With the non-STEAM release around the corner, I’ll finally start on Grim Dawn. I want to pick an Occultist as my first character, but I am not quite sure what second mastery I should pick if I want to go two-handed melee.
Shaman seems like a logical choice because of the two-handed specialisation, but then again Conjurers seem to do best as pet masters.
A Witchblade would be an option, and probably a better one than a Witch Hunter. However, I was wondering whether a melee Pyromancer would also be viable, two-handed or as a pistol and one-handed melee hybrid.
I know I’m being a bit vague here, but like I said I haven’t even started playing GD, and this thread is just to get a rough idea where to start from.
Shaman seems like a logical choice because of the two-handed specialisation, but then again Conjurers seem to do best as pet masters.
You’re saying that as if it prevents melee conjurer from being viable.
Overall b31 occultist became a decent support mastery for melee. The issue is how you’re gonna kill crowds before they kill you. Melee pyromancer isn’t very capable in terms of AOE damage, so I don’t think it’ll work great.
If you are taking Occultist and want to go melee than you are pretty much forced to focus on Chaos. With +320% chaos damage and a very impressive amount of flat +chaos damage, you’ll surely be able to get big hits. The problem is, as Dragon said, how are you going to deal that damage? Killing mobs 1 by 1 is never an option, you need solid AoE. Doom Bolt will obliterate anything it hits, but it has a small aoe.
Here are some options besides speccing into Shaman:
Sigil of Consumption: Now that it is 6sec/5mtr on lvl12 this is really nice. Provides some healing too.
Demo: Firestrike with Brimstone. It’s not melee, but the Fire/Chaos splinters provide excellent AoE.
Demo: Thermite Mine with Hellfire. Awesome Chaos damage, as well as -choas resistance. Nothing can survive the Sigil+Hellfire combination, but being so similar they don’t compensate each other weaknesses. Although mines appear to have been buffed in B31, they can no longer stack damage, which is a MAJOR nerf. It used to kill any hero absurdly fast. It’s still good though.
Soldier: Blade Arc. Excellent damage, excellent melee-aoe. With 135% WD your chaos damage will be even more amplified. Downside: it costs a fuckton of energy. Occultist’s own skills already drain about 7-8 energy/sec. A pro of taking Soldier is that Menhir’s Will (272hp/sec) + Overguard (+133% hp/sec) + Blood of Dreeg (106hp/sec) gives you a whopping 880 hp/sec! (More with items and basic regen)
Devotion Procs: Believe it or not, but Guardian Gaze provides an absolute absurd amount of melee-aoe damage when you’re able to proc it rapidly. Luckily, you have Bloody Pox which is one of the best devotion proccers available. Pox a group and you can easily have 8-12 eyes orbiting you. Take Eldritch Fire for more chaos damage and -chaos res. Targo Hammer for even more stuff orbiting you. The chaos damage of Flame Torrent is sadly very low, and I’m still not sure whether the procs stack.
I’ve just started an Occultist which will spec into Soldier. I’ll first wait to see if Sigil+Blitz+Devotion procs will give me a sufficient amount of AoE to rapidly clear trash. If not, I’ll get Blade Arc, but I fear the energy cost will be horrible.
NOTE: Don’t forgot about the amazing Chaos Strike skill given by the Riftstone component (it’s very similar to Blitz). Imagine speccing into Nightblade for Shadow Strike and dual wielding Chaos Strikes… you will barely need any cd reduction for fulltime teleporting. It’s sad that Nightblade has so little chaos synergies.
I’m running a a 2h melee witchblade. Currently lv 42
Use this on grimcalc: rOETeS (i cannot post links)
Survivability is slightly an issue, but i havnt really speced any of the defensive perks. The idea is to do dish out vitality/chaos/physicial damage.
Blade arc can be substituted for cadence. Atm I think cadence is slightly better as blade arc depends a lot on positioning. With Cadence you still have Chaos strike (Get rifstrone component) which kills all the small crap.
Conjurer is an excellent choice for 2-hand melee. The Occultist has heal/offense/damage with Blood of Dreeg, attack speed/damage with Solael’s Witchfire, and resistance reduction with Curse of Frailty, all of which are extremely useful for the Shaman. The Shaman on the other has the 2-hand skills and tons of life.
Thanks for sharing. Could you tell me how good the Blood of Dreeg + Menhir’s Will is in terms of HP regen? What’s your peak HP regen and how much does it help you survive? How is your energy level? And do you run into any trouble with DA/OA? Sorry for all the questions
Personally I wouldn’t go for 2H, especially if survivability is an issue. The advantage of Blade Arc is that you can use a shield, and Overguard is incredible, especially as it can bring your HP regen to absurd levels. Blade Arc is also much less skill-point intensive than Cadence: all you need is 16/1.
This is somewhat like how I would suggest it: http://grimcalc.com/build/UnQomM
Note that I took Hellhound - Hellfire for even more flat and % chaos damage. Especially the extra flat chaos damage should significantly increase your dps. I’ve taken 4 points into Chaos Bolt as I found it perfect for killing summoners, healers, and bosses.
So, the hellhound will stay alive well enough if you one-point it and don’t have pet gear? Herald of Flames dropped an infernal brimstone in elite yesterday and I was trying to figure out a fire/chaos pyro build (or something demo/* that would work for 2h). That was one of the things I was looking at.
