Hi there, long time fan of ARPGs, and recently got hooked into GD that was recommended to me by a friend. I now have 240ish hours into and a solid lvl 85 blademaster. Coming from Path of Exile (PoE), there are some things that I find intuitive and some not so much, but there 2 things that aren’t really explained how they work and would like some assistance with.
Dual Wielding: What exactly does dual wield do? What sort of benefits do I get from DWing weapons? In PoE that I’m familiar with, you get 20% more physical damage, 10% more attack speed, and 15% chance to block attacks. I feel like if there isn’t a tangible benefit to DWing, I’d be better off using a Markovian’s shield that I recently found rather than DWing 2 Warborn gavels. I find the DPS given to lower than if I were single-wield, even though my damage #'s for the skill itself (cadence) is higher DWing than 1Handing. What gives? I would love for someone to explain to this to me. (INB4 tooltip is a lie.)
Reflect and Reflective Heroes: Outside of Nemesis bosses and sloppy play, the only thing that scares the daylights out of me are reflect heroes, and I don’t quite get how they work. Currently I’m experiencing oneshots or near oneshots where I get blown up in a matter of 1-2 seconds because there’s a reflect hero nearby. I heard from my friend that reflect is only an aura granted to the hero when it activates it, but for some reason I am killing myself so fast and I’m not even engaging the reflect hero directly. Best example of this was when I was trying to do some BoC runs, and I keep dying to the fields of despair area where there’s a tyrant that spawns with the reflect mod on. Before I even engage him, who’s at the top corner of screen, I just die in an instant. I mean I can take on Log on Ult with no deaths easy and the fights last 30secs 50secs on average. I just don’t get how reflect is killing me, unless it works like an aura and is applied to all surrounding mobs? If someone could explain how reflect works, that would be awesome. (Could also explain why from time to time I get inflicted with Internal Dmg status and start taking a crap ton of dmg that requires a HP potion.)
I can share my build and details for further discussion on how to prevent myself from instagibbing on reflect as well.
There are no innate benefits to DW like there are in PoE. DW has more offensive skills available to it, namely in the Weapon Pool system of Nightblade, and can make use of Nightblade’s Breath of Belgothian transmuter. For the most part, DW is better if you want more speed and procs. Shields are better if you want to live longer. On average, neither are inherently superior to the other.
Is there a question here?
Reflect reflects attempted damage, meaning damage before resists, etc. are considered. It reflects it to you as a separate instance of damage, meaning you can resist it with regular resists. There is also % Reflection Damage resistance as well.
Largely speaking, Reflect is very rarely an issue. The two times, in endgame, where you would need to worry about it is with an Internal Trauma build or with an AAR build. From your description, I very much doubt it was reflect that killed you, but it’d be hard to know without seeing your character build.
There are no AoE Reflective auras in Grim Dawn (at least, none available to enemies).
Dual Wielding: There are two main benefits. First, you get a 50% chance to attack with both weapons at once. Secondly, skills. The dual blades line has some pretty good procs (most notably execution), and many skills that use your weapons (e.g. Shadow Strike, Markovian’s Advantage) use both weapons if you are dual wielding.
Plus, you get two weapons which allows for dual wielding certain things good for your build (e.g. 2x Stormheart for lightning sabo)
Reflect: Reflect heroes can be real dangerous if you’re not paying attention/there are a lot of enemies and you can’t see the aura. The reflection aura is temporary and iirc nullifiable. It is gold/yellow and kind of… spiky? Once you learn what it looks like and avoid using your nuke skills (including cadence hits) on reflecting enemies it’s easier to deal with. I definitely still casually kill myself off reflect sometimes though when I’m not paying attention (30k Internal Trauma over 5 sec on myself the other day thanks to a myrmidon set + weapon proc + cadence :rolleyes:)
E: Ninja’d by Ceno, listen to him since he knows way more than me.
Hi Ceno, thanks for answering so quickly. I’ll provide my character info down below:
With the following buffs on: Veil of Shadow, Field of Command, Oleron’s Rage, Vengeance of Cairn (pierce retaliation), and Void-Ward Aura (+chaos rez). No Pneuma burst, but with it I get 12% inc total speed and 20/20 chance to dodge melee/projectile attacks.
Character Info: (forgot to put up my chaos rez aura, I’m capped 83% chaos rez)
Skill Choices:
Devotion Tree: (3 points in crossroads - absolutely need to reach Dire Bear, Unknown Soldier, and Oleron)
Gear:
Warborn Gavel x2, one with Imbued Silver and Oleron’s Blood, with Outcast’s Might aug.
