I am wondering about the pros and cons of each of these secondary masteries. I’ve done a fair bit of reading already but figured it might be worth making a new thread anyway.
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I don’t know anything about it, but by chance, I did find this thread that seems relevant. Maybe helpful.
http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/showthread.php?t=32557
Well, while this is a mini-necro, I’ll post my opinion as someone who’s played two of the 3 combos so far.
Occultist I haven’t played. Probably middle of the pack, due to innate resist shred very easily accessible and applicable. Low synergy with your main damage type other than that, though.
Demo combo is what I prefer. Flame Touched is a very nice +flat OA booster, easily getting in the range of +150s if you get any overlevels at all on it. Natural Synergy here with ulzin’s hood legendary, gives you +3 FT’ed ranks on top of a 15% fire/lightning resist shred, beats out Ultos hood until the 4 piece set bonus IMO. Flash Bang is an insanely powerful debuff, with a 50% confuse chance at 12/12, as well as a 210 DA shred debuff as well, with both effects scaling harder into ultimate ranks. The modifier for it grants a chance for enemies to fumble their attacks, which is a major boost to your defenses just by screwing up their ability to hit you. Vindictive Flame takes low point investment, and gives you a bit of total speed, and a potential stun if you get melee’d by an enemy. Not major important, but useful. Blast Shield is the #1 defensive skill in the game after it’s buffs around patch 1.0, no holds bared. It grants a fairly decent chunk of +all resist (starts at 3%, scales up to 6 or 7% at max overlevel IIRC, although you won’t get that much overlevels on it due to your gear you want not giving +Blast Shield ranks) when heavily leveled, absolute fucktons of Fire, Lightning, and Pierce resistance during the proc, and the proc gives you a flat damage absorbtion, which when overleveled can hit 1000+ easily. That means you just flat out, after all resistances, take 1000 less damage per hit for 4 seconds when it procs. It also grants 65% ranged dodge chance at 12/12, scaling to 100% at max overlevel, again, not happening. Demo also grants you access to Thermite Mines, which don’t take many ranks to grant a ton of lightning resist shred, as well as possibly the most powerful CC in the game, pathing derp fest for enemies trying to navigate around them… You haven’t seen retarded until you drop 6 mines in a narrow hallway and you watch enemies go absolutely haywire trying to get past them. Works on bosses too. They have let me cheese bosses many a time into never hitting me once because they never reached me because of a wall of thermite mines.
Arcanist. Energy isn’t a big issue, so the main draw of adding Arcanist, IEE and a few other energy saving/boosting skills, isn’t as needed. Arcanist only grants 1 source of extra OA, although it’s a really good source, that’s easy access, Inner Focus. Arcanist DOES get the benefit of stronger crits via IEE’s second modifier, and better synergy with 1 of the BIS weapons for ranged PS, the Vortex of Souls, which has +2 Arcanist skills. Can give a nice boost to IEE skill line to give you a lot of extra elemental damage. The major weakness of Arcanist is you get NO innate resist shred other than Wind Devils, which are iffy at best, and won’t let you use other sources of weapon applied resist shreds either due to WD’s shred being stronger, and this isn’t excluded from the Demo combo either, so it isn’t a draw. Major weakness for the Druid combo as a result is low innate resist shred.
This is the elementalist build I used in HC.
http://grimcalc.com/build/0cvonGx