The noob Nightblade (Blademaster) build, how I screwed it up and how I (tried to) fixed it

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
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This is a thread about my first character playing Grim Dawn. I got the game in December and was addicted immediately. I normally play a Paladin type or Great sword wielding melee based character on my first attempt in a RPG. Looking at the Soldier class it seemed kinda boring and there seemed to be lots of shield based skills, but the Nightblade class looked fun with promises of duel wielding and lots of blades.

So Nightblade it was and off I went, immediately going with Dual Blades and Veil of Shadow (since it seemed to be the only available “aura” at the time). The first act was all about figuring out the mechanics of the game - so many damage types and resistances!

As skills progressed continuing down the Dual Blades line seemed obvious, but it was a bit strange that you didn’t assign any Dual Blades skill to the default LMB attack. By level 10, you suddenly had to select a second class! All other classes seemed liked ranged/mage classes and wouldn’t fit with my build. Soldier seemed like the only choice, that was kinda forced on me. But that never went past 1 point in mastery and 1 in Markovian’s Advantage, which seems to not work or do anything.

Continued on and then suddenly I had access to Phantasmal Blades and Pneumatic Burst. Finally a RMB skill! Throwing blades were awesome and destructive, but wait throwing blades use mana?! Pneumatic Burst seemed good on paper, but it’s not an aura? Was way too lazy to assign it to another button, you only need a LMB and a RMB skill anyway, right?

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Wrong :smiley: :smiley: :smiley:

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Cool story, I want to continue

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By now I was busy with Act 2 and 3 but didn’t really have any decent equipment, so even leveling up didn’t seem to make a big difference. Also the damage was low (<1000), and since the initial idea behind the build
was to focus on attack not defense (i.e. I picked duel wield and not sword and board after all), the focus was to get the damage up. By this stage I still didn’t die often, except when I found a stange key an entered somewhere I shouldn’t have….

Then devotions happened. This seemed to be a good way to get damage up as there were quite a few constellations with added damage. I started with rat, bat and ghoul. At this stage the nightblade skills seemed to suggest to focus on cold and poison, so that’s what I tried. I put a gem in my sword to add cold damage and another to add poison and was satisfied that DPS was increasing. Still didn’t really understand why some new weapons I found which seemed to have more base damage didn’t seem to increase DPS despite being fast/very fast. I was quite confused how
the armor piercing part of weapons was applied, wasn’t until much later than I realized that the armor piercing component on weapons converted physical damage to pierce, I thought it was a % of damage that bypassed armor.

The phantasmal blade started to do a lot of damage (±2500) and when I assigned Twin Fangs to it, it was really awesome with additional life steal.
I was also lured by the big numbers of poison damage of devotions and didn’t really focus on bleeding damage at all. Resistance wise, there also didn’t seem to be a problem, but some monsters started to hurt a lot
when they used their magic (chaos?).

My skills were now as follows:
Dual Blade, Belgothian’s Shears, Nidalla’s Hidden Hand (Poison) and Amarasta’s Quick Cut
Phantasmal Blades, Heart Seeker
Pneumatic Burst, Shadow Dance
Veil of Shadows, Night Chill
Phantasmal Armor

The next devotion I got started working on, was Akeron’s Scorpion (more poison, more DPS). It also had an ability, Scorpion Sting to assign, as by now I had a few different attacks that proc’ed from my default attack. Having already spend 20 or more devotion points, I started looking at the other higher tier devotions, some seemded really good but all seemed not attainable with the requirements to unlock them.

Also the higher level nightblade skills started looking good and it was time to skill up mastery to unlock them. The first one was Anatomy of Murder, but when I got it didn’t seems to make much of a difference to DPS. I then realised that this was because I didn’t do too much bleeding damage, so the base which was increasing wasn’t too high to start with. The plan to fix this was to get Fox. The next skill was Merciless Repertoire, which increased poison and cold damage and since I had the poison damage of Rat and Akeron’s Scorpion it seemed to make sense to max it as soon as possible. I could also get Manticore for even more poison damage.

