all will perform good in campaign even without gear. I usually recommend build 2 and 5 for beginners, a person with some practice should choose whatever he likes
soldiers are easy as pie in general. depends on a person though, one pet lover told me he had problems with soldier
I just can’t decide, I love the variety
Regarding your question. Vitality cabalist from melee section is a melee-caster hybrid. He fights in melee because he uses special skills from component and relic. I’ve just added his blood brother, which is ranged and fights from afar - check build 12 in caster section.
Conjurers are usually pet builds, I haven’t seen any strong non-pet conjurer. Pet builds struggle in crucible but are fine in the main campaign.
For a ritualist there is build 4, exactly with ravenous earth, totem and devouring swarm. It’s doing great in end-game and that’s why it is here - all builds presented in my initial post are made to smash end-game.
Check caster section more carefully and you’ll find more vitality-based builds. And they are all great.
I have a fair bit of experience with ARPGs (although I feel this one is taking me longer to learn than most), so I guess I should just pick what ever suits my style of play and go with it. Assuming I can farm the gear needed for the end-game (gladiator) versions in campaign (if I spend enough time).
I’m surprised Conjurers are usually pet builds though. I feel like every time I see someone ask for a beginner build (usually on reddit) the top two answers are Vitality Conjurer caster and some soldier (usually Warder).
I was kind of leaning towards just doing a Cabalist (since there’s so many of them on the list, I’m sure one of them will fit me), but now looking at that Ritualist that seems really neat to (no corrupted storm totem though). Damn. This is always my issue in any ARPG. I read to much and play to little, and end up never getting anywhere at all.
Guess I’ll sleep on it and then flip a coin tomorrow. Appreciate the input though. Thanks
I still can’t see the 2h Forcewave Witchblade, I will nominate my version. Cleared the Gladiator crucible even with extra spawns a few times, not a single death so far, very tanky, crushes the main game content very easily. Without extra spawns, with the standard Empyrion + Amatok buff and Vanguard banner clearing 100-150 takes about 25 mins, probably can be even faster. I spam all item skills as well. Maybe I will try to make some videos and create a thread for the build because it deserves it I think.
I recommend using the Octavius Visor, it makes you even tankier, I don’t have it yet. You can probably complete the crucible without buffs + banners with it, but I don’t know. 2 Iron maidens spawn is a bit tough.
I prefer cast speed on the weapon, mine is 28%, but good damage roll is welcome of course.
I had a quick question about ritualist for hardcore- do you recommend the devotion build author uses in his regular or hardcore post? Or do you have a different idea given the switched up gear? I’d love to see your grim tools!
Thanks again for all the info! This should really be stickied, awesome post.
thanks for this thread, it hit the nail on the head for me. I don’t have as much time for playing as I used to, but I still like to experience endgame content - so thanks for increasing my fun with Grim Dawn
I have tried my luck with the Aether DK, however, I currently find it to be a bit lackluster. I haven’t tried Gladiator Crucible with it yet, but sometimes I even die in in Challenger Crucible, especially against Mad Queen - there is no way I can facetank her. This is my current status: grimtools. com/calc/4Vxb1DpN (altered because I’m new on the board - sorry).
I know I’m missing a few pieces, but surely, this setup should be capable of farming Challenger, right? Am I just bad?
You’re welcome!
I studied the game forum a lot when I collected are these builds, no sign of a strong non-pet conjurer. I’d like to see link to a build of non-pet conjurer and video how it clears gladiator crucible, until that I’ll be thinking that those random people from reddit are just giving bad advice. Because this conjurer may be good in early game, but it won’t evolve into anything good, you won’t get a strong build in the lategame.
Hi. I added one just a couple hours before your post. Build 11 in caster section. It looks pretty much like yours.
