus a negligible source of frostburn, and nightfall is in a similar boat as a one pointer. This leaves the flat frostburn from star pact as the largest source, with 10/10 night’s chill as the second largest. Murmur and crown procs do a little, but you’re not going to be a DoT monster.
There is a point up to which the acid damage you deal is just as valuable as the cold, so NJE is a large dot source through normal difficulty.
Thanks for the replies, I’ll certainly give them a read tonight.
Edit: Alright, definitely helped my damage and survivability.
I assume that I want to be using weapons with cold damage, especially the % phys converted to cold? Does it matter at level 25 whether I used dual wield or a 2-handed? Also, does % to elemental count the same as cold?
you want to dual wield spectral longswords ideally (you can get those once you hit blood grove). L25 you can faceroll with just about anything.
% elemental is the same as % cold. put coldstones in your weapons
Heh, yeah I just found the coldstones. Big help.
You can get spectral longswords from the specters in the arkovian undercity and the spined cove as well, IIRC
As a spellbreaker, you want to be dual wielding cold weapons, so even if you can’t find spectral longswords with good affixes you should definitely look for the chilling, shattering, frostborn, and rimefire affixes, basically anything that deals cold damage or converts physical to cold. Spectral longswords also have a brother in Malkadarr’s Dreadblade, which drops from Malkadarr at the tomb of the archon if you pick Kymon’s Chosen in homestead, and a distant cousin in Loxmere’s Frostblade, which drops from a somewhat challenging hero that spawns in the plains of strife. Both of these are MIs and therefore a lot harder to find than plain old spectral longswords, but if you happen to get one you should definitely make use of it.
Thanks! Good to know what I should be looking for.
once you hit blood grove it is trivial to farm spectral longswords from the secret vendor.
- check his inventory
- rift to homestead
- talk to isaiah
- use homestead rift to return to personal rift at blood grove vendor
- repeat from step 1 until you have satisfactory longswords
The Spined Cove definitely has spectral weapons, but the swords are rare. Still, I got some axes which were a nice upgrade.
Another question: when a weapon has % attack converted to health, does that mean damage that otherwise would’ve been applied to the mob is being converted?
No, it means you deal full damage and then heal yourself based on how much damage you dealt. Some mobs can resist it but it’s a great source of sustain otherwise.