Hi folks, I made a little paladin build based on rune of kalastor. I don’t expect it to be stome top performing build but it was a fun idea. I feel tanky enough and the damage is OK, but the problem is I feel I don’t have enough healing and my hp is just getting chipped away until I die.
This is my build: Paladin, Level 100 (GD 1.1.9.6) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator
Can anyone help me with finding a way to heal with this build? I didn’t find any way to lifesteal with kalastor, thanks!
Generally I’d say there are four main ways to solve the problem of focusing on an attack that doesn’t allow any lifesteal:
a) slap a lifestealing devotion proc on it. Usually this will be Bat, but for most builds that means you need a way to convert the pierce/vit damage on Bat to your main damage type to get some actual healing off of it. That necessitates a whole lot of gear changes. With your phys focus you could go for Maul (Dire Bear), you’re almost there but stopped before you finished. I don’t have experience with trying to sustain solely off of Maul, so I’m not sure that would work.
b) if you’re a character with high cooldown reduction, focus on healing procs such as Dryad, Giant’s Blood, Wayward Soul, Wendigo Totem. I haven’t found that to be too comfortable myself though, you have to be very careful how much damage you’re letting through, else your procs might not sustain you enough. Involves a lot of kiting and smart use of “invulnerability” windows (Mirror of Ereoctes, Blast Shield, Resilience etc.). Also helps if your health is very high, you have some % healing increases or you have very good defenses, so that what healing you do get off of your procs is more effective.
c) sustain off of health regen. It really eats up a large portion of your build, way more than trying to fully convert Bat. It will often take up the majority of your inventory, components and your skill and devotion tree to get enough regen support, assuming you’re not using, say, a set that already naturally works off of regen. The plus side is, if you do get that regen high enough, it can be super comfortable and reliable, you can just stand there, take hits and your health is constantly full.
d) if your main focus is a cooldown skill, try to squeeze in a spammable attack skill with high %WD (assuming your attack/cast speed is reasonable enough) and use that to sustain combined with high % attack damage converted to health (like, say, 16 % or more). I’ve only done that on one character so far (Barrelsmith Grenadier) but it worked surprisingly decently.
With the direction you’re going you’re probably closest to d), cause you don’t have high CDR, Bat on Kalastor is gonna be too sporadic because of the cooldown on Kalastor, and you don’t have too much space for regen. I’d probably just integrate Righteous Fervor into the build and try to get 16+ % lifesteal on the devotion tree and gear.
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Personally I will pick at least 2 mastery skills, rather than relying only on RoK. Your shield has no -cdr, while full set gives 100% ele converted to physical and -cdr to Aegis, Aegis has %weapon dmg, hit multi target and can life steal easily.
@lMarcusl
Thanks for the detailed suggestions. Unfortunately bear and i assume bat don’t work on RoK, I can’t bind them to it. I tried to use RF for heal but it doesn’t seem enough, i’ll try to add more life steal to it though.
@holystar88
Thanks for the reply, I thought about octavian shield and I will try it again but it greatly reduces my tankiness. and I think you confused the cdr, it gives -1 sec to forceweave, I don’t see it gives cdr to aegis, it does give nice dmg bonus though.
edit: Sorry about misinfo, RoK can’t be bound onbear but can be bound to bat, I just assumed without checking lol.
you can bind bat to RoK, not that i personally would because of Bat being gorgeous on low cooldown skills, like Stormbox
Bear/maul is easy, plop a point into volcanic stride and you have one of the best triggers in the game, alternatively you can use Judgment, tho it’s not as good “on the move”/from pack to pack, but it’s decent and has good reliability uptime on bosses
and assassin’s mark probably shouldn’t be on judgment, because of how you can only get 1 trigger on an instant aoe dmg skill like that; even if judgment hits an entire screen of 100 enemies, and you crit all 100 enemies, only 1 will get debuffed the way it works
so there stuff like stormbox, vire’s might with volcanic stride also works nice, or ofc Rune of Kalastor could be decent despite cooldown since it’s not considered 1x instant dmg like judgment is because of frags
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Wow that’s a lot of new info for me, tnx!
so if a devotion has a debuf, it can only applied once per damage tick of a skill?
and you recommend binding bear to volcanic stride because it’s DOT will easily trigger the bear even if i’m not actively hitting the enemy? if that’s the case then it’s perfect for my hit and run strat lol.
I find it weird that I can’t bind bear to RoK, or to Oleron, do you know how it’s decided what can I bind it to?
yes and no
Judgement is a specific type of AoE, it applies all the dmg on the screen hit in 1 hit, because of that it can only trigger a devotion proc once/on 1 target
ex Forcewave is a “wave” aoe, the “travel” is not instant so 1 swing from forcewave can potentially trigger multiple devotion procs in its dmg path
Vire’s might is a 2 part skill, it has a direct hit travel dmg like forcewave, “you charge through enemies hitting anyone on your path” - but it also has an after effect when you take volcanic stride, you get a flame trail that lingers; this flame trail can then hit enemies individually each tick
it’s important to note it’s not the true DoT part that does it, Volcanic stride has a pseudo dot component, and it’s the pseudo dot that triggers things, not the burn; true dots, like burn, can’t trigger anything, not devos not item procs not lifesteal etc
Kalastor has fragments and projectiles, this means each hit isn’t 1 hit like judgment, each projectile and fragment counts for their own hit
Stormbox is both an Aoe pseudo dot, and a weird extra effect of “channeled” dmg
that means stormbox gets multiple triggers because it has the AoE pseudo dot, that after first cast will tick individually once per second on targets, and then has the lightning tether which will tick x/sec dependin on your cast speed; and the tether can overlap and hit enemies caught in the beam not just the main target
which then results to multiple proc chances just on main target but also potentially on enemies near main target
judgement can be an ok trigger for Bear/Maul because the cooldown lines up perfectly and makes it a 100% trigger, it means you get somewhat poor application of Maul “on the move” if you kill packs quick, because you only get it guaranteed every 5secs, but provides you 100% uptime on main target atleast.
But assassin’s Mark, on judgment only gives you 4 chances of 4 applications of assasin’s mark, which isn’t great on multi targets, but also not great when it’s a priority devo proc you want to not risk not triggering on such long cooldowns
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