Sword and Board Commando Advice

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
1

https://www.grimtools.com/calc/DV9AaOPV

This is my build. I do have a level 65 replacement for the mace, but I just reached 65 late last night and was too tired to get it set up with the component and augment.

Got about 90 hours in the game so far, so by no means an expert. Having a full time job and wife with 3 kids, I doubt I’ll ever be rolling Ultimate and farming ultra bosses.

I’ve sort of done a hybrid build-my-own while incorporating some general advice I’ve picked up in research. I haven’t sat down for a long time to evaluate specific detailed builds.

Basically the idea here was to split between physical and fire damage, with plenty of focus in defense/healing.

I’m in Act II on Elite at the moment. I’m not struggling a lot right now, but I suspect that I’ll have to make some changes before tackling Ultimate or AoM in Elite.

I know my gear isn’t that great. Still waiting for RNG gods to bless me with better stuff. I’m mostly looking for advice on skills/devotions.

My suspicions are that I’ll need to ditch forcewave so I can invest more points in the mastery bar and get to Menhir’s Bulwark. However, currently forcewave is a big source of my damage and the stun is always helpful.

Also wondering if I need to just go full physical dps and switch from Firestrike to Cadence. I like dishing out fire though, so I’d like to keep Firestrike if it’s viable.

Anyway, all suggestions/advice welcomed and appreciated.

2

Well, i’m by no means an expert either but i think you should focus mainly on 1 attack skill, and preferably 1 damage type. There are tons of viable commando builds, but i gotta say its one of the only classes i’ve never really played.

But i think you should at least focus on melee or ranged or caster. Few things that i think are important when playing on demo though. First of all you don’t have any points in flame touched which boosts your OA and damage quite a bit. You have blast shield at 14/12 which i don’t think is necessary, 12/12 should be perfectly fine. You only have 1 point in vindictive flame and no points in squad tactics which both boost your attack speed which is important if you’re gonna use firestrike as your main attack. Forcewave however is affected by cast speed.

3

if you want to go the elemental route, which you do, you should indeed take fire strike over cadence

it seems you’re not really committing to what you really want to play, you now have a hybrid S&B/2h elemental ranged build
the best thing to do is to make a choice
if you’re going S&B, it’s better to stick to it
forcewave is a 2h skill, so that doesn’t work in that idea
if you’re going 2h ranged, blitz is no use

maybe it doesn’t matter if you’re not expecting to progress your character
you’re not asking for advice for nothing though right?
I have a child myself and indeed, that takes up a lot of your time
you just get to ultimate slower
if you’re not planning on reaching ultimate, all of this may not matter very much
but if you are you should make a choice on the direction of your build

for the 2h ranged route I would go for something like this: [https://www.grimtools.com/calc/qNYRwbA2](https://www.grimtools.com/calc/qNYRwbA2)
it’s morning here and I don’t have that much time, so this is a quick version
I think it could be enhanced and I have only edited your skill trees and devotion, nothing done about gear

for the S&B route I would like to recommend my own build, you would lose fire strike but it’s very strong:
https://www.grimtools.com/calc/O2GpydjV

4

I rarely use the two handed rifle. It’s just a back up for very specific situations. Definitely want to build skills around S&B.

Thanks for replies so far. Will check back here this evening to follow up.

5

I rarely use the two handed rifle. It’s just a back up for very specific situations. Definitely want to build skills around S&B.

That pretty much means ditching forcewave

6

For what it’s worth, I’ve been working towards this (see also post #695 of that thread for the post-AoM version) with my first character, and it’s worked very well so far. I’ve stalled due to third-playthrough burnout, not because there’s any difficulty at all.

This would be the physical damage Cadence approach that you didn’t seem too enthusiastic about, though.

7

I’m planning to play Ultimate, but I just didn’t know if I would play long enough to farm the legendaries/sets I need for tacking ultra bosses.

If I take 16 points out of Forcewave and 2 out of Blast Shield, that gives me 18 points free. Where should I spend them? Max out the Soldier mastery bar and grab Menhir’s Bulwark / War Cry? Or get those later and grab Flame Touched?

Thanks for the build link, StrUktO. However, I would prefer to stay with Firestrike for now.

Anywhere I can equip some fire resistance reduction? What about my devotions?

8

Mastery and Menhir’s Bulwark, in my opinion. More stats and hit points is always good, especially since you’re significantly under-masteried for your level. Typically one has both bars maxed out around level 50, unless you’re doing a build that stops one bar at 32 for some reason (I never really understood why people do that, particularly at the level 100 level cap). And %damage absorption is an excellent stat, especially with the flat damage absorption from Overguard and Blast Shield backing it up.

Sources of fire RR:

  • Thermite Mines
  • Rhowan’s Crown devotion
  • Solael’s Witchblade devotion
  • Viper devotion (which you already have)

Looks like it should be easy for you to grab the devotions. Thermite Mines is yet another skill competing for your skill points, along with mastery bars, Menhir’s Bulwark, Flame Touched, Brimstone, War Cry, etc. You could pull about ten points from Menhir’s Will since there’s not that much benefit from having it at high level. Somewhere in the 4-6 point range is a good compromise. The over-cap levels of Fire Strike and Explosive Strike are not great either, so you could free up four more points there. And Markovian’s Advantage and Zolhan’s Technique are much less important than Flame Touched, if you want to respec further.

Regarding devotions in general, fire builds typically try to get Ulzuin’s Torch. You can’t have both that and Tree of Life, but it doesn’t look like the Tree gives you much more than the three nodes of Behemoth needed to get Giant’s Blood. That would free up a lot of blue and yellow to spend on green instead.

9

Plenty of things you can do with a S&B commando. Depends on what your priority is. Do you want DPS? Do you want defense? Do you want to go Forcewave? Firestrike? Cadence? Blitz?

