Shadow's Chill - The super CDR spellbreaker build.

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
1

NOTICE

Crate has effectively killed the build with the latest hotfix, by making NJE be a flat CD reduction. This has resulted in the build not even being able to break 1 second CD on Shadow Strike, and seriously hurts the build’s ability to do damage to a big target, where the build was already having issues before handling them to a degree. It more than halved my damage on the build. I would recommend just giving up on getting the character in this state into ultimate, as it is no longer really able to kill big targets at all, and the core of the build’s fun is gone with now having a longish CD on Shadow Strike even in it’s best case scenario.

NOTICE END

Basic nature of the build is focusing on stacking almost every source of CDR that you can possibly stack, opting into maxing out your CDR to enable casting all of your skills as frequently as possible, abusing the increasing value of CDR as you get more of it. The build’s main purpose is getting Shadow Strike to as low a CD as you humanly can, with other skills getting side benefits due to CDR allowing more cast of them, allowing them to trigger devotions more frequently.

 Just a warning, bad computers don't even try.  This build will crash you.  Period.  I've had times where I have more procs on the screen than there are enemies before I cleared out the room with those procs, it procs so fast and often.  My friend often commented when playing with me "Well, glad I'm a pet summoner, and don't have to target anything, because I can't see s***."

Pros - [ol]
[li]Really fun[/li]
[li]Very active, and unique playstyle overall[/li]
[li]Feels powerful[/li]
[li]Easy to get most of the gear[/li]
[li]Sheer insanity of CDR on some skills (Mirror can get down to a 6 second CD, with a 3 second duration, perfect optimal items can get Shadow Strike to a .4 sec CD)[/li]
[li]Works with suboptimal gear, can be a first character to farm ultimate with[/li]
[li]Both good at trash clear and single target kill times, short of very high threat targets like some bosses and Nemisi where you have to kite while Mirror is on CD.[/li]
[/ol]

Cons - [ol]
[li]Optimization requires very specific gear, needing perfect rolls on certain stats[/li]
[li]Hard to get started up early game. Starts feeling good around level 30-35.[/li]
[li]Hard to see foes at times because the entire screen is a mess of procs[/li]
[li]SQUISHY[/li]
[/ol]

 Important thing to note, I do NOT have the BiS on most of my equipment slots.  As I am not willing to cheat in gear, even to show off the build's maximum potential, what you see is exactly based on what I have found.    Having looked at sites like Graceful Dusk, I know what items would be better in slot that what I'm using, and I'll recommend these items in place of what I have if it is a better item for the slot, as well as the reasoning why this is the best item in slot.  Anyway, onto the build.

New devotion loadout, no +levels.
http://grimcalc.com/build/ft9ZBY

Old devotion loadout.
http://grimcalc.com/build/0V4Zeg

+levels included (Still uses old devotions in shown devotions).
http://grimcalc.com/build/Oum3yF

Current Items
Current Weapon - Shard of Askeran with Haunted Steel + Outcast Bastion
Current Hat - Clarivoant’s Hat with Sanctified Bone and Vitality resist augument
Current Chest - Shroud of Illusion with Chains of Oleron and Vr augment
Current Pants - Empowered Legplates of Valor with Antivenom + Fire/Lighting resistance augment
Current Boots - Generic boots that I crafted, Stonehide being the modifier, as a stat stick.
Current Off-Hand - Elite Rowari Cold Codex with Cold Stone + Outcast Bastion
Current Belt - Bladebreaker’s Sash with Rigid Shell + Vr Augment
Current Shoulders - Clarivoant’s Mantle with Silk Swach + Fire/Lightning resist augment
Current Gloves - Elite Harvest Grips with Spellwoven Threads + Vr Augment
Current Amulet - Unseeing Eye of the Blind Assassin with Black Candle + Poison resist augment
Current Rings - Lifegiver’s Signet and Inncorruptable Obsidian Band, both with Corpse Dust + Poison Resist Augment
Current Relic - Deathchill
Current Medal - Tempest Medal with Attuned Loadstone

