Need suggestions on skills and devotions of my 1h + shield trio: Warlord, Blademaster, Dervish

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
1

I am a big fan of Titan Quest and played it alot. So it was a quite smooth start to play Grim Dawn. Still i am not fully into it. And i like the difficulty. Its way more difficult than TQ.

Some weeks ago i started GD, and i looked at the classes and quickly know what i wanted to play.

I love to play tanky 1H + shield melee. And i remember Templar (Dream + Defense), Conquerer (Warrior + Defense) and Corsair (Rogue + Defense) in Titan Quest.

So i decided to play a combination of either Nightblade, Soldier or Oathbreaker. Finally i couldnt decide and now i play all 3 classes in combination, means Warlord, Blademaster and Dervish. I do like to play several chars simultaneously, because that gives me alot of selection (x3 loot so to speak) of equipment in every stage of the game. Like doing Act 1 with all 3 chars, and then Act 2 and so on. Also i do know the map like my own pocket by then.

At the moment i have all 3 Chars at the beginning of Act 4 (Veteran). They are all level 53. Btw i have all Expansions except crucible.

Before i started i noticed the fact that the skill point progession takes the first hit at level 50 (from 3 to 2 skill points per level) and the jump in loot quality at that level 50 (legendary).

So i was playing alot with +% experience items for a good amount time to rush level 50, hence the high level at this stage of the game (?). +30% experience are remarkable. At level 50 i put off all those +% EXP equipment and started to get serious about defenses (1h + shield) and proper equipment, because i already noticed some hard to fight spots. Til then i was going full damage with 2h. Died around 3 - 5 times each Char.

Now lets talk about my builds. I spent hours in reading and playing with grimtools calc. In general i like tankiness and low active skill usage, as i am a slowpaced player. I cannot handle more than 4 maybe 5 active skills and i am a notorious facehugger.

WARLORD 100 (1H + shield)

https://www.grimtools.com/calc/lV7GDLbV

The approach is to take alot of damage devotions to compensate the rather low raw per hit damage of the Eye of Reckoning. And they seem perfectly fitting damage type and easy to link to skills available.

Damage Types: Mainly Physical + Iternal Trauma (Bleed and Fire nice to have?)

Active gameplay: War Cry, Eye of Reckoning, Blitz, Overguard

Passive AOE: Bull Rush, Dire Bear Maul, Vires Might, Counterstrike, Targo’s Hammer

RR: Warcry + Celestial Presence

Questions:
Is this Ultimate playable without Cadence?
Is there any serious weakness in this build? (this is also a general question to all my builds)

DERVISH 100 (1H + shield)

https://www.grimtools.com/calc/gZwJrGnV

This is a difficult one because i dont know about high end items, but i know about conversion possibilities. I hope this build will be playable as you noticed the missing Righteous Fervor which is obviously the thing to go for Dervish i guess. But i read about (cold/physical) to Acid/Poison conversion. I also tried to cover the lack of soldier defenses with some devotions (e.g. the missing armor absorbtion from soldier is covered by Obelisk and Ishtak.)

Damage Types: Aimed for Acid + Posion (Cold nice to have? looking at Viper and Murmur)

Active Gameplay: Amarasta’s Blade Burst + Shadowstrike + Ring of Steel + Pneumatic Burst + Bladebarrier (5. Active skill, which is quite unpleasent for me, at least if i am in panic mode, oh wait, its a panic button :))

RR: Converted Celestial Presence + Night’s Chill + Rumor + Viper (looks like alot of RR vs Acid/Posion)

Questions:
Does the Obelisk Block Proc could be too weak in this build because it seems rather low with 15% in comparison to something like Targo’s Hammer which got 33%?
Is this build doomed because of lack of conversion from Cold to Acid?
Is Dryad’s Blessing a waste of devotion points in this build?
Is Viper helpfull if i cannot convert 100% cold to acid?

BLADEMASTER 100 (1H + shield)

https://www.grimtools.com/calc/m23gvOB2

This should be a Cold Blademaster. At the first glance, it seems and feels similar to the Dervish. Obviously i like Nightblade skills alot. Dam you Nightblade.

Damage Type: Aimed for Cold

Active gamplay: Like Dervish (which is odd, or not) but bringing up Overguard instead of Ring of Steel.

RR: Night’s Chill + Rumor + Elemental Strom + Viper

Question:
I didnt go for one specific devotion, so i want to know how difficult it is to proc the 100% on critical hit devotions like Amatok Blizzard against Bosses if i dont aim for super high OA?

As more i read through this builds, especially Dervish and Blademaster, i feel those are rather messed up. I would appreciate any comments, hints and suggestions.

Feel free to comment and thank you for reading.

Now i prepare to move my weird trio to Ashes of Malmouth next days.

2

I’d suggest simply look through your inventory and put some appropriate gear on these. That doesn’t mean Bis or End-game…just things you have. Then update the posted Grimtools.

GD is largely gear, tbh. Then peeps can suggest tweaks to make the gameplay more enjoyable = Things to think about and things to look for.

