I’ve heavily updated the build and the OP based on everyone’s feedback here as well as my own growing understanding of Grim Dawn. The updated build has 3K DA, 8.5K health, +3100% aether damage with Moment of Clarity, 26/16 Devastation, 26/16 Callidor’s Tempest, 3K OA, significantly improved Devotions (removed Hand of Ultos, added Ghoulish Hunger, Arcane Bomb, and Spear of the Heavens), and maintains 53% CDR.
Nice! I was hoping to see a build like this. With max rolls, that is 54 CDR + Time Loop + Time Dilation. And I think both Time Loop and Time Dilation benefit from CDR too.
I hope to see the build at a point where it can clear most content.
Edit: Read more text. Thanks for pointing out HC CDR aether Spellbinder Rei too
Ptirodaktill had a post here with some cool adjustments to the build, but he deleted it (I think?). The grimtools link he shared is this. Notable changes:
Uses an MI ring
Has 3K more health
Has a little bit less aether damage
Has a bit less armor
Has much better stun resist (20% more)
Has a bit less cast speed
Doesn’t have Giant’s Blood or Wayward Soul. But with some slight tweaking we can trade 500 health for giant’s blood
Overall I think it sacrifices some offense for some defense, but it’s definitely interesting. I’m hesitant to add an MI to the build because I have enough trouble finding legendaries as it is.
(thanks ptirodaktill, I do appreciate it!)
Don’t forget Aldanar’s Vanity! That’s basically a second Time Dilation (slightly longer CD and only -5 seconds to active cooldowns, but it’s basically the same effect, except it can proc from ANY crit).
And yes, devotion and item skills benefit from CDR. The crazy CDR of this build means you can keep your skills up almost constantly.
Lokarr defeated. Took some respeccing to get better stun resistance. GrimTools. I updated the OP with this build plus some tweaks inspired by ptirodaktill’s adjustments.
Gave Avatar of Mogdrogen a go, and his health bar is just ridiculously big. I’ve been one shot by >9K crits twice now. Not sure if I really want to try to push through the whole fight. I think I’d need way more DA and Lightning Resist to pull it off. currently I only have 86% + 57% overmax lightning resist, which isn’t nearly enough to deal with his -130% resist debuff. If I had stormshround ointment and tweaked my augments I could probably beat him, but for now I’m just going to cop out and say “nah”.
EDIT: Maybe tomorrow I’ll try him out with Stormshroud Ointment + Kymon’s Conduit applied to Belt/Boots/Pants. That should be enough to avoid getting one-shot.
EDIT 2: I went back and defeated all the Nemesis monsters again, they’re much easier now. I didn’t need Blade Barrier on certain nemeses at all, may have used it more than necessary on some others (was playing safe).
I went back and defeated all the Nemesis monsters, they’re much easier now. I only needed Blade Barrier against AoM nemesis monsters ocassionaly, but I used it a lot against Grava’Thul because I wasn’t sure if my reduced max HP made it possible for him to get a one-shot crit on me.
Sorry for criticizing your beloved concept but all the time you spend in blade barrier is the time you are not attacking mobs. Maybe this whole concept could work much better with a DOT.
Criticism is fine so long as it’s meant constructively.
I’m not sure exactly how a DOT based build could work for this. Maybe a frostburn build could work?
Anyways, that’s not necessarily true. So long as I have devastation going when I cast blade barrier the majority of my DPS is still being applied. CT doesn’t deal nearly as much damage as 26/16 devastation combined with all my other skill procs. There’s also spear of the heavens and a few other skills which can trigger, so the overall DPS lost is fairly low (assuming my execution is correct). I think you would be hard-pressed to make a DoT build with this concept and manage similar kill speed.
And, keep in mind, blade barrier isn’t strictly necessary against most enemies, I just like to play safe because I’m not very good at reading telegraphed attacks. You can probably use blade barrier half as much as I use it for all fights except celestials.
EDIT: I tried it (messed around in GrimTools for like an hour), but it’s really hard to pull off. The items which work best with the build simply can’t work on a frostburn loadout. If you want to try it go for it, but I don’t think it’s possible to do while keeping enough conditional CDR/+skills to be viable.