BiS Items
Weapon - Shard of Asterkarn OR Trozan’s Starkeeper. Trozan’s value scales higher the more CDR you have compared to Shard, but both work very well, even with Shard having no CDR itself. Bonus points is you can, if lucky enough, get Shard of Asterkarn from your quest to finish Veteran, and it sets up Elite to be a joke.
Off Hand - Tome of the Arcane Wastes with a perfect CDR role (19%), OR Empowered Banshee’s Misery, BUT Elite Rhowari Winter Codex or Elite Death’s Embrace is by far the easier to get, while only being marginally weaker, and easy to ensure a perfect CDR roll of 19%. You could easily have one of each, one for fighting undead, the other for humans, and both work for general use.
Hat - Trozan’s Hat OR Clairvoyant’s Hat. Trozan’s has +3 Starpact (meaning 1.5% more CDR on all skills) while Clairvoyant’s has +1 all skills (granting 1% CDR between Nidalla’s Hidden Hand + Starpact to Shadow Strike, .5% to all other skills), while both have 6% CDR as the default unmodifed value.
Chest - Frostdread Cuirass (1% global CDR) OR Deathmarked Jacket (1% Shadow Strike CDR and Overlevels, potential set synergy with Deathmarked Shoulderguard to boot)
Shoulders - Deathmarked Shoulderguard (Massive Shadowstrike damage amp, 1% CDR on Shadow Strike) OR Chilldread Mantle, ELSE Iskandra’s Pauldrons, Clairvoyant’s Mantle, Elite Devil’s Pauldrons or Resistance Statstick
Gloves - Elite Harvest Grips OR use resistance stat stick gloves
Legs - Empowered Legplates of Valor
Boots - Venomspine Greaves (1% shadowstrike CDR) OR Resistance Stat stick.
Belt - Spellbreaker Waistguard or Bladebreaker Sash
Rings - Open Hand of Mercy + Closed Fist of Vengeance OR Band of the Eternal Haunt OR Else resistance stat sticks. Notable epic is the Empowered Starfire (+2 Starpact, or 1% CDR in other words).
Amulet - Seer’s/Magi’s **** of the Grove double rare, preferably with the Starpact +ranks modifier (Caps out at a value of 10% CDR). As this is heavily unlikely to be obtained, next BiS is an Unseeing Eye of the Blind Assassin. Just about any CDR+resistance option follows it in value, with a notable exception being Night’s Embrace, which is about the only non CDR amulet that I would use, due to it’s active’s power with your build by letting you freeze any enemy in the game when comboed with Asterkarn’s Dagger, even if only for a tenth of a second (This means you reset their attack timer, really slowing down their dps, and even allowing potential freeze locking for that 6 seconds).
Medal - Black Star of Deceit OR Tempest Sigil. Yes. The level 38 epic. Only one that has CDR. I know. Empowered one doesn’t for some reason. Don’t get why they didn’t make the empowered one have CDR as well, because the Starpact levels on that isn’t even able to grant 1 CDR point. Black Star of Deceit is next best option, and probably outvalues Tempest until really high values of CDR.
Relic - Iskandra’s Balance, Malediction, and Nemesis. Iskandra’s has the best possible CDR (Starpact completion modifier), but all 3 have value to the build.

Album of Build stats - Pic of Character Sheet + Log kill proof included
http://imgur.com/a/EBX64

 I have killed the Undead, Aetherial, and Cthonic nemesi multiple times each (Cthonic and Undead take a rather low amount of time, Aetherial requires being pretty careful due to his risk of shotgunning you in melee range), as well as Fabius.  Fabius is still painfully difficult to fight ATM solo, primarily due to his ability to regen his hp and Blade Barrier my major windows of power to jump on his face, the times my Mirror is active.   Clones and Sentinal have also been slain, although the clones fight I had to resort to cheesing it at one stage, but most of it is fightable "legitly" so to speak.   May be able to do it 100% legit once I get full BIS gear, hard to say.


