Never played Arcanist, what classes have the best synergy with it?

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
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Something that mainly focuses on Arcanist’s spells (main attacks and spells), and takes advantage of powerful passive / rr / support skills from other class.

Thanks :slight_smile:

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Demo, Inq, Necro

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[Guide] How to find masteries that have the strongest synergy with a chosen one. Arcanist example.

  1. Open up the compendium Build Compendium X (Forgotten Gods)

  2. Click on all classes containing Arcanist and count how many builds there are for each of them:

  1. Chose masteries with the highest number of builds. This is your answer
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Not bad of a method, but it’s not always reliable. E.g. there’s like 14 Trickster builds in compendium, but it doesn’t mean Trickster is a crazy synergetic class, it’s just it’s actually taken as a challenge to make a decent trickster build. :smiley:

Spellbreaker on the other hand is dead last on the Arcanist list, but it is a synergetic class, more synergetic than battlemage or warlock at least. But builders don’t like it because almost every Spellbreaker build is simply better as another class, like Infiltrator, Mage Hunter or Druid.

Also, Mage Hunter tops the Arcanist build number chart, but it got a problem - you really want Star Pact, but you just have to get Censure. Which is why I’d put Sorcerer above Mage Hunter.

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Mage Hunter is top tier class in my opinion. Perhaps top there with Warlord and Infiltrator.

Sorcs are also in this discussion, Star Pact+Demo skills is one of the powerhouse combos in the game. Sorcerers strength is indicator if casters are the meta or not.

I tried fire AAR as Sorc and MH and build was way better as MH, same for Panettis Invoker build. Inquisitor Seal, Censure and Renewal makes them so sturdy.

Sorcerers are one of the better classes for Crucible and just saw Lee’s doing SR 85 with Iskandra Sorc, very good class.

Binders are limited for aether damage only but they’re the best class for that damage. Perfect synergy both offensively and defensively.

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Sorc, Mage Hunter and Infiltrator are top tier classes, but I have some doubts about Warlords. I’ve been keeping an eye on bits and pieces about Warlord and so far it began to look like just a slightly above average class.

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Sorcs are wicked fun in terms of debuffs and immobilization, as well. I built one based on Mind Control, before it was removed :frowning:

Now hes just a debuffing dude, level 75 and nowhere near optimized but between trozan, olexra’s, light of truth, haunt, aether corruption, flashbang, aetherfire, eldritch fire, rumor, acid spray, arcane bomb, and nullification, with high movement speed and mobility rune, he just kites all over the place debuffing every damn thing. In multiplayer this is wicked fun, as other players are free to focus on dealing damage while i scramble the entire battlefield.

I had a lot of fun with that class combo so far

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I suggest you Druid, Trozan Sky Shard plus Wind Devil with Trozan’s Skybreach set, you can check existing builds.

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I don’t know if they are the best synergy combos, but I absolutely love Spellbinder and Sorcerer. The playstyle is often based on timing strong cooldowns, think about a Sorc which can alternate damage cooldowns like TSS / BWC and chain defensive ones like blast shield / mirror / nullification plus devotions like Ghoul / Behemoth.

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Best synergy depends on damage types. It’s not really simple discussion (and as you have witnesssed above, people have different opinions on it) but without going too much into details:

Aether - spellbinder
Cold - Mage Hunter, Druid (Caster); Spellbreaker (melee)
Fire - Sorc
Lightning - Druid, Mage Hunter, Sorc.

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Looks like I need to “import” battle mages from AoM to FG. :rofl:

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And that’s another thing with @tqFan’s method - one player having a favourite underdog class can severely skew the results in it’s favour :rofl:

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:Right_Z:

P.S: Actually I have other builds in mind like DK (you are familiar with some builds). :wink:

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The most obvious issue when choosing a class is damage types and RR needs. FOr the arcanist that’s especially important as you don’t have RR of your own which means you usually only pair well with classes that have elemental/aether and RR.

Aside from that, I find the best way to figure out what builds work is to look at the sets. Generally if a skill you want to use has a set focusing on it, there will be a couple of secondary abilities from two other classes that are supported by that set as well. This gives you a good idea of which combo’s will be best.

The same goes for major legendaries like weapons or amulets that modify a skill in a big way, you can usually look at what secondary skills they modify and if there are +skills for other class skills on it.

For example, if you want to focus on TSS, you can look at Trozans set and see that it supports shaman and occultist skills in addition to TSS. You can play Trozans TSS with a mage hunter for example, but most of your items won’t have any inquisitor +skills on them and there won’t be any special bonuses for inquisitor skills either (like adds X damage, modifies the skill). Maybe that’s OK if theres a specific reason to play that class but usually its a good sign that it isn’t optimal.

Some skills don’t have sets dedicated to them, like AAR for example which has a chaos set but otherwise builds are just using various specific items to buff its damage and convert it to fire or lightning or cold. These are harder to judge class combo’s on and most often really comes down to the various +skills on the items you need to use.

I’ve theorycrafted more than one build where I put together a bunch of legendaries that buff and convert the damage of a skill I want to use, and then go build it in grimtools only to realize that none of those items give any useful +skills to my chosen secondary class.

Sometimes your second class is just there for support. This can work but the builds that really shine are the ones that buff at least one key skill from that second class. You might be able to make a given elemental build work as a warlock who spends minimal points in occultist for curse and blood of dreeg, but chances are there’s another class (shaman, inquisitor often) that just works better because the build you made has a bunch of skill bonuses for that class rather than occultist.