[V1.0.0.5] Panetti's Sorcerer

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
1

Panetti’s Sorcerer

This is a pretty basic Sorcerer build focused on the aether damage from PRM. You can facetank almost every boss in the game while doing good damage, with the exception of the Mad Queen. Nothing new here, as it seems 50/32 Sorcerer builds are dime a dozen now. However, it has been a long time since I’ve seen a PRM build posted up here, and I figured it deserved an update.

Build:
Build without +skills
Build with +skills

Gear:
Main Hand: Warpfire - Imbued Silver - Outcast’s Wrath
Off-Hand: Aldanar’s Vanity - Riftstone - Outcast’s Wrath
Helm: Outcast’s Secret - Sanctified Bone - Venomguard Powder
Chest: Iskandra’s Vestments - Chains of Oleron - Kymon’s Conduit
Shoulders: Iskandra’s Pauldrons - Silk Swatch - Kymon’s Conduit
Gloves: Aethereach - Spellwoven Threads - Venomguard Powder
Legs: Wraithborne Legwraps - Silk Swatch - Venomguard Powder
Boots: Golemborn Greaves - Mark of Mogdrogen - Venomguard Powder
Belt: Phantom-Thread Girdle - Antivenom Salve - Kymon’s Conduit
Amulet: Iskandra’s Focusing Prism - Focusing Prism - Survivor’s Ingenuity
Ring: Closed Fist of Vengeance - Corpse Dust - Survivor’s Ingenuity
Ring: Open Hand of Mercy - Corpse Dust - Survivor’s Ingenuity
Medal: Black Star of Deceit - Arcane Spark
Relic: Agrivix’s Malice

There are a lot of gear variations that work with this build, even if you don’t have all the legendaries. I tried to achieve a balance between offense and defense with my gear and augments. So you could squeeze more damage out of the build by switching to Clairvoyant’s chest and shoulders and a Peerless Eye. Albrecht’s Duality and Eternal Haunt are good options as well. You could also switch out the accessory augments for the resist/hp ones and switch the legs to Empowered Legplates of Valor for more defense. You do not need all of legendaries to do well with this build. In fact, you could easily do BoC with only epics and faction gear.

Attributes:
I have 15 points in spirit in this build, but they aren’t needed. Everything can go into Physique.

Devotions:
Nothing fancy here, picked up Widow and then went for Giant’s Blood/Tree of Life/Obelisk. For anyone wondering, I picked up Ulo for the resists since I didn’t need the pierce res or DA from Solemn Watcher.

+Chaos Crossroads
+Viper
+Eldritch Crossroads
+Hawk
+Primordial Crossroads
+Behemoth
+Widow
-Chaos, Eldritch, Primordial Crossroads
+Order Crossroads
+Turtle
-Order Crossroads
+Sailor’s Guide
+Panther
+Ulo
+Lion
+Tree of Life
+Obelisk of Menhir
+1 point in Scales

Gameplay:
Pretty self explanatory. Rift Strike in, cast OFF, Flashbang, and Devestation, and then pew pew things to death. Use Mirror and Nullification as needed. Aldanar’s reduces your cooldowns. Keep up Flashbang on bosses. Facetank everything except for Mad Queen. Technically you can get the most out of Aldanar’s by casting Devestation and then Rift Striking in, but I usually don’t bother. You could also put Oleron’s Blood in the second weapon slot if you wanted.

Leveling Guide:
Leveling an Arcanist is incredibly easy. First, rush to OFF and max it. Put a Searing Ember/Flintcore Bolt in your weapon for your main attack. The fire resist from OFF combined with greater fireblast will destroy everything normal throws at you. After you have OFF maxed rush Arcanist to 50 to get Devestation. Once you have that nothing stands a chance. You can pick up other core skills after you get Devestation. It isn’t that bad of an idea to pick up Rowan’s Crown in the lower levels to help with damage since it will all be fire/elemental. At level 40-50 you can switch over to PRM. After 50, start putting points in Demolitionist and pick up the skills along the way. If anyone still needs help after following that, just ask.

Videos
Bastion of Chaos
Cronley Run with Fabius
Loghorrean
Mad Queen

I haven’t taken this character through the Crucible yet, but I plan to soon. If anyone has any questions or anything like that, I’m happy to answer them. :slight_smile:

2

Regarding the points in PRM, it looks like you only focus on the 1st and 3rd modifiers that add aether damage. Does maxing the main skill and the 2nd modifier to increase elemental damage not add a worthwhile amount of damage?

Also, what makes vindictive flame strong enough to put 9 points in? Is maxing reckless power not useful? And I suppose the reason why you put more points in mirror was to reduce the cooldown time?

3

As someone who’s played an Aether PRM before, similar build, its just because the most important modifiers on PRM happen to have Aether damage, and ranks into base PRM are only really good for more shrapnel on hit, and Supercharged is just bad all around.

Vindictive Flame’s CD means it actually has a 100% devotion proc chance despite it being always on, it’s total speed is quite potent at early ranks, and the extra mirror ranks are probably because it helps bring it to a low enough CD that Alkenar’s Vanity can be a full reset on it, enabling double-cast of Mirror back to back, rather than just a partial reset with some downtime. Reckless Power’s scaling decays heavily into it’s later ranks, and almost any Aetherfire Arcanist build gets tons of free ranks into it anyway because + Reckless Power ranks are a dime a dozen on arcanist legendary gear

4

I’m currently leveling a PRM build as well, as of now still pure arcanist. I was planning to go for Battlemage (Fighting Spirit synergizes well with Aldanar’s Vanity) because I was worried Sorcerer is not tanky enough to facetank, so I would have to kite, which doesnt work well for panetti since you have to stand still to spam it. However it seems that Iskandra’s set is enough tankyness to facetank? Going Sorcerer would be a huge damage boost.