 There are a few interesting things this build shows off about the game.  For instance, Shadow Strike's CD starts on cast, as it starts moving you.  Means that if you are dashing to far off targets, it has effectively no CD.  At lower CD values the CD doesn't even matter as you dash through stuff, if you wish to ignore trash.   It also really shows off the power of the CDR on devotion procs, as many of the devotion procs scale insanely hard with all the CDR you have.   I have Blade Spirit bound to Crown, and crown is on a .9 second CD.  I have 3 Spirits active at a time, and as a result the crown procs can be spawned so frequently that I can have 15 up at a single time.  A few more points of CDR, and I'll be able to have 4 Blade Spirits up 24/7, meaning I could easily achieve 30+ Crown procs active at once.   The entire room WILL be debuffed on it's resistance.


 I'll include videos once I get a better computer (Soon TM), as is my current one can barely run GD during the battles as is, let alone record it as well.

 I don't consider it HC viable, at least self-found, but that is mostly due to how gear dependent it is to avoid the worst of the one shots, as its pretty squishy without near perfect gear, and if you go a different devotion route, you lose out a LOT on the build's fun.  I mean, you can do it with tank devotions, but... it wouldn't be THIS build.  It just doesn't fit.

Thanks to Silben for recommending Trozans over Temporal Tempest. Swapped Trozans to have its place as BIS potential with Shard.

EDIT : Just a note, this build is busted in Crucible DLC, and I think it actually is, with perfect gear, the #1 build in Gladiator difficulty.

2

Why don’t you consider Belgothian’s Carnage relic as BiS? It has a crit proc that reduces 2 seconds cd from each of your active skill. Basically you get a double SS every 3 seconds. It can spawn with nice completion bonus too, i.e +night chill/SS/NJE.

3

Silben points out that it doesn’t work on single weapon, so it’s invalid for the build. Thanks for the clearing it up Silben.

4

Belgothian’s carnage requires DW melee weapons meaning no spell tome cdr.

5

Ahh, that would hurt it’s value a lot. Ok, so back to what I had listed then, as there is no reason I would ever drop the 19% CDR from my off-hand, it gets me far more DPS on repeated shadow strikes far more frequently.

6

Ah I see, good point there. Used to get it all the time on my SB with DW as the default choice so I totally forgot that.
Not sure if it is worth switching to DW for it though. By using a Tome you are cutting your SS dmg by at least 300%+ of your off-hand dmg

7

It wouldn’t be. I’d have to lose far more reliable DPS in the roughly .4 second CD Shadow Strike (Assuming optimal CDR capping) going to .8 (Meaning I’m going from 5 cast of SS per 2 seconds to 2.5. Counting the Carnage, I could maybe say 3.5 cast per 2 seconds, assuming crits are happening frequently enough). Even at best case scenario for the dual wielding two CDR weapons, I’d be losing about 13% CDR, which would more than double my Shadow Strike CD, effectively halving it’s DPS. And the further I get from perfect CDR itemization, the less effective Carnage will get for what I would consider using it for, the fact it would be setting my CD for Mirror to near 100% uptime.

8

Yo, man ! I just wanted to say that as a person who usually plays only WH/Spelbreaker/BM I think his is a very effective, nice, original and ballanced build (unlike many others on this forum).

I have just one question: why did you put Venomspine Greaves as BiS. I mean, you already have 80% psn resist and, unless you have around 94%, guys like Gastris will still be dangerous in confined spaces. Wouldn’t you be better off with a Golemborn, since It offers you +300 armor, around 500 HP and 6% physical resist (even more on a good roll). A WH can get away with Venomspine due to AotG, Possession and Focused Gaze and it’s BiS, but for a Spellbreaker ?

