Looking for a bit of advice on my Blademaster please

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
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Here is my character: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/pZrBo5jZ

So I haven’t been playing too long, have gotten a few characters higher level, and then made this one and really loving it.

I feel like my gear at this point is pretty decent, and not sure I can really upgrade much else until I just find the random legendary drops I need to start adding to my build. I’m not sure though, which is the reason for the thread. I’m not sure how rare some of the pieces are, or all legendaries are kind of the same and just random? I happened to find 2 Belgothian rings and the Barbaros pants popped out of a random normal chest! I didn’t even know that was possible, lol.

I just started running Crucible very recently for the first time, and damn… I thought I was going to get further in Ultimate than I did. I broke 100… I think I died a couple times in the 120’s, it seems like the difficulty starts ramping up quickly. The one thing I changed was moving some skills around to get warcry to 12 so it gets that 25% reduction and I think it seems to work pretty nice, especially for Crucible. It basically just hits the entire map, lol.

I looked at a few Cadence BM’s and the builds are similar… few things different in some, and then I kept wondering why these builds seem like they had way more skills to use, lol. I realized it’s because some of the sets give a ton of +skills, freeing up a lot of points to use in more places. I saw one using the Shattered Realms set, which I was wondering if that would be better than what I’m using. +2 to ALL skills seems like a lot.

So back to Crucible… I feel like I just need to be tankier. I crafted my belt and it seems to work really well until I get something way better. The cooldown on the proc basically lines up with Ghoulish Hunger, so that seems to work pretty well.

Anyway, still fairly new and have no idea really how things scale exactly. For example, like how much more damage reduction I would get by trying to pump armor up a bit more, etc.

Open to any advice as I know people have been playing this game a long time and know way more than I do. Thanks!

Edit: I’m so new to Crucible I haven’t even tried out using the buffs. When people are farming high level Crucible, are they normally running them? I seem to be sitting at 100 Tributes anyway, even after jumping to a higher starting point. I’ve read a few things on it, but if there is some kind of really good guide on the forums I’d love a link. Thanks again.

Edit: Just finished a normal Crucible run 150-170 and got a Mythical Blade Breaker Sash. Seems pretty nice.

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Not really?
Off the top of my head you can get Elite Coven Combatant Spaulders instead of your current shoulder piece. There’s also Gutworm’s MI for +3 to Deadly Momentum. Your relic is also far from the best option, Blademaster REALLY needs skill points. Barbaros maybe kinda okay for now, but pretty sure decent Kuba’s or Solael-Sect would be better. Not sure why you have a Vengeful Wraith in one of the rings either, always go for two Bloodied Crystals unless you know what you’re doing. Standard amulet component is Seal of Annihilation. Your component setup is also overkill when it comes to armor absorption, you could easily afford using Runestone + Sanctified Bone in head and chest respectively. Using 15% chaos resistance armor augments is also far from optimal.

Don’t get it into your head that your gear is pretty decent, it’s pretty much a budget setup. Much can be improved.

More or less, but this build can greatly benefit from target-farmable MI’s so not the point.

There are several slots that are typically used for +1 to all skills - weapons, head, amulet, belt and relic. In your build only head has +1 to all skills, so no wonder you feel low on skillpoints, especially in such a skillpoint hungry build as Cadence Blademaster.

Yes, they are. Most are running 3 buffs + 1 T3 banner or 4 buffs + 4 T1 lightning beacons, but it requires clearing 150-170 in less than 8 minutes to pay off. For crucible beginners I think it’s better to run 4 buffs because you would only need to clear 150-170 in 12 minutes. I’m talking about Gladiator ofcourse.

Buffless, or “naked” crucible as we call it, is a different cookie entirely and you shouldn’t expect to clear it easily if you don’t have a SR80+ capable character.

Congrats, although with normal’s rewards I think one’s better just farming campaign on Ultimate.

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Farm Totems on Ultimate difficulty.
Also remove points from Menhir’s Will, it doesn’t work with Dual wield.

