Nonstop aether devastation + TSS binder - ~13min crucy cleartime

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
1

GT link: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/d2jOv3mV
Youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0GzZ5sslM4&feature=youtu.be

As always, for putting up with my incessant questions, my thanks to: Heatwave, Marzuk, Cryoo, Superfluff, Ptirodaktill, Chthon, mad_lee, strukto, Ampd

“And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger …and you will know my name is the Lord.”
^Arguably the best monologue done by Samuel Jackson in the best movie directed by Tarantino - Pulp Fiction.

Preface
As I played my spellbinder, I couldn’t help but feel…empowered. Line after line of quotes from movies and books ran through my mind as I cackled with glee while I brought down fury and death upon these wretched fools.

Aleksander, I will teach you fear as I tear the heavens asunder to rain my judgement upon you. :stuck_out_tongue:

My inane rhetoric aside, this build is incredibly fun! I don’t normally say this in the guides I write, but the reader should DEFINITELY give this a try. Power unbridled. Fury unleashed. I BE THUNDER AND DOOM!

Logic of the build:
The core of the build focuses on converting as much elemental damage into aether damage (shoutout to Fluff for the magelord set suggestion.)

Allagast’s stormbinder has 100% cold --> aether conversion for TSS, and a 45% cold --> aether conversion globally.

Cord of violent decay has 50% fire --> aether.

And the magelord set 50% elemental --> aether.

As such, our 3 primary attacks will completely (if not mostly) deal aether damage:
i. Trozan skyshard
ii. Devastation
iii. Chillspikes

What is interesting, if I may so toot my own horn, is how offence is melded with that of defense through the use of devotions/items.

Aeon’s not only grants devastation a near 100% uptime but also allows for Mirror/MoT chaining.

Iskandra’s amulet grants the player a global 15% damage boost which allows you to hunker down in the midst of a mob while you rain devastation around you (terrible pun, I know). This in turn allows you to make full use of spear of the heavens. Having a 0.6s cooldown on this celestial power results in INSANE damage. The more clumped up our enemies, and the more they hit us under the effects of mirror - the happier we will be.

Ill omen which reduces enemies’ physical damage by 25% is supplemented by the 16% phys resist granted by the iskandra set. Furthermore, we will bind arcane bomb to ill omen to constantly spread that aether RR.

As an added failsafe, I opted to take phoenix as a mini arcane seal. 128 flat damage absorption with a 7s uptime, and a 7s cooldown. Lovely. Not to mention that all the fire damage it does will also be converted to aether damage.

I would also recommend overlapping both MoT and mirror by about 0.5s just in case of stuns. I tend to use siphon souls to heal while under the effects of mirror, and to use health pots while under MoT.

Devotions:

  1. All 4 crossroads except ascendant.
  2. Eel, Sailor’s guide
  3. Hawk, Candle
  4. Widow, Watchtower
  5. Phoenix --> Spec out of candle
  6. Viper, Vulture
  7. Aeon’s, Spear, 4 nodes into Dying God.

Cheaper item options:
Head - Iskandra’s hood
Shoes - Stormtitans

Items suggested by veteran players
While I have yet to personally test these items, I am inclined to believe that their suggestions are better than the items currently being used in my setup.
Gloves - Krieg’s gloves, or wyrmborn
Weapon - Decree of aldritch

Leveling
I highly recommend for players to level devastation ASAP, and to use some component like greater fireblast as a primary attack. What devastation does is allow you to farm 2 mobs simultaneously. I devastate one, and I fireblast the other.

As usual, would also recommend speed levelling in crucy with a mate over the first suggestion.

2

Nice build! Spellbinder being overpowered when it comes to Crucible 150-170, what, never heard of such shenenigans!1

Few questions:

Why this shitty weapon? Shouldn’t Decree of Aldritch be 10 times better?

Why those components in amulet and medal? You already have plenty of leech and regen (and you can only leech tiny bits thru chillspikes anyway), those aether/chaos shields don’t do much imo. I would go with double tainted hearts or Annihilation + Tainted Heart.

Those gloves kinda suck, why not go for Krieg’s gloves or even better, crafted pair of Wyrmbornes?

3

Well for devastation and in general. But aether TSS focus is the thing in the build

4

Interesting suggestion, I will definitely try them out. Thanks again Lee!

TBH, this is my very first aether build. So I’m not to familiar with optimizing each item slot perfectly. You’re most likely right.

This was originally going to be a purely TSS build. But I found the damage to be lackluster which is why I included devastation into the mix. Besides not stopping to question my weapon choice, I also don’t have a decree of aldritch. :stuck_out_tongue: While this toon is GDstashed, it does use the items I actually have at my disposal.

I went for seal of ancestry for 5% hp, and to fix the vit resist. You reckon tainted heart is better?

