Newbie looking for help on a Sorcerer Build (or, My First Sorcerer)

[Giant_Octopodes]

Greetings!

Brand new to the game, just getting started really, but I’ve always enjoyed theory crafting so based on my near zero experience with the game, I took a crack at putting together a build. I figure it would be helpful for me to learn more about the game if I presented what I thought looked good, and my reasoning and what I’m going for, and then folks who actually know what they’re talking about tell me what of that will or won’t work and why, and hopefully some ways I can better achieve my design goals. Without further ado, the build!

https://www.grimtools.com/calc/lNkzmz6Z

Note: The lack of items or attribute points is deliberate, in that I have no idea what’s good, so while this is mostly about the skills and devotions, I’m certainly open to info in regards to what I should be looking for on that side of things!

The core idea of the build is a somewhat resilient pyromancer who can take things out from afar but is better close up, where if you hit him, it just pisses him off. This is mostly intended to be achieved via Blast Shield and Vindictive Flame giving survivability and mobility, with the Flame Turrets giving support and lowering resists. The Mortar Trap is around for Protracted Fights and Predictable Triggers, and because it seems fun.

On the Arcanist side, the intent is between IEE and Mental Alacrity, I can afford to use a Reckless Power boosted ARR somewhat at will. If someone is immune to fire, or close to it? Flash Freeze solves that, and again, if they hit me, Arcane Will ensures they’ll not live long enough to regret it.

For Devotions I basically tried to pick up fire enhancers while working towards Ulzin’s Torch. I have basically no clue so I just grabbed stuff that looked like it would be good for the theme. I somewhat regretted not being able to get the Phoenix one but I wasn’t particularly close, so it felt like I was essentially choosing between the Torch and the Phoenix, and the Torch seemed more fun.

Anyway, those were my thoughts, rudimentary as they may be, and what I’m kinda going for. If anyone has the time and inclination to help a Newbie out and help form this into a better version of itself, and maybe toss tips my way about attribute point expenditure and key items to look for, that would be highly appreciated. Regardless, thank you for your time and have a great day!

[Worblehat]

Greetings, stranger! Here I thought I was the only one doing the Stardew Valley/Grim Dawn combo… (Apologies if somehow there are two Giant Octopodes on the internet).

Many points:

• Pyromancer is Demolitionist+Occultist, this is a Sorcerer.
• The concept of “build” in this game very much does include your exact gear setup. Particularly once you have AoM (and you pretty clearly do since you picked an FG devotion in your setup) items can make major changes to skills. If you’re going for fire AAR, you’ll be wanting something to convert the aether to fire, for example. The other reason “build” doesn’t really mean anything without the gear is that there are a lot of sources of +skills, so in practice you’ll have a lot more skill points to play with than you think.
• If you haven’t already, a thorough reading of the game guide would help. For example, Ghoul doesn’t help AAR builds, since AAR has no weapon damage and thus doesn’t get attack damage converted to health (ADCtH) from Ghoul. It can get ADCtH from a certain off-hand. And there’s an item that can add weapon damage to AAR, in which case Ghoul can be viable with AAR (just to be clear, Ghoul is arguably the standard survival devotion for most builds in this game - just not the pure caster builds with no weapon damage to their main skill(s)).
• Likewise, flat damage from buff skills like Reckless Power can be very strong, but doesn’t help you at all with skills with no weapon damage like AAR. Reckless Power still does boost you a lot and is well worth the points, but just be aware that what you’re getting is cast speed and the +% fire and aether damage, not the big chunk of flat aether damage on top.
• Regarding AAR, it is now a great skill (I remember back in vanilla when it was what the kids these days call a “meme” skill). You’d definitely want Mental Alacrity, but people typically don’t invest much in IEE. AAR builds do emphasize energy regain in their devotion setups. Arcanist skills alone aren’t nearly enough to keep you going, and you’ll never be able to ignore energy management with an AAR character.
• I don’t think you yet understand quite how important resistance reduction (RR) is in this game. You have some (thermite mines), which is already better than a lot of new players do. But the correct amount of RR is “all of it that you can possibly get for your damage type”. Particularly the kind phrased as “-X% Fire Resistance” since those stack and the other kinds do not. Solael’s Witchblade is actually the most important devotion for fire builds, and one will usually want to get Rhowan’s Crown and Viper as well.
• Conversely, your own resistances are a hugely important part of your defenses. Keep them as high as possible (capped if at all possible, which it should be from ~level 30ish or so). That was my first and most memorable learning experience back when I started playing - character deaths dropped precipitously as soon as I made resistances my absolute top priority.
• OFF is a newb trap skill. It can be great for clearing trash, but in this game trash is meaningless, no amount of trash mobs can ever threaten your character. Bosses (and nemeses) can, however, and guess who is mostly or entirely immune to CC effects like being frozen? And just to be clear, if an enemy isn’t frozen, it doesn’t get that -100% Fire Resistance either. Apparently there’s a specific level 94 set that can make OFF work against bosses/nemeses, but I don’t think that’s what you’re aiming for. If you like, OFF plus the fire blast skill from a component is a common suggestion for early leveling with an arcanist. I don’t like it, but your tastes may vary.
• Survival skills - Blast Shield is nice, but won’t keep you alive by itself. Maiven’s Sphere of Protection is an excellent defensive layer, and Mirror of Ereoctes is the best active defense in the game. Don’t expect to be able to facetank dangerous opponents, though.
• Worth mentioning that Nullification is a great quality of life skill. Being able to clear an enemy’s buffs, and clear your own debuffs, is very handy. As you’ll learn from a few enemies who can do it to you (try not to let them). Not necessarily worth maxing out, but throw a point in there just to have it as an option.
• Arcanists pretty much always want Inner Focus for the spirit and OA. Also note the OA and aether resist on Overload now. And Demolitionist has OA on Flame Touched and DA on Temper (a fire build would probably skimp on the latter since you don’t get anything useful other than the DA).
• Looking at the Build Compendium is a good way to get a sense of what good builds look like. There is one doing the fire AAR plus OFF combo you’re looking at. Good luck finding the four pieces of the Mageslayer set, though. The weapon converting aether to fire on AAR is crafted, so you can get that the moment you hit 94. What you do to get to 94… People on this forum love to suggest leveling one way, then doing a complete respec at the end to the actual build they want to play. I find that utterly bonkers, but that also means I’m not willing to play (or even consider) builds that are heavily dependent on very specific gear effects like this one.
• Attributes - the rule of thumb is still all physique, maybe a few points in cunning or spirit if needed to equip pieces of gear, though I don’t think you’d need any with a sorcerer. After the changes a couple(?) years ago it is viable to do spirit-dumps to some extent, but that’s for people who know what they’re doing and want to make their builds glassier for more dps. Builds that do pierce, physical, or bleed damage can put a lot of points in cunning if they want, but that’s not relevant to a fire sorcerer.

