Need tips to improve survivability on a for no reason cold mage hunter

Hello there kings, I could use some advice to optimize my dumb build. Here’s what I have going: Mage Hunter, Level 100 (GD 1.1.9.5) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator

The build is pretty damn old and goes back to the time when malmouth was just out. At first I just intended to make a chillspikes cold mage for that sweet TQ feel and I’d rather stick to that. I initially picked inquisitor for the cold rune, but unfortunately I figured it’s complete trash (mostly thanks to setup time) way too long after, so the build is kind of stuck with an inquisitor for no reason.
I’d very much love to get rid of the inquisitor seal, because I am not a big fan of how it works, but seems like inquisitor class wholly relies on this crutch to survive. I considered picking aura of censure for damage reduction, but it’s fire, which goes against the idea of the build. Haven’t figured a way to convert it to cold too. This build has grown reliant on trozan for damage, so I feel like star pact is better with its cdr.

The problem is that it dies way too easily and seal doesn’t really allow to be mobile and stay protected at the same time. There seems to be a lack of cold legendary gear for anything that’s not a melee nightblade or a necro, so I had to fight that as well. Looking for cool ideas, besides rolling marginally better greens.

The first issue I see is that you have no RR at all.
Resistance reduction is THE thing that makes builds work.

You need to swap your devotions to pick up elemental storm and Rumor, and you should consider swapping Star pact for Aura of Censure, which will also give you a strong source of damage reduction. I know it’s not the right damage type, but reducing enemy resistance will net you WAYYY more damage than whatever Star Pact gives you.

If you have the parts, try to complete the Eastern set.

Bind Giant’s blood to Arcane will instead, to ensure it goes off only when you actually need it.

Your casting speed is a bit low, and you are not converting the piece damage from chillspikes to cold, losing you a ton of damage.

OFF is not doing much for you here, so I would move those points around to buff other things.

Try this instead:

I changed a few of your components and your chest armor, but otherwise I only changed skills and devotions.

Completing the trozan set (you already have the hat) would cover that.

There is a LOT of good legendary gear for cold TSS

But don’t discount Epic gear too: TSS works great as long as you have good cooldown and hardcapped skills.

Thanks for the feedback.
Since when ultos is not an RR? Rumor is moreso for poison and is very weak for cold rr. Elemental storm I had at some point and I don’t feel like there’s a skill which I can reliably activate it with. That’s why I went with ultos.
I don’t really see big improvements in what you did. DA dropped by a lot. Why did you invest points into spirit?
I don’t need a different component on the belt, antivenom salve boosts armour, bleed resistance is overcapped as is. 30 DA won’t make a difference.
Swap to eastern chest you did seems useless to me. Trozan is capped as is, but this way 2 points into frozen core are lost. And the loss of lightning to cold convertion makes ultos slightly weaker. The only good thing is phys resist there.
What’s the point of medal swap even? DA shred on olexra seems nice. Your changes also lost a fair bit of aether resistance, which I need overcapped by quite a bit.

I don’t really see how you improved anything. Especially survivability. The build didn’t need more damage. OA jumps to 3700 as is with deadly aim. Are you really sure your changes did something better, besides grabbig rhowan’s crown?

Ultos is a % RR, which means it only reduces existing Resistance value by its percentage (I.E. If the enemy had 20% cold resist, it now has 16%)

RR like Rumor is not only linear, but stacks with other -RR, like Aura of Censure.
(Same enemy with 20% RR would now have -3%)

Elemental storm is also linear, and stacks with other types of RR.

I didn’t want to impose, assuming you don,t have all the gear available, but completing the set was the point. Sure, the skills are already overcapped, but that frees up your ring slots for some with other defensive stats that you cannot get otherwise.

You have +25% spirit boost from Arcanist, each point there is a noticeable improvement in damage output. Most TSS builds even spirit-dump.

It does much more than 24 armor.

Yeah, it’s equivalent to about +100 OA, which, as you pointed out, you already have around 3700 of, way past the point of diminishing return. Investing 24 skill points and your medal slot just for this is wasteful.

Aether resist overcap actually went up, from 21% to 28%

Your physical resist went from 17% to 26%
You have a constant aura of 20% less damage taken
And your DPS probably doubled or even tripled against targets with high resist.

I suggest you try it first.
If all of that seems like I was wasting your time, then you can wait until someone else suggests different changes, and see if you like those better, but IMO you should at least give it a shot before being dismissive.

I am not really a forum guy, so I am gonna answer without quotations.

I didn’t notice the “%” thing on ultos. Guess it’s useless then, I specifically went for it for RR.
Earlier I had Rumor and Crown as you suggested and I didn’t notice serious differences running crucible 150-170. Just like that, ascendant heroes who roll anything with elemental resists in normal game are completely unkillable with either setup. I guess going back to crown. This is off-topic to the thread however, as survivability was needed, not extra damage.

As for full set, might as well go full trozan, but this is boring and isn’t exactly about the dumb build idea it was created around. Just around a single powerful skill.

I’m happy getting the inner focus spirit just from flat bonuses, I don’t want to invest into spirit and have a risk of being crit one-shot, which devalues any potential damage output for me. I tend to invest points there for OA, not spirit.

24 more armor on everything is nice. 30 extra DA aren’t a bonus if the grimcalc you suggested has much less DA in general.

Olexra does a great job of clearing trash and otherwise keeping them in one place. Yes, it’s useless otherwise and I dislike how it’s, supposedly, not intended to be used on a cold build at all.

