Pyromancer help

OK so, this is my first char… and also keep in mind that I’m kind of a noob in general.
Decided to go with the DW pyromancer as I liked the idea of dual smoking barrels and well, diablo didn’t have something like that ^^…
Made a run through normal difficulty to get the hang of it, starting off with a 2h of course, but as soon as I got a gunslinger item, oh boy did things take a weird turn…
Made a build focusing around raw dps (or so i think), and I itemized accordingly stacking fire and chaos dmg.
Right now at lvl 74 according to the stat page, my dps (with my buffs up) is 30200.
I can burn through stuff pretty quickly but… well… starting Ultimate difficulty, I kinda bumped into trouble and my glass cannon falls short.

So at this point I have no idea what to itemize for, or change around, for better survivability in Ultimate difficulty.

Any tips?

Oh i forgot some pics…




If you can, upload your character to www.grimtools.com/calc using one of the side menu options, then browse and select your character’s .gdc file.

If you’re on Local saves, I think it’ll be in Documents/My Games/Grim Dawn (can’t be sure, don’t use local saves).

If you’re on Steam saves, it’ll be in C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\userdata(some numbers)\219990\remote\save\main

It’ll allow people on the forums to examine your build closely and make adjustments and see the effect basically, but for now, some suggestions I can make based on what you have shown us are:

You need to improve your resistances. Nothing should be below 0 for Elite/Ultimate. Ideally for Elite, you should have everything except Stun resistance at 40% at a minimum and preferably 60% as an average or capped at 80%.

I recommend you replace some of those Bristly Furs with things like Antivenom Salves for Poison resistance, Silk Swatchs for Pierce/Bleed resistance and an Imbued Silver for Chaos/Bleed resistance (these can be crafted at a Blacksmith) and an Unholy Inscription for some Vitality and Bleed resistance (dropped naturally) as a start.

You’ll also want to check faction quartermasters for Augments if you are Honoured/Revered with any factions as these can also provide resistances and finally to look out for any gear, faction gear is fantastic for levelling if you are struggling to find options, especially faction gear from the factions from Ashes of Malmouth.

You need to improve your health. Ideally, you want around 100 health per level, you are level 74 so you want to be at 7 400 health for a good amount. I recommend using Leathery Hide on your helmet or Mark of Mogdrogen on your feet. Devotion can also be a good source of health but I cannot see what you have done here.

Demolitionist skills

[spoiler]You don’t need so many points in Vindictive Flame - it scales poorly after 16/16. Hell, if you need the extra points you can even drop it down to 9/16.

Searing Strike, the transmuter for Fire Strike does not work with one-handed pistols.

Consider putting a point into Blackwater Cocktail and it’s transmuter. The reason is it is a good debuffer, the transmuter if you’ll notice it lowers enemy physical damage dealt and is maintained so long as they are inside of the flames. Physical damage is the most dangerous damage type you will find so having more defense to it is a plus.[/spoiler]

Occultist skills

Pick up Blood of Dreeg - it provides an on-demand heal and while it active increases your health regeneration and grants Offensive Ability, it’s a staple of Occultists everywhere.

I 2nd what Baka said. I generally prioritize resistances, some DA and flat health, particularly once you move to Ultimate difficulty. After that I try to make my damage keep up with either constellations, gear and/or the faction augments. The difference in incoming damage received from 80% to 60% resistances is actually rather significant.

I also recommend Blood of Dreeg, as well as some additional points in Flashbang - it is a great CC skill, especially once you are getting swarmed by 30 mobs on Ultimate. It also lowers enemy DA, increasing your damage - plus it works on bosses.

If you can upload your GrimTools and we can see your constellations there may be some tweaks there as well. Hope that helps!

Ok so… first of all thank you for the tips!
I did some component tweaking, swapped out a couple of gear pieces (lost about 3k dps in the process) and I uploaded my char/build on Grimtools so here you go…

https://www.grimtools.com/calc/eVL3Ozw2

All help is welcome!
I’m kinda clueless as to what I should aim for in gear. As you see my devotion is focused around fire/chaos damage as well, as was my gear so I’m not really sure which pieces I should drop and which attributes I should favor.
Is there a ballpark for the dps I should be having? health? resistances?
Keep in mind I’ve began my way in Ultimate.

