While working through my first play through of Grim Dawn following one of the excellent beginner build guides on this site, I decided that I would let the RNG drops dictate what my subsequent characters would be. I don’t have any real endgame gear yet, since my first character is only around level 75 right now, but I have somehow been finding a lot of blue pistols, rifles, and gear focused on Fire Strike and the Demolitionist mastery. It’s looking like I might want to try out a ranged character at some point for fun and to make use of all of this leveling gear.
Given all of the Demolitionist and fire strike gear I have found, Purifier seems to be the best choice for my first ranged build. So far, the best leveling guide I have found for a Purifier is the combination of Nery’s Budget Lightning DW Ranged Purifier and the build diary by x1x1x1x2 linked in that same post. Would you all say this is still the best leveling guide there is for that class–particularly for a Fire Strike focused build–or is there another guide out there that is more up-to-date or with a greater degree of detail and organization than the build diary–something more fleshed out like the more recent beginner build posts by people like Maya, Monceaux, Nery, Stupid_Dragon, and others?
Regarding @Nery’s Lightning DW Ranged Purifier, he says that lightning is a better damage type to use than fire for a budget build. Is that still the case in the current patch, and does this answer change with endgame gear?
If lightning damage is still the way to go regarding a beginner/budget Purifier, then what are the pros and cons of building a lightning Fire Strike Purifier as opposed to something like a lighting ranged Primal Strike Vindicator?
Apologies in advance for all the questions, but I am still getting a feel for the strengths of each of the mastery combinations regarding play styles and gearing. There is a lot of information within the beginners guides about caster, pet, and melee builds, but somewhat less when it comes to ranged builds. I’m still fuzzy on things like how a ranged Tactician compares to a ranged Purifier compares to a ranged Vindicator compares to a ranged Paladin, etc., etc. It may be that ranged builds are less powerful and/or less popular than the other play styles. I don’t know. I’m just looking to get some use out of all of the ranged gear that keeps dropping for some reason.
I cant speak on this with any conventional wisdom, but purifiers are a lot of fun to play, they come out the gate strong as hell, dual wielding pistols with ranged expertise youll be cutting down enemies like a hot knife through butter.
I have more experience with dual wield ranged Tactician, but nothing super end game viable, just fun fast shooting, “sand skills” based build (modeled after Lord Gaara, from Naruto). Relatively easy to play and i found it was a enjoyable journey from 1 - 100.
I personally prefer to just build elemental purifier based around the arcaneweaver MI two-handed rifle which has 100% pass through. And then respec in end game or just use it through end game (can clear lokarr with some optimizations, but not supeebosses afaik).
The plus point is the weapon is farmable, and clear mobs really quickly. Downside is that there is a lower amount of resist reduction total compared to pure fire or pure lightning builds, and less survivability from my experience, but purifiers arent exactly well known for being tanky.
And also that a storm-spread +pass through + a gazillion brimstone procs kills framerate so much that adding too many points in brimstone can lower your dps by causing your computer to lag.
there is a very well made beginner guide (at least up to level 94) outside the forum
I can’t link it because mods here hate the guy who made that guide.
its quite easy to find if you just google “Grim dawn purifier beginner guide” on google.
x1x1x1x2 is usable, but the formatting is a bit messy. but its good enough for most of things.
Anyway, @x1x1x1x2 leveling guide is still pretty solid and gets you to aura quicker than other recommended layouts, along without recommending specific legendary drops that you have no control over. Pistol based purifier can be tough as a first build because you don’t have the solid crafted/faction guns to lean on as you level like some other skill setups, which is why you don’t see a by the level breakdown of gear options. But it sounds like you’ve already gotten some gear that will help that. Otherwise no shame in farming francis pistol at the beginning of act1 if you don’t have a better gun to hold you over. The drop will scale up at times to stay relevant.
As x1 alludes to in his guide, it will be much easier to lean into fire OR lightning as you level depending on your pistol drops, as opposed to trying to balance both. Dagallon is your pistol end game target, although it’s relatively glassy and doesn’t appear to push amazing performance now if speed running crucible or high level SR is your goal. If you just want to run campaign and farm totems, it’ll be perfectly fine. Otherwise there are a few builds around desolator, a faction blueprint fire rifle, that also has passthrough and good purifier support.
edit: final note, that akdong build linked in multiple threads is absolutely out of date. Gear and skill choices have gone through multiple cycles of changes. 3% physical res even with inquisitor seal is going to feel very frustrating to play at times too. Maybe @Monceaux will post his updated dagallon setup as a potential end game template