9

Its about the only boot option that actually increases the CDR on Shadow Strike via the Nidalla modifier. And poison damage isn’t all bad on you, as your modifier does some decent poison damage. I did list “Generic Stat Stick” as an alternative option for the boot slot, and I consider Golemborn Greaves something that falls under “generic stat stick”. It offers nothing unique or build defining to a build, it just is resistances and hp and the proc. I consider that if you are playing this build, you are playing it for the perfect CDR max, which is what the build is made for. Even without the max out, I’ve had a ton of fun, and I can’t wait to see just what insanity I can get up to once I get a few more CDR items. The only reason Empowered Legplates of Valor made the cutoff for BIS Legs is because leg legendaries suck so bad (What does this game have against pants? Almost all pants suck sooo bad, no faction offers pants as an item slot you can buy for, they generally have super-lackluster stats, and almost never contribute something unique to a build, unlike stuff in just about any other slot being able to.), and Legplates are just so far up and above the rest of the pack due to how much resistances, hp, and just general “Oh, I’m a squishy? Now I’m not” they offer. There is absolutely nothing I’d take over them for the sake of this build, except maybe some super insanely perfect rolled double rares that grant a ton of resistances and xp. Maybe the new witchgod sect pants may be able to replace it, if I got a really good double rare roll on one of them, but other then that I heavily doubt I’m going to swap anytime before we get a full expansion of legendaries/epics for the next set of levels up till 90/100/whenever they set the new item level cap. And even then, Legplates are so insane I doubt I’ll swap then.

Also, yes, my resistances are currently capped out. I am using 4 or so different stat stick item slots though, with all of my ring augment slots being locked into the poison resistance augment atm. I’d love to swap a few of those to some of the other utility choices, or maybe some of the augments that grants me hp or damage reduction. Being able to swap a few of my stat stick items for items that grant new and interesting choices to my character would be much prefered. I actually have a Band of the Eternal Haunt, but I don’t use it because I’d have to lose a ton of valuable resistances to do so, and the -10% cold resistance isn’t worth as much to me as the survivability of using another item atm. As is, if I swap a single item, I will no longer have capped out resistances. The only item I could swap would be my main hand, as I’m seriously overcapped on cold, but that’s it.

10

I can cast it twice as often (And the base damage on SS is insanely high, remember that), or I can cast it slower but faintly stronger, maybe a 33% dph increase in trade for casting it half as frequently. It comes out to about the same overall on DPS on just the Shadow Strike, but then you notice that we just lost about 13% CDR on our Mirror, Flash Freeze, Blade Spirit, and our devotion procs, which scale insanely hard on the fact we have about 60% CDR.

Fun point of math when it comes to CDR, it has exponential value growth per point. 1 point is nearly worthless, being an aproximately 1% DPS increase, 10% CDR averages out to an 11% DPS increase compared to baseline, 50% CDR acts like like a 100% DPS increase compared to baseline, 66% is a 200% increase (Over the span of 16 points, you gained another 100%), 75% acts like a 400% increase(9 points for a further 100%) ect ect ect.

Also, Carnage requires us to get a very specific medal, which further requires us to spec into a very specific modification on our build, further troubled by the fact we lose out on synergy that almost all the other parts offer on scaling on CDR for the crit gimmick, and as such against enemies where we may not crit often (Bosses) we lose out on a lot of our DPS.

There is a guy who build a build based on Carnage enabling double rolls of skills. This isn’t that build ultimately, where as he requires RNG to enable extreme burst, we more focus on consistent DPS/uptime that doesn’t vary from target to target, RNG roll to RNG roll.

11

I’m currently playing a Warder myself, but was initially thinking about a melee Druid. With that idea out of the window, I still need another Arcanist character, and Spellbreaker does seem like a good alternative. I was looking at a more WPS heavy setup though, focussing on cold & acid crits:

http://grimcalc.com/build/sIqFXS

12

I’d be interested to see a video on this. Someone had almost this exact build on the forums some months ago, and after they nerfed CDR, I wasn’t aware it was viable anymore. Sounds like fun though.