5

I have something similar - Binder using TSS + Devastation + BH

-Iskandra there feels odd I take it you didn’t want MIs. In which case Iskandra is cute otherwise I’d switch to mix setup
-The rings or the scepter. Pick one. If you go with Rings then go with Aldritch, if you go with Allagast then go with Band of the Eternal Haunt + AD Ring
-Gloves are odd, don’t have Krieg’s Gloves?
-For Crucible Hungering Void is suicide but for MC you can try it

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I hope I didn’t unintentionally make a duplicate of your n00b guide, chthon. :stuck_out_tongue:

Jokes aside, I went for eternal haunt and allagast’s gem intially. Not to sure what AD ring is.

I personally enjoy the use of the magelord set. May I ask why my item decision is sub-optimal?

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P.S. Thanks Eisprinzessin!

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With Decree + Magelord you get more Elemental to Aether conversion that benefits literally everything else. But most importantly gives you 100% Aether TSS

Now with Allagast Scepter you already have 100% Aether TSS. So Magelord becomes redundant. So Band’s RR
I was going to suggest Albrecht’s Duality (AD Ring) for Chaos>Aether conversion will help out with Fiend but I just realized you didn’t take it :eek:

If that were the case then Mage Hunter would’ve been better imo.

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Should I take fiend you reckon? I’m sure I could rework the devotions rather easily. Again, this is my first aether rodeo. Any and all critique is much appreciated.

As for the TSS conversion, I’m not sure that’s entirely true. The 3rd node of TSS (can’t rmb what that’s called) does lightning damage. So having the magelord set would also convert that to aether damage.

What do you think?

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Huh, what do ya know. Allagast still gives you 100% Cold>Aether. I could’ve sworn they changed the scepter at some point when Ashes of Malmouth was young

Well I’d say then switch to Decree then and get rid of that useless scepter. If you were a mage hunter then the RR skill mod would’ve made the scepter more useful
With Decree you get more conversion, a not so bad proc and more plus skills

P.S

The best line of that movie for me was-

“Jules if you give that fuckin’ Nimrod $1500, I’ll shoot him on general principle” :smiley:

And my favorite dialogue exchange from any Tarantino movie is
Steve Buscemi a.k.a Mr. Pink saying “I don’t tip”

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RESERVOIR DOGS!

‘Whaddya mean you don’t tip?’

P.S. I did think of doing a magehunter, but felt that spectral wrath was too good to pass up on, what with stormbox being another thing to cast.

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Hey was stylish, decree is overused as it is:D

13

Found it, I was mistaken. The mod was added in 1.0.3.0. I don’t recall what the scepter did before they added the mod. I do recall I considered Allagast to be crap outside Electrocution builds

“I don’t believe in it”:slight_smile:

Pretty much the reason why I shelved both Binder and Warlock. I got bored of Devastation back then. I think they still use Scaled Hide cause Armor Absorb wasn’t added to other components back then :smiley:

14

Spellbinders are definitely kings of aether. You can go for full Iskandra, you can go Clairvoyant, you can go Agrivix, you can even go Krieg and you would still be able to do Crucible 150-170 with a spellbinder. Class is just too strong.

15

Buff my beloved nightblade class and maybe I’ll stop using my binder. :stuck_out_tongue:

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Lol, mate, I almost did 170 with my new Infiltrator with 2 buffs/1 banner, died at last wave because I don’t have much experience with pure melee builds. Before my experience with Nightblades was Spellbreaker, but after Infiltrator I can safely say that Nightblade mastery is insane. Coupled with Inquisitor is just godly. And you can go so many ways with it.

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But is it really nightblade? I know your main skills are nightblade WPS but compare an infiltrator with a blademaster of similar gear, then you’ll see it’s inquisitor and not nightblade.

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^What he said.

The inquisitor class offers a lot of flat pierce damage to NBs. But pair NB with anything else and you either have an extremely item dependent class (i.e. breaker), or a rather meh class.

19

Come on now, fellas. Infiltrator can be so many things, and all of them thanks to both masteries. Reaper is hella strong. Spellbreaker can be so many things as well. Blademaster with belgo is roughly equal to belgo Infiltrator, I know, I compared mine to Superfluff’s. His is even better in single target damage in some cases. Phys blademaster by JoV’ can do all content while dual-wielding. Trickster is probably the strongest melee class in-game. Even Sabouter is not that bad.

Nightblade mastery is great imo, if only it could have something like a trap skill that was related to blades, like Trap Blade or something, that would be really cool.

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I mean, you’re pairing what is currently one of the weakest/least supported classes with one of the strongest classes - necro &/or inquisitor.

The breaker is arguably the strongest, but most item dependent class in the game.

As for the belg set BM, I don’t think it’d be able to clear crucy 170 even with buff and banners. JoV somehow managed to design that warborn BM you mentioned - a BM capable of clearing all content, but it also relied on the use of 3 MI’s and dem stonehide stoneplate greaves o’ kings. (This is also another example of how the NB class is overly item dependent).

Haven’t looked much into tricksters, but I’d be very surprised to see it clear 170.

Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE the concept of the NB class. But in this meta, and as far as crucible goes, it is one of the weakest classes.

While not entirely accurate, I ask myself one question to determine which class is ‘good’ - if I could only pick one mastery, what would it be? And the answer is certainly not the nightblade class.