Saboteur - Mythical Nex and Ortus - fun but not quite right

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
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So I built another toon. I am having a blast with this one (no pun since it is a DW). I chose the Saboteur only because I wanted to do something around the Mythical Nex and Ortus swords, of which I have had several Mythical Ortus drops and one of the Nex. The weapons, with Fire Strike, Flame Touched and Veil of Shadows, plus +1 to both Nightblade and Demolitionist, seemed like Saboteur was their design intent.

I read a few threads on Saboteur, not looking at any build guides, and it seems that Saboteur is hated because the combination does not work together well, in many opinions. So far, I am liking it better than any of my previous builds. This toon leveled faster than any others (using the leveling plan of collect and read notes, use the Lokarr Set and drink potion). I just walk through enemies with a brief pause for some bosses. Kraā€™Vall was almost my doom - very ugly fight. The Mad Queen was just LONG and SLOW. The Bourbon Clones, well, frustrating but barely manageable. The issue is very low resistances for the second row (Bleed, Vitality, Aether, Stun and Chaos).

I chose to go with the Emberā€™s Calling set because I had it, and it seemed to fit the toon. I believe if I change it out I might do better with something else to increase the resistances. I think the rings and amulet are fine, left as is. I have been considering the Chillwhisper set or for the chest, Mythical Rune Armor of Ignaffar or Mythical Stormweave Armor. For the head, Mythical Bounty Hunterā€™s Hat or Shadowspark Hood.

I have not finished out the last several Skill points because I am not sure if I want to put them in defense - Ring of Steel, Pneumatic Burst, Blast Shied, etc. Or if I should try to boost my Offense a bit, but adding to Fire Strike or such. So many decisionsā€¦

Anyway, that is the toon. I am not quite right with it and any comments are more than welcome. I am sure that when people look at my devotions they will immediately be saying, ā€œWHAT?ā€ I think it is a bit of a strange mix but I chose them to fit the theme of the character. Amazingly, I think they work well together and it seems to be working for me, almost. I say almost because every major fight was just far too close and I realize my Resistances are too low - the lowest of any toon I have made, but surprisingly, I am still fighting on with zero deaths, even with Shattered Realm 25 (I am a bit scared to try to go more before fixing a few things). Oh, I upgraded to Mythical Fateweaverā€™s Leggings when those dropped for me, I think in the Necropolis?). I had hoped they would help with the resistances, but I have not noticed.

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Just a couple of suggestions:

Itā€™s generally better to target one damage type. Since N+O targets cold FS, Embers might not be your best bet as it focuses on fire. But if you do like the fire/cold mixā€¦it is a good set for that.

And donā€™t forget to get the devotions of the appropriate type for Resistance reduction. It might not matter at first, but in the higher difficulties it will make an impact. This is the problem that elemental damage types run intoā€¦more common mob resistance than many other damage types.

Edit: Here is a variation on your fire/cold concept that is a bit less squishy:
More durable version with better single-target

Things I tweaked:

  • amulet (I think the extra skill points are more valuable here due to tight points ), medal, and some components
  • devotions for more health leech, CC resist, and physical resist, and RR
  • heavy investment into fire strike and generally less for other skills. And maxed Atk speed. I think fire damage portion is higher, so more % focus where applicable.
    and juggled some attributes to increase OA (3k is enough, though - so not that important)

Edit2: It occured to me that this might be a fun devotion proc path that might work well with this fire/cold mix:
No emergency health leech, but consistent health leech, a few big whirlpools and also reasonable CC + phys resist. Whirlpool path Fire/cold

On this I put an Oleronā€™s Blood on the offhand for 20% Damage reduction on hard bosses.

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Thanks for taking the time to look at this build and make suggestions. I did fail to remember RR ā€“ bad mistake! Since I have the Chillwhisper set and was already considering it, I might swap over to it. I did ā€˜put it onā€™ once and OA, DA, DPS and all resistances went down, but of course, I had not played with augments and components. Also, I was trying to find a conversion for the fire to cold, to boost and focus on the cold, but I was not able to find anything besides the amulet, Conduit of Whispers, and the belt, yet you suggested it with the Nightsalker Pendant. I do like the added skill points. Sadly, I do not have that blueprint yet and blueprints are dropping slower and slower now that I have about 90% of them. I had already swapped to the Serenity Relic. That helped with resistances and now the toon is far more balanced.

I battled Lokarr and it was ugly. The Saboteur did win, but it was probably the sloppiest, ugliest and closest fight I have ever had and I would definitely NOT try it again until I fix things. I do think the RR is what is most important to fix, so I might try your devotion suggestions, despite how I actually like mine.

Both my Dervish and my Warder are far better characters, bot also based off of gear I have gathered, but they do not clear a path nearly as quickly as the Saboteur, despite their radically higher DPS. I think, as you pointed out, the issue most needing fixed is RR. Maybe I will run my Warder or Dervish up as far as I can in SR to try to get more blueprints, but really, I seem to get more just attacking ever totem I find. If I can get the amulet blueprint, I will give it a try.

I never even thought about Oleronā€™s Blood for the Oleronā€™s Might. Duh. I know I can get Cold Resistance reduction from Murmur. For some reason, I completely missed Leviathan - I guess my inexperience really shows with that oversight! I am going to try adding Murmur/Rumor for now, farm for the amulet, and if that does not help, then I might try Leviathan. Blind Sage may not be the right choice, but I would really like to see how my initial plan works with minimal changes, not major.

Thanks again. I will farm and try to make some of these changes and then post the results.