13

Well… I mean, first of all (Ignoring the fact that you are posting something completely different from the point of this topic, which is the CDR capped Spellbreaker with a casting focus), your skillset is really really bad. 1 point OFF is just a wasted point for instance, as OFF has like triple amped scaling (Duration, Range, and Damage all scale with rank.) Spellbreaker has no innate Basic Attack replacement (With only Mistborn Amulet or Shard of Bernath or whatever that legendary component is as options), and your points in general are just a mess, to be honest. If you want WPS, just build for them and a few supplmentary skills, rather than wasting all those points to get Starpact which has almost 0 impact on your WPS.

If you honestly want a true critique of your build plan though, post it in it’s own topic, not in someone elses build guide topic for a specific build. Spellbreaker has like 5+ build options, and having some other person just come into my topic and post about their build (At which note you have only the most basic idea of what you want at that) would be like me going and posting about a Vitality caster Conjurer in the Lazy Pokemon Master build thread. That thread’s OP would sure not appreciate it, and neither do I.

Yea, that actually is what inspired the planning for the build was remembering hearing someone talk about the CDR synergy on the GD Reddit. I have done just about every part of this solo, without refering to that first guy’s thread that you are talking about at all though (I don’t even know anything about what he has, tbh.), and its adopted to what the current devotions and such are like, and the current “meta” of GD. The build is more than viable though, and is actually really easy to play for the most part, other than the rare 1 shot you have to look out for until after you get your hp and resistances up high enough. A lot of people said it wasn’t viable anymore, but the build sounded like too much fun to abandon the plans for it, and I’ve refined it over the last few patches as I leveled it further and further over time. I reset my devotions like twice over so far almost, and this build has gone through several different forms as I refined it and optimized it.

As for videos, I’m about to start ordering the parts for building a new one from scratch any time now (Personal life issues got in the way so I’m a bit behind on my plans to build one), so I should be able to start putting up videos within a few weeks, as is the 5 year old laptop I’m running on can’t even handle GD all of the time in some of the bigger fights, let alone also trying to record it while playing out that fight. I’d be lucky to have more than like 2 FPS if I tried to do that.

14

With 40 points in Shadow Strike, 48 points in passives, and only 32 in active skills, none of which are truly capped, out of which only 17 points are used for active damage dealing, with which again the main purpose actually seems to be CC, I wouldn’t exactly have guessed your build has a ‘casting focus’. In fact, I’d say your build is quite weapon heavy, and as such a WPS focus seemed to me to require only a relatively minor variation. Then again, I might be totally misreading the situation, and’d been better off ripping off parts of your build and presenting it as my own.

15

Well, the thing is, I’m focusing on being a caster casting Shadow Strike as my primary DPS, being focused on casting one specific skill on CD, with that CD being as modified as I can possibly make it. I’m actually mostly ignoring it’s weapon damage component, I almost don’t use my basic attacks except for the short time SS is on CD. RoS is CC, but also a devotion procer for getting my Leviathan procs out, and is mostly used for that, not the fact it’s its own skill, and my Blade Spirits are in a similar situation, being used more for devotion procs than their own damage. The only skills I have for damage that are not devotion procers are Shadow Strike for single target, and OFF for trash clear/CC.

And anyway, the core of your build (poison/acid based WPS) is far better handled by a Witch Hunter build quite frankly, as Occultist has far better poison support than Arcanist. Witch Hunter has a few viable build differences sitting around in it, and honestly is probably one of the most overpowered classes currently in the game currently, due to changes to crit mechanics and the fact poison damage has eaten the least nerfs of all the damage types in recent history.

And you still are coming into my thread, which is generally supposed to be focused on my build and how it works, and then asking for tips for a 100% different build. WPS builds play very different from CD casting builds, regardless of if it uses a melee weapon based attack or not, and AS and CDR are very… exclusive stats as far as a scaling method goes. Again, its similar to me going to ask a summoner Conjurer for tips about how to play a vitality caster Conjurer build. It is almost a completely exclusive build, with just about nothing in common.

And just again, you are showing a complete lack of knowledge about how some Arcanist skills scale at all, in leaving a 1 point OFF. OFF is probably the absolute worst 1 pointer skill in the game, as you can’t even call it a devotion proccer as you can’t bind devotions to it.

