Trying to make a build for the first time - help me improve

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
1

I’m a new player (about 100 hours in) and wanted to have a go at making a build, not just following a tutorial. I made this Cabalist, Level 100 (GD 1.3.1.0) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator in the planner.

(i started from [1.3.0.8] Poison Witch - DEE Cabalist)

Is my slight focus on retaliation damage % added to attack making any sense? Is % retaliation damage working on the added retaliation to attacks?

Are there areas to improve survivability without sacrificing too much offensive power?

Please guide me towards something resembling a functioning build.

2

A few things:

  • It looks like an overreliance on purple items
  • Health is, as a result, very low (17k is probably on the lower end already)
  • Kraken is doing nothing for you, as you’re not using a 2hander. That means you’ll want to rethink your devotion setup.
  • You will probably also want to find ways to improve your DA to ~2800 at least, preferably 3k.

That said, you got a lot of it right. Resists are fine, armour absorb is fine. OA, while it could be higher, is sufficient, etc etc.

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3

swap kraken, swap weapon augs (you’re stacking bleed res despite there being an acid hp aug with bleed res)
swap some comps, fudge an affix or two to cover res even it seems like a dmg loss it lets you use HP boosters (you’re getting unnecessary high overcaps on vit/acid re so glove is a swap opportunity)
example Cabalist, Level 100 (GD 1.3.1.0) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator (i would not consider this final as there are still issues like CC res)
*it’s not that your retal is wasted, it’s just that low retal doesn’t do much so you don’t need to worry about retal comps/augs

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4

I tried to apply the feedback and made this: Cabalist, Level 100 (GD 1.3.1.0) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator

Swapped attribute points from spirit to physique and changed the comps/augs to have ~3100/3000 OA/DA and 25k hp.

I don’t really have a better idea how to approach cc res, so I turned my mana pot into grim dawn’s version of https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Kiara’s_Determination with the use of geliodis.

5

That looks much better, congrats! I would maybe take out the eight points from Necromancer main line you don’t need anymore and put them into the final node of DEE (and possibly even scrape two more points together from CoF to cap it, if you want to be greedy). Loses you about 500 health, but you have padded that up nicely and especially group clear should be a bit better.

Yeah, capping freeze res can be tricky at times. There are green pants with innate freeze res you can customize to your liking, but not sure if they fit here fully. Otherwise, frozen hearts can help, but you need the bloodied crystals for bleeding res in your current set-up.

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6

change comps, if when res is not there yet just use res comps instead of armour comps. Armour increase is good, fixed res is better (specially the lower your base AR is), so spellscorched plate is a valid swap.
Then you can swap affix on greens, (or base ring even), letting you farm or roll for CC res, ex could be slith suffix on ring, or consecrated prefix on gloves

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7

ok I arrived at something like this Cabalist, Level 100 (GD 1.3.1.0) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator

HP went down but there’s capped cc res (except entrapment), capped Vile Eruption for some clear, ~3200/3000 OA/DA, and swapped geliodis to ventorus for more ms qol