So, I recently reached lvl 94, farmed a decent Decree of malmouth, got some really lucky legendary drops and took boots/chest from my stash, tweaked my devotions and skills to give myself as much survivabily as possible since my damage is rather good and as long as I dont get killed in one shot by something ill almost always survive since I leech like crazy with my FoI. I rely on my Mark of Tormet to avoid telegraphed damage.
Is there anything that I missed? Something obvious that I overlooked? I havent really touched the game since FG release lol.
I in act 2 in Ulti and I plan to farm a better helmet from cronleys guys and a better shoulder piece from lang(althoug this one has some crazy phys resist)
Would also like advice on where to farm the FoI, it drops only from cronleys arsonists.
Grim Tools.
Some better amulet? Haven’t checked all but conduit with Unique prefix - Item prefixes - Grim Dawn Item Database for example?
Right, thanks. I’ll check if I have that recipie/mats to create it till I get that prefix
Would dual wielding Decree of malmouth be better?
Your build looks very tanky with that 50% phys res, maxed Inquisitor Seal and soft capped Mark of Torment. I think the build is very strong considering you haven’t touched the game since FG release.
My biggest criticism of it though is the low OA it has, especially since you did some investment in Deadly Aim (which you need a crit first for it to be effective). I am pretty sure that with that unbuffed OA (before Deadly Aim), you have a very low crit chance on tough enemies which makes proccing Deadly Aim really hard. You also have a lot of + Crit damage that won’t be effective with such low OA.
I would start off by taking some points from Deadly Aim (I would leave it at 1 since you are starving for points and for OA), and some from Mark of Torment (leaving it at 6 should be enough for now) and investing them on Spectral Binding for higher OA and health. I would also take some points from Endless Flame to make sure I can hard cap Spectral Binding and get 2 extra points in Aura of Conviction (plus 1% phys res and 18 OA). You also have 1 point too much on Flames of Ignaffar, so remove one point there. The focusing prism component on your Amulet is also not great because you already have a bunch of crit damage and your OA is not that big for it, so I would switch it for Arcane Spark (the Blueprint can be bought from the Black Legion faction). Finally, I would also switch Stag devotion to Panther since you would still have 48% phys res after all my suggestions (which is more phys res than most endgame builds have).
I just realized you don’t have an augment on your amulet, probably because you forgot about it. I would use an Arcanum Dust from Malmouth Resistance on it since you already have a lot of life with the modifications I suggested. Furthermore, as you just gained 70 DA and 10 Elemental resistances from Arcanum Dust, I would swap your chest component for a Chains of Oleron for even higher OA.
The grimtools with all these modifications is here: Apostate, Level 97 (GD 1.1.9.2) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator. You can see you lost 2% phys res, 21 DA, and 5% crit damage, but gained 331 unbuffed OA, 1296 Health and even more energy sustain because of Arcane Spark. You also do a lot more damage due to more consistent crits and Deadly Aim procs, which will boost your health sustain from Attack Damage converted to Health. I would say this new version of the build is probably tankier due to the higher Health and health sustain, despite the slight loss in phys res and DA.
You could also try to get more OA on your gear. The issue is you already have a double OA roll on your helm, but it is low level. Getting higher-level gear with OA and the resists you need should improve your build. Belt with OA would be the most obvious upgrade, but I know you currently need the resists on yours, so you would have to fix your resistances after the swap. I would also like to have more armor absorption, but you currently need that Spellschorced plating to have decent Elemental Resistances outside of your Inquisitor Seal. If you fix that, then I would use Scaled Hide on your pants and Scaled Hide on your shoulders as a budget alternative for decent armor absorption. However, when you find Living Armor or Sacred Plating blueprints, either of those is a better alternative for your shoulders. Regarding resistance overcaps: Elemental and Aether are the most important while Chaos, Bleeding, and Piercing are usually regarded as the least important ones. Therefore, if you could swap some Chaos or Piercing overcap for Aether (you only have 9% resist overcap there), it would be better.
Sorry for this wall of text. I guess there was just too much I wanted to talk about. I hope my reply is helpful despite that.
Disclaimer: I know you said your damage was already rather good and you were already leeching like crazy with FoI, but all your Crit Damage and Deadly Aim would be wasted against tough mobs (like most bosses in Ultimate) due to the low OA in your grimtools link. You also gained 1296 Health with my suggestions, which should protect you from one-shots. Furthermore, the higher damage will improve your survivability due to killing things faster and leeching even harder.
Most players don’t do that it seems but I think I’ve seen some good builder dual them (cannot find the video now though) and I think I’d personally try it as well for those FoI mods but hard to say for me for sure as CDR and CS are nice stats to have. I think you’d have to test it. Medal for enabling dual-wielding is probably optimal.
Thank you so much for all that info!
Changed some things like you said also got one new piece of equipment, OA is better now.
Looks good. You reached similar levels of OA with better DA than my sketch.
You still have 27 points in FoI in your grimtools link tho, so you should remove 1 point there and use it somewhere else.
After quite a bit of testing,seems like dual wielding is the way to go.
I spent many blooms on that crap :(, seems like bluepring was designed by a sadist. Didnt get the wanted modifiers
The stats look a lot better. I didn’t know you had a Direwolf Crest to the test dual wielding alternative. How is the energy sustain with DW? I noticed you are using two Arcane Sparks now.
The energy is perfect. I traded the direwolf recently.