Need concept help: Blind Sage elemental caster

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
1

I call this character the Disciple of the Blind Sage.
After some time on other characters, I’ve gone back to my first to see if it can be made to work better. I think the basic playstyle is legitimate, but I think it needs improvement. I’m not completely clueless, but still have some stuff to figure out.

This character is mostly a caster Shaman with dabbling in Occultist that mainly uses:
Curse of Frailty(w/ Elemental Seekers),
Storm Totem(w/Reckless Tempest),
Wind Devil(w/ Elemental Storm),

Also side dishes of: Mogdrogen’s Pact(w/ Giant’s Blood), Savagery(only for Tenacity of the Boar), Stormcaller’s Pact, Blood of Dreeg

This combination actually seems to mechanically work pretty good. The beauty of it is you don’t need to aim at anything, so your reaction time & efficiency is very high, and your stationary time very low - This build is incredibly easy to play.

  1. randomly lay down a wind devil,
  2. randomly drop a totem,
  3. Curse the screen.
  4. Boom, monsters explode, or bosses start melting to DOTs, while you pick up the drops.

Some things that I think work out pretty good:
A) The combo of slows from both curse & wind devil help improve the damage application of Elemental Storm, and the Seekers. It’s valid CC, also.
B) The -35% elemental resist on wind devils and the -30% elemental resist on Curse, and -20% from Viper constellation, combined with tri-element damage seems like a real force multiplier to me. Although I’m still not totally clear on how resist reduction math goes.
C) Lots of automated attacks make lots of crits, and High up-time on Devotion & item procs, since the triggers are largely independent of your clicks.

But so far I’ve only gotten to lvl 150 in medium difficulty Crucible, probably due to my limited capacity to get the most out of this approach. So I want to see about backing up to figure out how to build, and see if the abilities & gear can be improved.

I’ve been building for elemental DOTs, resists, health regen, heavy armor, OA, Crit%. In practice, I’m scrounging and farming for the right gear, but I don’t really know what my gear goals are.

I guess my main problem is survivability though. In spite of the heavy armor, a circuit breaker, Blood of Dreeg, and Giants Blood, and some effort on health, I get 100-to-0’d too often. With all the armor and resists, I’m not totally sure why the character’s not more resilient in practice.

For offense maximization, I’m also not sure how to find out where my bread & butter damage is coming from. Comparatively, how effective are the seekers, versus the totem, versus reckless tempest, versus wind devil, versus elemental storm? Are the DOT’s worth it? I just don’t know.

Here’s GrimTools link. Gear’s probabaly a mess, reflecting my uncertainty on what to wear.
Empty slots are the 6 greens I have on. All resists are around 87, except a weak spot on Vitality ~60%.
16.7k health, ~2100 DA. 2122 armor. ~2400 OA before temporary buffs

Interested in any thoughts on how to improve on the direction this is going.

2

The % reduction from viper constellation requires that you hit an enemy with %weapon damage to be applied fyi. Not very viable with your playstyle?

3

Not wholly viable. But I do tend to whack bosses, so it’s not useless. It just isn’t as synergistic. I’ll have to re-assess it. Thank you for pointing that out!

How would I know when something like that is the case? I can’t tell.

4

I am not sure what to say after seeing your grimtools link, except that almost everything in it is wrong. Like all the gear choices you made in it are bad except boots. Skill allocation is wrong too, why are you maxing out Modrogen’s Pact line? It makes no sense, only Heart of the Wild is worth softcapping there. Overcapping Wind Devil itself does not make sense as a huge chunk of it is physical damage which your build will have very minimal support of.

If you want a caster Conjurer, you should go for Light Defender set, but I warn you, pure caster Conjurer is a very glassy char (well any kind of Conjurer is glassy), I’ve tried it myself. What I ended up with was a hybrid char, something that fits Conjurer better, you can follow my guide for reference.

5

Yes, I’ve read that character build. I suspect you’re overlooking this character’s intention. It’s not a lightning build.

Use of two or three element damage sources is the goal. Wind Devil’s main purpose is spreading around Elemental Storms proc, although it’s Cold damage is welcome. And this build’s Elemental Seekers do maybe most of heavy lifting. I’d like to use Storm Totem to apply something more than just Lightning/electrocute, instead of Reckless Tempest, but I wasn’t really sure how to replace it. In the meantime, totem & RT’s automatic damage application fit the rest of the play style.