Warborn chest with Chains of Oleron, Acid/poison rez aug
Warborn helm with Sanctified Bone, Acid/poison rez aug
Warborn Pauldrons with Mutated Scales, Acid/poison rez aug
Grasp of Unchained Might with Antivenom Salve, Acid/poison rez aug
Earthshatter Treads with Mark of Mogdrogen, Acid/poison rez aug
Hellforged Legplates with Silk Swatch, Acid/poison rez aug
Reforged Chains of Oleron belt with Dense Fur, Acid/poison rez aug
Avenger of Cairn with Vicious Jawbone, Consecrated Silver aug
Belgothian’s Sigil with Corpse Dust, Consecrated Silver aug
Lifegiver Signet with Corpse Dust, Consecrated Silver aug
Badge of Mastery with Vicious Jawbone
Oleron’s Wrath relic
Quite an impressive character. I can definitely see you being a little banged up from your Internal Trauma, if it were Reflected. So yeah, I’d caution you to be wary of Reflect when it’s active. Major sources of Reflect are
Reflective heroes -> Yellow/orange spiky sphere
Possessed Mages -> light blue spiky sphere (mirror of ereoctes)
Thanks for the reply as well, OmnipotentSnail. I believe indeed the Cadence/ID I’m doing is just straight up killing me, although I’m not directly hitting the reflect hero, which is really odd if it isn’t an aura.
Also I don’t know how to put images into a spoiler-box, so please forgive me on the long list of images.
Thanks for the reply as well Ceno. Yea, a lot of my gear was handmedowns from my friend, like the relic/ammy/lifegiver ring. The Warborn set legs, and belt I traded for and the gloves/boots I found.
Thanks for the tip, now I can make my post more clean.
I just thought that running into the same reflective tyrant in 3 BoC runs in the near exact spot was retarded, unless he always spawns there. I don’t want to waste any more skeleton keys if that’s the case.
I definitely will need to watch out for the reflect heroes for sure. Having looked at my build, is there anything I can improve on to reduce my oneshots to reflect? (Getting more physical rez seems impossible, that stat is rare to come by.)
Try to get some more Health Regen? Probably not possible to the extent that it’d a noticeable difference though. Health Regen around 400-600hp/s is good for counteracting the effectiveness of DoTs.
Had I went shaman for my 2nd class, perhaps. Even with Pneuma Burst, I only get 214 life regen, and nothing worth taking in the devotion tree that will get me to the 400+hp/s mark without sacrificing DPS. Lizard and Scales of Ulcama are nice, but I’d have to sacrifice Dire Bear for it, and that’s such a good cluster for my phys-based build.
I hear that only phys rez can reduce Internal Trauma dmg, but getting more phys rez seems impossible without some radical gear changes. Would equipping a shield help in case of reflect?
@Jarl: I took it just for the dmg increase. I know this isn’t a pierce based build, but with all the %pierce dmg I have, it’d be a waste to not put a point into something that’ll give me flat pierce dmg. (no armor conversion with maces)
Put Haunted Steel in one of the Warborn Gavel for ADCTH. Helps against reflect mobs too.
Leave Fighting Form and Squad Tactics at level 12, any points above are wasted. Max Scars of Battle.
Kind of wondering why you maxed Nightblade even though you don’t use any of the final skills. I would pick Ring of Steel just to get Circle of Slaughter and put it at level 12. 50% chance to fumble is really useful, specially against more hard hitting enemies.
About reflect, pretty much the only annoying reflect thing in the game is when enemies spawn with shields with the suffix of Vengeance. It adds reflect damage. The rest of them are easily noticeable by an aura.
@Norzan: I could give up Oleron’s blood… would miss the on-command Cadence-like skill but I can always slot Dryad’s Blessing on my Shadow Strike.
Originally I took this build as a cookie-cutter BM… but the more I fiddled around with the build after getting into Ultimate, the more I became enamored with the idea of going phys-based with the Warborn set. Since I use Cadence as my DPS skill, I don’t feel like I’m getting mileage out of the WPS skills BM offers. I could be totally wrong and it is worth taking, but I chose to max out Cadence worked around that. (I maxed out my skill bar before I settled on the build… there’s nothing wrong with more hp/mp/physique/cunning/spirit I suppose.)
As such, taking Ring of Steel could be an option, but I definitely don’t have the points to get 12 into circle of slaughter without reducing dps or other survivability options.
For the time being I took your advice and took out points in Fighting Form and Squad Tactics and put 4 to max out Scars of Battle at 9/8, 2 to max out Veil of Shadow at 10/10, and the last 4 into Anatomy of Murder at 9/12 for more dps. I use Ground Smash from my boots as a form of AoE, along with Oleron’s Fury.
I can definitely see you being a little banged up from your Internal Trauma, if it were Reflected. So yeah, I’d caution you to be wary of Reflect when it’s active. Major sources of Reflect are