Possible Health Reduction Build

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
1

I was inspired by Poinas’s Pwning with Spirit Guide to create a similar health reduction build for GD.

My plan is to use a 2H weapon with the “of Annihilation” suffix and some jewelry with the “Sapping” prefix. Then layer weapon damage skills on top of each other to maximize concurrent health reduction from multiple independent sources. The best I can come up with so far is to max Upheaval, stack OA, and use a devotion skill with high weapon damage like Maul.

Another method would focus around maximizing Targo’s Hammer orbits. I’m not sure this would work better given the “of Annihilation” suffix isn’t as good for 1H weapons. And though it is less OA-dependant it is highly block-dependant.

I am aware that Heroes and Bosses have a separate resist for health reduction called, “Resist to Health Reduction.” That makes vitality resist reduction combos like CoF + DS useless. I was planning on using the “Plaguebearer’s” prefix + Mark of Dreeg + Sacred Strike combo for general flat resist reduction. Regular mobs probably don’t need resist reduction and if they do adding Acid Spray/Agonizing Flames/etc. in the mix somewhere would probably do the trick.

The only question remaining is, how much Resist to Health Reduction do bosses have? I hope it’s not 500%, otherwise this build is toast.

2

  1. One of the reasons Poinas’ Spirit build works is because of Necrosis. An equivalent skill does not exist in GD, though Curse of Frailty+Devouring Swarm work well with vitality damage.

  2. Flat -resists don’t stack in GD. There are three types of -resists in GD: -% (resist type) resistance, %resistance reduction and flat resistance reduction. Only the first type stacks from different skills/gear (generally rare), the last two can stack with other -resist types but only the strongest take effect.
    There’s a unique case for main hands/offhands though.

  3. Health reduction is basically vitality damage in GD, it just ignores any type of vitality damage bonus. It only scales with -resists, monster HP and possibly one or two other things. It is affected by vitality resistance.
    Only bosses (not heroes) have a unique HP reduction resistance, and AFAIK there’s no point trying to beat that resistance. If you’re dedicated to creating a pure vitality damage build (just like to point out that it’s easy to incorporate other damage types to any Occultist build) then you’ll need to rely on non-HP reduction vitality damage to kill bosses.

3

Are you sure no heroes have it as well? I was pretty sure at least one did.

In any case, HOW MUCH resistance do bosses have? That’s all I want to know.

4

There are exceptions to everything, I suppose.

It doesn’t matter though because AFAIK there’s no way to lower it. Even general -resists only work on the main resistance types (elements, physical, pierce, vitality, chaos, aether, poison/acid, bleeding).

5

I would like Raiyaz to confirm specifically for Resist to Health Reduction, because his Advanced Mechanics guide doesn’t make the damage types you mention exclusive.

6

I’m very interested in seeing the results. I have pondered about a similar build. However as stated by Tyr, the results are not going to be as extreme as in TQ.