3

Well, hello there sweetie, fancy meeting you here. :slight_smile:

As it happens, my first (and highest) char is also a cold based S&B blademaster. I’m cruising my way through Elite atm. I finished base+AoM+FG because I wanted to explore.

With respect to that build, the best thing that I can do for you is point you to this guide/build.

I have to warn you:

  1. More experienced players than myself say the build is not , erm, shall we say, optimal. Maybe it’s not even good. But I wanted to play a cold focused S&B char and this was the best that I could find.
  2. The build, at least in my experience, is very safe and tanky. Since it’s my first char, I am playing completely self-found, and I have no issues with it.
  3. I died 5 or 6 times because i, and I assume that is the same in your case, had no idea what bosses did and as such I stood in s@&t I should have moved out of. Or because I was soo sleepy at 2 a.m. but really wanted to kill that boss. I blinked and when I opened my eyes it was 15 minutes later and my char was dead. But we will not be talking about those 2 particular deaths now, will we? No, no we won’t!
  4. Because we are disregarding some powerful dw skills in the nightblade tree, we will have to get some dmg from somewhere else. Since we are kinda limited (according to the guide, ofc) we will switch our focus from flat cold to the cold dot: frostburn. They do go hand in hand, most of the time, frostburn should be your focus.
  5. Since we are tanky from skills, check the devotion path in the guide, which also focuses on frostburn and tankiness.
  6. Not too many active skills, at least for me, but might be more than you want, because it also has Blitz. That + the mobility glyph, gives you 2 more buttons to push.

Conclusion: even if it’s not the best build, I really enjoy it. I find it suits my needs atm. I shall see how it fares in ultimate, but for the moment it’s great. 3 mobility skills, safety in Overguard, Blade Barrier, Menhirs Will and some devotions. Can tank most things, and what I can’t tank I can always dot and run around a few seconds before I shadow strike back in.

If you need more info (acquired through first hand gameplay) let me know. Also read the link that I gave you, all of it. It has a skill breakdown and a devotion breakdown as well as some other pieces of advice from other people that played this build in HC.

Cheers.

4

Oh thank you for reading, and i am glad to hear of someone liking such build as well. I was reading your build after you wrote me. And i am lucky that i found Cresent Moon early.
I didnt consider Frostburn > Cold before. I was rather going like Cold+Frostburn. The following link is my build atm.
Please ignore my jewels. They suck. I would like you to look at my thoughts of Devotions in particular. What do you think about it? I think Turtle Shell is not that bad as a filler if i wanna go Ishtak.
Btw. Still Veteran Act 7.
https://www.grimtools.com/calc/d2j8PmxZ

5

Hey there,

Again, I am not the expert on the build, but I am having fun with it.
That being said, in the guide I linked, buried in the comments, there is the explanation of the devotion path.

By looking at you, I see you went very defensive. I assume that you went that way because you wanted to max out all your rezists. I also assume that is why you went with so many points in the defensive passives from Soldier.

I went with the proposed build, which focuses a bit more on damage + defensive procs. I also have more points in Menhir’s Will, Overguard, Blade Barrier. These three, combined with Giant’s Blood and Wayward Soul from Devotions makes it very safe. I can give you more details if you want, in about 24 hours or so, since I’m a bit busy atm.

Here is the devotion path description.

1 - Blue CR
2-6 - Tsunami
7 - Green CR
8-10 - Hawk
11 -*
Remove Tsunami
Remove Blue CR
Remove Hawk
Complete Spider
Remove Green CR
Put point in Purple CR
Complete Hammer
Remove Purple CR
Put 3 points in Rhowan’s Crown (E Storm)
12 - Blue CR
13-15 - Eel
16 - Red CR
17-18 - Jackal
19 -*
Complete Jackal
Remove Red CR
Put 1 point in Murmur
20-23 - Murmur (Get Frostburn Node)
24-26 - Behemoth (G Blood)
27-32 - Amatok (Blizzard on 30)
33 -*
Complete Amatok
Remove Blue CR
Put 1 point in Owl
34-35 - Owl
36 -*
Complete Owl
Remove Hammer
Put 3 points in Chariot of the Dead
37-40 - Chariot of the Dead
41 -*
Complete Murmur
Remove Jackal
Put 3 points in Quill
42 -*
Complete Quill
Remove Spider
Complete Toad
Put 1 point in Rhowan’s Crown
43 - Rhowan’s Crown
44 - Purple CR
45-51 - Leviathan
52-55 - Viper

6

Thank you again. I think my build will be under better test conditions in Elite, which i will start soon. One thing i have to consider is how important weapon damage on devotion skills will be. Because that was the reason to avoid something like Leviathan for BM or Yugol on my Dervish.

7

That is the whole point. We are using a blademaster, but we don’t use it’s strengths. We basically ignore auto attacks. Which makes the weapon more of a stat stick. At least I am. From ABB I only care about the frostburn dmg, from Shadow Strike the same, and I use extra devotions with frostburn.

That is why Ghoul (which gives life steal and attack speed) is skipped. It’s more like I am a melee caster, with a few short cd skills.

I have no issues in Elite with the build I posted.