It’s not just about getting the RR, it’s about making sure your main attack does enough damage while also giving you the sustain necessary to survive against packs. Yeah, Occultist has Jarinthor’s head to provide Pierce RR, but what is a Conjurer (or Cabalist) going to attack with to make use of it? I thought about using Chillspikes, but I distinctly remember having a very poor performance every time I tried to use it as a main attack. The removal of Crit damage to these items make these attacks very rough to sustain yourself, and instead are meant to be easy proccer’s or filler damage.
The reason Elemental Blademaster did so well, despite the low RR, was because it had 30K weapon damage and Cadence is a really good default attack. Something like Savagery with only 15K weapon damage (like in my theorycraft above) simply isn’t going to cut it, at least for my testing purposes.
Here are some additional theorycrafts to fill up more of the chart. Whichever ones are the most promising are the ones I’ll test out next.
Chaos Beronath Reaper - I know Chaos Witch Hunter can go quite high in SR, so a Reaper shouldn’t be too terrible, especially with 100% WPS including tons of leeching and decent Weapon damage.
Lightning EoR Sentinel - A dual-RR mastery with a fully capped EoR shouldn’t be so bad, as long as we avoid Grava, right?
It’s weird since except vit support, reaper does not contribute anything to your gears and playstyle; but there’s a helmet that supports both class and bleeding damage; like custom version of demonslayer but atleast some reaper support Reaper, Level 100 (GD 1.1.9.6) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator
Yeah, I didn’t give that build much thought to be honest. I knew Demonslayer and scarab shell could carry the build on their own, so I took this opportunity to test out the buffs to siphon soul. Having a constant -400 OA debuff on everything (including veil of shadows) really shows.
That’s much better than what I threw together
I still have a lot to learn
Honestly I think you can just slap Silverbolt+Pack of Treacherous Means+Bladetwister Signet+some pierce rr conduit to make pierce anything that includes shaman or occultist work.
Just tweaked my grimtools for pierce savagery vindicator for these:
Can’t get to full conversion, but maybe tankiness from % absorb and blood of dreeg and massive +skills can carry enough for Korvaak and maybe SR50 something.
Pierce Silverbolt Death Knight: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/O2GAzRGZ
It’s really really rough. There is pretty much no RR at all (which is why I took Necrosis of all things as relic), Conduits don’t help, so I tried to pump as much Cunning and %wpn damage on WPS to even out
Resist and DA are also pretty shite and the devo map I made up at the last second, so I have no idea if it’s even capable of finishing the Ulti campaign+DLCs
On the plus side, it does get a ton of HP and half-decent armor, but I’m not sure those can save it from having like 30% total RR
Let’s be honest - the pets are doing the yeoman’s work here, and there’s no reason to pick Ritualist over Cabalist, but here’s a build to show that you can run Chaos pets with Ritualist and clear SR65-66 deathless. Since I’ve already done a Chaos Reap Spirit Cabalist, this build was easy to construct and easy to pilot. Making sure the Reap Spirit pets do enough damage is the most important part here, and with tons of pet OA and Primal Bond, you get to see big damage numbers.
It’s up to you whether you think having Goredrinker’s Vire’s Might is sufficient to make this a Pierce + Bleeding hybrid, since the majority of the damage is coming from Pierce Vire’s Might and Pierce Grenado. There is -85% Bleed RR stacked into this build, so I at the very least attempted to make it part Bleeding.
I initially discounted this build since there’s barely any passive sustain, but 23K Health and leeching from Vire’s Might was enough that I was able to run SR65-66 with this deathless. I was really worried about monsters like Iron Maiden due to this build’s horrifically low Physical Resist, but I was able to vanquish her all the same.
If this build covers bleeding, then all that’s left is Vitality damage and Shieldbreaker can be added to the complete list. Getting 2 classes complete is not bad for a weekend’s work.
Aether PB throwing knives at a 360 degree angle is very cool, and the Aether Wind Devils from the off-hand are visually pleasing. Had 2 deaths running SR65-66, but I was able to beat Theodin Marcell in the boss room for SR66 without any deaths, so that balances it out. A little squishy, but the knives do a good job sustaining you, and Wendigo Totem + Giant’s Blood help out a lot in sticky situations.
A very important part about piloting this build is that you want to hold off going ham on the PBlade usage until you can tell that Arcane Bomb has reduced the enemy’s RR. I’m fortunate that Grim Internals gives me that information, but I’d just wait a few seconds after using Aether Corruption otherwise. PBlades take up a lot of energy, and you can easily run out against a boss if you’re too reckless with your usage.
Is there any reason to use a hybrid Vitality/Chaos version over a strictly Vitality version? No. Was this the only way I can get Trickster to do Chaos damage? Yes. I really wanted a Chaos/Cold cooldown PB to take advantage of the -0.7 second recharge, but in my theorycrafting efforts, I had around 1,200% in each damage type (yuck). I wanted to do Chaos Savagery as well, but again, I only had a pittance of Chaos damage once you account for getting Savagery points.
Even though you get more damage out of the Vitality/Chaos blades, I like the Aether PB version better. It actually fits within the theme of the build, and you have plenty of RR from items. Here, you’re just using Devouring Swarm and taking advantage of spam PB’s natural Vitality damage. To reiterate, this was the only way I can get Trickster to do Chaos damage, and I was able to beat SR65-66 deathless (after struggling against… Zantarin, who’s immortal to blade leeching).
So we can celebrate having Trickster complete, and move on to other classes.
Courtesy of @x1x1x1x2 - looks like you can complete Crucible with Chaos Retal DE, so one more for the list.
That leaves Pierce Damage and Acid damage left for Death Knight to be completed, but you get sent to Meme jail for trying Acid Death Knight, so I see this class being unfinished for quite a while.
Some other videos from x1x1x1x2 to add to the list:
Lightning Warlord:
His channel also has a “Pierce” Aegis Warlord, but it looks more like a Physical Retal build with very few Pierce options, so it’s not likely to be doing any significant Pierce damage. I’ll let x1x1x1x2 fill in on how much Pierce damage is actually contributing to that build.
Yeah, Physical is the next damage type that’s closest to complete, so I’ve been thinking about those. Physical AAR was what I was thinking for warlock too.
You can complete crucible with any meme build with decent enough defensive stats. The question is if it will have the damage to clear in a decent time. But seeing as we’re in a meme thread then that’s good enough I guess. That build is gonna die for real next patch tho. At least for me it’s already dead now and it’s gonna be deader once the retal bug is fixed.
Honestly both of those can still be used with DE, just with different items.
Griminternals shows the damage breakdown on the right. You guys calc the percentages I’m too lazy to do that
