[Melee Aether] DW-Aether Sorcerer

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
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[b]BUILD HAS BEEN ABANDONED. FOLLOW THE LINKS BELOW IF YOU’RE STILL INTERESTED IN THE CONCEPT

I know the general opinion of aether is that it’s pretty bad for melee. While putting this together i realized it isn’t 100% true.

Here’s the explanation for the build:-

Build Concept:-

1. Conversion-

Conversion is our prime source of Flat Aether Damage

-Arcane Shard of Agrivix gives us Fire->Aether
-Albrecht’s Duality gives us->Chaos to Aether.
-Reckless power gives us->Physical (if any) to Aether

Since our chaos conversion is high and our RR skills depend on crits we need OA. Dying God constellation gives flat chaos for conversion and high OA. Flame Torrent is pretty much the go-to devotion for this build. It has % weapon damage, flat fire and chaos damage; all of which get converted to aether damage.

2. Resistance Reduction-

This build has no items that provide %damage to aetherials, i got that from augments on my weapons. Since % damage to aetherials is low you’d expect aetherial enemies go down slow. Wrong! Actually i have decent RR which makes me drop three Ironside Hulks in an open field like flies while some dimwitted troll is shooting at me

-Arcane Bomb gives me -33% Aether Resistance
-Band of Eternal Haunt gives me -15% Aether Resistance
-Warpfire gives me -20% Aether Resistance
-Decree of Aldritch gives me 16 flat reduced resistance

All of this gives you around -84% Aether Resistance Reduction

*Flashbang reduces enemy DA by 250 hence further contributing to our OA and making our 100% crit procs go off more often

GrimCalc (w/ Plus Skills and Devotions)-

http://grimcalc.com/build/1009-ra0dok

Playstyle:-

LMB- Fire Strike (w/ Flame Torrent)
RMB- Oleron’s Might
Keyboard 1- Flashbang (w/ Arcane Bomb)
Keyboard 2- Mirror of Ereoctes
Keyboard 3- Nullification
Keyboard 4- Bloodthirster

Screenshots (Only contains toggled buffs and no temporary ones):-


An old screen of Rashalga’s Corpse (Lol she looks like someone used a fly swatter on her :D)

PVDnspp.jpg1024×768

Items-

Weapon 1- Warpfire
Weapon 2- Decree of Aldritch
Helm- Maw of Despair
Shoulders- Stonehide Valdaran’s Shoulderguard of Kings
Chest- Ulzuin’s Chestguard
Pants- Wraithborne Legwraps
Gloves- Voidsteel Gauntlets
Feet- Stonehide Exalted Treads of the Kings
Belt- Ulzuin’s Torment
Ring 1- Band of the Eternal Haunt
Ring 2- Albrecht’s Duality
Medal- Mark of Divinity
Relic- Blademaster’s Talisman
Amulet- Empowered Essence of Beronath

-If you’re feeling squishy then switch Ulzuin’s Chest for Chestguard of Justice to gain Armor and Armor Absorption (from the 2-piece set bonus) and some nice Defensive ability.
There will be a slight DPS loss but overall performance should remain the same.

-I used to use Plaguebearer Master’s Spellblade, and you can use it in place of Decree (Ty to Tomo for trading :D)

Bosses-

I have beaten Lucius and am not at nemesis with anything except aetherial and chthonians and am borderline with undead. My main aim was to open up plains of strife since it’s the best place to test this build. I did however make it to rashalga to test this. I didn’t die to her due to having effective 7 seconds of invulnerability.

Port Valbury-

This place is a nightmare cause narrow spaces make sure you can’t skip mobs.

It’s doable but i prefer not to touch it.

This was my first build that did it on ultimate (on the first attempt ofc)

Leveling Guide:-

  1. Bounties:-

You gain a shit ton of experience from the main quests, but what’s nice is you gain a lot of exp from bounties as well. Since its easy to gain reputation with all the faction except the Black Legion. I go for the Legion’s bounties on all profiles. Below are the bounties i do and when doing them i clear the entire screen.