5

Steelflame was right when he answered. Supercharged is garbage and maxing the main skill adds little enough damage that the points are better spent elsewhere. If the -% fire res from OFF worked on bosses it would be worth maxing. You could take out points in Inner Focus/Flame Touched/Reckless Power/Mirror to max out the main skill if you really wanted to. Vindictive Flame gives 12% total speed at level 11, with diminishing returns past that. Reckless Power has diminishing returns after 12. Mirror has a 13 second CD for me with CDR when maxed. When Aldanar’s procs it has a 7 second cooldown. When paired with Blast Shield it makes you VERY tanky.

I actually thought about going Battlemage but eventually decided against it for a few reasons. First is Blast Shield, which is insanely good and works with Aldanar’s. I really like the move/cast speed from Vindictive Flame which you don’t get from Soldier unless you decide to go for Oleron, which is a huge point investment to the point where you will be starved for skills elsewhere. After some testing (and I hope I did something wrong and someone can refute this) I found out that Aldanar’s does not work on Fighting Spirit. Couple that with the fact Fighting Spirit is an 8 second buff and then a 16 second cooldown, I was severely disappointed. War Cry is great but we don’t need it for regular mobs, only bosses. In that case, you can swap out the Riftstone for Oleron’s Blood or weapon switch to it. You don’t even need Iskandra’s to facetank with this build. You just need to be a little more careful without it. I’ll try to do a BoC run with zero legendaries in the next few days and post it up.

-I missed a few +skills in Temper, Searing Light, and Ulzuin’s Wrath in the grimcalc and will edit it.

6

I would love to see the devotion progress whenever you get the chance. I’ve been excited to finally try a sorcerer and this may be the best starter one I could find.

7

As someone who’s played an Aether PRM before, similar build, its just because the most important modifiers on PRM happen to have Aether damage, and ranks into base PRM are only really good for more shrapnel on hit

Game could really use some more +% elemental damage gear for this reason, since if you look at the numbers, base PRM elemental damage isn’t far behind the base aether damage from the combined modifiers.

8

Devotion order is in the main post now.

I agree, the game does lack options for doing elemental damage. I’ve been thinking of trying the Invoker’s Set/Panetti’s Wand for this build to see how much damage a decked out PRM can do. The proc on Invoker’s Shard looks interesting too. I doubt it would be optimal though. The build is currently at a sweet spot where it is tanky as hell and does respectable damage. Don’t really want to change that.

9

This build looks really fun; thanks for posting it. How would it fare in hardcore, and what adjustments would you make? Looks like Aldanar’s and Iskandra’s are fairly important for getting enough survivability.

10

100% hardcore viable, zero adjustments needed. You could lose some damage/OA to become even tankier by using Empowered Legplates of Valor, a Mark of Divinity, an Avatar of Mercy, and replacing Outcast’s Hood with Iskandra’s. It really isn’t necessary though.

11

I did it and my problem wasn’t the damage itself, but the survivability wasn’t good against some mobs. Here is build:

guia1_zpsqkzb2j2z.png1024×473

I think I’m going to get an Aldanar’s Vanity. It will probably improve survivability a lot. Panetti’s wand has a nice passive and it can be used with mark of divinity. You get 9 invulnerability seconds. If Aldanar’s Vanity works well, you can facetank every mob in the game. I NEED to try it.

Greetings

12

I actually posted a very similarly geared build long ago with warpfire + invoker set and pumping up the main skill a ton as well. Thermite mines+invoker set bonus+sometimes using Ulzuin’s helm provides a ton of fire/lightning res, even though I was pretty low on OA it worked out pretty well. I need to retool and see how good it is as I threw it together in a few minutes. It was really lacking in OA and didn’t have an ideal devotion setup as I went out of my way to use blind sage cause I had never used it before :stuck_out_tongue:

13

https://grimcalc.com/build/CdJzaXp

That is a pretty viable way to use Blind Sage, as part of the superfire devotion loadout. You already have the Warpfire to convert the seeker’s cold damage component into more fire.

14

hi, I’m new in this game

sorry if my question is stupid

why have to put point in burn,frostburn,electrocute damage% skills?

PRM and Devestation don’t do any burn,frostburn and electrocute

15

for +crit dmg

16

That’s more or less the general idea of the setup I was using. Worked pretty well I just had the feeling I would’ve been better off going for more damage elsewhere in the tree

17

Aldanar’s Vanity only affects castable spells, not auto proc buffs. That’s why FS is not affected by Aldanar’s. Same for Blast Shield. It’s exactly the same how Belgothian’s Carnage or Markovian’s 5pc set proc works, it only works on castable spells like Overguard, etc.

18

Alright, that means there’s pretty much no reason to go Soldier for this build.

19

Been looking for a fun tanky caster build to play.
Started this yesterday, OFF is such a beast.

20

Whenever Blast Shield would finish and the cooldown icon would pop up, I always thought it had just procced again. Oh well. :slight_smile:

Just for the hell of it I tried maxing out the main PRM skill and using the 3-piece Invoker’s set. I did end up doing more damage, but replacing the rings is not worth it at all. Judicator’s Signets are too good for a build that relies on regen. I can see the merit in maxing out PRM though, especially if you take Thermite Mines.