Hey everyone, I’m going to be hanging out with family tomorrow and playing some Grim Dawn. I was looking for some good advice on a co-op pairing with the character he planned on making and maybe some general advice as well. This character would be played exclusively co-op.
The character he plans on making is a Shaman / Arcanist Tornado / Meteor build. I’ve made that build myself for solo play but noticed that it got pretty squishy even with some of the beefier talents from both trees. But this will be especially true since we’re going to play Bojack’s Smash n’ Grab mod which multiplies all enemies (including elites) by x4 or x5 I forget, in exchange for greatly increased drop rates.
Further, for good synergy, a class that can keep enemies grouped / CC’d for easy continuous tornado / meteor damage would be pretty good. So I’m certainly sure I want to make a sword and board tank that can block off enemies and soak some damage, kinda sure that soldier is an obvious synergy with sword and board due to its talents (but might be overlooking some others due to lack of knowledge). If soldier is the best base to work off of, and I’d be interested to hear otherwise, the next question is what secondary class to pair it with?
My first thoughts are:
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He’s Ice / Lightning, so some elemental diversity might do us some good in helping efficiently deal with tons of different elites with different resistances.
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The dust devils DO give some good elemental resistance reduction for enemies, so maybe I want to take advantage of that myself?
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Soldier, if I use soldier, will already be pretty physical focused in talents, so it might be inefficient talent wise to try to pigeonhole in an extra source of elemental damage for synergy, when I’m also trying to build pretty tanky as well.
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I also want a build with some source of CC / slows / etc. that can perform well in melee range so we can efficiently fill our roles.
So this leads to my general questions:
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If I wanted a good pairing to ice/lightning then would fire be too close due to it being a kind of “magic element” as opposed to physical, poison or vitality/chaos? Does this game have an “element wheel” where there’s a good way to cover one’s bases?
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If I want to help stack resistances for enemies, should I look for classes with elemental resistance reduction which includes physical (occultist for example) and manage my talents efficiently in a physical build, or would the fact that we have elemental overlap be mitigated by the fact that we’ll have stacking sources of elemental resistance reduction on enemies?
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I’m seeing some cool CC in talents such as slows / stuns / confuse. Are there talents which can draw enemies to you like the Monk from Diablo 3 does with Cyclone Strike? Are taunts as good as it gets there?
Finally, I guess I’m wondering about my whole thought process when looking at characters like this and if I’m thinking about it all wrong, so maybe here’s my thoughts on some class pairings so everyone knows where my head is at:
Soldier / Occultist:
Has curse of frailty for TONS of movement speed reduction for easy kiting, maxing it also yields physical reduction for soldier, but I can max vulnerability to give access to more resistance reduction (but I don’t think they stack if they’re both % based, right?). If they stack, then I could use the vitality reduction to build Solael’s Witchfire. But if it’s more efficient, I can stack the reduced reduction for him, but use the physical reduction for soldier and go full physical, and if doesn’t stack then I guess that question is answered anyway.
Soldier / Nightblade
Veil of Shadow for perpetual slow, cold damage, and -% cold resistance (stacks with his ice but not lightning, if it stacks at all?). Lots of abilities based largely on weapon percent damage, so maybe not the best to get my offensive abilities if sword and board? Both Nightblade and Occultist have some pretty powerful tanking abilities regardless of how they work offensively.
Other mentions in which I’ve been doing the same kind of analysis:
Soldier / Demo: Stun Jacks for CC / Cocktail for resistance reduction, decent mitigation in blast shield.
Soldier / Inquisitor: Auras for resistance reduction, healing, Rune of Haggorad for CC.
etc.
This wall of text is already pretty long, so I guess I’ll stop here for now. Any help is appreciated!