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Thanks for all the tips man. Feels like it came off as slightly aggressive, but I appreciate the abundance advice and will look at all of it. Some of those things I haven’t even heard of, or seen the in the builds that came up when I google it. The relic I’ve seen almost every build I’ve looked up using. I was kind of wondering why but the whirlwinds with the debuff seemed good I thought.

Anyway, going to spend a while looking into everything you noted. Like I said… relatively, I’m still super new to the game. I appreciate the time taken for all the feedback.

Edit: Funny enough I just googled a couple cadence BM builds, and both were using Serenity. I swear the first several I looked at just to get an idea of what I should change were using the one I am, lol. Serenity seems nice. I just checked and I don’t have the blueprint for it yet though, damn. Looks like a random drop too. Could always craft a Belgothians Carnage. Does that cooldown reduction help passives from devotions and/or items?

Edit2: I had not heard of Gutworms Mark. Stats seem ok but +3 DM seems like a ton of damage. Another item to hunt for.
Just bought the shoulders from the vendor. Nice stats. I don’t understand how armor works exactly yet. My armor on my stat sheet went up like 10 points total, even though those shoulders like are 700 more armor than my current ones.

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Lol. I’m an idiot. I kept thinking to myself… why does no one put JUST ONE POINT into this ability???

Lol… yeah, ok… thanks. :smiley:

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Well, thanks again, btw. I know it took a bit of time to reply to all of that and maybe I just thought it sounded aggressive since it was blunt.

Really helpful stuff, much appreciated.

Oh, and I was using those Living Armor components just because I thought they were really good, not exactly for the armor absorption I suppose. I was having trouble capping Chaos resist, and those helped overcap my elemental resist and also gave more offensive ability… that was my reasoning anyway. :smiley:

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Your previous shoulders had 6-8% armor bonus on them which applied to all pieces of your gear, so it averaged like that.

I’d say try using two Sanctified Bones. 16% bonus damage to undead and chthonics is going to be better than slightly more OA I think. Only problem is you’d have to find elemental resistance, but I take it you’ve already found it on Coven Combatant Spaulders.

Overall components is something that is more or less similar from build to build because people had long figured the optimal ways. Builds with Soldier tend to differ a bit because they have Armor Absorption on Scars of Battle (which is an amazing passive I recommend to have at 8/8).

Here’s a blademaster component setup that looks good to me:
https://www.grimtools.com/calc/b28B3YqZ

Don’t mind the affixes, it’s obviously stashed.

Didn’t test it myself but there’s this cheat sheet:

Baffling. That relic was always considered a meme afaik.

Also, I just opened your devotions and it seems like your build has no flat RR. That’s a typical setup for a high end blademaster, but it only makes sense with Mythical Grasp of Unchained Might because it gives flat RR to ring of steel. For that reason my budget blademaster setup looks like that:

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Interesting. I didn’t realize flat RR was that important. Since giving up the Unknown soldier and Harpy seems like a ton of Flat piercing damage and crit damage.

Is getting Fighting Form high enough to get the +3 targets a priority? I had it high enough to get the +3 but with my current items, that is a ton of points.

Edit: With a current setup I am 97% armor absorb. Is that extra 3% to get 100 fairly significant?

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I also just realized who you were. Your beginners blademaster thread is what got me started, by the way. I just didn’t / don’t understand a lot of it but that thread definitely helped a ton. I actually have it bookmarked, haha.

Also, I was wondering about Veil of Shadow. Is it worth increasing some? The area increase and slow seems nice, but it lowers enemies offensive by 12. That seems pretty nice for our own defenses.

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Oh, I just found the Belgothians Mask recipe.

I have not used Transmuting yet, but do people attempt to craft a mask and then Transmute yet?

I honestly have NO IDEA how long it could possibly take to just try to farm the entire Belgothian set… feels like it could take a really long time.

Hmm the mask itself doesn’t seem hard to craft, except that it uses 10 Wendigo Spirit, which I’m not exactly sure how rare are, but I have 20 of them after playing a few characters so I assume probably pretty rare, lol.

