[Melee] [1.0.0.6] [u] [g4] [vid] The Infernal Commando

Hello everyone, I want to share my build that utilize The Infernal Knight set. Special thanks to: Most, Avatar of Dreeg, They Live and Duck King whose discussions, posts and videos in this thread here and this one here inspired me to try out this build.

EDIT patch 1.0.0.7 with the changes to the recent patch I tweak the build a little, took Superfluff suggestion and increase the deadly momentum and temper while keeping blast shield at 12/12, I also took points off in Vindictive Flame, Overguard and Shield Training to and put it to Field Command, since we are low on DA and OA new patch has adjusted the enemy OA so this is to balance it a bit.

The build utilizes the new in 1.0.0.6 Infernal Knight set which focuses heavily in Black Water Cocktail (BWC) and Thermite Mine in Demolitionist skill line as attack and debuff skills. The objective is to stack reduce fire resistances on enemies for our fire damage and burn damage.

[b]Here is the Grim Calc for the build without the equipment:http://grimcalc.com/build/1007-YAWg0Q

[b]Here is with the equipment on and devotions: http://grimcalc.com/build/1007-UqIFrN

Attributes: 87 point to physique and 3 points to spirit to equip Warpfire, here in my character sheet I put in 8 points in Spirit by mistake since this is one of my first character I did not intend to use him with this build and I didn’t know much about components that can increase spirit.


Pros:

  • Very good clear speed against trash mobs and bosses alike.
  • Lots of procs in items and devotions that will active on attack so the burn damage and debuff stacks and spreads around fast.
  • Good survivability with over 30% physical resist, all resistances almost capped, Over 13k Health, Blast Shield, Flash Bang, decent health regen and decent damage blocked and chance.

Cons:

  • Very gear dependent, the gears are needed to achieve the balance between the offensive and defense. Without this setup you can still do well but it will probably be too defensive (not enough damage) or too offensive (died easily, since basically we only rely on HP Leech from flame torrent proc, our high hp pool and giants blood devotion. With overguard up you may be fine but this build does not support 100% uptime of the overguard).
  • Many people dislike the targeting and mechanics of Blackwater Cocktail and Thermite Mine, the bad news is that this build use this two skills as main damage and main debuff :frowning:
  • Low OA and DA, since most item we use are intended for casters we ended up with only 2200 ish OA and slightly below 2000 DA.

Videos:

Equipment
Main-Hand: WarpfireEnchanted Flint .Yes, I am using it to whack and slice with Cadence :wink: I found that the flat burn damage and -% fire resistances gives a lot of boost to our burn damage despite the weapon has only very low base aether damage.
Off-Hand: SiegebreakerImbued Silver
Head: Infernal Knight’s FaceguardLeathery Hide
Shoulder: Infernal Knight’s PauldronsSilk Swatch
Chest: Infernal Knight’s JacketKilrian’s Shattered Soul
Hands: Wyrmbone HandguardsSpellwoven Threads
Legs:Empowered Legplates of ValorScaled Hide
Feet: Golemborn GreavesMark of Mogdrogen
Waist: Infernal Knight’s GirdleAntivenom Salve
Ring 1 & 2: 2x Entropic CoilMark of Illusions
Amulet:Peerles Eye of BeronathFocusing Prism
Relic: Ulzuin’s Pyroclasm

Active Skills:

  • Cadence with 3 points in Discord to convert to elemental damage (default attack), Bound Devotion Skills: Flame Torrent from Fiend.
  • Blackwater Cocktail with High Potency (Main Damage, Debuff) Maxed, 1 point in Demon Fire since the infernal knight set will up this points a lot. Max in Agonizing Flames for the reduced target resistances. This is our main damage skill the burn damage in this skill is very big as you can see in the tool tip once you have completed the infernal knight set. It also debuffs enemy offensive. Bound Devotion Skill: Fissure from Magi
  • Thermite Mine with Hellfire mine (Debuff) -% resistances and damage.
  • Canister Bomb (Damage/Debuff) with Ulzuin Chosen, the skill adds a nice burn damage dot plus it helps spreads Eldritch Fire, the 1 point in Ulzuin Chosen is nice utility. Bound Devotion Skill: Eldritch Fire from Solael Witchblade
  • Flashbang with Searing Light (Debuff) impaired aim and confuse enemies, very useful, works against bosses too. Bound Devotion Skill: Meteor from Ulzuin Torch
  • Overguard (Buff) Gives a big boost to our block and regen use it when facing enemies that hits hard or when surrounded taking hits.
  • Blitz (Mobility/Damage) helps you get to your enemies or get away from pack of enemies.
  • Gaze of Beronath (Debuff) – 100 to enemy offensive abilities to further reduce their offensive abilities. Useful since we have kind of low DA.

