Forcewave is great for leveling, but I rarely see Physical Forcewave builds that work well in endgame.
Does a strong Physical Forcewave endgame build exist in the current patch, or is it simply outscaled compared to Fire variants?
This is my build, shown as a reference for comparison:
Tanky, but not high DPS.
Videos:
with all the crit bonus to fw did you try with Oleron instead of bulwark? 
Title of the thread is pretty wrong.
Of course there are, endgame in GD is a vast spectrum you know. And the fire version has way better AoE so it clears SR faster hence it gets higher score
The Physical FW Warlord from ā Top 20 Softcore builds in Grim Dawn (An Opinion) still works, but can use an update (+more realistic greens). But I only play it in SR. Superbosses kinda became 100% no interest to me since the advent of sunder mechanics. Such stupid and lazy way of forcing the player to use the new evade skill imo. Kinda becomes boring after a while for me.
Thanks for the suggestion.
I tested Oleron, and Ravager and Callagadra were about 10 seconds faster. However, I still feel Menhir is better for damage absorption.
Here youāre right. The title was poorly phrased, so Iāve corrected it.
I looked through the forum and YouTube, but couldnāt really find clear Physical Forcewave endgame builds, so I wanted to ask people who might know.
Iām aware Battlemage is a more defensive combo, but my impression is that Forcewave itself doesnāt scale very well in single-target damage.
Something similar can be said about skills like Callidorās Tempest ā wide AoE skills often seem to trade off single-target damage.
On the other hand, Bone Harvest spammer still feel decent in single-target, so Iām not fully convinced this is always the case.
Also, as far as I understand, Fire Forcewave doesnāt get additional AoE expansion from skill modifiers on gear.
Thanks for sharing it. But, Iām looking for builds in the current patch that can handle superbosses , at least Ravager.
you have the granted skill on the weapon, BWC and all the devotion procs. So you can stack pretty big AoE with DoT damage on entire screen and thus clear the SR shards quick.
Ok so Ravager tanker Physical FW, got it.
I could not see you use Mirror that often? Try same gear but with Warlord instead.
Youāre right, I overlooked the contribution from other skills 
Good point about Mirror. I intentionally didnāt rely on it, since Ghoul was proccing at good timings and felt sufficient in practice.
Iām also considering other class combinations, but maintaining OA is a concern. Inner Focus from Arcanist is doing a lot of work there. For SR specifically, Warlord would probably be faster.
You can invest in DA shred like blindside etc
Hmm, DA shred from Blindside and Crushing Verdict overlap with the weaponās skill.
Because of that, Iāve been wondering whether Occultist with Vulnerability would be a better source of DA reduction instead.
Oh are you actually using that skill? 
But yeah, the weapon has 25% chance to cast DA shred, I am more used of using MI cleaver for physical FW so I have forgotten what stonefist actually doā¦
Yes, for DA shred and proccing Ulzaad.
Whitchblade was good years ago, no idea how it is now
Thatās interesting. For me itās the opposite. The bosses were imo much more boring when you could just facetank everything. Now you have to actually play the game. Even Lokarr isnāt a free win on every build anymore.
But I certainly respect your opinion.
I put together a Death Knight version using the Krieg set.
Ravager is about 1.33x faster compared to my Battlemage, but it clearly loses the super tankiness.
I understand that some people think that, but it is a lazy āsolutionā imo and also pretty late to include such thing this far into the games history. You are supposed to keep an eye for an animation and then press the evade button. It does not āsmellā gameplay to me, at least not a genunie gameplay.
what does ā1.33xā faster means? You mean 33% faster? 93 seconds compared to 128 seconds is 37.6% faster. Anyway, fight looked just like most of the ātop 20ā fights, clinging on the edge and claiming it can do it. Heck I can not even survive the fights with the builds that claims can facetank through the sunders of ravager. So, it looked good to me.
You could use more life steal and again you did not even use mark of torment?
thatās the gameplay if you decide to facetank, but itās not your only option
and paying attention to attacks and responding to them, or build adjustment, is an element of gameplay regardless if one appreciates it or not, and the issue was that prior to sunder all those animations/attacks and effects got completely ignored for a largely purely static fight regardless, more detrimentally so almost regardless of build.
Now if you have a weaker builder or build with more/less gaps you can get rewarded with more lazy, or counterplay it by then āplayingā the boss that has attacks, or sunders, it doesnāt handle.
This can also kinda be seen in āgreatā builds that can chill facetank a gangbang in SR bossroom, vs just a more nervous pilot, or actual weaker setup, that 1v1 or even avoids some non sunder attacks if not outright kiting more or stutterstepping to avoid extra spike dmg now.
Lokar isnāt impossible as melee, even if easier on ranged/kiter, but now the fight asks you to be more attentive on a bunch of builds, instead of just entering the arena, planting feet and standing still for 20seconds, whether that attention is in the actual fight, or in your build before you arrive.
Maimuās setup works comfortably against celestial but is slow, or it can get more offensive and dial up the risk factor for that 37% dps gain, requiring better fight attention, that is gameplay. And it would have been much less accented pre-sunder.
This is one sentance. I have not read sentances this long since grad school. Almost impossible to read.
All I am saying is
i mean, youāre not wrong, but what would you have them do, outside investing in entirely new attacks and animations and telegraphs?
The existing ones didnāt work, they were wholly ignore because you could straight up just outstat them with extra res.
Meanwhile even before sunder, some amount of players still had the issue of either not responding to or not noticing dangerous attacks or even telegraphs like Grava nulli orb cast.
Itās not a āprettyā solution sure, but itās still miles better than the āmark ground with warning cone 2-3 before attackā, which would have been less ālazyā but even worse imo 
- and i can understand not pouring massive investment into full individual boss overhauls adding new/different animations or attacks on the business side ānowā/for this change/this late in dev.
For a large part the āonlyā change was that existing intended dangerous attacks got dialed up to not be ignored the same, or at minimum not just passively outstatted with a super abundant stat. Whether all attacks are equally fair or decently telegraphed/warned could probably also be debated, but itās also worth to keep in mind not all bosses(celestials) are meant to be regarded the same, and devs have long insisted on stuff like Ravager/Calla be a bit unfair, making the ādrasticā changes of sunder intentionally that more impactful there.
I donāt really get the ātoo lateā point. Itās a good thing that they keep making changes this late into the gameās life. As to someone giving up because of it, surely they were just bored of the game anyway. Sunder doesnāt do anything 95% of the time. I know there were people saying that it made the game into a Soulslike, but that was frankly ridiculous.
Concerning the design, it would certainly be better to have a range of different tells to watch for rather than just a scary orange light for every boss. But ā¦ itās still better than what we had before.
Read between the lines - they should have ādoneā nothing this far into the gameās history. Imagine going to your favorite restaurant for almost 10 years and then suddenly they change the recipie for your favorite dish.
And tbh, some animations for the sunder is not that well telegraphed so they can not be avoided 100% just look at this threads DK video, 4 times sundered, yikes.
And now this thread is gonna derail into a sunder discussion 