Opinions on builds

Greetings all!
Sorry if this has been posted before, but I simply don’t have time to scour the entire fourm at the moment. :wink:
I was just curious if I was the only one who thinks the Nightblade just simply doesn’t pair well with anything other than demolitionist?
I’m aware I’m a relative newb with only around 130 hours into it, and I don’t fully understand all the gearing and what not. I love the Nightblade class, but it really seems to be a stand alone, to me. I’ve tried pairing it with demo, that works fairly well. I have tried pairing it with an arcanist, and I did not do well. I tried pairing it with occultist, and that seemed to work ok, but not well
I tried with soldier too, and that didn’t seem to work very well, yet I’ve seen folks say that is one of the more powerful builds in the game. It just doesn’t seem to flow since the soldier is pretty reliant on 2HW and/or shield.
I even paired it with Inquisitor, which I thought was going to be an amazing build, but I’ve yet to see it work well. Granted, a lot of these combos are fairly ‘young’ yet, but my main Nightblade is 50 something, and that has been the only one that seems to work. In that build, however I am guilty of not dropping a lot of points into demo. It was my first character, and I completely didn’t understand the system, but after dumping some points into demo, I decided that I wanted to work the Nightblade tree to as close to max as I could get, so I wound up with about 3 mastery levels in demo, with 5 points in flame strike, and that’s about it. The rest went into the nightblade tree.
Anyway, I was just curious. I realize I am still learning the system, including devotion, and was wondering if I’m missing something.

It pairs well with a lot of classes, but I think you are looking at things a little differently than most long term players. These builds do not make use of all the abilities of a class. You might only use 1/4 of a classes skills, and pair it with another class and only use a few of theirs, to create a class with great synergies.

Pnuematic Burst is great to work with a Soldier. And Shadow Strike gives you a 2nd closer. Blade Barrier is a great circuit breaker. And for piercing builds, Night’s Chill works as a debuff. Any build built around Cold, Pierce and Poison and Acid are going to like Nightblade. And Pnuematic Burst is simply great for any class, as well as Blade Barrier. Not to mention, if you want to DW melee weapons, Nighblade is the only show in town.

Scouring the forums isn’t really necessary. You can check out the Build Compendium VI and see what people are doing.

If you are wanting more specific assistance, you are going to need to provide more information, because what you’ve provided is vague. You can use the Grim Dawn Build Calculator to share your build.

Anyway, Soldier makes a great pair for a DW Nightblade. Nightblade does not have a default attack. Soldier fixes that with Cadence, which buffs a ton of physical damage to your attacks for 4 seconds after Cadence gets going on top of the huge 3rd hit. Get 1 point in Blitz, and maybe pick up the WPS. After that, just look at War Cry and buffs that help Nightblade. Ignore the shield and 2h stuff. You wouldn’t have enough points to spend in them anyway.

After I posted this, I did find a build calculator, and after looking at it I did realize I was looking at it from a different perspective. I was trying to max both(or as close as possible)skill sets, and that seems not only impossible, but a waste of points, since many of the skills kind of overlap, so you end up with a bunch of skills that you never use…if for no other reason than you run out of quick-slots. :wink: And by limiting the demo build in my first one, I actually had done something resembling the right thing. Now I just have to go through and play with my gear to get the most out of the damage modifiers/resistances. Good gear seems hard to find though, which I understand, being that it’s supposed to be rare and all. I went back and tweaked my Warder build some, and thus far it’s nigh unstoppable. I took out Gutwrench with my level 16 and barely broke a sweat. Used maybe one healing potion. Which is more than I can say for my other builds. I have a serious vendetta against that creature. That and the high priest in Steps of Torment. I will squash him. Every chance I get.
I thought that with the nightblade not having a default attack, it seems to make it pair well with anything that does, but I couldn’t find anything that worked well besides fire strike. Also since it’s the only class that supports dual melee, is where I was having problems finding stuff that seemed to work. But again, I was looking from the wrong perspective.
Thanks guys! I really was just looking for opinions, since I was clearly doing something wrong to think that the pairings didn’t work well. Now that I found the build calculator, maybe I can try again with more success.

Well I’m not sure if I found a good build, or if I just started to ‘get gud’ at the game.
My Warder build focused on lightning and pet damage, and did really, really well. Then I tried something different: A trickster build that focused on cold and lightning, with lots of movement speed buffs. I admit, I have an ingrained D&D Ranger perspective, and tend to avoid poison damage, and I’m sure that cripples me somewhat. I got to Asterkarn Valley before my first death, and that was only because my fingers failed me and I kept targeting the wrong thing(s). After that I didn’t die again until I went after that damn priest in Steps of Torment, and the Logorrhean. Then I went to Malmouth, and died another 50 some times. LOL. Particularly in the taking the docks quest, and the final boss there.
Anyway, if anyone’s interested and I can actually find the patience to post my build, I will.

I have several builds with nightblade base. I decided to try a ring of steel build to see if it is viable. It still needs quite a lot of work but it is funny when you can proc 5 rings of steel one after the other to the point where you are just running around dropping rings of steel and any dots have the potential to proc ring of steel as well. As to nightblade not pairing well with anything, you should check the build compendium. Specifically the 0 phys blademaster builds which are pretty nuts. Nighblade/Occ is one of the strongest pairings in the game in my opinion because of the insane dots you can proc on enemies. Shadow strike in with the abomination poison AoE and then watch everything melt. Use blade barrier and shadow strike in, proc your abom AoE and then use blade barrier and everything dies incredibly fast.