Aura and Buffs

  • Menhir’s Bulwark: for damage absorption and health regen. Bound Devotion Skill: Giant’s Blood from Behemoth
  • Field Command with Squad Tactics: 1 pointer each for extra OA and DA as well as speed.
  • Flame Touched: Fire/Burn damage and OA.
  • Vindictive Flame: Fire/Burn damage, health regen and speed.
  • Void Ward Aura: from Imbued Silver for chaos resists.
  • Fire Aura: Fire/Burn damage from Enchanted Flint for extra burn damage.

Augments:

  • Mankinds’ Vigil for All armor pieces except for one with Outcast’s Warding Powder, improvise as you see fit depends on your gear roll, I couldn’t cap my poison, aether and chaos resists with this setup so I just try to balance between them.

  • Creed’s Cunning for both weapon and shield, I prefer this over Solar Radiance or Outcast’s Inferno, the health, offensive and energy regen and elemental damage is a better balance over those other augments.

  • Overseer’s Gaze for both rings, the lightning damage may seem to wasted stats, but really need these for the aether resists and OA.

  • Infernal Dust for amulet, I feel my resists are good enough and this is to add more offensive capability.

Playstyle:
If you have the completed set, entropic coil and warpfire, most trash mobs in campaign game Ultimate dies without us applying all of the skills and debuffs, you can see it in the videos. I usually just throw flashbang and blitz in, throw down BWC while auto attacking with Cadence is more than enough for most trash mobs as our procs from gear will also do the fire and burn damage.

Against Act bosses and nemesis you will need throw all your gadget at them. Start with the flashbang, thermite mine, bwc and canister bombs while auto attacking with Cadence and Blitz to add up some burn damage dot in. while all skills are on cool down keep refreshing that flashbang on them.

Gladiator Crucible
This build is also quite capable of handling Gladiator Crucible with Extra Spawn, however you will have to be careful with your skills.

Make sure that you are engaging mobs with your thermite mines up around them and you to get that massive -% fire debuff, and make sure that BWC are ticking on the area you are engaging as BWC also debuffs damage and reduce resistances.

Use the Canister Bomb to spread solael witchfire early and flash bang into pack of mobs before they charge or throw things to you.

Conclusion
Thank you very much if you have been reading all the way to here, I hope this guide can be useful to you. A very big thank you again for the Grim Dawn Community here for the many informative and insightful posts!

i really like the concept. I wanted to do a Cadence fire hybrid as well but with the Justice set. This build has big damage potential. May I just suggest one thing. Keep Blast shield at 12/12 ( you really don’t need more for it) and put rest of the points in Deadly momentum, You will get a lot of damage converted to fire from there as well.

Thanks for posting!

before i saw your post, I’ve tried a different combination of gear while using Firestrike. Even though i can’t test with the full set of the Infernal knight I currently use the Justice set and the elemental rings.

You made me try cadence with the transmuter and I once again tested a bit more with warpfire.

I cant tell about your AOE damage, but mine is quite crazy!
Lets say that the elemental rings helps a lot in my case but I use the full Justice set.

I would suggest you to bound:

  • Meteor to blitz (not needed, i found it handy to enter into a pack of monster with an aoe proc)
  • Fissure to the Thermite Mines (each 3 mines from one cast has its own cooldown for a devotion proc)

Hi Superfluff, thank you for the feedback. I tried it and you are right the blast shield is kind of overkill to overlevel, I guess before I found the right gear balance I kind of died a lot :P. The added damages from just 4 points more in the deadly momentum is huge! I will update the build, thank you for the suggestions.

Hi MrTek, yes I also tried with many different weapons with firestirike, Grim Fate, Herald of Blazing Ends, Legion Fire starter. it seems the damage is still lower compared to Cadence with Discord I guess the % Weapon Damage does matter a lot in cadence since in my case it also increase the burn damage ticks.

I have not tried it with Justice Set and Elemental Rings set sounds like a good idea! does the damage conversion warpfire affect a lot in that regard? mine is only 82% convert cold to fire.