Edit: Why is it that in the grimtools, it says I have 28 skill points and 12 devotion points available? ^^

Because the maximum level is 100 so you still have to level up to get those points in the game.

Again, take points out of Searing Strike - it only works with one-handed melee weapons.

  • Yup, get rid of Searing Strike

  • Only put one point in Ulzuin’s wrath, for the knockdown

  • I wouldn’t push Vindictive flame up that high either

Give Blood of Dreeg and Aspect some love - good healing and resists all around.

You want Vulnerability. And lots of it.

With those plus skills, 1 pt (gets you 4) in Temper is not wasted.

I would change your skill points around to look like this (Maybe could pick up BWC/High Potency like I said but eh, up to you if you don’t mind another skill slot being taken, it does help quite a bit though).

Most changes I made have been explained either by me or others above except for putting Static Strike down to 1 point. You’re not focusing on Lightning damage so you won’t see big returns if you invest into it with your build.

I would also start putting all of your points into Physique. You likely have enough Cunning. Late game, you want to use a Potion of Reshaping to respec your points and put enough into Cunning/Spirit to meet equipment requirements and dump everything else into Physique - you need the health and DA it gives for Ultimate.

Your devotion could be improved. Firstly, you have few defensive constellations (the only ones I can see is a few points into Behemoth and Lizard offers a smidge) and have gone heavily into offensive constellations, namely offensive procs. You might want to consider dropping some and moving points into ones that provide defensive procs or defensive stats, ones I can recommend are:

Defensive celestial powers:

Behemoth (Giant’s Blood)
Chariot of the Dead (Wayward Soul)
Ghoul (Ghoulish Hunger)
Crab (Arcane Shield)

It’s not perfect but I would probably do something like this for your devotion. (This link still has your current skill selections).

Changes I made and why:

-Removed Imp. Imp isn’t great really as far as T1 constellations go, even on Aether/Fire casters. Flame Torrent is much better for you.

-Removed Falcon. Falcon Swoop used to be a devastating shotgun that all builds took long ago but it’s steadily received nerfs to the point where it’s great for Bleed builds and probably Physical builds and ‘eh’ for everyone else. Basically, there are other constellations that will benefit you more than Falcon.

-Removed Lizard. Repurposed towards Eel for DA.

-Removed points in Hydra and Magi. Repurposed for other important constellations. OA and flat damage are earned elsewhere.

+Eel. As mentioned, provides DA and also some Pierce resistance.

+Chariot of the Dead. Provides tons of OA along it’s nodes, some other nice bonuses and a proc that will keep you up some more and provide a nice boost in DA.

+Ghoul. For some passive attack damage converted to health/lifesteal and also for Ghoulish Hunger - when it goes off you go into a life steal frenzy. As mentioned, Physical damage is deadly so the resistance to it is nice too.

+Completed Solael’s Witchblade. Eldritch Fire is a stackable source of resist reduction for Fire and Chaos. I have Curse of Frailty bound to it as crowds of enemies give it multiple chances to go off every tick.

+Quill. Some nice bonuses on here, we need it to get to Rhowan’s Crown.

+Rhowan’s Crown. For Elemental Storm, it lowers enemy resistance to Fire allowing you to do more damage. It also helps with breaking enemies resistance to Fire on ones where it is high. Bind it to Fire Strike to proc it as often as possible as it has a fairly low cooldown and decent % chance.

+This opens up Ulzuin’s Torch for which I have put 3 points in to start. Torch is amazing for it’s nodes but also it’s proc when you reach it.

After putting 2 points into Torch for Meteor Shower, I’m not sure where your last 10 points would go with your current gear.

Keep looking for pieces of gear that give resistances and if need be - stay in Elite and grind reputation with factions to Honoured/Revered for their Augments as they will provide extra resistances that you are missing out on and also for Faction gear.