Fought avatar of mogdrogen for 32 minutes. Got him to about 40% health, then died. I think if I had more OA I would be able to crit him, which would let me actually kill him in a reasonable time frame. As it stands, I could probably beat him but it would take an hour, which is kinda stupid.
EDIT: And before you comment about Blade Barrier, I only used it a few times in the fight. Probably about once every 3 minutes.
I felt like I made tons of mistakes, but the crazy sustain from Ghoulish Hunger and other procs almost always being up made it so I just didn’t die. I regularly went down a fair bit of health, going below 2000 a few times (would blade barrier/potion/mirror immediately when that happened). But I also saw my health go down to half for a frame before going back up to full quite a bit. I was overall very surprised at how effective I was able to sustain against his fairly bursty damage.
I’ve made some progress on Gladiator crucible. I died once on wave 110 because I wasn’t really paying attention (and my framerate was getting really bad b/c I was recording, making hard to play). Tried to adjust my graphics settings and OBS wonked out - wouldn’t get image from Grim Dawn anymore. I think I’ll get gladiator crucible figured out sometime in the next couple days, assuming I have the time to play. (just evacuated from my house because of the fires in the area - I live in southern california)
My suggestion would be take survivor’s ingenuity for your rings and your amulet. You killed Lokarr, that is no small feat. The build is starting to look better.
I’ll look into it. The only real problem with Survivor’s ingenuity is it doesn’t provide any resists. But I think I could make it work. I feel like the DA is fine though, tbh. The extra damage seems so small it’s insignificant. I feel like I really need +% crit damage, more OA, and health. But I’ll give it a try.
EDIT: I really think wish I could use Mindwarp, but swapping Aldanar’s vanity loses us a ton of CDR, and swapping wand loses us so much +% damage and +1 to nightblade skills. I feel like the debuff could be really strong, but it just doesn’t seem viable to use…
If you’re willing to use Green MIs you can get more HP. And dieing fast when you make a mistake doesn’t happen as much anymore. That’s only really the case when fighting celestials now.
I’m also going to be looking into removing Aldanar’s Vanity and dual wielding either Mindwarp or Decree of Aldritch, (though I’m afraid the CDR we lose will make the build considerably less effective).
I’m also going to test the frostburn variation I posted at mammothhunter’s suggestion on the previous page.
I think the build is strong, but no buffs/banners Gladiator Crucible to wave 150 doesn’t seem quite doable, and I feel kill speed could be improved. I’m hoping that one of the ideas listed above will improve the build’s offensive strength without sacrificing too much defenses.
It was funny build you do so I try do almost same but use albretch ather ray some weapon. The problem is the health is so low and cant was invicible 100% always http://www.grimtools.com/calc/62a6B0OV
I try first go over 200 in cast speed/attack but see 200 was max
If you adjust your components and augments you can get max resists and a lot more health. You should really avoid investing any attribute points in cunning/spirit save to meet gear requirements. Your DA in particular is quite terrible. The big bads will crit you for all your health in the window between MoE/BB casts.
Also there’s no reason to overmax Blade Barrier or Mirror of Ereoctes. Damage reflection will never be large enough to be significant, and that’s the only stat that scales past level 12. So, with further tweaks: grimtools.
Also, I don’t know why you’d want cast speed when using AAR. Does AAR DPS benefit from cast speed? (I’ve never actually used the skill, tbh)
I think AAR is a poor choice, tbh. It’s one of the weakest skills in the game and because it’s a channeled skill you won’t be able to life leech (via attack damage converted to health) while stunned/disrupted/petrified/frozen/out of mana/repositioning/in blade barrier. Even if it had better DPS, you’re going to be very glassy in fights with strong enemies like Nemeses and Celestials.
EDIT: You also don’t have Widow in your devotions, so you’re lacking on resistance reduction, which is really necessary for damage to scale well against bosses/nemeses/celestials. Your only sources of resist reduction that apply to your main damage type (aether) are -10% from open hand of mercy and -8% from corruption (I don’t think having two corruptions as in your original build would stack, but I could be wrong).
I did adjust things so you have Ghoul in my link above, because I think Ghoul is absolutely a must have with a high CDR build (4% constant ADCTH and b/c of CDR the proc buff can be up constantly, assuming you drop below 45% health often enough).
EDIT 2: One more grimtools with widow and toad in devotions.