At this stage, I still didn’t see any way any skills in Soldier could make me get more DPS. But the build was going good as my DPS was constantly increasing, more WPS were proccing more regularly, Phantasmal Blade was awesome, Twin Fangs and Scorpion’s String caused extra damage. I was now getting close to the end of Act 4 and getting closer to dying more often. I tried assigning Pneumatic Burst to MB4 and tried to use it as a healing spell, it worked alright but I still forgot to use it too often. I didn’t really know that I could cast it again before it expired.

I completed normal with 1500 damage on default attack and being level 52. It was fun, but really didn’t feel like going straight into elite with the same character. It was time to try something new, something like a caster.

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Wrong section and you can edit your original post to continue your tale of joy and sorrow

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I thought this time lets plan ahead a bit on the skills and devotions
and I started looking around for build which seemed fun and not melee. I found two:

1.) An Arcanist (Druid, just for Mogdrogen’s pact) Panetti’s Replicating Missle (PRM) build that focus on elemental and aether damage with Devastation and Reckless power. Lots of devotions worked well with it. It was really fun to play and the first thing I noticed is how much more DPS I had! I mean it was above 1000 way before the end of Act 1 and between 4500-5000 by the end of normal (level 52), while my Nightblade only had 1500 by the end of normal!

2.) Next I tried was a Pyromancer. Duel wielding pistols, fire strike, demon’s breath and thermal mines. I was amazed how much more destruction this character could put out and specifically how much damage
the Flame Touched and Solael’s Witchfire added to the damage. I mean now I was doing even more damage than my Druid and way more than the Nightblade = 10000+! Getting properly planned devotions to add fire and choas and great proc’s like Fissure and Meteor Storm was amazing. I had so much fun, I immediately also completed Elite after Normal as it was still so easy with massive damage. Playing with this also taught me how to use three skills: Fire Strike = LMB, Demon’s Breath = RMB and Thermal Mines = 2 (1 = Health potion)

Playing these to characters made me realise how much there must be wrong with my Nightblade build. I started to work it out and what I came up with was:

  • Lack of sustained abilities to increase my damage output i.e. piercing, bleeding, poison
  • Too many different damages types: including poison and cold. And I really wasn’t doing much cold damage at all.
  • Lack of a replacement default weapon attack that can be leveled, I mean there is just no comparison between just default attack and fire strike!

I was also a bit upset that I took Soldier as the 2nd class, if I took Occultist I could have added something like Solael’s Witchfire and had way more damage. And there was no way to undo this despite only having used 2 points in Soldier. I still think the Nightblade class misleads you into thinking you should go cold damage, but there isn’t really good ways to get the flat cold damage as a melee character.

I had to find a way of fixing my build, the one thing I however decided was to stay with Phantasmal Blades, because I just loved the skill. It is so much fun trying to position yourself just right to hit all the enemies
with only throw and if you’re lucky with enough penetration, kill all of them (I think my records is about 10 enemies in a line). Then I could rush in and kill what’s left.

My plan to fix it was therefore the following:

  • Keep Phantasmal Blades
  • Focus only on a few damage types: physical, piercing and bleeding (Since cold was a bust)
  • Between bleed and poison, I decided to stay with bleed and dropped poison since Phantasmal Blades has big on bleed too.
  • Drop poison devotions for bleed and pierce devotions and have a set route planned out to a Tier 3 devotion
  • Get a new default weapon attack that works with WPS!
  • Get resistances up.
  • Use Pneumatic Burst much more often
  • Use the soldier skills to improve the build (Fighting spirit was right there available for only 5 mastery all along!?)

The above have worked okay so far, into the start of Act 3 in Elite and damage is up from 1500 at the start of elite to 4000 (DPS at 8000)

I’m now at level 64 and the skills are as follows:

Nightblade:

I decided to drop all the points I had in Nidalla’s Hidden Hand.

Plan to expand as follows:
All skills in the Dual Blade line maxed excluding Nidalla’s Hidden Hand
Phantasmal blades maxed with Heart Seeker, but not Nether Edge (since it doesn’t add much)
Pneumatic burst, with Shadow Dance and Elemental Awakening
Max Phantasmal Armor and Anatomy of Murder and drop the rest of the points in Merciless Repertoire.