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Just crafted my Belgothian’s Carnage relic and as the bonus got +1 shadow dance and +1 circle of slaughter. That seems pretty sweet. 30% chance at lvl 8 circle of slaughter.

Guy is feeling stronger and stronger with the advice.

Edit: Not going to worry about the Mask for a while. I have 33,000 iron left and haved used a lot of mats after all of this crafting and redoing stuff, lol.

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I’d say no.

If it’s too difficult to squeeze points for it I’d say don’t bother. You should have good enough AoE from WPS and devotion procs.

Most Crucible speedrunners get it at 10/10 for RR radius and some protection. Not sure it’s worth it for this build in particular because it doesn’t have THAT much damage flying out of your melee range. You can compromise a bit and have like 5-6/10.

Honestly no idea. All of my pals had long stopped playing legit, as for me I’ve been only making beginner builds since FG release.

If I were you though I’d probably just polish the Cadence version enough until it can do ultimate SR65, at which point getting legendaries should just stop being a problem.

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Gotcha, yeah… just doing SR now and just blasted my way up to 45. Taking a break and will see how much higher I can go later. It was still pretty easy.

Also, I just now realized something… there is a MAX attack speed? Damn, I didn’t realize that. I am now sitting at 200% attack speed before even casting Pneumatic Burst. Hmm. That changes some things I suppose.

Edit: Just realized I’m max move speed as well before casting PB. Well… now I am more understanding why a lot of people don’t seem to put points into it.

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They didn’t before, but now it’s an at least 12\12 skill because it received Offensive Ability. Just check where the extra movespeed and attackspeed comes from and think if you could drop it and get something else instead.

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I am currently using 2 Belgothians rings, but I see some builds using 1 Belgothians and one blackseal, which I happen to have. Seems like a good trade since that attack speed isnt doing anything anyway.

That puts me at

3037 OA
3016 DA
3006 Armor
81k DPS
More balances resists, and all slightly over capped. Gonna see how high I can go in SR later. I’m back to about the OA / DPS I was before, but farrrr tankier now, but it FEELS like I am doing a lot more damage. I imagine that’s because of the raise the dead devotion lowering resists. Haven’t played close attention to the actual dmg numbers yet.

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50 was getting difficult… but I’m still going through the levels with like 5-6 minutes left in them. I’m gonna try to get to 60. The SR set does look pretty nice… +2 to ALL is quite a bit…

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If you need it craft it and transmute. There is a smith in Malmouth outskirts that can transmute Aetherial Mutagen/Aetherial Missive/ Wendigo Spirit (like the smith in Necropolis does Ancient Heart/Blood of Chthon/Tainted Brain Matter). I did it for a set and it wasn’t too bad, just need to have a lot of iron on hand.

Also you can try trading.

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Thanks, I just got the shattered set and got that setup so I’m kind of broke again. Seemed like I made Iron real quick doing SR but pushing to 60 I died a few times. I’ll probably try doing like 45 to 50 or so and see if that is pretty fast. Gonna try to save up a bunch of Iron… tired of dropping to like 100k, lol. Although I think I am set for a while now so just going to do a bunch of SR runs.

I don’t think I even can now? I been playing my character offline now since I was using mods now. Just for stash space and the interface stuff the grim tools gives.

I can’t see the lure in giving yourself items or anything like that though… it would be fun for a bit just to see how strong it is but it seems like the game would lose all purpose and get boring super quick.

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I am pretty sure trading is still viable. Just post an ad in the FG Legit Trading thread. I too play offline but still trade when I need, it doesn’t affect anything.

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Ah, ok… strange. I didn’t think anything I’ve done since I turned off cloud saving could revert BACK to being able to play the character online, which I assume is needed to trade with someone. I honestly haven’t even played with anyone else.

Seems confusing to me, since my initial though is that you could just cheat a bunch offline then take your character back online? Maybe I am not understanding how it works. Regardless… I probably don’t have much to trade with yet, but who knows. I’ve just been dumping legendaries I don’t need right now in my Item Assistant stash.