Anyway, I hope this helps. Fire AAR sorcerer with OFF can be a thing, but I would not recommend it for a first character. No harm in playing with it, level for a while, see what skills you do and don’t like. The real strength of Grim Dawn is the huge build diversity, so create as many alts as you like (says the confirmed altoholic… ). Sometimes a nice gear drop will result in creating a new character just to use it.

For what it’s worth, speaking for myself, if I wanted to do a fire channeling skill, I’d do Flames of Ignaffar rather than fire AAR. I’ve never actually done that (my aether AAR spellbinder is enough of that playstyle for now), but as far as I know it’s perfectly viable.

Like I said, some time spent browsing the build compendium can help a lot with ideas, as well as learning what to do and what not to do. There are a lot of beginner guides these days that are particularly helpful. They produce characters that are easy to gear effectively, and have more explanation of why certain choices were or were not taken.

[Giant_Octopodes]

Thanks much for the reply! While there may indeed be a multitude of Giant Octopodes swimming out there somewhere I am indeed myself, good to see you here. I greatly appreciate all of the info, gives me a lot of stuff to review.

I also found a build from Shoka which looks to be doing similar things (Some players just want to watch the world burn ! - Sorcerer(-ess) (Arcanist + Demolitionist) Fire Albrecht Aether’s Ray), that Hexblade looks custom made for this concept which is awesome. Knowing there’s Conflagration out there to fill out the mid levels is fantastic as well.

Once I finish reading through the linked material I feel I’ll be in a much better spot moving forward. You’re correct in that gearing specifically to make OFF worth it isn’t really the direction I’m looking to go, which gives me a nice start in terms of points to spend on some of the other things you mentioned. I definitely like how much flexibility there seems to be in terms of respeccing, and am definitely looking forward to trying a bunch of things out. Again, thanks!

[Worblehat]

Very nice, that build looks perfect for what you’re aiming for. I wonder about energy sustain, but maybe there’s enough from gear to get by without more points in Mental Alacrity or taking energy regeneration devotions like Harvestman’s Scythe, etc.

Yes, Hexblade is designed for exactly this. There are a lot of items like that, which is nice when you find one for something you want to do, not so nice when RNG insists on giving you legendaries where you look at it and say “what is this even for?” At least in this case it’s crafted from a faction blueprint so you’re guaranteed access.

I’d forgotten about the relic; yes, that should work very nicely. My fire character (sorceress at the time; after getting AoM I used GDStash to edit her into a Purifier) is a gunslinger so I was locked into the gunslinger relics and couldn’t use Conflagration.

One minor point about respeccing - the costs do go up the more the character has respecced in the past. It takes a long time for the costs to actually matter, though. I think even my first character who did a lot of experimenting can still respec for 200 per skill point, which is fine (level capped characters will have a few million, unless they’ve just done a serious crafting binge). Anyway, definitely experiment, just don’t expect to keep doing major changes indefinitely. The game is designed with the expectation that you’ll settle on something and do rare minor tweaks (as gear with +skill points changes what you have soft-capped or not, for example) from then on.