Hi, really noob player here, coming from PoE and looking for a beginner friendly but powerful build to start.
I got the game while still in development (early access), but haven’t played at all. I like spell focused classes that can stay in the middle of the action (aka tanky).
For those who play or played PoE, I’m used to the insane leech mechanic from Vaal Pact but I have no idea how does this work in Grim Dawn. That’s basically how I really like to play: get inside a pack of monsters and unleash powerful spells like storm call, icestorm, firestorm, spark and jump into another pack, tanking everything with insane life regen or leech.
What starter class and specialization to seek in Grim Dawn?
By the way, I have no idea how the itemization works here. Is this game too much gear dependent? Does it have gear customization of any kind? I mean, if I follow a build here, do I need to get the exact specific stats on item X or esle the build won’t work?
I’m not seeking the ultimate build, but an enjoyable one that make it possible to constantly progress.
Judging by your description, you want to make a vitality damage Conjurer. If you read what the skills do and have experience with ARPGs, you probably already know how to build it because it’s extremely straight forward.
40 Shaman Mastery, 50 Occultist.
Wendigo Totem and Sigil of Consumption are your main sourced of damage and life leech. Transmuted Storm Totem seems good on paper, but vitality dmg items don’t really support it. You can still use it if you lack damage before you farm up ideal items.
Curse of Fragility + Vulnerability and Devouring Swarm add up to -120 Vitality resistance, and DS gives you more damage and life leech as well.
Rest of the skills go into passives. Blood of Dreeg max and Aspect of the Guardian goes to 12/12, Heart of the Wild goes to 12/12 and Possession to 12/12, then increase it up to the next damage reduction break-point when you get more +skills items (14, 17, 20, 22 are the levels you want).
Attributes go mainly into physique (this is true for any char), except you should save 15-ish points until you farm your endgame gear to meet requirements (caster off-hands need a lot of spirit, you will need 715 for your best one).
Devotion setup is Straight-forward as well, you want Offensive Ability since you don’t get enough from your skills. Dying God is a great choice, Chariot and 3 points in Ulzuin’s Torch can work as well. You might want Scales of Ulcama and/or Wendigo for more life leech.
first of all like all arpgs, you have to read and learn some basic mechanics in game…
and if you are addicted to broken mechanics of VP + 20k ES combos from poe, i have sad news for you , there is no such char or broken mechanics in GD. you cant basically cheeze game with vp + es or vinktars pot and such
but this is game where ALL LAYER OF DEFENCES are WORKING… so you dont need something broken thing to keep your char alive anyway.
to continue this, you can play any char in game and pretty much farm all contentincluding nemesis spawns with decent gear when you have decent items and game experience.
id highly advice to play some type of char which is FAST, so dont play a conjurer
gd has no movement skill no whirling blades, the amount of time and distance you walk in this game is already MIND BLOWING imo.
and conjurers are really slow in both killing groups and bosses compare to many builds. they have insane sustain super hard to die with them, and their main jam is making enemy cripple to death and decay away slowly… you may find it boring, still dont know your style tho just saying.
i would start GD with something MELEE since melee chars in poe suckss sooooooooo hard, GD is kinda opposite… melee chars are really powerfull and gives the feeling of playing melee char for arpgs.
you can maybe like some type of battle mage or hybrid melee + caster chars aswell.
in the end, first 1-2 chars play what you feel like you gonna enjoy.
R u noob? U want an OP build with lots of survivability and insane clear speed? Look no more PRM Sorc is the way to go. U put a sufficent amount of points into PRM then max out demo unlocks Ulzuin’s Chosen then spam grenados till bosses die while stunlocking mobs with canisters+OFF … Ez build for facerollers but extremely boring to play (stunlocking is stupid and need to be nerfed) so ur choice .Peace mate:))
Stuns don’t work against anything you would actually want to stun.
If you want to abuse cc, a Sorc or Spellbreaker that use freeze resistance reduction items and spam Ring of Steel, Olexra’s and/or Sky Shard is the way to go, but I can’t suggest a build that relies on legendary items to someone who is just starting out.
Thanks a lot for all the replies. Nice to see that the community is active and willing to help new players. Hope the forums here don’t become liek D3 or PoE forums… All that salt and negativity, lol.
Well, I was checking some build guides and found the Begginer & Newbie Friendly Melee + Caster Hybrid (thread 50343 - can’t post a link yet, cause only have 2 posts in the forums :().
Looked interesting to me. Hybrid melee + caster and seems not to rely on crazy good gear. The guide owner goes Nightblade and Arcanist.
Is it worth it to try as a first character?
PS.: Good to know in this game we don’t need VP + Vinktars to tackle the content LOL.
well ya, its my guide… i completed whole content with selfound gear and deathless. its weird hybrid char that uses dual wield melee and caster stuff together. its weird but imo super fun char to play.
i have played poe a lot, i mean a lot mean from first day of poe release to 4 months ago then stopped it, prolly forever. community here is so nice, and tend to help newbies even they ask silly questions so you will be fine.
feel free to ask any question, never hesitate… you can even pm about some basic stuff and if you wanna follow my guide or some1else, read everything and search more classic learning curve of arpg’s.
watch some youtube videos of the builds and skills, and play what you like
like i said in GD every build works in every way, game mechanics are solid and every aspects of it is working unlike poe…
I didn’t play that build specifically, but I would not suggest it necessarily.
The problem with builds like that is they get tedious after a while because there are too many buttons you need to constantly spam while kiting and that’s not great once you start farming the same areas over and over. A hybrid Spellbreaker can plow trough mobs once you get some decent gear, but before that it’s too squishy to face tank or just skip mobs, which is what you want to do when farming (unless you are looking for a specific Monster Infrequent, this is what you want to do since mobs rarely drop anything). If your goal is only to finish the game once, it will probably work.
The tankiest classes in the game are (not counting bonuses from class-relevant legendaries), in order:
Shield Soldier - no contest here
Occultist - physical resistance, huge heal and regen, damage reduction if it’s your main class
2-hander or caster Soldier - high health and defensive ability, huge armor, aoe damage reduction
The order of the rest goes something like:
Demolitionist - mass fumble debuff, automatic oh-shit buffs that activates on low health, high regeneration, trash disabling passive, decent health/physique
Shaman - huge health, amazing healing totem
Dual wield Nightblade - amazing insta-heal, decent regeneration, aoe debuffing aura and evasion (which is not nearly as good as it seems at first, most enemy attacks ignore it)
Caster/2-hander NB and Arcanist - Arcanist has the only damage resistance skill that stacks with other damage resistances and a non-dw NB has a much worse healing skill than the dw variant
Summoner Conjurer is a category unto itself, in theory it shouldn’t ever get hit, but in practice he can get screwed if he gets stuck and takes aggro for a few seconds.
Making a build that uses the most out of the defensive skills will probably make your legendary/recipe farming much smoother, you can tank up almost any class combination with decent items once you have them.
As such, a shield Witchblade (Soldier + Occultist) or Commando (Soldier + Demo) should make a great starting build. They can facetank any boss with mediocre items, completely ignore trash (actually, since the Anvil devotion proc is an amazing damage most, you want to pull as many mobs as you can). Between those, WB does more damage (resistance reduction is king in this game) and /k/ moves faster (this may look silly, but it’s an important stat since most of your farming will include hunting down specific bosses while running past mobs).
Finally, lifesteal is much worse in GD than almost any other similar game, the numbers you can reasonably get are low and a lot of enemies are highly resistant or even immune to it. Regeneration and high Defensive Ability are your best bet.
