Hey, I’m looking for an ice melee builds (FG). I have four 100 lvl chars and I’m going to come back to the game after a break. I have no idea what’s good nowadays. I would like to a build especially with 2H. I love Rune of Hagarrad skill
What are some interesting class combos?
For 2-handed melee Cold, you have some options on the surface:
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A Trickster mixing Savagery (with Korba’s head) or Primal Strike (with the Conduit), Bane of the Winter King and Cold support in Nightblade in Lethal Assault for flat damage and Night’s Chill for RR together.
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Morgoneth’s set with Soulrend focusing on Shadow Strike for huge chunks of Cold and Frostburn damage. Spellbreaker works well due to Arcanist adding more flat Frostburn and CDR, although Necromancer with Bone Harvest as a secondary nuke is also an option.
1.1.9 added some potential new ideas, like the changes to Alkamos’ weapon with conversion to Menhir’s Bulwark is looking interesting to a few people but merits testing first.
I hate to break it to you but if you want to go Hagarrad, I’d recommend either going all-in on it or don’t try to mix it with melee. Both playstyles want completely different things - melee wants flat damage, attack speed and if you’re playing an auto-attacker wants WPS. Hagarrad benefits from none of these working with skill ranks in the base skill/Chillsurge/Artifact Handling, conversion and CDR.
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Keep in mind that you can also peruse the forums tags…
…wherein you may find stuff such as https://forums.crateentertainment.com/tags/rune-of-hagarrad
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You can use the following relic for 2h Cold melee EoR like skill (probably Infiltrator)
| Skill (link to YT) | Item (link to GrimTools) | Damage types | Item type |
|---|---|---|---|
| Voracious Reach | Yugol’s Hunger | Weapon, Cold, Acid | mythical relic |
Conversion from Acid to Cold can be partially done by Alkamos’ Scythe
and also by The Silver Sentinel which also buffs Rune of Hagarrad you mentioned.
Maybe the patch adds new sources of this conversion but I haven’t found it.
You can also play Winter King’s Might Trickster like that
Technically it’s a caster but due to short range
(need to hit with multiple projectiles and watch out for terrain)
and possibly using ABB, it plays / feel like melee
This is more for casters. Do you really need to play melee? 
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Honestly no idea why people say melee and Rune of Hagarrad don’t mix well…
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Just the builds I know are casters / ranged that’s why I wrote that automatically.
But there seems to be a support, for example
Witch Moon
Mythical Crescent Moon
If you have some links, please share, I’ll look at them
because I haven’t build such characters personally
also don’t play melee too much because casters are more comfy for me.
Or Saboteur… and rip it the same day the patch comes out that buffs the class. 
High end builds perhaps no, but frankly I haven’t seen RoH builds in a long while.
Budget all of my RoH affairs were either hybrids or at least a close range casters. I mean, it’s RoH, you want it to shotgun, for that it’s best that enemies don’t move. What better means of achieving that than engaging them in melee? Especially since both Censure and VoS are short-ranged too?
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Perhaps by ranged means Northern Wyrm and Chillspike spam, but honestly ranged builds play like melee in GD anyways cause they usually have shotguns / more dps in close range.
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Even Spectral Longsword for Shadow Strike has +2 to RoH
Mythical Beacon of the Winter’s Veil
Mythical Dreadweaver
Yeah, I guess there just haven’t been builds posted like that.
Can be tweaked for melee I guess. Got nothing else at hand.
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I mean, someone could mix both together, but both are antithetical to each other. You want:
- Hagarrad to do enough damage that when you stop meleeing, it’s not a damage loss casting it/letting it explode.
- To have enough spare skill points/skill modifiers in a character for both sides of your melee + Hagarrad/caster to not be useless or one side overly dominates the other (to the point where the weaker side becomes redundant).
The only real way I see a Hag + melee build “working” in that respect is a cd-based build or Frostburn stacker.
Regardless, something like it I theorise is above the person asking’s paygrade/understanding hence why I don’t recommend it. Something more straightforward and immediately strong seems more to their speed.
https://www.grimtools.com/calc/eVLnqY6N
thats my mele spellbreaker thats build around freezing the whole screen and nuke them with medal, scourge strike, and elemental strike
Melee is simply a filler in such a build for some extra damage and sustain. Similar to how Shadow Strike builds pick some WPS onepointers for extra damage. But honestly it’s something I would do only because there’s the ABB/RoH gear.
Alkamos’ scythe has a menhir’s bulwark modifier for 100% acid to cold and 50% phys to cold, as well as some cold damage, see the post here: Grim Dawn Version 1.1.9.0
I know, there’s even my post there with stash attached with this weapon
It’s just that I wouldn’t play it with Soldier, at least in the version I posted above with Voracious Reach.
If you’d like to play a dedicated Blitz Cold BM then sure, go for it.
But maybe OP would like to play it so nice suggestion.
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Thanks guys. I’ll go with Trickster (no Hagarrad).
To be fair though, Shadow Strike and WPS synergise in the way that they both benefit from flat damage and attack speed (even if it’s only a slight animation speed increase for Shadow Strike). There’s more of a gap between Rune of Hagarrad and Beronath’s Fury that you have to make a bridge over with a bigger variety of stats.
You certainly can make a character with AA filler in-between Hagarrad and I have done builds for other damage types/skills that weave cd-based skills inbetween AA filler and from my experience and viewing other people’s builds around the same damage type and auto-attack replacer concluded that they were strictly worse than just going full-on one side or full on the other. The exceptions again being DoT builds where concepts like Electrocute Stormreaver Savagery + Totems can thrive because DoT builds rely on multiple sources and more skills often means more DoT damage.
In this case, I would be more inclined to either go straight auto-attacking with ADCtH for sustain and ignore Rune of Hagarrad or solely use it for Biting Cold/a devotion proccer or make a caster around it as a damaging skill and secondary abilities like Chillspikes or Trozan’s Sky Shard and rely on a combination of Twin Fangs, Giant’s Blood, Dryad, Chariot or other mastery specific sources (e.g. Wendigo Totem/Word of Renewal/Blood of Dreeg) for health recovery personally.
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This is no joke a huge part of why I like RoH so much. You can use it like a conventional trap, or you can just pin people in place (whether through melee combat or crowd control) and treat it like a direct damage spell. It’s not even about how effective it is, just the ability to use a skill like that in different ways that are all consistent with it’s theme is a mark of really good game design.