My only changes are related to gear: Dark One’s Gift set and shield with vitality damage and phys res. I believe the author didn’t use them just because he didn’t have them, the set seems much better than just random pieces of gear. And shield is a great instrument to keep youself alive, I heard that’s quite valuable in hardcore
You’re welcome! Your gear is pretty good, especially for challenger. You’re clearly doing something wrong. First of all, NO ONE can facetank Mad Queen. There just isn’t such a build. All thanks to brilliant design of this boss. You see, when he glows red (50% of the time) she has an aura which amplifies her damage like 10 times (maybe more). So she shreds even tanks, you can thank devs for such a great experience. So you fight several seconds, she starts glowing red, you run away, aura is off - you fight again. Repeat as many times as needed.
You should read crucible guide in my initial post, all this and much more tips about crucible can be found there.
So my Callidor’s Tempest Sorcerer does not even get an honourable mention? Despite bravely dispatching of two Iron Maidens and one Fabius at last wave of Crucible. Imma dissapoint
Hey, take it easy! You’re saying this like you personally came to me and offered to test it and I refused. That didn’t happen. I don’t monitor the forum 24/7 looking for builds, I just overlooked yours.
Double Iron Maiden+Fabius is pretty impressive, I’ll check your build.
Hey Zhu, could you check this one when you got time? (not mine just noticed it) 2H Elemental Forcewave Tactician
Seems promising, obliterates screens of mobs with very high elemental crit dmg and decent ADctH with weapon dmg skills/procs.
Also has high armor from Justice set and high DA.
At this point i want to say: Big Thanks For Your Work !!!
its a very well done thread - good overview - i like it much more than the build compendium which misses much build.
Thanks for posting, guys!
I’ll definitely check the builds
Thanks! I appreciate this kind of response a lot!
In my opinion build variety is already through the roof in my compilation - I imagined there would be 10-15 builds, but now there are almost 30! And they are all great! And they keep coming! Wait, does that mean devs are actually good at balancing the game?!
I’m a bit afraid of [1.0.4.0] with its new crucible - I’ll drown in testing!
I’ll be honest here. I saw your topic just a few minutes after you made it and I figured it was just an attempt to make your own build compendium, but I’m impressed at how far it’s evolved and how you’ve kept it updated with the seemingly “best of the best”.
It seems Crate did it well, with bringing balance and diversity into their game (though there is a lot of work still - for example, ranged weapons still suck).
I also wanted to thank you for your great job!
Agreed. I was a little confused when he started this but once he clarified it was essentially a Crucible clearing build compendium with a brief review of his findings I found it incredibly useful.
Especially since he has kept up with the patches, fleshed out his opinions and added some other pertinent information (such as crucible bosses to watch out for).
I think it might be worth Zhug’s consideration to add a blurb towards the bottom detailing at least three categories. 1.) Fastest clear time winner (purely the fastest in the hands of a skilled players), patch to patch. 2.) Easiest to play/clear (or lazy/safe if you will, for the unskilled player) winner, patch to patch. 3.) Best pick for new player (or starting fresh veteran) to level up and focus on for gear collection, patch to patch (this category is for the players that are legit purists in regards to cheating or other game exploits).
Its tedious enough that he has to test this every major patch. Imo that’d be unnecessary work. This is will be only get more tedious as more crucible viable builds get posted and it will get worse when Drizzto returns with his crucible crushing builds
Heh, I wish that was the case, but actually only thing that happened in AoM is that player characters scaled much more from expansion upgrades than monsters, especially in crucible, thus cruci is not even a challenge any more especially if you use buffs and banners. Dont get me wrong, they did more than good work with all expansion content, new items, classes and stuff, but they somewhat failed in game difficulty scaling, even half decent builds can trash cruci w/o any issues now. In terms of raw power of the builds, game is more unbalanced than before AoM.
People recommend new builds for him to test often enough. Seems like people could weigh in on those categories as well. He’ll automatically have an opinion about 1&2 just doing what he already does. Might as well jot down the results.
3 may be more of community effort and not really a tough one considering many GD veterans are going to peruse the grimtools links and can often very easily identify which builds are going to run better gear poor than others.
Just because Ulgrim killed your pet and crashed your pad doesn’t mean you get a free pass to be so close minded. Keep it up and people are going to start telling you to go to bed old man.
