[Something not very Clever about Freezing]: cold Flames of Ignaffar Mage Hunter (SR75, controller friendly)

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
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Part fourteen of my controller friendly build series: Cold Flames of Ignaffar Mage Hunter.

Grimtools link.

After the success of my Chaos FoI Mage hunter, I looked for other FoI avenues to pursue. After fire Purifier, which was a moderate success, I tried Cold Mage Hunter, which is tanky but very very slow.

I thought of doing this as an Infiltrator, but ultimately opted for Mage Hunter for reasons I already don’t remember. I also just saw that a similar Infiltrator version of this build exists, having been created by Willnoword, and appears to be better. I don’t use the full Mageslayer set, but otherwise they’re very similar. Although I think my Mage Hunter is tankier, the Infiltrator appears to be much faster, I think due to its increased resist reduction.

So, with all that said, I’m going to make this guide extremely brief, since my chaos FoI Mage Hunter is just better, and it looks like Willnoword’s Infiltrator is a better cold FoI.

In game stats:

cold FoI
cold FoI776×488 68.6 KB

Video proof of clear

Fight tips

  • Defense (excerpt from my Chaos FoI): the most important thing is to keep casting FoI, since its lifesteal will quickly heal you to full.

  • Controller: if you have FoI bound to “A”(xbox)/“X”(sony)) When you interrupt FoI by casting another spell, there will be a slight delay before restarting FoI. If FoI is on “A”, the game will initiate an auto attack before realizing that FoI is available, robbing you of damage and delaying your healing. If you bind FoI to another button, this should go away.

Gear

  • Spelldrinker: since there is no cast speed on the off hand (WHY?), you need a lot of casting speed on your main hand, and Spelldrinker provided a decent means of achieving this.

  • Coven Sky Seal: not a common choice, but Intensify is very important, and it’s not hard to get a Coven Sky Seal with 4% OA and 4% DA, which I don’t think any other ring can match.

  • I wanted to use Rimeforged Mantle, but it turns out I don’t have one. I do have a Mageslayer’s Shoulderguard, and it does give a big (but not entirely necessary) boost to aether and chaos resists.

Leveling tips

When levelling this build, you may struggle for healing. If you can get a Bloodsworn Sigil, that will help a ton. Otherwise, you’re going to struggle. The fire and lightning to cold conversions isn’t really feasible with <94 items, so I just ran fire FoI with the cold devotions, and it worked pretty well.

Pay attention to your energy management in item and component choices, since it can easily get out of hand.

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small optimization tip
if when using 2 mono resist augments, for which a duo exist, you get less total resist than if using 2 duo
(effect seems often missed by people)
ex 1x 12 pierce + 15 vitality res
vs 2x 10-10, for total 20 pierce and 20 vitality, gives 5 more each resist on every 2nd slot
(potentially saving up an entire augment slot over all the slots)

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I posted Infiltrator, not Deceiver :slightly_smiling_face:.

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Whoops, fixed it, thanks. Man, I’m bad with names.

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You’re absolutely correct. However, I didn’t want to do the entire Forgotten Gods DLC to get the rep to unlock the ones this build called for, and then I forgot to fix it on the grimtools link. goes and fixes it on the grimtools link. Thanks for the feedback as usual.

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