The Stormfire Mage - Fun, Higher Damage Caster | CR 150 | Dungeons

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
1

Pyrocumulus: Stormfire Mage
https://www.grimtools.com/calc/lV7d8vaZ

This is a firestorm mage that looks and feels very much like a powerful elemental wizard type, great single target and wide-spread AOE damages. The damage of the build is very high, and the survivability of the build is moderate. It leans toward being a glass cannon, and focuses on fire and lightning damage types. The premise of this character is that I wanted a LOT of different sources of high damage to contribute, including devotion procs, skills, equipment and augments.

A quick demo vid of 130-140 Crucible


I was able to take down Kra’Vall in 16 seconds on my first attempt with this build.

Let’s talk about the details -

:: Offensive Traits ::

Thermite Mines x9
This character is built around having a ridiculously strong Thermite Mine, which sounds like a weird idea until you realise that you can have nine of them, each pumping out the boosted damage. These thermite mines are critting for up to 120k, so if you stack them in a corridor and force enemies to run through them, their HP drops VERY fast. At max rank these are reducing Ele resists by 50%.

Fissure x2
The thermite mines proc Fissure, which can effectively have two going at any one time dealing 6-8 times the flat damage each (12-18 times the flat damage). When stacked on Thermite Mines that are clumped all together, this combination just wrecks large targets so fast.

Wind Devils x4
Buffed fairly strongly for extra damage, and reduce ele resists by 30%.

Ulzuin’s Wrath
Procing a little over once per second for AOE knockdown, damage and healing.

Storm Totem
This is just there to proc Hand of Ultos, lowering enemy ele resists by 20%.

Reckless Tempest
Constantly damaging all enemies within an 8meter radius, this rapid-fire skill is fantastic at helping to clear or significantly weaken hordes of trash mobs before they can get close to you for finishing them off.

Elemental Storm
…reduces ele resists by another 32 points.

Stormfire (weapon component)
This is the perfect ranged attack for this build, as each of the 4-5 fragments deals 40% weapon damage plus the flat damage, effectively making each shot do 4-5 times the listed damge (to large targets or anyone caught in the AOE). A cast speed of 170% lets you churn out 3.something per second.

Flashbang
To help compensate for the average OA, reducing enemy DA by 170.

Pyroclasm
This is a wonderful shotgun fan of damage at close range to enemies nearby. As three projectiles are launched outward away from you (in whatever direction you’re facing), this helps to blast anything that’s gotten close enough to challenge you, to help take them down quickly.

Other Procs:
Magma Orb (belt)
Elemental Seal (pants)
Volcanic Wyrm’s Breath (gloves)
Grim Fate (dagger)

Total Resistance Reductions
Eldritch Fire lowers Fire resists by 23%, Arcane Bomb lowers lightning resists by 35%, with the combined reduction of Elemental Storm, Hand of Ultos, Wind Devils and Thermite Mines, this gives the build a total of 155% fire RR and 167% lightning RR.

:: DEFENSIVE TRAITS ::

This build primarily stays alive with the combination of 15% damage absorption (Primal Bond), 15% lowered damage to nearby enemies (Tainted Ruby of Gar’Dal), Wendigo Totem for healing, and Ulzuin’s Wrath for healing. A 25% chance of Fumble and Impaired Aim from Flashbang’s modifier Searing Light helps to avoid incoming damage as well, and a lower tier Blast Shield serves as a circuitbreaker (with a fairly low cooldown of 8.8seconds).

** :: Summary and Limitations:: **
This build is not going to be a Celestial Soloer, but it IS powerful and a LOT of fun to tear through enemies. The damage is high (I got a 16 second Kra’Vall kill with it, yey!). Its limitations are sources of healing (staying near Wendigo Totem is not always ideal, and I have died if I accidentally stepped just out of the radius in a busy fight before), and you’ll need to keep both HP and energy potions fairly well stocked for long fights. This build would do fantastically to complement a team’s damage, especially if there is a good tank in the group.

3

You’re right that x% reduced applies separately to the others but it’s 2nd. -x% goes first, flat RR goes last.

4

This is interesting, I wasn’t entirely sure how the mechanic worked. If that’s the case, would it work like this?

I reduce enemy resists by ~105% (let’s say). They enemy has already got -% resists. Then, “reducing their resists” by 20% from Hand of Ultos… would it reduce it at all if their resists are in negative already?

Of course, then the “flat” resistance reduction could reduce it by another 32 points, drawing it into a negative…

Is this how it works? :expressionless:

Or does it work how I initially put it, where you just add all the RR numbers, subtract them from the enemy’s RR?

5

Say you have an enemy with 100% Fire resistance. You have -108% Fire resistance from Eldritch Fire, Thermite Mine and Raging Tempest, 20% reduced from Hand of Ultos and 32 reduced from Elemental Storm:

  • The -108% applies first reducing them from 100% to -8% Fire resistance.
  • The 20% reduced resistance applies next as a x1.2 modifier so they are now on -9.6%. (If they were above 0%, it would be a x0.8 modifier instead).
  • Elemental Storm then applies a flat 32 finishing up at -41.6%.

Hand of Ultos did not do a lot here but that is because their resistance after your -x% was close to 0. Because it’s a multiplier, the further away from 0 an enemy is, the bigger of an impact it will have. For enemies that are either massively resistance to Fire damage or massively vulnerable to it, it will be significant.

6

Awesome. This is really significant, thank you for explaining it to me!

So really, then, the two most important resistance reductions are the -%, and then the flat reduction, with “% reduced” being relevant only if the -% is poor, or if the enemy has massive resistances to get past.