Hi all - title says it all. I have ~700 hours in Grim Dawn but haven’t dipped my toes into hardcore yet. Tonight I intend to do so a sword and board character for hard core, self found.
What are you guys rocking? Any points/useful tips for sword and board, or hardcore in general? Looking forward to responses!
I’m doing a warder right now. Playing soft core, but I started this build with the thought it would be suitable for hardcore. I am focusing on bleed and vitality damage.
When I started, I rushed Wendigo Totem. Stellar skill, and I would definitely get it, but maxing out devouring swarm right away would probably give you more offense, good sustain, and need less points. Other key skills are grasping/entangling vines, the second one in the Mogdrogen line for health (and the point in pact gives you a place to put Turtle Shell if you do Tortoise first), wendigo and its modifier, and primal bond.
On the soldier side, I’m using cadence as my main attack and maxing the first modifier for the bleed. There are other options, but points are at a premium so you have some left for goodies like war cry, Mehnir’s Will, Shield Training, and Overguard, which I consider rather important.
However, one thing to be aware of (if you aren’t already) is that some of the shield recovery from shield training was moved to the shieldmaiden constellation in B31. This was already a great constellation. The fact that it got a big chunk of shield recover might make make it easier/better for doing a non-soldier s&b build, but I haven’t speak to the viability beyond that.
I have had a few deaths, but they were because I hadn’t figured out what I was doing yet, didn’t know how certain bosses worked (got gibbed by all the shots from Thalonis nova at point blank range) or just did something stupid (went wrong way heading into Stonerend yesterday and died to ground damage). Anastasia did wipe the floor with me at a point where my gear was awful (39). There were points where I was struggling and it seemed like my health was getting low every fight, but I hadn’t put more than a minimum of points into swarm yet, which was a mistake.
Thanks for the input. I was considering one of 3 things:
-Warder
-Blademaster
-Battlemage
Or outside chance:
-Druid
I was primarily looking at DA skills. I believe the most you can get is 35% from shaman/arcanist, though you can still get 32% from Battlemage. But one thing I have to take strongly into consider is gear. I have no gear on hardcore and so will be playing this with whatever I find. If gearing up for one of these is far easier than the others, I’ll probably go with that. I am just not that familiar with these builds, only warders which I’ve played a few of.
The bleed/vitality build doesn’t seem terribly gear dependent. Having some +vitality and +bleed is obviously desirable, but it isn’t hard to find. The fact that swarm has resist reduction built into it helps a great deal and you can get more bleed redux from the Huntress constellation. Otoh, my opinion may be skewed because I’ve been rather lucky with drops (e.g. Got crimson spike from turning in Log quest on normal). Unfortunately, I can’t speak to that aspect on the others. Hopefully someone else will chime in.
Oh, if you go that route, pick Angrim. His low level sword and shield are both nice.
I can vouch for 2hander physical damage focused Warder. Currently in act 3 elite in hardcore with mostly self found gear. But I used the stash a little. I will probably try pure self found eventually.
I cannot say how I will do in ultimate but so far doing well.
Pro of such build is resilience not very gear dependent.
I’m not surprised to see Warder pop up a few times. The general defensive bonuses from Soldier combined with Heart of the Wild makes it a very tanky combo. This may be what I end up going with but the DA from Maiven’s does seem very appealing to me too.