Regarding the devotion skill, I also sometimes bound it to Blitz but since I think this build is a squishier than heavy armored soldiers build I am reluctant to charge in sometimes and prefer to target area for the meteor.

For thermite mine and fissure I am going to try it thanks for the suggestion!

Yes, the Justice set makes you overall quite tanky so i can afford to charge in with blitz non-stop even though I play HC.
With field command at 12, I have 1925 armor, it helps!
That being said, with your version the strong point is the burn damage!

And yes, warpfire convert cold damage from the rings proc to fire damage.

Btw, i didn’t go further than the blastshield into the demolitionist mastery and instead of Oklaine’s Lantern I went with the Manticore constellation. Otherwise the devotion set-up is pretty much the same.

EDIT: One thing I couldn’t test yet but would like to test is Helm/Chest from Ulzuin set with shoulder/gloves from Justice set.

I think you are right it may not be worth it to go that far into demo and just invest in field command, deadly momentum and temper but I did anyway because of the bonus skills from item to hellfire mine I think I am going to make another commando and try to level this build from begining not use old character:p may be a good leveling guide too.

Regarding the Ulzuin, I have the helm and shoulder, no full justice yet but I tried it and for this build I think it’s not worth it because I lose the burn proc from the full set infernal knight.

For the fire commando I think it depends on you, going ulzuin definetly increase your offensive ability but you lose a bit of tankiness from justice high armor If you want I can craft the Ulzuin Helmet for you:rolleyes:

Bump for information on new patch, I have not been able to level my character but I tried to run the old character with mostly craftable and faction gear except for the Legplates of Valor, just to give newer players idea on gearing, the key is to find balance between the offense and defense, a good starting defense is capping the resistance in ultimate.

Video vs Fabius in the gear:
https://youtu.be/_bhuDfG9ePw

Nice build.
Did you try this?
Empowered-Flamebreaker

Hi Gomagon, thanks!, yes I have considered about it but actually never tried it as when I build this char survivability was the main issue hence the siegebreaker.

I think the empowered flamebreaker should be good enough or even better for campaign, but in crucible pretty much need the defense from siegebreaker.

Sent from my D6653 using Tapatalk

Lot of love for the Infernal Knight set lately.

do you have link to your devo setup?

@MrTek

This is my absolute favourite build so far, thanks for that!

It melts everything and is surprisingly tanky.

Hi Therion, thanks! glad you like it. I always think this build is very versatile and consistent in terms of damage since if we are forced to kite around the burn dot still does decent damage to enemies.

https://gracefuldusk.appspot.com/items/5845-Essence-of-Ch’thon

noob question. how does the 15% rr from this augment work? is it applied to all type of resist or only for chaos?

edit: Is it possible to use elemental rings with infernal set? or need different gear setup?

Hi Black Dream, that augment % rr should apply to all damage type, but if you follow the build devotion set up it is not necessary since we use Viper, it only grant % rr for elemental damage but since most of our damage is fire/burn I think it works fine.

Regarding elemental rings, if you meant the Elemental Balance set:
http://gracefuldusk.appspot.com/items/7643-Ruby-of-Elemental-Balance
http://gracefuldusk.appspot.com/items/7644-Sapphire-of-Elemental-Balance

Then you can use it if you have your resist covered and do not have entropic coil, though it is not optimal for this build as this one relies more on burn damage.

I would suggest you to go with Justicar Set for that build, Mr. Tek has a nice write up on the first page of this thread, he mentions about using Justicar set and elemental balance rings on his commando. Hope he want to share the build with us all:p

I see. Ty for your reply. Hopefully MrTek will share:p

Btw this is my fav built for the time being.:smiley:

edit: i took MrTek advice binding meteor on blitz and blitzing is fun / fisure proc with thermite mine is so cool

Thanks! Glad you are having fun with it. Yes the devotion binding should be assigned to each of everyone play style. This is a commando class after all :stuck_out_tongue:

Sent from my D6653 using Tapatalk

Hi Mbaharto

sorry to ask. how did u get that 72% stun resist? i only stuck at 50%

OMG!

A viable Cadence + Shield build!

And it’s a Commando!

It’s like Crate took the “all brown” complaints about the colour palette, fixed it in that one patch, reverted it, and in doing so broke the code so badly, that the gameplay came up monochrome.