As for why I spent the points where I did, it’s because I didn’t see value in spending them elsewhere, as dictated by the above intent. The Mogdrogen’s line had survivability components that, while much less potent per point spent, was what I needed most.
Unless the Familiar line is somewhat decent… But it doesn’t seem like it.
Otherwise, I don’t know what else I’d fruitfully spend points on, except more into the Occultist mastery.

Now, if you think the entire intention is limited - that there’s only so much a tri-element Conjurer caster can do - then okay. But otherwise, you’re talking about something unrelated to the stated goal. So your declaration that it’s all wrong is a bit weird and inappropriately forceful. I’m interested in your take, but only if you’re interested in mine.

*as for gear, I use what I’ve got, not what’s perfect. But I’m trying to find out which items are closer to optimal. Which of course doesn’t mean I’ll equip them - Got to loot it first.

6

First of all, no offense, but your English is a bit weird and a bit hard to get through, so I might be simply misunderstanding you here.

But let me try. You do have skills you can spend points on, for example “Aspect of a Guardian”, taking it to 12/12 is absolutely mandatory, physical resist is not easy to come buy and having Acid resist covered just from one skill gives you a lot of freedom in terms of gearing. Mogdrogen’s Pact doesn’t do anything for a caster, a physical damage is only good for attacks that have Weapon Damage component in it, and your Savagery is weirdly just at two points. Health and energy regeneration that is granted by the skill won’t matter in end-game.

Then, let’s talk about your gear, or those few pieces you have shown. Iskandra’s Balance is an Arcanist relic, using it here means that you are missing out on +1 to your mastery skill. Plus, the relic itself is a weird one, no build really uses it because it’s proc is again, good for skills with weapon damage but requires caster’s off-hand at the same time. Same with amulet, it’s a really great amulet but when you are using it on an Arcanist based class to take advantage of that Mirror of Ereoctes damage modifier. Plus, that conversion that applies on attack won’t do much for you except convert 1/5th of your Wind Devil damage to Elemental (which would be a drop in the water). Your weapon is also very irrelevant to your build, it gives skills to Inquisitor and got no useful stats. Maybe you thought that because it has three elements in it, you can somehow utilize it, but no, you can’t utilize it unless you are planning to be hitting stuff a lot with Savagery, which would be a bad idea since your build got no attack speed or defense or ADTCH to fight in melee range.

And Elemental Seekers alone won’t do the heavy lifting without a properly built offense, they can be great support damage, but you can’t really build around them.

I recommend looking at some caster guides and some beginners guides maybe to get an understanding how certain skills work in the game and what gear combinations and skills you should be pursuing when building your own char.

7

One thing I don’t agree with is your stance that items with a particular +mastery/skill on them is an item for that mastery/skill.

On other sorts characters, it’d make sense to line that up as much as possible. But something I’ve found from browsing gear for this build attempt is that what I’m attempting to do is not really supported by the gear that’s out there. There’s just about no items that are +shaman and %elemental, for example.

So I make do, and sometimes use items with +arcanist, or use a lot of green items. This would be much easier with a lightning build. But since it’s not, there’s a lot of lines on most items that just need to be ignored, because nearly nothing fits perfectly. It’s those lines I’m intentionally ignoring out of necessity, but which you seem to be focused on.

But the other half of the issue is that, again, I’m using what I’ve got rather than what’s just right. The medallion, for example, has been staying slotted largely for the extended resist cap plus some %elemental. But you’re right that it’s a sore spot. It needs replacement the most, even though I really value those high resists.

You’re also right about Aspect of the Guardian. I didn’t realize it’s poison resist went to +100%. That plus the physical resist would be good. I could lose the points in Storm Touched, since most of that isn’t doing anything.

In Mogdrogen Pact’s case, I gave it points just for the health regen. Stacking health regen had been working well previously, but after Ashes of Malmouth, it seems to have a harder time keeping pace with incoming damage.

As for Savagery - No reason to put more than 1 point in it. I whack things a few times for Tenacity of the Boar’s Health regen, OA, and DA. It’s a significant buff.

Scepter: 200% elemental damage, 8% crit, 72 offense. Seems like a good item for what I’m attempting.

You mention that Seeker’s can’t really be built around as for my primary offense - why is that? They seem to be working fairly well right now, but I can’t be sure since I’m having a hard time seeing precisely which abilities or procs are nuking stuff down the most.

