Okay, I played for almost 16 hours straight - yes, insane! Why? My Conjurer was good, but not ‘good enough’. So I looked through my Grim Dawns Item Assistant stash for interesting items which I might want to play with to build yet again. As always, a few simple personal rules: Try a new Class; try a new fighting style; try a new damage type; don’t look at any other similar builds (until it is felt this one is solid or a fail); and try to use what you have is stash.
What I had in stash that seemed interesting was: Eldritch Spectral Warmaul of Insanity; several items of Blood Knight set, including the helm blueprint; and the interesting medal Dread Lord’s Namadea’s Eye of Soulwarding. Since the Mace was acid and vitality based, I looked for similar damage type items and had all of the listed. The rest I just added to the toon as I collected them. But…
The reason the photo shows only about 11 hours in the game and I said I had 16 is because this toon started out as a Cabalist. Yep, from Cabal to Oppressor. I leveled it to 95 as a Cabalist and when attempting SR it was a joke. Any time the toon was surrounded but acid or fire, it was a nightmare to get away and survive. This was frustrating because I have played other toons, with less resistances, which survived much worse attacks. I made it to SR 12 then decided this was just not going to work. I re-did Devotions but that made almost zero difference (again, running SR from 1 to about 6?). What to do? I felt the items and the build idea were sound. I went to this website page: Vitality Decay Damage - Official Grim Dawn Wiki and decided to try the old-faithful Oathkeeper, despite it being probably the worst Mastery for Vitality Damage. I respected the toon. Okay, I only got rid of the Occultist for the Oathkeeper. I actually left the Devotions exactly the same, except for where the skills needed replacing with Oathkeeper skills. Simple… Sort of.
Deciding to jump right into the testing platform, off to the Shattered Realm we went, the Oppressor and I…
SR25, easy - well, not really so easy. There was a lot of jumping, running, fleeing… Vire’s Might and the Rune of Vampiric Shadows saved the day. Sadly, since I had just redone the Devotions for the Cabalist and had not had a chance to build up the skill levels, most of them were only at level 1 or 2. I think Shattered Realm would have been easier if I had waited to level up the Devotion skills but, hey, why wait when there is a challenge to be had?
Yet again, I write far too much! The Oppressor is working. I will make changes as I feel necessarily after I play on Ultimate some more. As of now, I still have 10? skill points to use and 3 or 4 attribute points. I am pretty sure all Attribute points will go to Spirit (Vitality Damage) but I really am uncertain how to allocate the remaining Skill points. Also, I find I rarely use Mark of Torment, mainly because I am too poor a game-pilot to remember to use it and often, when I do, the cursor is in the wrong place. I might get rid of Mark of Torment. I might not. There are other skills I do not know if I use enough or if they make a difference, so I will decide on those as I experiment. I really wish there was a method withing GD to see what damage is being done from which skill, as well as a method to see what damage from enemies is affecting the toon the most. I have a very difficult time determining this myself just from in-game observation. Even with Grim Internals running, I do not know what hit me or what affects me most. Grim Internals probably shows this in a file or even on the screen, but I am not clever enough to know how to get this information. So, I just trudge along.
Here is the Oppressor: Oppressor, Level 100 (GD 1.1.9.7) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator
Fabius was pretty easy, but I find him easy with most builds. I have not went through Ultimate enough yet to have better examples. I did make a video of the SR run from 1 to 26 but I do not know how to process a video for YouTube or otherwise so I can post it here. If anyone wants to see this toon in action, I will try to learn how to crop and process a video. I think only the last part, SR25 or 26, boss room, is enough, particularly since my old computer started over-heating at about SR15 and the video quality started to really deteriorate. Hey, maybe I should use that as an excuse for my poor piloting and near-failures? Nah, it is all me and the build.
Before anyone points it out, yes, I know, almost all the Resistances are too low. I am sure a better use of Devotions or gear would fix this issue but I am trying to do this without help or guidance and this is the best I could come up with today. I keep watching drops and gear to see if a better item, BiS, for Vitality Damage, appears, but so far, no. I did have a few items that might be better, but I have not tried them yet.
For those interested to see where this toon started, here is the Cabalist, showing the original Devotions, prior to the reset.
I just noticed this GD build calc is pointless as it did not show all the skill points I had allocated. This was not correct as I had used all the skill points. I am not sure why the GD Calc page went rogue.
One thing I might try, is dropping Harbinger of Souls (exclusive skill) and trying Path of the Three. I realize this is more of an acid skill but it is one of the only skills in Oathkeeper which is Vitality and I am not sure HofS nor Reap Spirit are doing anything significant for this build. When I used Reap Spirit, prior to respec, I never noticed anything from it, but that does not mean much. With my poor gaming ability, Reap Spirit may be the only thing that got me to SR12 and I remain unaware… I doubt it, though.
