Occultist support for Trozan's Skybreach (with test mod)

Grim Dawn Ideas and Feedback
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In How to buff Trozan set, @mad_lee suggested adding Sigil of Consumption support to Trozan’s Skybreach. I was quite taken with the idea of a cold/lightning Sigil and, having developed a small test mod for it, I am happy to report that it works well for Warlock. I haven’t tested Conjurer yet; I think it has the potential to be slightly faster, but will probably be very fragile.

As tested, the modified Skybreach adds the following:

  • Occultist skill bonuses:
    • +1 to all skills in Occultist (scepter)
    • +5 to Sigil of Consumption (3 from 3-piece bonus, 2 from torso)
    • +2 to Destruction (shoulder)
    • +2 to Vulnerability (hat)
  • Sigil of Consumption modifiers:
    • 100% chaos to cold, 90 cold damage (hat)
    • 100% vitality to lightning, 70-110 lightning damage (set completion)

(Note: modifier distribution is roughly based on that of recent tri-class sets. The TSS modifiers on the hat and scepter need to stay there since they are used by other TSS sets, but beyond that, bonuses should be free for the shuffling.)

Gameplay video: Skybreach Warlock in Crucible of the Dead

Preliminary results

Primary test setup: Lightning Skybreach Warlock, 6:40 Crucible of the Dead with 3/4b + 1vb. (Average of 6 successful runs, with 2 deaths. A straightforward Warlock adaptation of my Skybreach Druid.)

What works for Warlock:

  • Well-paced, fun gameplay, with cooldowns of 1.2s for TSS and 1.7s for Sigil.
  • Damage is pretty good, although not as good as Skybreach Druid.
  • Excellent lifesteal.
  • Good physical resistance.

Defensively, the new mastery combinations suffer from the issues you’d expect:

  • Warlock: small health pool. A bit squishy despite the physical resistance and lifesteal, but nothing out of the ordinary.
  • Conjurer: poor defenses, especially compared to Vindicator.

To improve the defensive offering of Occultist, I’d consider a modifier for the sigil:

  • Reduced target damage, OA debuff, or fumble.
    Damage reduction would make Conjurer more competitive with Vindicator for Wind Devils. Fumble I’d rather see on TSS, which currently has an ineffective/overlapping Slow modifier.

Finally, it might be nice to convert some fire into cold/lightning – recent sets often throw in some 30-60% global conversion. For Skybreach, it would improve Sigil damage and make Seekers more viable.

Test Mod

Campaign: Grounded Trozan v1.0 (13.4 KB)
Crucible: Grounded Crucible v1.0 (289.0 KB)

Installation and usage

In a modded game, all blacksmiths can craft Trozan’s Grounding, the modified version of Trozan’s Skybreach, for 1 scrap and 1 iron a piece.

To test the set in campaign, extract GroundedTrozan.zip to the mods folder in the Grim Dawn installation directory; the mod will then be available as a custom game. To use an existing character in custom games, copy its folder from save/main to save/user and mark it as “In Mod” with GD stash.

To test the set in Crucible, go to the Grim Dawn installation directory and backup the survivalmode2 folder. Extract GroundedCrucible in the folder, replacing database/survivalmode2.arz and resources/text_en.arzwith the modded versions. Existing characters can play the modded Crucible normally; note, however, that they can’t bring the modded items back into the main, unmodded campaign. I recommend cloning a character and using it in Crucible only.

(Addendum: this archive also includes revised versions of Allagast and Iskandra, to spare me the effort of maintaining separate Crucible mods. Feel free to ignore them.)

2 Likes
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This is some really productive feedback, I admire that you went through the effort to test a proposed change for yourself.

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Not sure how you tested this because it 100% will not work on Sigil.

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Ah, my mistake; I was wondering why I couldn’t notice a difference after adding it, but put it down to other factors. I’ll replace it with something else.

(This test mod was rather more rushed than the ones I made previously; there’s only so much time.)

5

-% specific resistance only works on debuffs with duration, like Curse of Fraility and Word of Pain. Flat RR will work on Sigil though.

6

(Embarassingly enough I’ve corrected other people on this very point before, but it somehow escaped my attention today.)

7

Looks sick, would love a to see a video of such mod in action.

-Ele res can be added to CoF.

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Welp, oversight fixed. For now I’ve added some extra damage rather than exploring alternative modifiers.

I avoided CoF mods because most tri-class sets modify three skills only. I’ve no opinion on that constraint, just following convention.

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what about a video of a crucible run?

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Let’s make it three, then. -x% RR is only for debuffs, as it only modifies the character resistance like a buff would. Blah, blah, blah, we already know that, stupid idiot wanted to be cool (me btw), blah, blah, blah.

Serious thing: I’d avoid giving additional RR to CoF, because it already has massive RR (30% elemental is not massive, but it reduces literally 7 resistances already, so it’d be better to avoid doing that). Would be nice to add one more skill to the builds’ rotation, like, idk, Bloody Pox? It’s up to you if you’d like it, I never played Trozan set nor I plan to, but I just wanted to say that more/higher RR to CoF is kind of… boring? Lame? idk.

1 Like
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Nicely done @Pareto, your mods and thoughts on improving the game have been thoughtful and interesting. Here’s to hoping it can be done!

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Here you go: Skybreach Warlock, 6:50 Crucible of the Dead with 3b+vb

I’d say it was an average run, so it should be a reasonable representation of how Skybreach Warlock would play in Crucible. Edit: after a few more runs, I’d say the recorded run is a bit over par.