All in all, even though my damage could be a higher, it’s not the problem. Crowds die quick. The problem is when a pack charges, or if I get multiple CC’s stacked on me. Or lately, there’s some trash mobs that seem to be hitting really, really hard despite my heavy armor & high resists. Been thinking about picking up a shield, but don’t know if it’s worthwhile when it’s not supported by the rest of my kit.

8

Just post your current Grimtools with all the items so I can be of some real help. It’s hard without seeing your full character.

9

Its all greens. Grimtools doesn’t seem to list those.

10

You can make green items in GrimTools, just add pre and suffix

This is how you can upload your char on GrimTools
pdf: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1EaPgyave_zqzo3aJi4T4bZ2pQrnBemD3
video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEASwrQ5C7k

11

an uploaded grimtools link would be helpful (the website can actually parse your character save file, so you don’t have to manually fill in all the items and fill out the skills/devotions)

my main criticism of that build is the lack of a strong single target killer attack.

wind devils and storm totems are great for killing trash quickly, but they aren’t all that great at killing bosses.

the closest thing to your build i’ve played was a druid using wind devils, storm totems and sky shards. i think it works better that way since sky shards is (basically) a dedicated focussed nuke skill that removes lots of HP of a strong opponent.

since there is no such skill in your chosen 2 masteries (at least non that is compatible with your elemental theme), you might have some success with using different devotions. the blizzard celestial power would be better suited thant he tempest, imo. tempest is yet another unfocussed area damage skill (of which you already have plenty). blizzards also does area damage, but it can (sort of) “shotgun” a high HP target (boss/champ) which would be more useful for your build i think.

i’d also drop savagery altogether. you’re not tanky enough to melee and it’s not worthwhile damage wise anyway. just slap a component on the weapon that comes with a nice free ranged attack to shoot while your other spells are on cooldown (chain lightning from seal of skies [ https://www.grimtools.com/db/items/8906 ] is pretty nice for that purpose in my experience)

skill wise - i think most of the points in the mogdrogen buff are wasted. the middle node (that one that adds %HP) is worth maxing. the other 2 aren’t.
with the saved points from losing savagery and most of mogrogen, you could max out aspect of the guardian (very useful - % physical res is pure gold and the huge amount of free poison resists makes it easier to cap all other res). probably also max out occultist mastery just for the bonus HP and stats. also, leftover points could be invested into wendigo totem. that’s always nice to have with any shaman build tbh.

12

Yeah, that’s a great point about the lack of single-target focus. While offense isn’t necessarily a big problem right now, it does take a bit of kiting on those waves that have a couple big bosses.

After looking at devotions and skills, there doesn’t look like there’s anything that fits the bill. Unless maybe I used a damage type transmuter item on a devotion? Or alternately, is there an item proc that can grant a solid single-target elemental nuke? Blessed Steel comes to mind, but that’s not good for casters.

Thank you for the links & GrimTools info. Unfortunately, I don’t have time to do the grimtools thing at the moment. But even so, I’m beginning to think that it would tempt us to spend too much consideration on the specific gear, and not enough on the big picture of skill & devotion mechanics and play style. The concept and idea behind it. I should think we dont exactly need green item info for any of that.

But I’ll come back to it later. Outta time for now.

13

I suspect it’s still easier for the vets to show you an improved/suggested setup based on your build with GrimTools, rather than writing long paragraphs theorizing how to realize your build idea. You’ll get better rersults and faster too. But it’s your thread…

14

And I would say you are wrong. Items are as important as the skills in any build. Things like cooldown reduction or damage boni on a specific skill are powerfull tools to make your build work. Items are also needed to compensate for any lack in defense or offense that your skills and devotion provide or lack.

I don’t want to be rude, I just want to give you my opinion to feed (constructively I hope) the discussion. I have to admit that so far, I disagree with you on some points.

15

a full grimtools link could be useful for identifying weaknesses in gear that can be overcome.

of course something like “replace items A B and C with [full suite of legendaries you don’t have]” isn’t going to help, but there are faction items that are basically guaranteed (may have to farm some rep, but that’s trivial) and there is usually also some potential to optimize smaller stuff. like “replace the components on this and that slot with [other component]. that frees up the augment on slots […] so you can cap XY res and end up with better res and defense overall”.