-Black Legion= Kill the Herald of Flame, Kill Luthus’Balok, Kill Corprus, Bane’Gargoth, Kill Anoxis, Kill Kilrian

To farm negative reputation with Kymon’s i just keep doing Tomb of Archon and for Cronley’s negative rep i clear all the mines, four hills and Cronley’s hideout.

  1. A leveling skill-
  • You don’t need to be very strong to clear veteran and this means an optimized build can do it. I usually farm Veteran till lv. 60.
  • Till you reach homestead you can use the granted skill- Greater Fireblast granted by the component Flintcore Bolts.
  • Now you can start using Panetti’s Replicating Missiles to clear large packs of mobs. PRM is a decent levelling skill.
  1. Attribute Points-

You need to be very careful and keep in mind you can’t refund attributes. Inner Focus skill provides you %spirit. So spirit shouldn’t be an issue. Since you’re using PRM most spirit requirements can be easily met. But if you still put a point or two in spirit it’s not an issue. But you must not put a single point in cunning. All your points should go into physique

In Closing:-

I would like to thank JoV and TomoDak for trading for the Exalted Treads and the Spellblade that made this build viable.

Aether could use some melee support and i hope future patches or the expansion add this. I would say this that a DW Witchbladecould probably out-perform this build due to Cadence having high % weapon damage. I still went ahead and made a Sorcerer to present a concept.

This is a fun build and i hope you guys enjoy it as well.

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Reserved for later

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(Reserved)

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Updated the guide. I will update once more when i try the patch. It seems Fabric of Reality would make a nice investment

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How do you get 173% AS? I’m not sure I see all the sources.

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Isn’t it one 171%?

Items-
Ulzuin’s Chest, Justice Gloves

Components-
Consecrated Wrappings, Kiliran’s Soul, Dread Skull 2x

Devotion-
Jackal, Revenant and Lantern

Also AS calculations isn’t like you think. It’s calculated differently based on the speed class of your weapon ranging from Very Slow to Very Fast.

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Nice one, Im glad you gave aether dmg another chance, its not so bad after all :wink:

Build looks solid. I can see that you are pushing atc speed so maybe this would be worth trying for chest armor https://gracefuldusk.appspot.com/items/7973-Empowered-Fanatic’s-Overcoat proc is amazing and HP and regeneration bonuses are nice, tho it would cost you some elemental resistance and skill bonuses from ulzuin chests.

Its a bit unusual devo setup you are using, is there any particular reason you chose dying god over spear of heaven?
Think about taking 2 AB rings, you would gain more from total chaos to aether conversion that you are getting from -15% aether rr imho.
Also try to work around and put at least one scaled hide in armor, your phys resistance dont shine :slight_smile:

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Those shoulders are some fap material for sure. Glad to see MIs being improved in the newer versions, they are the stuff that made Titty Quest stand out from other games, but were poorly handled in GD until recently.

I was actually thinking about using the Master’s dagger for a Chaos-based Pyro, but it never worked out the way I wanted. Never thought of trying conversion to aether since items that do it looked too caster-centric.

This looks sick though. The devotions are all over the place, but I guess that’s gonna be fixed in later iterations. Is Static strike so worthless now that you prefer Explosive strike? That’s sad.

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What didn’t work out about the pyro for you? I need to test my master blades out with some other builds. Plaguebearer and of abyss provide some nutty resist reduction

Nice build Cthon! Cool to see Aether melee and another interesting use of blademaster talisman

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The build felt like a weak version of Elementalist/Sabo, the damage just wasn’t there and he was still paper. This was in 1.0.0.4., when elemental melee builds were much more insane. Also, BoC was the benchmark, so chaos was a poor choice, even with the massive res reductions. Now that I think about it…

Oh, and just noticed OP is using Blademaster’s talisman, that can’t be right. Agrivix’s Malice is just insane for something like this and Ulzuin’s Pyroclasm is also pretty good if you want +1 Demo skills. Is Mark of Divinity so important that you have to drop a proc that clears the screen on it’s own?