Spellbreaker also probably has the worst possible OA growth of all classes, meaning it has rather low crit synergy as well, and to make matters worst you didn’t even rank the only source of OA within the class combo when you left Inner Focus unranked. Seriously though, I have enough issues with keeping my OA high enough as to maintain 100% accuracy and the 10%+ crit rate, even with me using the absolute highest OA granting gloves in the game with me using a near perfectly rolled Elite Harvester’s Grips.

16

I somehow doubt that sacrificing so much for CDR will give you more dps than the DW spellbreaker build i posted recently.

low cd ss uses a buttload of mana too, are you going oom at all? i remember the guy that orignially posted the full cdr ss build mentioning mana problems

if you can’t post vids, you can alternatively post some kill times - for ultimate dummy in a3 or sharzul/fabius.

ur gc shows a lvl 19 ss, this is on only 1 weapon and missing alot of flat bonus dmg from gear by not using nightblade gears.

my dw ss is on a 2ish sec CD with belgothian carnage procs double casting it every few secs, it crits for 200k on fabius as shown in my vid.

with that said SS still only accounts for half of my total dmg on a single target. you basically have zero single target dmg outside of SS, so unless ur doing over 4-6x as many SS casts as me your dmg will be lower.

OFF while good is also an unreliable source of AOE as it doenst work on many enemies, the dw procs esp deathmarked weapons give more reliable aoe and LS.

full CDR thing sounds really great on paper but seems to me more gimmicky than effective, but do prove me wrong with some kill times or vids.

17

Steelflame - have you considered a Trozan’s Starkeeper for a BiS weapon for this build? It has the cooldown of the Temporal Tempest but adds in a VERY high damage proc. Also mixes well with Trozan’s Hat if you are using that to get even more cold damage.

18

I am not BIS (So going by cleartime/kill speed isn’t 100% accurate compared to those builds that are twinked/spent 200 hours farming legendaries/cheated to an easy BIS for shows), but in clears I tend to zero out the entire crowd in about 2-3 seconds in either SoT or BoC, heros take about 4-6 seconds, and I can spend almost 100% of my time between enemy packs in Shadow Strike. If I had BIS, my kill times would probably improve by 50%+, as it would add a LOT of damage that I’m currently lacking. I’ve only got like 3-4 BIS at best, and the sheer range of improvement potential is massive. Last time I fought the BoC boss in ulti, he took about 20-30 seconds IIRC. As most of that time was me waiting on my Mirror CDs, further increase to mirror uptime would make him turn into a joke.

As for mana, I have 5 buffs that require upkeep on my mana. I never use mana potions. I think I might have gone oom once. To be fair, the enemy I was fighting at the time had energy burn/leach, so I doubt that was because of my energy consumption. If I go out of battle for a while, my energy regens really fast, even with my large upkeep cost, so I never have an issue with energy. A big part helping me on that is that Nightfall applies a nice chunk of weapon damage in a large AoE, which means I apply my energy leach from IEE in a fairly large AoE.

19

alot of my gear aren’t the best rolls but at least they are the right pieces, so they aren’t BiS by any means but i suppose they are better than your gear at the moment.

my SS 2 shots heros so they go down in like 1-2sec but your build being able to chain cast ss for movement is pretty nice as i often have to waste SS on trash for movement.

i suppose hard to compare without you having at least the right pieces but would be interested in seeing some kill times with near BiS gear.
u need mirror vs sharzul pre-enrage? squishiness might be an issue for bosses tho…

20

22/12 Nidalla’s gives 30% cooldown reduction on Shadowstrike…max from Starpact is 15% and you can just about scrape 40% from gear (Seers amulet of the Grove anyone?) which means you can get up to ~85% CDR on Shadowstrike…

…having played my Spellbreaker in this variety (as well as Jajaja’s :D) I would say that though 85% CDR Shadowstrike is fun, it’s more like flying by the seat of your pants and it’s very difficult to cover your resistances with all the gear you need to dedicate to getting there (only really have pants / gloves & rings) to cover your resistances!