You play Age of Empires, too?
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Great work! I assume the 3k+ armor builds are going to be the best in the current test patch?
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Bleed is decent now, it’s not hard to make a good build with it, a lot of skills work.
The problem for being competitive in the top of endgame is the amount of debuffs mobs are able to stack on you before they die. Bleed is the only dot that gets almost no flat support to help with burst dmg and sustain. So it would be nice to see some of that insane duration bleed has shifted into the raw power of ticks per second.
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What happened with the EoR Warlord? It was #2 in the previous list. Was it not tested or is it an issue in the spreadsheet?
I finally assembled all the pieces I think I need for mine so I am curious to see recent testing and/or gear updates.
Thanks for the update!
EDIT: Last time through one of the main criticisms was that there wasn’t a pet build on the list at all and you didn’t test many pet builds. This time… it kind of looks the same TBH? Not trying to start an argument here, just wondering why.
What precisely is the issue with pets that means they don’t make it?
I notice you only tested 2 pet builds (unless I missed some?) and you didn’t test the Diviner’s or Ghol’s sets at all. I’m wondering why?
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Beastcaller and Lost Souls were the ones that made the spreadsheet. Bysmiel was tested but didnt make it. Ghol was tried as well but I think we should have put more effort on it. Diviner wasn’t tried, I have a hard time seeing it score high in this system and clear speed should be slow.
Anyway, beastcaller was really close. Single target damage is amazing and good survivability, but its lacking aoe damage.
Lost Souls falls due to clunkiness to play. Quite a few buttons to press and skellies need micro and resummoning. Looking at results it is super strong.
Only skeletons can rival top tier non pet builds in clear speed from my experience, but they are too frail and non pets reaches the same results without the clunkiness.
Aoe, summoner sustain and CC Res are lacking for pet builds over all.
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Fair enough. I forget that these top20 list things are allergic to pushing buttons 
Ghol’s set has just as many buttons to push and I guess as long as they get marked down for having more buttons, the pet builds will remain off the list. You kind of need to have a bunch of buttons to proc all the things that the builds need to have enough damage… otherwise you get Maya builds which aim to bore things to death while eating icecream.
I would agree with pretty much everything you said. Only skeletons have enough weight of numbers to match clear speed, but they do occasionally require resummoning in boss rooms. I just thought it weird that one of the main criticisms of the first list appeared to have been… maybe not ignored completely, but certainly it appeared to have not been addressed.
Anyways, cheers for responding without taking offense.
Excellent effort by all concerned. Cheers.
Have never levelled a Trickster to 100 but I will now.
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“an”
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Patch 1.2.1 will bring heavy changes on this list? (Im looking at you, avenger archon)
It wasn’t “one of the main critisisms” but it was rather some pet players throwing a little tantrum in the comments because they thought pet builds were ignored when in fact they weren’t, they were even worse back then.
Before complaining that something “wasn’t addressed” please, I kindly ask you to read the op carefully and check our grimsheet and see what stuff has actually been tested. Also Nofika’s answer to you explains everything. We tested the very best pet specs and they didn’t make it under our criteria, end of story. We would’ve loved to have a pet build in the top20, it’s not like we were playing favourites when chosing top builds, in fact most of us wished top20 was more diverse.
From what we are testing so far - unlikely. Some of the builds on the list will change a bit tho, for sure.
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Classic mad_lee.
I specifically stated that I was asking for information and not to start an argument. Not every question is a personal attack on your e-honour. Please calm down.
I remember it very differently, and so does the first couple pages in the previous thread, but sure whatever. Like I said, I was just after information about what was tested because I couldn’t believe that you’d almost completely ignored an entire archetype after getting complaints about it last time.
The sheet lists chaos Lost Souls and vitality Beastcallers. That’s it. I did check before I commented.
Anyways, nice list. I can at least respect the work done.
EDIT: Thanks again to Nofika for the mature response.
@mad_lee if you had to rate the top ranged gun build what do you think it would be since there is no WPS or attack gun build in the list?
Lee in unable to respond like a human being shocker!
I didn’t bother putting Ghol or Diviner up for testing. Ghol’s additional squishiness and even more buttons was going to be a non-starter. Diviner I never got around to a build that I liked although it has potential, but also with the QoL coming in super low for anything pets with this crew, it didn’t seem worth the effort to optimize.
As you know they are both perfectly playable, but the top end of the list was pretty ridiculous to get into with melee feeling safe and doing melee damage things this patch. I personally don’t care for melee gameplay in Grim Dawn but I couldn’t really argue. When you can just click on any mob and be both safe while slaughtering everything around you, and maybe 1-2 other buttons to push, anything needing 3 proc + RR skills and occasional pet micro and resummoning is going to get pooped on from a ratings standpoint. Add in the weirdness around pet player tank metrics and it’s a recipe for lower average.
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That would be the latest version of Evoker. My Pierce Paladin is also all in all a pretty decent farmer, it’s just it is in a waiting room for blanket Pierce nerfs (that are never coming).
I tested Darkblaze in test patch and it was decent-ish.
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Guys, what is sustain?
Super cool that the list is posted on the forum!
Last time around, I thought it was our swan song in the world of grim and dawn, but it was just a prelude to this new testing. And this is before we consider there will be new expansion. Game feels like a cat with nine lives.
Since we’re on the internet, time for a little bit of circlejerking. I want to express my gratitude to all people involved in the process of making (wonderful) builds, and testing them. But, also to all people following this topic, being passionate about this game.
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I’ve tested Ghol Cabalist and it’s one of my personal favourite builds in Crucible, also producing my fastest ever run. That being said, build is obviously glassy and set gloves block my favourite pair of defensive pet gloves. Also build ain’t easy for piloting, having few extra buttons. So, it’s more of a build shining in speedrunning, but can’t make it to the top. And this is version with off-hand and weapon for conversion. I also tried with Witching hour, bit it’s an inferior build.
Tankiness or survivability. Sustain is life steal or health regen, paired with stuff like damage mitigation/reduction, absorb, defensive ability, etc.
I have an outdated guide posted on the forum. Leveling cold DW Trickster shouldn’t be hard, since you have abundance of suitable weapon options.
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I’ve only really messed with Vitality Cabalist for pets, and I play HC, so I can’t make it a complete glass cannon, but I just did a 4m15s SR80 and could probably get it down. SR75 would probably have been sub- or around 4 minutes just from things having less hp to burn through. Seems like similar performance to the pet builds in the list, though there aren’t a lot of SR times listed for them.
That Chaos Lost Souls build in the sheet has some… questionable decision too.
As for Ghol’s, I’ve only really messed with it on my Ritualist… and I’ve yet to see anyone else using the set on Ritualist. I’ve seen people talk about Ghol’s Conjurer or Cabalist, but not really Ritualist. I wonder why, since the set is clearly “supposed” to support Briarthorn and Blight Fiend? I haven’t touched the Ghol’s Ritualist since pre-1.2, might go play with it a bit, see what it can do.
What counts as glassy? Both of my pet builds have similar defensive stats to the #1 on this list… though they don’t have the lifesteal, they have other means of sustain and shouldn’t be tanking often anyway. They also don’t freeze everything, so there’s that.