Marvelous!
Chaos Spellbinder: 
We are done with Chaos!
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Why not taking Mirror and Nullification - “bread-and-butter” of Arcanist in all classes?
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A point in mirror for damage absorb wouldn’t hurt. This being a pet toon, I really only use the Arcanist class as support for the pets (IEE line), just buffs them and helps keep the toon alive with Maiven’s.
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A point in mark of torment would also be a good safety valve.
Don’t ask me where to take it from though
Edit: Maybe Arcane will ?
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Went through Port Valbury with a pierce/bleed warlock:
This was slightly less clunky than I thought it would be early on, as my original plans called for seals of the void (on a pierce/bleed build) and a mistborn talisman. It turned out during leveling that the amount of damage put out by the one pistol was small compared to bloody pox, and that AOE was not the problem, so the pistol attack became Decapitate, and the relic slot was free.
During leveling, I used a Vendetta relic, and found the proc to be very pretty, although the long cooldown hampered it a bit. The final relic was better, primarily because the cooldown was much shorter.
The build centers around Jarinthor’s Head, and converting a bunch of random damage types into pierce. I didn’t have a Jarinthor’s Head, and Jarinthor only has a 4% chance to drop it. So I used a different character to farm it, starting with the level 94 version. I braced myself for a long streak of running this guy and getting nothing. Then, on my very first run, I got one, and at that point I started leveling the character.
When I reached level 75, I just decided that I’d rather run Jarinthor than wait, since there’s also a level 75 version. I leveled up from 75 to about 82 running Jarinthor only before quitting. I don’t know if it was a bug or just an ironic bad luck streak, but I just could not get the level 75 version to drop.
Decapitate damage:
Bloody Pox damage:
Loot room:
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Well done. And impressive damage on Bloody pox.
Have you tried Seal of night instead of Bloody whetstone ?
You’re already converting all cold to pierce and you have decent attack speed and nothing to do during Decapitate cooldown.
Also, you could have another action that is a source of bleeding with a movement medal augment. Violent delight comes to mind. Alternating between this and decapitate would surely help with both survivability and damage output.
Anyway, congrats!
Bleed Warlock:
Pierce Warlock:
Warlock:
Another class completed!
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Nice. I had worked up a theorycrafted attempt with some overlaps 
Warlock, Level 100 (GD 1.1.9.7) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator …
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rayray need an off hand to function
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One more to cross off… Acid Commando is done.
“Kinda Works” would be a good slogan for this build. I wouldn’t recommend it unless one really, really wanted a pet commando (no one wants that…) 
SR65
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AAR was just for fun anyway (not pierce)
Must try to actually build some in the game: Commando, Level 100 (GD 1.1.9.7) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator
Interesting suggestion.
The whetstone is the source of Decapitate, so to do something like that, I’d need to replace seal of blades, or use the movement skill to apply bleed weapon damage.
Looking at seal of shadows, that could work as well. On paper, it looks like way more damage than seal of night, so I’m assuming seal of night can shotgun.
The character as it’s currently built doesn’t have 100% cold → pierce, since I think individual elements and elemental conversion as a whole stack multiplicatively, instead of additively. But I do have a fair amount of both cold and elemental conversion, and my original idea involved a mythical pack of treacherous means, which would have given more acid → pierce and would have resulted in 100% elemental → pierce.
So I think both of those ideas could work. It would make the character more of a caster (though it’s mostly a cooldown caster already), so it might involve boosting energy regen, but with arcanist, that’s easily doable.
Now that I think of it, seal of blight with acid purge could work reasonably well, and IIRC there’s a relic with a fire ray which could be converted to pierce.
Survivability on the current build is pretty good. The Gollus ring has strong health regen (as well as bleed damage), and was a lucky drop. That plus giant’s blood plus dreeg’s blood plus maiven’s sphere makes it reasonably tanky, and it has no need to stand still.
Most of the reason it has so few skills on the bar is because I am not good at piano builds, so I minimized the number of skills as much as possible. This is also why it doesn’t use mirror, though that would help.
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Acid Commando:
I certainly wasn’t expecting that one in the form of a pet build!
I thought you would go for Eldritch hound, since it has acid damage to start with and is an additional pet, but if it works, it works!
With that:
Acid damage:
Only 4 damage types left to complete: Lightning, Vitality, Pierce and Bleed
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The extra acid pet would obviously have been nice, but I get OA reduction from BWC. Only so many devo points to play with, can’t have everything I’d want.
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Alright, I saw the changes to Conduit of Night whispers and I’m trying to make a Lightning Reaper for the board out of it.
Helps and suggestions welcome at this point. (I’m super rusty, haven’t played in months)
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Some interesting options there - I was theory crafting an elemental version: Reaper, Level 100 (GD 1.1.9.7) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator albeit not quite equal on the 3 damage types… 
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Good idea there, but Shadow strike needs a melee weapon to work.
Oops… 
not essential that, so will redo…!
EDIT: Reaper, Level 100 (GD 1.1.9.7) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator
So, a few months later, will this suffice as evidence?! Not the final article as I still need to find some more of the Valdun set and get top tier augments in some of the factions… Very happy to have recommendations to improve it.
Grimtools Pierce Defiler
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Nice work!
I took the liberty of modifying your build: Defiler, Level 95 (GD 1.1.9.7) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator
You should have way more OA and damage at the cost of a bit of sustain.
I also removed a few skills to streamline the experience and modified the devotions accordingly. (A 2-handed build without Kraken is a cardinal sin IMO)
In any case:
Pierce Defiler:
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