Still playing around with Ring of Steel to see if it is useful

Soldier:

Plan to expand as follows:
Soldier master 15
Fight spirit 8, Military Conditioning 5 and Veterancy 5

Devotions:
Bat - For Bleeding and life steal
Ghoul - For Life steal and health regen
Fox - For Bleeding and pierce
Assassin’s Blade - For Bleeding and pierce and Assassin’s Mark
Harpy - For Pierce
Huntress - For Bleeding, pierce and Rend (It sure does make things bleed)
Empty Throne - For resistence and to unlock Blades of Nadaan

I’m currently busy with Blades of Nadaan. What would then be left is Lion (mostly just to unlock the last constellation) and then Unknown Soldier for the pierce, bleed and life steal (except the last ability point)

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So much fun to read it, you remind me myself 1st time playing Diablo II and choking Diablo with corpses of my paladin who went out of portal, put new, zeal (<=21 hit)=>die XD

Overall you much understimate Soldier mastery and using skills that have not so much synergy between them. Usually either you go caster (Phantasmal Blades line) or hitter. For the latter you can use maxed Lethal Assault (more flat cold/acid dmg) with casts of Amarasta’s Blade Burst (only 1 point to not drastically increase the cost) or Cadence line in Soldier tree (max Cadence and Deadly Momentum, 1 point Fighting Form, this is more for phys/piercing oriented builds).
Also, try using Shadow Strike in Nightblade tree, it does tons of damage.
Here’s classic example of cold/piercing Blademaster.
This one is more pierce/phys

Overall at my experience (I play only hardcore) Blademaster feels much squishier than other classes and it’s much harder to itemize them unless you have a high lvl twink who can find all items for them.

p.s. it’s awesome that since D2 ARPG developers invented skill retrain, my 5 Might 20 Zeal pally would appreciate it as well :slight_smile:

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Current attack / devotion assignments:
LMB: Troll rage -> Rend
RMB: Phantasmal blades -> Assassin’s Mark
2: Pneumatic burst
and Twin Fangs to Execution.

Initially Twin Fangs was bound to Phantasmal blades (more heal) and Assassin’s Mark to Execution or Whirlwind. (Does it have a better change to hit with Whirlwind because it hit more targets?). But Assassin’s Mark seems better against bosses and proc’s more from Phantasmal blades. Might still switch it back…

Resistances is still a bit of problem and will be even more, but that can be mostly fixed with the augments, but I still need to get to level 70 to use it. For now, the Preatorian set with 15% physical, 35% aether and 35% choas res and the Runic Braces with 17% elemental resist (and 25% to all res on hit) keeps me alive in Elite. It would be great if those can be upgraded and replaced with some other better gear (like the Empowered Quickdraw Gloves or Grasp of Unchained Might which I already found). I’m still mostly stuck with the weapons I had at the end of Normal - an Empowered Willie’s Razor and an Empowered Cruel Edge. Where to I get better weapons? Even the Demapteran Slicers that drop (with 50% pierces) doesn’t seem much better.

I’m also close to having enough Severed Claws to make the Oleron’s Blood to make a Shard of Beronath and a Slaughter and then drop the Mistborn Talisman.

I know off course, all this will change again in Ultimate (and the build will suck again). But, I hope you enjoyed a bit more in depth explanation of noob mistakes. I think there are too many end game builds and not enough mid level build explanations / guides on this forum.

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It was a fun read (and I’m also a noob). My first character is an Occultist and not wanting to do your mistake of taking a 2nd class that wouldn’t work in the long run I made it into Act 4 Normal with only Occultist.
Also fun that by the end of Act 3 Elite (level 64) I was also wearing the 3 pieces of Praetorian cause of the resistance. At lvl 65 I had 2 item waiting so I dropped them but yeah the set resistance for a noob like us is pretty good.

Will also have to agree with your last part I did check a lot on here and couldn’t decide which second class to take until I ended up with a build that seemed less strong than the optimal but also seem to rely on…nothing in term of item AND amazingly has a kind of leveling up process (GrimDawn Calculator at multiple level step and not only at 85 with and without item.