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Huh, trust me on this, chaos pyro melts everything on his way. Dmg vise with devo procs up Im trying to get him above 100k, but stuck on 97k :confused:

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I think i have a dw chaos pyro, he’s not too far for me to tell you how good he actually is. But i can say this Pyro is probably a better choice than witch hunter for DW-Chaos

And yeah, i like to play it safe. Even though my Mark hasn’t proc’d till now i still keep it. I tested a Agrvix’ proc but had to drop it. One of the harder choices i had to make. Meanwhile my Flame Torrent is a pseudo-Malice. It has % weapon damage, chaos and fire (both get converted to aether).

I don’t think Static Strike would help me much in the Aether Department

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Thanks.

Aether is kinda hard to reduce which is why i went with the ring. As for the coat yeah i have it but didn’t go for it since it was only a 2% AS increase and it cost me some +skills and resistances. So i went with Ulzui. Plus Fanatic’s Overcoat makes me look like a damn hobo, Ulzuin is way cooler :cool:

As for your assessment of Aether, i disagree. I think the game needs more support for Aether. I still think it sucks :p.

And yeah the devotion setup took around 16 Tonic of Clarity. I went with Dying God because it gives me the OA i need for procing my Amulet’s mini devastation spell and to proc my Warpfire’s RR, it gives me flat chaos damage that can be useful through AD ring. Though SoTH did recieve a buff this patch might change the devotion setup and maybe get Chariot and SoTH. That flat chaos damage loss from DG would get compensated as Arcanist now gives Flat Aether damage through MA passive.

As for Scaled Hide, i honesly want to use it on atleast one of my builds but resistances are stretched so thin that i can’t afford to. Although this might change since they have made some nice changes to the items.The previous chest was of Justice set. But then i got greedy for AS (moar! moar!). I am used to playing w/o hide. But one can go with Chestguard of justice for a little DPS loss to gain more tankiness. Should i add this part to the guide? I honestly can’t tell

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Ty, and thanks again for that item. I would’ve been stuck using Wrath of the Ascendant and an even wackier devotion setup had you not agreed to trade

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I’m surprised you didn’t opt for some of the Black Legion’s daggers that they sell - surely the ‘Elite Legion Aetherspark’ is what you’d want? 47-56 base Aether damage, around 150% aether damage and 80% elemental, and an extra proc. Sure, you can’t get prefixes or suffixes, but still… it just wants to be used in this build!

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I’d miss a lot of RR. Warpfire also has base aether damage and chaos damage on spellblade gets converted to aether. I did consider those weapons though

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Change rigs to 2X AD rings MA will get some flat aether and chaos dmg with 1.0.0.7, it will be great boost :smiley:

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Yeah i know, i saw the higher damage before posting this build here. But i prefer RR since aether is hard to debuff as it is and i’m not going to go for Necrosis. But i guess i should update the guide for two alternate setups this build can go for.

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I noticed you said you are making a dual wield melee sorc. Have you tried grinding for two of that new legendary, the Decree of whats-his-face? You could achieve 100% elemental > Aether conversion with that easily, and have an absolute ton of +Arcanist ranks (4 piece set of Iskandra, dual wielded whats it’s name is +4, and you can use either a dual wield melee relic, or be fancy and use the Direwolf Crest instead so that you can stack another +1 Arcanist from your relic, and a further +1 from belt for +6 Arcanist total). Use Albertch Dualities for Chaos > Aether conversion, and we have some stupidly high aether damage to play with, with literally 100% of both IEE AND Firestrike converted to Aether damage.

Each one has +200%-ish Aether damage, and that proc. Man. That proc.

I currently have most of the gear for the build, just need to farm myself 2 of the Decrees and get myself a high level sorc to use em, and I think I need the Iskandra amulet or shoulders, but hard to remember.

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Yep that could be sick, tho im not sure how it would fare due to severe lack of atc speed.