Well, this is a great thing to wake up to. Thanks for all the effort you put into this. Opinions about builds will vary, but it always seems that there’s a wealth of knowledge in these posts. To me, at least, there’s a lot more value in something like this than in the tier-lists you see on Maxroll.
Also, I think this can’t be said too often:
The game has real balance. Whatever your taste, there are strong builds you can play, even if not in the Top 21.
Too bad new patch is comming soon 
Great job as always!
Newbie here;
The old builds like Blitz, is it not as powerful or has it been nerfed? Did any of the old builds make it to the new list? If not, what was the reasoning?
Amazing job by the way <3
Yes!
That’s 70-80% pseudo-spam caster, closer to Voidsoul Sentinel than to an actual melee.
Closest to an actual melee that made it, but also a heavy hybrid in reality.
Great skill but each PB build that made it here has a lot of things going, PB alone is not really op.
Good job on the Warder. After tweaks it became one of the faster builds in our testing, closer to speedsters actually.
We can all hope!
Pet lobby is too powerful and I shouldn’t really say anything…
Still good but not top20 good. Physical builds lost a lot of appeal when incoming physical damage was reworked. Phys res and armor no longer automatically grants you a lot of tank. And speed and clear was never that impressive to begin with.
Ah I think I will run some SR with it and see how it feels then jump into the new skeleton-builds before the expansion! 
Would you tweak your old build anyhow? Amazing work by the way, <3
Pet builds made it! Looks like a fine list so far 
I’m legitimately shocked that you guys tested any pets beyond the chaos Cabalist.
It’s late here, so I only ran a quick SR30/31 with the Warder and it seems good. Here’s my thoughts:
~~The damage is not amazing (still good enough), but it tanked Grava’s purple balls to the face and just kept trucking also, so there’s that.
For item choice, nothing here seems too crazy. No triple rare items, no double Alkamos or Magi rings. No celestial loot.
The rolls on this gear is still quite good. Probably a fair bit better than most people are going to have, but nothing like the complete unobtainium that the Korba Trickster had.
Reddit is going to have a field day with that DA value.
Obviously this is just my first impressions, but the build seems good so far. At least for version 4 of the first place build, it gets a thumbs up from me.
Nice work.
EDIT: 60% RATA on Blitz is where the damage is hiding. Second run through SR30/31 Grava didn’t get to pull his purple balls out before he died.
EDIT2: And the other shoe drops. Build 2, the Dervish, is made of unobtainium again. Oh well. Thumbs down for this one.
Really cool to see the new list. The first one I’ve seen after I gained some understanding of how the game works and have some builds of my own.
A lot of concepts I never thought of or never would have tried, as well as a few that are close to characters I do have.
My first serious attempt at making a strong character was a DEE rotgheist conjurer, but I did not have nightbringer and when I finally found and tried it I didn’t like how much my casting speed dropped. Maybe I should try it again.
And my current favourite build is actually a Nightbringer archon, which I tried to make a pseudo-pet build… but in the end I gave up on that, and went a completely different direction vire’s might and cooldown primal strike with (again) the rotgheist set for vitality decay, so it actually ended up being completely different. But I could definitely give your setup a try.
The only build actually similar to one of mine is the Clairvoyant Spellbinder, but then that is perhaps the most “out of the box” build on the list, build around a set as intended with all the typical AAR items. Honestly not my favourite AAR character to play, but definitely harder hitting than my druid. I’ll be sure to try out your devotion map though, and see what difference that makes.
Again, thanks for all the new ideas and all the testing!
Some eye-opening picks on here for sure. I checked out some of your YT channels occasionally so some of these I expected but Vita Skellies is a surprise. Two pet builds is a sure sign of the apocalypse. 
Great work and congrats on finishing the new list!
Banana did this during the testing, should be all right.
Unfortunately GD Reddit is a bastion of outdated and sometimes outright wrong information. Low DA is actually better here, in fact it was one of the tweaks I made to the original build that made it faster.
It is the most expensive build in our top20 for sure, but can be put together with lesser pieces. All of the rare affixes are among the most common ones.
You know that, and I know that… does reddit know that?
The build absolutely slaps, easily the strongest build I’ve ever played. I think you put the wrong build at #1.
What do you mean by expensive, though?
I’m assuming you mean the affixes on the greens, which I’m not too concerned about. I’m concerned about the unrealisticaly high rolls on every single piece in the build. The freeze resistance on the boots is so good grimtools says it’s not possible (72% on an item grimtools says tops out at 69%).
Anyway, there’s no reason to rehash this. Disappointing after the Warden wasn’t like this, but not surprising.
Builds are good so far.
Oh, the list is posted, nice!
The tests taking 6 months in total remind me of the story about the Leaning Tower of Pisa, constructed in 200 years, and it’s still tilted. Luckily, our ranking is standing straight and proud. Hopefully…
Saw my name @ at the list of credits, but I’ve just played and scored these builds. Real credit goes to the guys creating and min-maxing these builds; without them any sort of ranking would be impossible. And, to Eard for organizing everything neatly in Google Docs and creating the new iteration of the ‘‘Holy Sheet.’’ This time around, we had some very interesting hybrids, strong casters. Even a couple of pet builds made the list, so personally I am glad with the final result. Very nice way to say goodbye to Forgotten Gods (you won’t be forgotten) and to welcome the upcoming expansion, coming posthaste or at least postlater. And, finally, I want to thank anyone reading this thread and playing any of these builds!
Presumably blacksmith bonus?
For craftable legendaries or relics you can make a few copies and get the blacksmith bonus/completion bonus you want, but for the green boots/gloves/etc that’s not really viable since getting even 1 version of the affix you want is next to impossible. But eh, for the tests you need to put SOMETHING there. And the Grimtools version still has 70% freeze resist so it’s not like average stats would kill the build
What gunner? I woudn’t call Hellborne SB a gunner 
Reddit We need some toxic thread to copy the upcoming gems from there related to this Top 21
Nice list, nice to see some variety here.
As someone who’s been playing Rata FoI since its meme days (pre 1.1.9.6 or something) I can’t help but wonder if you guys tried paladin? Been out of the game for a while, but I remember it slapped hard last time I played it a year or so ago Paladin, Level 100 (GD 1.2.1.6) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator
it still counts for pewpew 
Amazing work guys , some of the builds are super cheap and easy to build a huge surprise for me to see this Aether PB Conduit Reaper looks like tons of fun . Really glad to see every damage type covered , apart from physical but we all know this was expected . I want to say thank you for your dedication and passion , it’s not easy to test so many builds
PS: I am pretty sure Roman named this Deathguard Reaper
Can you imagine using a gun (or xbow) in your build and not even shooting it? Who would do something like that?
Yep, after tweaks. So like I said in my topic, retal build problems are systematical rather than this warder and that shieldbreaker.
Rather than nerf this one and that one directly, I would like to hope devs to try to fix retal systematical issues (as a result this one and that one in the list may be nerfed a bit indirectly), and then try to buff other retal builds.
So do non-retal builds.