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Iā€™d definitely consider sticking with one damage type, itā€™s way better to both gear and play.

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The Nightstalker Pendant is not a random drop, but a faction blueprint, specifically from the Cult of Bysmiel. Youā€™ll need to get to Revered status with that faction before you can purchase the blueprint.

I wanted to point that out just in case you were wondering about the blueprint situation.

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I saw a bit of confusion here in the build with this. Embers is an interesting set, but you have to ā€œembraceā€ that it globally converts ~60% cold to fire and a few skills. The only practical way to combat so much global is to target skill-level conversion (as per your mines conduit) which is not that easy to do with so many skills.

Hopefully not too much rambling, but this idea was interesting due to the way that opposite conversions should not be a problem:

  • Normally a belt like this would conflict, but here it fits in ok to the concept and adds relevant skills. It could be changed to a demo skills +1 (as FS is the focus), but the counter-conversion is fine since you are trying to keep cold at a reasonably high % damage. But if you want to truly emphasize fire, then change the belt.

  • Note that N+O also does this fire/cold with acid (Lethal Assault), so the Embers fire/cold idea is not unreasonable. But overall the fire portion appears to be significantly higher in the end result - which means cold should be considered a lesser partner.

  • If you include the PB modifierā€¦cold->fire is ~100% globalā€¦and as such there is only cold where skill-level modifiers are in effect (FS, RoS, etc) or other conversions ofc (~50% fire->cold from belt). Conversion only happens once so the calculation is not that bad.

  • In fact whirlpool sees that conversion too (100% fire), but it fits ok.

The result is convoluted, but essentially all original cold is fire and 1/2 original fire is cold. It looks like flat fire is greater than flat cold, even in FS and fire damage is superior. You can see if that is actually the case when Static Strike and Brimstone get to work and tweak as needed to % damage and focus. If this is not the case then prioritize Rumor and add more % cold damageā€¦

There are also various things that could be tried in the devotion path. For example N+O conversion could be used to profit off 1/2 the devotion proc damage of Guardian Gaze for some more leech. I never looked at that, but these type of conversion concepts are fun.

Finally, what I didnā€™t like about Seeker is that 1/3 of it gets wasted by lightning damage and it basically doesnā€™t have a hands-off proccer skill, unlike whirlpool - because most of this will be in melee range unless used before SS,etc. The problem with Seeker is that it seems disruptive to the build = interrupting FS to cast it each time, which seems counter-productive. In melee range FS Explosive Strike probably does a better job for a similar AoE.

(Because Seeker is considered pet, it is not attachable to another pet = Blade Sprits or TMines)

The big thing of Seeker is the short cd and cranking them out fast - which falls short here.

Edit:

I like the mix concept here and I think that it will improve drastically once tweaked. Do updates.

But if you wanted cold focus, I would be tempted to try Rimetongue to test out the recent improvements to this Blade Trap cold set. Apparently it should be useable for many bosses now. Ofc, Iā€™m just predicting and really donā€™t know about this.

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No rambling at all. I am learning from your comments and suggestions. So again, thank you. Somehow I pulled an old-man brain fart because I did have the Nightstalker Pendant blueprint already. I must have been typing poorly when at the Blacksmiths. Regardless, I realized my mistake and changed it out, as suggested - very good choice, by the way. I also did a little devotion modification, not yet to Leviathan, but I will swap from Blind Sage. I just wanted to see how far I could push Blind Sage before getting too scared to move forward any more. I think I am about there! What I have done so far, though, is got rid of Assassinā€™s Blade, Hawk and the two points in Behemoth, replacing those with all of Murmur, Tortoise and one point in Crossroads. After these changes, OA and DA are both over 3000 - nice.

I went and tackled Modrogen, winning, after about 4 minutes, so I am very satisfied with that result, even though it it was a lot of strike, run, strike, runā€¦ run more, strike, run. I went back to SR and made it to SR42 before I had to quit because of pesky work assigning me to a job (I work on-call 24/7 so never know when I will have to work). I think I could have reached SR50 but it was getting pretty questionable so maybe 45? I have not gone back to Lokarr since making these changes.

I had not really thought about Seeker being a pet. How pets are defined in Grim Dawn is still confusing to me. Once you wrote that, a little light went off. I was trying to stick with it because I wanted to push the viability of my build. That has actually already failed, though, since I had to ask for help and have made several of your suggested changes, so I will do a few more. Just those devotion changes and the amulet gained me about 33% more damage in Fire Strike and almost 75% more in Amarastaā€™s Blade Burst. Those upgrades with the added RR made a big difference.

I will let you know how Leviathan goes, but I am sure it will be another equally significant improvement. I keep hoping to understand all these mechanics enough to do my own, 100% me, build, that will get me to SR75. The Warder is all mine but I feel it will also be maxed out at about SR50. I have ran it to SR40 and then decided to try this Saboteur. All of your comments have really taught me a lot so, as I already said, they are greatly appreciated. Every tweak I make to the Saboteur is just helping me understand the game better so that I can eventually get a toon build, without any help, which will make the SR75. I am already thinking about a Trickster with the Kobra set since I have all of it, so maybeā€¦

Oh, regarding Rimetongue, that was on my ā€˜thoughtā€™ list when pre-thinking this build. I believe I did not go with it as it because I only have the Shoulderguard and did not want to craft the other pieces since I had most of Chillwhisper and all of Embers. So maybe I will just go ahead and craft the pieces but I remain undecided on it since it buffs skills I am not using and do not want to try for this build.

Now, letā€™s go try out Leviathan!