Great to see such an original build for an older mastery combo. What crossbow could fill in for levelling until you get the BiS version?
Switching Inquisitor to Soldier in an otherwise well known build for questionable benefits doesn’t strike me as very original.
As for levelling it simply doesn’t work without gear. Closest you can get is DW Bloodsworn pistols and Cadence instead of Touch of Chaos.
I’d recommend creating a “controller-friendly” tag to append to such builds. Would make it easier for me to find them and link them when someone asks for builds good for controller.
First we need to define what it actually means.
For example in this build there’s Doom Bolt and I don’t think there’s a way to cast it precisely (if your main enemy is standing behind trash mob etc.). Even Forcewave is not precise with a controller (ie you cannot shoot in between two zombies not standing in a line to hit them both, you have to kill them one by one because of target lock)
Do we say that this build is controller friendly because Doom Bolt is not the main ability, shooting works well with controllers so build does not lose too much if using a controller? And Doom Bolt spammer where it’s the main ability and precise casting is crucial is not controller friendly?
I would say that if he is actually clearing SR75 on a controller with little issue then it is most likely “controller friendly”. Precision with such skills in Grim Dawn comes down more to the player understanding how to properly place themselves for best effect.
Ok but with such definition it would be hard to find builds that are not controller friendly and yet capable of SR75. Which means definition has little use.
Yes I can agree with that. You definitely play differently with a controller. But it means there’s no need for a tag since you can always adjust your gameplay.
It’s not really what I’m going for anyway. Having an easily searchable tag denoting builds a creator deems as “friendly” would be useful to me. I see such request for controller friendly builds on Steam often enough that it would certainly be handy to have a single link I could give showing them the way.
If a builds creator has played and verified a build to be able to do what they claim on controller comfortably then that’s definition enough for me.
3 Likes
Ok I’m fine with that.
1 Like
I haven’t tested it myself yet but I made a version of this build with the Oblivion relic for smoother trash clearing: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/O2GqXz5Z
Thinking about building this a few characters in the future but I’m not sure how well it will perform.
That looks pretty good, although I’m concerned about the 0% trap resist, and the low stun resist; this build excels on the move. Overall, if you want to stand still and attack stuff, I think you’re going to be better off with a deceiver. I’m also not sure that the ~10% damage from dying god is worth the defense you’d lose in the process though, since this build hits so hard anyway.
Trash clearing isn’t so much of a problem as boss spawned trash blocking your auto attacks (and doom bolts if using a controler), and I’m not sure if the abilities from enropic coil and eldritch pact will make a big enough difference there. It’s worth trying though.
I’ve seen a lot of builds which either use abilities that are misereable with a controller, like AAR, or that have too many active abilities to use on a controller. With a standard xbox controller, I have 8 buttons available for skills. This build uses 5 of them, so that isn’t an issue. Doom bolt can be a problem, but with practice you can usually get it to land where you want, although sometimes you need to delay its cast, so using a controller doesn’t ruin the build.
Since pretty much every build will be weaker on a controller, I’d say a build is controller friendly if the build itself doesn’t need to be changed to be successful on a controller.
I’m new to this game, so I didn’t know that the deceiver version was well known. I made this build because, after trying out a DW purifier, I wanted a ranged build that didn’t derive any strength from standing still. Anything with inquisitor is going to use inquisitor seal, and anything with demolitionist is going to use thermite mine, so with either of those kiting will always result in a loss of damage and/or defense. Being able to safely output high damage while on the move is a pretty good benefit, worth giving up a little peak damage, in my opinion.
I’ll add a few leveling tips.
2 Likes
Just an idea: use Harbinger as main weapon when doing ranged and kiting and weapon swap to Wrath of Tenebris to quickly clear trash mobs or face tank the boss. Zolhan’s technique can give you decent aoe damage with melee weapon.
I dont see any aoe damage in this build. I am missing something?
Man I can’t even do SR65 boss room with this build?
Hi may i know ur devotion route pls? Thankyou 
Technically there is Zolhan’s Technique and Deciamation relic as kind of “Aoe” but yeah the build lack AoE. It was 1.1.7 build which is pretty much a year ago ( i think )
It’s available on the grimtools link (click the book near the bottom left of the screen, then click on devotion)
It seems you can do well with guns, chaos damage and two complete sets.
@Bagel
Let me ask two things:
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Why Witchblade (Occu+Sold) instead of Warlock (Occu+Arca)? Because Soldier makes the build more “sturdy”?
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What about this build? (Make any change you want, if you fell it is necessary, the build is actually lvl 10)… Warlock, Level 100 (GD 1.1.9.7) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator
Soldier brings some very valuable things for an AA build: attack speed and WPS. Rah’Zin set supports these WPS so it’s kinda meant to take either soldier or nightblade.
Also the soldier passives at the bottom give good cc resistances; stun and slow. Edit: and freeze as well. Soldier op? 
Soldier gives some very useful defense, and a big AS boost. More importantly, it gives 2 WPS (weapon pool skills), one of which is buffed by Rah’Zin’s. Judging by your build, you’re unfamiliar with the importance of WPS: they allow ranged attacks to penetrate targets (well, some of them do), and their damage stacks with the default attack replacers, additively for flat damage, multiplicatively for %weapon damage. Here is a great primer on the subject Turbo-charge your auto-attacks with default attack replacers and WPS. It’s a bit old so it doesn’t contain penetration info since that was added in a recent patch, but it explains it really well.
In summary, the percentages add up (until you get over 100%) so in this build, 90% of the attacks will utilize one of the four options: 16% Burning Void, 18% Blazing Fury, 27% Markovian’s Advantage, and 29% Zolhan’s Technique, while the remaining 10% are default attacks. Markovian’s Advantage and Zolhan’s Technique apply some pretty substantial debuffs as well.
Let’s run the damage numbers on the best WPS for this build, Zolhan’s Technique: the basic attack is Touch of Chaos, which does 133% weapon damage + 33-135 chaos damage. Zolhan’s Technique does 238% weapon damage (with the buff from the build) some small internal trauma damage that can be ignored, and 50 chaos damage. If I understand correctly (99% sure I do), the 133% and the 238% get multiplied, for a total of 317% weapon damage, plus 83-185 flat chaos damage on top. To make it even better, this super attack will penetrate targets (I think no more than 6). Basically, if you’re using an auto attack build (that isn’t cadence), the biggest factor in your damage output is WPS.
Your build doesn’t have WPS, so it will do maybe half of the single target damage, and far, far less against multiple targets. It should still be reasonably strong, given that my build could clear SR80 before they added penetration to WPS, but it won’t be top tier. (also, you should take the last 10 points out of arcanist and put them into a skill, probably overload. Skills > attributes).
5 Likes
nice working on it now lol