It’s been awhile since I played Grim Dawn, but I was working on this guy for awhile as my main. This was an immensely fun build both to level and screw around with. The statistics here don’t match what I have in game of course because I have a mess of augments and some really unique rings that I can’t duplicate.
I don’t remember the leveling strategy or anything so I can’t (unfortunately) propose it as a build. It’s also not max or even > Lv 60. But the build is super satisfying. Shadow striking into mobs to tear them up with ring of blades, while chewing through mobs with savagery alongside a summoned shadow.
I just wanted some off the cuff advice about a couple of questions I had because I haven’t played in awhile. I’m currently in Epic difficult and slogging through the catacombs soon.
First up. What belt would anyone recommend with good elemental resists that supports a dps bleed/pierce build.
Second. Is there an ideal armor rating for Elite -then- Ultimate?
Third. Should I bother to max Shaman or Nightblade.
Fourth. I remember the plan I had for this character was to also get Oleron’s Blind Fury constellation and just pour out damage however I’m wondering if that’s inadvisable for the Ultimate difficulty. Should I be thinking about tankiness?
Your build feels a bit strange. Seems that you use savagery as primary attack - why go for primal strike then? And totally ignore Nightblade WPS. I think you should either drop Savagery and go fully 2H synergy, or drop Primal strike and go full DW.
If you choose go 2H, you will want to get Stormcallers pact for its great synergy with Primal strike. So max the Shaman mastery bar, and primally go for lightning damage. You should respec your deovotions in this case.
If yo go DW, you probably will want to max both mastery bars for Execution, Primal Bond and maybe Blade spirit. Your damage will be mostly pierce, then bleeding and cold.
Your Primal Strike points are holding you back no matter what you do, so get rid of those.
Your weapon only has 25% armor pierce base. If you want to stay piercing highly recommend go all in on piercing. If you want to do bleed, go all in on bleed. Right now you seem to be trying to straddle the two and that is a path to ineffectiveness. Can’t really give you more feedback until you decide which of the two you are focusing on.
Its hard to say what belts you will find while leveling. Any green+ belt with life, DA or OA, and resis will be nice.
In Ultimate my melee chars have 2k+ armor as a minimum. I can’t remember Elite but my motto is usually to keep armor up-to-date with the highest level items that are dropping.
You will likely want to max Shaman for Primal Bond if you plan to use Bleed.
Oleron’s Blind Fury is possible but you may have bigger prioritizes like life leech and max resis which also depends on your gear. Oleron’s constellation gives bonuses mostly to physical damage though.
I also agree with the others about primal strike. If you are looking for other skill points to optimize then you can consider reducing Brute Force to 1 skill point because it does not help bleed damage.
Well I’ll definitely take a tweek to build and remove Primal Strike. I expect it was just a hold over from earlier in the game when it’s a pretty effective cc and burst of damage.
re: bleed & pierce: I think I remember reading in 2017 that you always wanted two damage types but I didn’t realize there was a point where you should divest from that two damage type. I’m pretty sure I was trying to emphasize bleed damage over pierce it’s just an easy buff to get as a Nightblade.
You can read all sorts of things on the forum, many of them wrong. While it may be possible to build 2 damage types at once (and some sets/skills definitely supports this) it is frequently better to specialize. Lacking multiple items that provide support for your chosen combination results in you splitting your bonuses. Basically you can split your focus and do half as much damage all the time, but are prepared if you run into an enemy that heavily resists one or the other of your damages… Or you could go all-in on one and do a lot more damage for 95% of the game and just accept the slowdowns that occasionally come when an enemy has heavy resistances (also it isn’t as bad as you might think, if you have appropriate resistance shred).
For bleeding support your primary resist shredders are going to be Rend (huntress) and devouring swarm - you can easily spec into both. Consider maxing Circle of Slaughter and the first node of Phantasmal Blades for heavy bleeds - the combo will give you a great 1-2 punch of on demand bleeding and make bosses fumble like crazy. Also definitely max out Feral Hunger for increased chance to hit, increased weapon damage (amp’d by Savagery, will inflict your weapon damage bleeds) and increased health restore.
Where to find those skill points? Upheavel isn’t great - it won’t affect the main target and as such can be dropped without incident. Brute Force is for lightning builds so can be lowered to one point without issue. Mogdrogen’s Pact, unless you need the energy regen, can be safely lowered to one point in a bleed build. No need to spend more than one point into Blade Barrier. Without some +shaman skills you can drop Oak Skin (at least for now, when I make Shaman builds I usually include a few points here as my very last skills in the 90-100 range, other skills permitting)
You may want to consider dropping Blade Trap too. In my experience using it the way to tell if an enemy is going to be immune to blade trap is to ask “Do I really feel I need to blade trap this enemy?” If the answer is yes then they’ll be immune.
He was probably planning to focus on bleeding damage initially. Back in the day some of the most relevant endgame content (i.e. Steps of Torment) more or less forced you to have a secondary damage type since enemies had 400% bleeding resistance and were basically immune to that damage type.
Gladly Crate wisened up and lowered those numbers. Plus, now that there’s an abundance of resistance reduction options available, focussing on bleeding damage is no longer a hindrance.
Without tinkering too much with what you already have, I’d suggest the following changes to your skill point allocation: http://www.grimtools.com/calc/0V0J16XN
Primal Bond was the biggest gap in my build. A larger health pool allows my to not rely so heavily on snares and stuns. I was definitely planning to focus on bleed and blade trap is a solid bleed choice, combining it with the devouring totem allows me to ignore most mobs and focus my savagery on the mob’s tankiest or deadliest enemy. I was originally planning to get the Oleron constellation and so I was keeping stacks in brute force to make sure that dealt ridiculous amounts of internal trauma.
You’re kind of suggesting a different build entirely. I’ll definitely look into stream lining my build more.
Oh man. I forgot that devouring swarm lowered bleed resistance. I’ll definitely look into specking into that. I can probably throw that out instead of blade trap.
You know you can directly download your character file into grimtools right? Your build is quite strange. A bleed build that doesn’t use grasping vines or devouring swarm? Vines an amazing trash clearer and can hold in place any enemies that might be inclined to charge you. Blade trap is awful sorry to tell you. Rend is super important for bleeding builds and you will want it maxed by the time you hit ultimate. There are some amazing end game two handed purple weapons that support bleed and shaman class in a massive way. I think it is the mythical wildblood crusher or the set that gives ADctH for grasping vines.
I don’t remember why I went 2 handed. Like I said. It’s been quite awhile since I was playing Grim Dawn. I think a small part of it might have been that I liked the incongruity of it.
I have no idea what happened really. I seem to remember wanting to make a night blade but I found a lot of the skills super boring so I just picked Shaman because I saw some overlap. I am not a power gamer. Just ask my friends who often make 2-3 character pre season in PoE while I make one, and rarely do a lot of maps.
Honestly I’m getting kind of confused and annoyed with Grim Dawn already. I probably stopped because I’m not fucking smart enough to understand how Grim Dawn’s supposed to work. Also I’m surprised that there hasn’t been any work on the UI. In the skill tree there aren’t any key words or even unique borders around the different types of skills? Buff and Debuff Icons are still super small. You can scale the entire interface yeah, but that’s a little impractical.
