Question about internal trauma build 1h/shield.

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
1

Hello, i’m currently level 50 playing with a friend, I’ve been focusing on solider with internal trauma so far and it’s going well. We recently beat the game and got to the 2nd difficulty so i’m doing another passover of my setup and see what I can improve.

I really enjoy tanking and doing the Internal Trauma Dot. I have mechanical questions.

So far I’ve been using maxed blade arc, and it’s fine but I started looking around the tree and was thinking of maybe switching but i’m unsure if this will work the way I’m thinking.

I’m going off the assumptions that dots from the same skill refresh and not stack. And also that the base damage of something like blade arc doens’t increase the Internal Trauma portion of it.

If this is true I’m thinking something like this for my skills.

grimcalc.com/build/g7SzKMW (Only 2 posts so I can make this a link)

The Idea here is I have blade arc and forweave for just there internal trauma damage and with short cooldowns to let the dot do it’s damage over time and while they are on cooldown I auto attack to get the internal trauma damage from the passive proc skill. Is this the correct way to maximize my internal trauma damage? I’m unsure if putting points into the base bladearc and forcewave will help my damage much?

I also have a question about flat internal trauma damage for instance the damage from Oleron’s Rage. Is it applied to every target I hit with any skill attack or ability? Or is it just things I hit with a weapon skill? It seems ambiguous.

I’m also looking for ideas on a secondary class. I still haven’t picked one because it’s been easy so far but pretty soon i will need to. I’d also like to add that I exclusively play with a friend who is a occultist/engineer demolitionist, so he has maxed Temper for the internal trauma buff and dreggs for the heal which is really nice. So i’m unsure what to pick up that would help me the most.

Also for devotions i’m planning on going from what i’m at to boar/crab then oleron’s.

Any suggestions are tips are appreciated. I’m just trying to keep moving towards a way to maximize the internal trauma damage at least for now. I can always switch to other things as I find items. The mechanics of how things work together can be really confusing and I’m looking for any clarification or advice that would help me have a little bit of focus on what I should be aiming for.

Thanks

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1/ You’re right, dots from the same skill only refresh. Only dots from different skills add.

2/ That may be a good idea, worth trying I’d say. If it doesn’t work the way you want you can always go back to your old set up

3/ If you want to optimize your internal trauma damage, you might want to use the buff from cadence, it’s pretty good (the last node on the cadence tree)

4/ Points in the base skill will not help your internal trauma damage, only the base damage. (phys/bleed for blade arc and phys for forcewave)

5/ Flat damage is considered weapon damage, so it’s applied with every skill that does weapon damage. If you’ve got a skill that does 50% weapon damage, you’ll do 50% of your flat trauma damage, I’m not sure if that works the same for skills with more than 100% weapon damage (at least you’ll get 100% of your flat damage).

6/ I don’t know if you can do enough internal trauma to rely on it alone. But you play with a friend, so that might work. Internal trauma is often associated with physical damage, so you can easily do a phys/internal trauma build instead.

7/ For classes, that’s hard to say, temper from demo would be a nice add if you want to continue this way. I didn’t like commando so I can not really help you there.
The strongest builds I’ve seen with soldier goes with shaman (warder) or occultist (witch blade). Blademaster are really tricky on a first play, battle mage doesn’t feel really tanky and ain’t easy to do right.
I’d say commando if you really want to maximize internal trauma (don’t know if it is such a good idea though), warder or witch blade if you want to go a more safer route.

8/ For devotions, bull is also a good option for internal trauma as anvil (if you’re going with a shield) and hammer. You’ll surely want to go to oleron in the end. There’s also rhowan scepter that’s quite good if you use a mace (1h or 2h).