Returning player greatly appreciating advice (Devotions etc)

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
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Hello guys, haven’t played in about 2 years so I missed Crucible and AOM, decided to buy em all and FG as well, now I need to level through. I had left off with a lot of different characters, lvl 85 was the cap back then - and decided to dust off one of my strongest to experience the new content - dual wield autoattacking cold/frostburn/pierce Spell Breaker.

I have been doing a ton of reading on Grim Dawn, builds and devotion stuff to try refresh my mind. Seems a lot of stuff got nerfed, but right now my biggest issue is fixing my Devotion setup.

Question 1 : I have come up with this setup - am I trying too hard to grab a little bit of everything here? (evident by a few incomplete constellations, only going for the procs). Is it better to focus on reaching a T3 constellation like this or this? Are there any no brainer must have devotions regardless of build?

Question 2 : With Nightblade I never know how many points (if any) I should assign to each skill on the dual wield line. I see people going max executioner and nothing else, others do one pointers, etc - with my build I am also not sure even on Arcanist whether to max IEE or leave it at 1 and max the other skills that affect IEE (Overload and Elemental Balance). Here is the general idea of my build - please critique me and tell me how ridiculous I am for not maxing X skill or putting even 1 point in X skill?

Question 3 : Order of priority of fixing squishiness? eg : DA, life pool, leech, devotion procs (healing etc), this armor absorption I keep reading about… I know you will say resists first but I am completely resist capped so - besides that?

Question 4 : Am I on a fools errand here and unaware how hard Spell Breaker was nerfed and am I better off scrapping this char and building / dusting off another? I am a big fan of dual wield autoattack builds, I literally have one of every vanilla combo - Nightblade + x (except for Inquisitor, Necro and Oathkeeper). Am I better off just going for Infiltrator or Blademaster or Dervish or something? Thanks for reading, any help or advice is greatly appreciated.

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Spellbreakers are squishy as hell. Your defence comes primarily through cooldown reduction. It operates on an entirely different mechanic.

What items are you using? Also, have you had a chance to read my guide on devotions?
http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/showthread.php?t=81977

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I know this is a pretty old guide, but it was one of the first build guides I turned to back in the days http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/showthread.php?t=65863

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Witchhunter, Dervish and Infiltrator seem to be the strongest DW melee classes right now, so maybe you wanna try that out

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Thanks for replying - I did indeed read your guide, really great thanks for that. Can’t show my character as I am at work but off the top of my head I am using both Deathmarked weapons, deathmarked hood, badge of mastery, Tranquil pants, Wraithwalkers, Shroud of Illusion, Night’s Embrace amulet - stuff like that.

Thanks to the others who replied here as well, really appreciate it. Will be sure to check out that guide and also look into dusting off my Witchblade or making a Dervish / Infiltrator

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Good luck! :slight_smile:

Blademaster might be worth checking out aswell. It is my fav DW melee class and with the new pierce devotions it looks pretty promising. (I have a budget/beginner build guide in draft-mode as we speak)

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I hope that will have chance to play FG and my first post(next week probably) is going to be spellbreaker:p.If you want autoattacker you need attack speed and beronath fury as default skill.Also you shoul invest in dual blades line,execution hits like truck,lethal assault harcapped,veil softcap,pneumatic burst-10 points and shadow dance as much as posible.From Arcanist take star pact,put a point in mirror,iee,mss,also more points ine lemental balance and inner focus.My SB is going to be focused around Shadow Strike-the massive CD from Arcanist makes it desirable as secondary class for that build.

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Thanks for this mate, this guide you linked really helped me a LOT… old as it is. my Spellbreaker really feels better now… even changing my legendary Deathmarked weapons to green Chilled Spectral Longswords made a big difference… I copied the Devotion setup from the guide as well and seems strong - but this leads me to my next question… why are Dying God / Hungering Void and Ultos so universally strong and suggested for my cold build when those constellations are chaos / vitality / lightning respectively? It seems so counter intuitive and I would never have thought to pick those…

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OA mostly. The fact that the constellations leading up to them are great as well helps.

For ultos specifically, there are some fat, juicy +%cold damage nodes in it

For DG, 10% total speed + 40% crit? That’s universally awesome.

Not sure how relevant this is to you but this is a breakdown of my breaker which is a lot easier to gear for - http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/showthread.php?t=69951&highlight=breaker+inconsistently

Xervous’ variant is without a doubt superior to mine, however.

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Thanks for your input mate - I had pretty much that whole setup you have suggested, except for ABB / Lethal Assault… would you believe I didn’t have a single point assigned in this haha? Just never understood how it worked…

But now I am not sure if I should assign ABB / Lethal Assault to my left mouse button as main attack, or use Beronath’s Fury and just spam ABB from keyboard every 4 secs or so… (what I am currently doing).

The guide that malawiglenn suggested doesn’t mention Beronath’s as an attack replacement so I am not sure if it is better or worse for my dps, or if the guide assumes you just use ABB on left mouse click.

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Both dying god and ultos provide nodes with OA/DA

Ultos gives nodes with +% cold and frostburn damage

Dying god proc gives speed and crit damage

Ultos gives proc that deals wpn dmg up to ten targets and resistance reduction so you do not need viper

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Lethal assault is a must. It’s especially potent with silver sentinel’s shoulder