Finally, sorry if that is a lot to take in, keep in mind that your new devotion skills will be starting at Level 1 so they might take some time to start rolling along.

Good luck and don’t forget to ask for help or assistance again if you still have issues or questions.

Curious -

No love for temper? Not arguing, I’m still a newb when it comes to statting these things out. Just curious.

I could probably have taken a point from somewhere and dropped it into Temper, guess I forgot to :stuck_out_tongue: I just realised actually that you could pull a few points out of the Occultist mastery for 1 point in Temper and 1 point elsewhere (probably Hellfire Mine I’d say?).

Alright, alright…!
Must have brainfarted hard when I picked up Searing Strike…

So following your advice, I changed around a couple of stuff and I’m breezing my way into act 2 on Ultimate, already. (So far I’ve only had my ass handed to me by that damn Herald of the Flame, in Conflagration, and I actually kinda gave up on him for now).

My Devotions are a bit messed up still, I’m having some trouble balancing between having points in defensive skills, and not picking up crap skills in order to keep opening more Devotions.

Thnx for all the help!

Did you read this and get the devotions suggested?

Pyromancer is the perfect toon for great dps, mine has 141 000, you can go to heavy fire, chaos being secondary damage.
With this toon i can kill everything exept ravager and mogdrogen.

Take temper, at least one point, explosive strike at 12 (with bonuses).
I prefer canister bomb with it’s transmuter, because it stuns, eldrich fire bind to it.
Take mortar, it is surprisingly good with only one point in each. Meteor shower (Ulzuin torch constellation) bind to it.
Fissure bind to fire strike.

Get rid of fiend constellation, it’s good only for a melee toon.
Think of taking viper, revenant 5 for the ADCH plus attack speed, and ghoul.

Take second rite.
If you take canister bomb (with transmuter) bind with eldrich fire, you can remove curse of frailty.

@medea fleecestealer
Yes mate I took a look at the devotion tree that was suggested but I don’t think I can follow that one, since…unless I’m going blind, my devotion tree is kinda different than the one in the grimcalc.
Might have something to do with me not having the expansion?
So I can’t really follow the constellations suggested there :S

Actually, you can do it with a bit of reworking, since Quill is the only new constellation in that set-up. Make a note of the constellations used, then play around with Grimtools (or the old GrimCalc.com since you don’t have the expansion) to find a replacement for Quill which lets you get Rhowan’s Crown and also access Ulzuin’s Torch. Here’s what I came up with:

Raven
Owl
Rhowan’s Crown
Ghoul
Solael’s Witchblade
Chariot of the Dead
Fiend
Eel
Remove Crossroads A, C and P nodes
Scholar’s

That leaves one point to go into Ulzuin’s at the same level, but you will still be able to complete it and have a point left over for the max 50 of the base game.

@kourkoumpinis
My apologies for providing you with the devotion setup that I posted earlier, unless I missed something somewhere, I don’t think you said that you didn’t have the expansion so my assumption was that you did. Regardless, take medea’s advice to reconfigure it and you should be fine.

@evil_baka
No need to apologize! :stuck_out_tongue:

I had actually been messing with it already, and I ended up putting points in Hawk. Crap otherwise but I wanted to check how much dps I’d get by going as far in, in Ulzuin’s Torch and couldn’t figure a way around it.
I’ll check your suggestion out, medea fleecestealer, thnx again!
Though by the look of it I wouldn’t say I’d be thrilled about picking up Raven and Owl…
Which would you say are the MUST constellations I should be picking up? and i’ll try to fill in the rest to my liking…

I lost another 3k dps in the process (I guess it’s normal since my previous devotion setup was pretty fire/chaos aggressive), I hope it’s worth it! :stuck_out_tongue:

Well, no guarantees kourkoumpinis since I’m not the best builder in the world, but it does include as much of Evil_Bake’s suggestions as I could manage and I’m not sure therea are any other alternatives that will get you the requirements to reach Ulzuin’s. But as said, you can have a play around with the old grimcalc.com and see if you can find anything else.