The logic of most builds would be to funnel skill points into a primary, spammable attack. The less time you spend using other spells/attacks, the more you use this one hard hitting skill, and the greater your DPS. There are exceptions to this rule of thumb, but let us not venture into that territory.

You would also want to concentrate your damage into a as few damage types as possible. 1 obviously being the best, 2 being the norm, 3 being rather rare, and anything else being bad.

Why? Well, if I concentrate them into a single damage type, the greater my flat damage base, and the more efficacious the %bonus damage will be. It also makes it far, far, far, far easier to apply RR (resist reduction). In addition, it gives you direction in your devotion pathing. If I convert all my elemental damage to aether damage, it follows that I will want to get widow, and spear of the heavens in my devotion.

I therefore think beronath reforged is arguably the best item at a S&B commando’s disposal. It will convert all of the elemental and chaos damage from the demolitionist class into physical damage which is very much so supported by the soldier class.

For example: Cadence commando - https://www.grimtools.com/calc/d2jOgXvV
This toon is by no means BiS’ed (best item in slot). It is by no means fully optimized. I took what I believe to be items which are relatively easier to obtain to make it. Ask around the forums (or me if you like) to see if people have spares they’d be willing to toss your way. You can also trade for them using mats. Ugdenblooms sell like hotcakes at a frat party.

I intentionally left the suffix for the ring empty as it doesn’t really matter what it is. Obviously some are better for our purposes, but the main goal here is to fix our resists. I advice you to go into grimtools, and to look at the various affixes to understand HOW IMPORTANT LVL 94 GREENS ARE. DO NOT THROW THEM AWAY.

P.S Damage conversion from beronath reforged also gives you a lot of flexibility in your devotion pathing. You can look at getting both fiend and ulzuin’s torch as well. You would then be trading defense for damage. What, however, is a MUST here is assasin’s blade for the RR.

The logic of my above build can be translated into all other types of commandos. You can look at jajaja’s double blitzer for more ideas. You can swap out the warborn set for other items if you prefer the firestrike line(intuitively I lean towards markovian or octavius, but I can’t say for certain).

You can also go 2H (i.e. infernal brimstone or shar’zul’s worldender) for forcewave builds.

Good luck and happy hunting! Feel free to PM me for more questions.

@Worblehat - Markovian’s advantage is phenomenal. DA shred is always good. Also, do you think I should include this in the tips I wish I knew before playing? Or is this too detailed?

10

I’s pretty shit animation 1h or 2h unless it’s markovian set that makes it a bit better:)

If not markovaian i’d sooner pump blindside

11

Beronath Reforged looks awesome. Will be nice if I can finally get it. I assume it’s a random drop just like most other items?

My plan is to try finishing the main campaign on Elite. Then I’ll probably finish AoM on Veteran (just went long enough to unlock the factions so far). From there I think I’d like to buy Crucible DLC and do that for a while. Maybe after that finish AoM on Elite. Then consider getting into Ultimate.

Maybe it would be more fun to start different characters, but I’ve always liked trying to max out a character before starting another one, or at least get to a point that progression is so slow that it’s not worth the time anymore.

As someone with limited play time (like I mentioned earlier), personally I would appreciate an optional “smart loot” feature like Diablo 3 has. This heavily tilts the loot tables in favor of items that are specific to your character. I understand, however, that such a feature would be much more difficult to pull off well in GD because of how all the classes work together. It does seem like it could be implemented at least to some degree. For example, they could make items that add to the skills from one of your two masteries more likely to drop than the ones that don’t. I hate seeing a blue/purple drop only to discover its skill buffs are for other classes that I’m not using.

Anyway, veering off topic. Thanks again for the responses. Much to consider. More feedback always welcome.

12

Go to the trading forums.

13

MA is a good skill, I was just saying that if the build is still at the stage of building up key buff skills like Flame Touched and Menhir’s Bulwark, MA shouldn’t be on the radar yet. Or maybe just one point to benefit from any +skills gear that might be available.

Tips thread - the “focus on one key skill” part was definitely a key lesson learned for me. “Focus on one damage type” I found pretty obvious from the start, but it’s certainly a valid point too. :slight_smile: Discussions of specific skills is probably too detailed though. Some sort of Introduction to the Skills of GD guide would be a major project by itself.

Good luck with Crucible. To unlock Challenger you have to beat the Nemesis at Aspirant 100. I have found that to be a problem, and deferred it to level cap and actually being able to cap all resists. Crucible is definitely worth it though; it’s a great way to get new characters started with several devotion points.

FYI, Ultimate is not especially difficult. For me the hardest part of the game was in the 20s and 30s on my first character, getting used to the game and the controls and generally how things work here. After that, easy peasy, Elite and Ultimate have both been trivial.

I’m an altaholic, so obviously I think swapping between many different characters is a great idea. :slight_smile: A couple were created specifically because loot drops seemed weirdly favorable for leveling a certain setup (vit/chaos conjurer, cold spellbreaker). Others were on my to-do list from the start.

I do strongly recommend that you wait until your first character has max rep with most/all factions. Mandates are cheap and awesome, such that you only have to do the rep grind once, ever. :smiley: For the base game factions it didn’t take too much effort to grind out at the end of Elite.

14

IMO, the earliest time to start a new toon is when you get revered with malmouth so you get use exp pots.

15

Here’s my revised build as of now. Level 67.

https://www.grimtools.com/calc/4ZDDpQkZ

16

If you just want to level up fast to try some builds, buy the crucible dlc, ask someone to carry your character to unlock gladiator difficulty, then do die farm in gladiator.

You need at least 2 people to make it works by switching with him after every death because your tributes will run out.