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I would switch the devotions a bit:
Put 1 point into shadowstrike (seriously, even for just the mobility it’s insane) and 1 point into nightfall (so you hit multiple targets, so higher chance for procs) and link rend to that (incase you dint know, higher CD = higher chance to proc)

And link bat to troll rage.

The reason for the above us that multiple rend price just refresh duration, while multiple bat price increase damage and sustain.

Rend is aoe, so shadowstriking into a group would offer multiple 50-60ish% to proc, and a single proc would put the debuff in everything in 5m radius. The debuff lasts 5 secs, shadowstrike has 4 sec CD, so you can more reliably keep it on the whole group without sacrificing your main attack which is better served for a low CD instant ability like bat

And putting it on execution drastically lowers the chance to trigger (20%*15(?)%= really low

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So what is new today? Well I made it to level 68 and also crafted my Shard of Shard of Beronath and a Slaughter relic!

I also found this sweet medal!

But on the Asterkarn road, packs of Chilmane Alphas are not so easy to tank! Need level 70 to come to get augments for resistance to swap the set piece for more armor.

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Okay, thanks I’ll try out shadowstrike. For interest sake to what button would you normally assign it?

Quickly tried by swapping BAT to Beronath’s Fury and REND to PB. Bat proc’s alot and Rend at 68% i.e. 2/3 i.e. almost always

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I usually have my charge/mobility skill on rmb, and my low CD skills on mousewheel up+down

So, I see a cluster of mobs, right-click on them, quickly move wheel up+down, meanwhile I keep lmb pressed, and use the wheel when needed.

Short term buffs, heals, and secondary debuffs are on 1-2-3-4

So, for your setup I would probably have curse+pb on wheel , strike on rmb, relic on lmb, heal on 1

Alternatively you could have curse +shadowstrike on wheel, point to a cluster of mobs, curse+charge them (I wouldn’t bother reapplying either for nonboss minions), and then keep lmb/rmb as you have already

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Interesting, i have a Phantasmal Blades Pierce Blademaster but with the upcoming patch’s nerfs and the fact that i constantly keep running into energy issues i am unsure whether i should post it or not

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I finally finished Elite (Level 73).

Trued Shadowstrike a bike, but it is not too effective with only a few points in it, also can’t really see myself using both PB and SS. Perhaps in a different build instead of PB it would be good.

But it was an excellent idea to go with Troll Rage/Beronath’s Fury to Bat and PB to Rend. When I see a mob, I PB them. PB does 2000 pierce damage and 8700 bleed damage (over 3 seconds), that is per blade I assume. The chance for Rend is 68%, but in 30 throws it proc’ed 28 times and the two times it didn’t proc was because the targets was killed outright. I’m assuming the 68% is per blade, so with 5 blades it is guaranteed to proc. Rend does 2800 bleed damage per second for 5 seconds at -27% bleed resist. So yeah, most things have bled to death before WPS start.

I went with Assassin’s Mark to Amarasta’s Quick Cut. It proc’s 100% on critical hit. I’m hoping because Quick Cut hits 3 times, the chance to cric is is 3 times more? Does seems to proc way more often than any other WPS skills. Everything that is not dead after the PB, i.e. bosses are then hit with the WPS, get’s marked at -27% pierce and hit again every 5 seconds with another PB restarting the approx. 6800 bleed damage per second.

On to Ultimate…

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I had some problems with energy, but now on Elite I get hit often enough with magic that I absorbed enough energy because of one Soul Shard with 30% energy absorption for energy not to be a problem.

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He doesn’t spam PB to have serious issues.

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I do spam it and constantly run into energy issues, i can facetank anyone until i run out of energy :(.
With the upcoming nerfs i am considering respecing it to something else and using the green gear on my Cold Caster SB. That one had resistance issues and couldn’t use Manticore + Whirlpool like it used and had to rely on Elemental Storm. Some juicy double rares from this build allow me to make that one OP :smiley:

Do you think it’s worth sharing the concept of the build regardless of nerfs?