Not sure, to be honest. I think I might drop it. It used to survive all the way up to the end of normal, but on the higher difficulties I can imagine that a 1-point Hellhound won’t survive for 18 sec (the cooldown). Putting up on defensive might help a lot, but it might still die due to aoe In the end, you are quickly running out of skill points anyway, so it might not be worth it over the alternatives (esp more defensive options).
One thing that does seem different from Titan Quest, is that it seems almost impossible to fully max out more than one skill branch in each of the two masteries you can choose. Judging by GrimCalc, you tend to run out of skill points pretty quickly. Am I right, or am I missing something here?
[/li]
This was my initial thought too. I really liked the idea combining Sigil of Consumption with Thermite Mines. If I then spec some into Fire Strike as well, the actual weapon used probably won’t matter that much. Maybe sword & pistol would work as it would mostly be a deterrent while throwing and drawing the Mines and the Sigil respectively.
I’ll be playing co-op with my brother (got the KS co-op bundle), so that should be a bit more forgiving on survivability as well. He’ll probably play a dual-wielding Nightblade as his primary mastery too, so he can do all the pulling. However, because he was also interested in Demolition as a secondary mastery, I am also looking at alternatives for the sake of diversity. Out of those, seeing the replies here, Shaman does seem to be the best or rath,er most fun, alternative.
Looks good! Can I ask though, why Primal Strike instead of Savagery? Savagery’s synergies appear much more complementing to the Occultist’s chaos damage potential and survivability.
Mainly because I find it hard to get a 2-hander’s attack speed high enough to quickly build up charges. Another reason is that Savagery is single-target only while Primal Strike has good AoE. Maybe I’m wrong but to me savagery seems more suited for dual-wielding, especially if you have something like 2 Crystallum.
Primal Strike Has torrent, a great crowd clearer while Savagery while good needs to get in at least 5 hits before its up to maximum damage output.
Still, u could take both, and use primal strike without the modifier,wich is how i played it so far and its a great mob smasher,especially with a 2-hander!
Considering using a Shield, u could also go for a caster offhand, since they give huge boosts to chaos damage and there are also great shaman offhands as well, so give it a try
I’m currently running a melee witchhunter (level 35, self found, veteran) and she’s doing very well. Let me share what I think will work well for any melee occultist hybrid out there.
Focus on both vitality and chaos damage. Since damage is additive, flat damage and additional damage types are more powerful than moving any damage type past a couple hundred percent. Adding vitality really helps upping the damage and also keeping your damage amounts constant over multiple enemy types/resistances. With eldritch fire you can break vitality, fire, and chaos resistances quite well. These are good set of damages to work with. Grim Dawn doesn’t work as well if you only do a single damage type.
I raced to possession, but upping armor of the guardian can also do it. The physical resist can be up full time and 5-10% less damage is very helpful.
Sigil of Consumption is a very good AOE now. It allows you to leech very effectively, does three different damage types (both chaos/vitality upped by possession) and has great synergy with guardian’s gaze, eldritch fire, ring of frost, olexra’s flash freeze, calidor’s… heck you name it). You can make that your main AOE damage spell
You still need an AOE CC spell. You will have to get this from your other mastery/devotion as occultist doesn’t have a good one.
I’d look for vitality weapons and attack damage converted to health. You leech well, you can break the vitality resistance, and they usually show up together. Omen/Empowered is a great low/mid weapon that you can use for this, but there are 2h versions.
You get chaos/vitality/poison/physical resistance from this mastery. You can get pierce/cold from nightblade, a whole bunch of different ones from arcanist/soldier, and pierce/fire resistance from demolitionist. What is fairly hard to get resistance to is aether. Focus on this resistance in both devotions and with factions. Only the Black Legion and Outsider have aether resistance material upgrades. I tend to gravitate to the Outsider, since it’s so bloody easy to get here faction standing up and you don’t really need half of the Black Legion’s upgrade. For an occultist she has the best material upgrade. You can also add aether damage/resistance to your character… it’s not standard, but can work quite well…
I might be derailing my own thread here, but for now I think I’ll focus on the Sigil & Thermites build. Realising Thermites count as “pets”, they look very promising in conjunction with the Occultist mastery, and I can figure out the weapons later.
This was my initial thought too. I really liked the idea combining Sigil of Consumption with Thermite Mines. If I then spec some into Fire Strike as well, the actual weapon used probably won’t matter that much. Maybe sword & pistol would work as it would mostly be a deterrent while throwing and drawing the Mines and the Sigil respectively.[/QUOTE]
After that, there’re quite a few options. Investing further in the Hellhound seems like a good choice, based on Cap.'s notion on its survivability on higher difficulties, but a one-point Raven with Mend Flesh maxed out might also be an option.
Then, is it worth it to take the Occultist mastery from 32 to 50, and maybe access Possession? Or are those points better invested in Solael’s, Flame Touched, and/or Fire Strike? Finally, there’s also the option of dropping the Hellhound completely to free up points.
Hellhound’s Hellfire is the least effective chaos damage booster, so always first go for Possession and Solael. If you are going Mines & Sigil, I would recommend investing (much) more in CC, as you need to control monster movement to BBQ them. Curse with Flasbang provides good consistent slow. Cannister Bom (w/ concussive) provides good aoe stun for just 4 points. For smaller groups Stun Jucks work better though, given the much lower cd.
You’re going to need to invest more in defensive options, including mastery points. Else you’re going to die all the time.
EDIT: Remember that Mines are NOT pets! They scale with player damage, e.g. the %chaos damage from Soleal and Possession. They don’t benefit at all from pet bonuses.