As for survivability improvements you mentioned, I am unsure if more phys res costs the likelyhood to be one-shot by rektos blitz at boris arena. About aura of censure vs star pact choice I explained why I made that decision at the start of the topic. I am well aware censure is the supreme choice, but I specifically want to avoid it. How is it even allowed to be this good?

I am sorry

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Here’s a quickly thrown-together build, how I would make Cold TSS/Chillspikes Mage-Hunter (with no Inquisitor seal)

Granted, it can definitely be fine-tuned a lot, but that’s the best I could do in 10 minutes.

Cheers!

TSS builds are glass-canon anyway, and will always be, no matter how you cut it.
The best survivability increase you can get for this build is to kill things faster before they get to you, and to get a source of damage reduction.

If you don’t want to use Aura of Censure, that is your business, but there is literally no point in having Inquisitor here then.

One option would be to use a cold devastation conduit and move some points from OFF there. An extra attack that is effective at clearing mobs for less points invested, and the conduit themselves have great defensive stats.

24 armor is literally 24 points of physical damage… that’s it.
if you’re getting one-shot, with 10K+ health, it is a drop in a bucket. 1% damage reduction or physical resistance would have a bigger effect.

Speaking of which, if you don,t want to use Aura of Censure, you could move your points from OFF to Horn of Gandarr to get some DR. You will have 12 skill points left over.

In a pinch, if you don’t want to use either, change your medal component for an Attuned lodestone.

Yes, I made some changes that lowered DA… so I changed something else to bring it back up a bit.
Bleed overcap is also better too…

Here you ask for improvements… but have made deliberately weaker choices for stylistic reasons. That’s totally fine, but improvements from this position are difficult to find, and to discern from choices that were made for other reasons. I cannot read your mind, so I cannot foresee which changes would “cramp your style”

Thanks for the help anyway. I will make changes to devotions and work from there. Cheers!

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worth to note, the DA shred only applies to enemies that (can) get frozen, while they are frozen, which means it doesn’t apply to bosses or other fatties anyway (freeze resist and all that)

aside from the general basic “dos and don’ts” like RR Deputy covered
as for general survivability, you need sustain, either regen or lifesteal, or “enough” proc heals to go around; a single devo like Gian’ts Blood will never be enough.
Not just because you don’t have enough base regen to have regen as your method of sustain, but even if the heal was dryad (much lower cooldown) it wouldn’t be “frequent enough” to keep you alive, when you you’re taking XX dmg multiple times a second
^this also applies to stuff like Mirror rotations, - unless you’re willing to can guarantee no fighting/0 incoming dmg during the time ex Mirror+Blood is on cooldown

Inquis Seal def has it’s shortcomings in “mobile” combat, but you can still somewhat make use of it for that; plop seals around and make your “kiting”/relocations from seal to seal as best as possible
ex can be on something simple as Mogdrogen fight i like to place my seals in sorta a “triangle” pattern, and then i jump from seal to seal (making sure i refresh each location as necessary), when things get tough or he gets too close
^this is obviously lot easier on Mogdrogen/more trickier in hectic combat environments like ex SR/Crucible where enemies are trying to crowd your style, but it’s not impossible and still fairly useful
which then comes around to this; you need a better movement rune
Vanish requires a target, this is bad defensively, you want a movement skill/rune that doesn’t require a target/has X meter range, and preferably with low as heckin cooldown - and then you need to start use that movement skill very liberally.
on the high level front you have 2.5 sec CD vire’s might style “rush” runes like Amatok, which is phenomenal for fast relocations and frequent use
but even stuff like leap, disengage or teleport are splendid because of how you can target where you want to go as needed, and leap gets pretty decent low’ish cd on the high level front, disengage gets as low as 2.5 secs too
shadow strike and blitz style might be fun and entertaining to move across the campaign map, but for survivability/in fight scenarios they can be straight up detrimental, when you’re on a class with it as your single movment ability

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What? I thought it applied along with the damage effect. Wow, what other feats of uselessness olexra hides? Even with that though, it’s good to permafreeze stuff in place and trigger on attack procs. At least to a dumbo like me.

I am finding I am mostly using it like a sigil of consumption. Drop it on top of the enemy, facetank it until it dies.

I need a good skill to move around in the game. I never had any problems with it whatsoever. “Rush” skills barely cover any distance and are about as slow as walking. I’d use teleport if I actually needed a mobility to avoid anything. The way inquisitor seals makes this whole thing work is I have to facetank enemies. Which the build as is can do somewhat well, but I wanted someone to see if anything could be further optimized without completely remaking the build into an aura of censure no fun allowed kind of stuff.

Anyway guys, thanks for your input. The way I see it, picking inquisitor was a mistake as it promotes using very specific combination of skills to survive and deal damage, which being superior as they are, demote using anything else. And the only cold skill there is a skill point void.

If anyone can come up with a way to get these devotions: full hourglass, ultos skill, rhowan’s crown, behemoth and solemn watcher, please do tell. I am just 1 point short of doing it…

I would consider this closed otherwise, thanks again everyone!

wont trigger attack procs against freeze immune enemies either
so if you’re in a 1v1 fight against a boss with 100% freeze resist or more; no proc will be triggered

def a viable use if your char is fine with full on facetanking :sweat_smile:

ex with purely affinity requirements/mentioned unlocks in mind; with 4 devo points left Level 100 (GD 1.1.9.5) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator - assuming i didn’t miss something ? :thinking:

Majestic, thanks. I had trouble trying to still have amatok on.