[v1.0.3.1] Cold Trickster

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
1

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First of, thanks to Ryzel for his awesome Cold Blademaster Guide.

It was the first build that I’ve had success with. It inspired me to do my own Cold Trickster build and my build got heavily influenced by it.

Grim Tools Link:

http://www.grimtools.com/calc/0V0Jxa9N

I do not have most of the gear that I would like to have. But that is exactly the reason why I did want to share the build. It doesn’t need perfect items to have some fun.

The build is able to finish Ultimate, kill Rashalga, the Mad Queen, some of the Nemesis(Moosilauke, Kubacapra, Zantarin) I didn’t come across the others yet. It is not a powerful build and it is not a one shot build. You may need 3-5 minutes for a nemesis instead of 25 seconds.

Devotions

  • Elemental Storm
    It gives you 32 reduced elemental resistance for 2 seconds. Bind it to Savagery to have it active all the time.

  • Rumor
    Reduced Offensive Ability and -23% Cold Resistance. Bind it to Amarasta’s Blade Burst

  • Whirlpool
    Frostburn Damage - AoE- bind it to Shadow Strike (Grim Tools shows it as 30% chance on attack. But it does have a 100% chance ingame)

  • Wayward Soul
    Solid help to recover from hits. Good OA.

  • Blizzard
    AoE Damage - procs a lot - Bind it to Wind Devil

  • Inspiration
    That’s a tricky one and I’ve tried a lot of different devotion skills. Inspiration needs 7 points to activate it. You could go with Giant’s Blood and Ghoulish Hunger as an alternative. Or you could pick Giant’s blood and Viper. I’ve tried all of them and Viper and Giant’s Blood was a solid option for me for a long time. But I’ve preferred the energy regeneration and OA/DA from Inspiration


Skills

  • Amarasta’s Blade Burst
    It’s going to be your main attack for the most part during the leveling process. Try to get an item to boost it 17/16. Put 1 Point into Lethal Assault.

  • Night’s Chill
    Frostburn Damage and -30% Cold Resistance. 10/10, max out Veil of Shadow as well.

  • Nightfall
    Main Damage -> 12/12


    [li]Ring of Steel[/li] Put 1 point into it and Ring of Frost and Circle of Slaughter. It really helps your survivability.

  • Pneumatic Burst
    Nice heal, but the heal itself isn’t really necessary until Ultimate Act 5/6. Put 1 point into Shadow Dance and Elemental Awakening. Depending on your need, you could put some points into Elemental Awakening(if you need more damage and elemental resistance) or Shadow Dance(if you need more DA and some avoidance from hits)

  • Savagery
    1 point is enough. You could consider to swap all the points from ABB into it after you got Kobras Hood. More important is Tenacity of the Boar, max it. Nice OA/DA. Storm Touched is changed to Frostburn Damage if you have Kobras Hood and a nice additional addition to our Frostburn damage.

  • Wendigo Totem
    Put 1 point into it and 1 point into Blood Pact. You could consider to max it out later on or just put 5 points(Improves from 2% to 3% heal) into it.

  • Stormcaller’s Pact
    Max it. Additional Frostburn Damage + Crit Damage. If you do have the Kobra Chest, it would change some of the Lightning damage into Frostburn Damage. You could consider to pick Primal Bond if you need some Damage Absorption. I never needed it.

  • Wind Devil
    Put 1 point into it and max out Raging Tempest(-35% Elemental resistance). I’ve put 1 point into Maelstrom because I expect that it does increase the chance to proc Blizzard. Not 100% sure about it, but if you would have Kobras Chest, it might even be worth 12 points.

  • Mogdrogen’s Pact
    1 Point into it, max out Hearth of the Wild. Put as many points into Oak Skin as you need to max out Pierce resistance(I would like to put only 1 point into it, should be possible if you do have some good gear.

  • 1 Point wonders
    Phantasmal Armor, Anatomy of Murder, Merciless Repertoire and Blade Barrier are nice 1 point wonder that offer a lot of survivability and additional damage for just 1 point.

Components

Weapon -> Coldstone for additional damage. Seal of Night would be another option.

Shield -> Oleron’s Blood for damage reduction. It might not be needed any more later on. But since I still have a lot of old gear, I’m not able to verify that because of my low armor. If that is not an issue, you could go with something else. I still enjoy the damage reduction

For the other parts. Use whatever you need. I’ve always tried to cap resistance with augments and components.

Augments

Ring/Amulet ->Malkadarr’s Chillbane is still awesome.

Weapon/Shield -> Coven’s Guile offers some nice frostburn damage, enegery regeneration and elemental resistance. If I would had the reputation for Malmouth’s Aegis, I would change to them for more armor and aether resistance. Elemental Resistance isn’t an issue normally because of Elemental Awakening.

For the other parts. Use whatever you need to cover your resistance.

Before I’m going into the leveling detail the most important question. Why a shield… First of all, the build was created for Hardcore and I’ve got my first Cold Trickster(same build) to Level 85(still alive) with a shield. I never had any damage issues and the leveling process was more smooth then with a dual wield build.

After the expansion I tried to rescue my first trickster character/softcore (misguided pet trickster) and I did stick with my hardcore experience. I’ve tried dual wield on level 100. It did work well and it wasn’t a big deal. But I just preferred the survivability of the shield and the nice animations, yeah that is really a reason for me;)

That build could possibly even work with a two hand weapon, just put some points into might of the bear from savagery for additional physical resistance and you should be fine.

Levelling

  • Start
    Go to Hargate’s Isle to speed level up to level 7-8. If you do have Crucible, try to get the first 5 devotion points after that. It’s a nice head start.

  • Devotion
    Purple Crossroad
    Complete Toad
    Complete Quill
    Get Elemental Storm(Do not finish it)
    Purple Crossroad
    Blue Crossroad
    Complete Viper
    Remove Blue Crossroad
    Complete Sailor’s Guide
    Get Rumor (Do not finish it)
    If you need more survivability put 3 points into Behemoth for Giant’s Blood if not ->
    Put 4 points into Amatok for Blizzard.
    Complete Chariot of the Dead
    Remove red crossroad
    Complete Murmur
    Complete Amatok
    Remove Viper
    Complete Elemental Storm
    Complete Empty Throne (alternative would be owl next to it. I’ve tried both and I preferred the resistance)
    Get Whirlpool(don’t pick the cold damage one)
    At that point you could go for inspiration or for Giant’s blood/Ghoulish Hunger or one of the two + Viper.
    If you want to go for inspiration->
    Yellow Crossroad
    Complete Dryad
    Remove 5 points from Leviathan
    Complete Inspiration
    Remove points from Dryad and put them back into Leviathan

  • Talents
    First Class-> Nightblade. First Talent -> Amrasta’s Blade Burst. Put 2 points into it, 1 point into mastery. During the process of levelling ABB, put 1 point into Veil of Shadow and Pneumatic Burst. Max out Night’s Chill. 1 Point into Phantasmal Armor, helps if you do have mana issues.

    At Level 10 pick shaman. Put 1 point into Savagery to activate it. 1 Point into Shadow Strike. Mastery Points into Shaman until Mogdrogen’s pact. 1 Point into it. Back to Nightblade. Put points into Mastery until Night’s Chill. 1 Point into Lethal Assault. Max Night’s Chill.

    Back to shaman. Put points into mastery until Heart of the Wild. 1 point into wind devil during that process. 1 point into Tenacity of the boar and 1 point into heart of the wild. If you need more health because of survivability issues, put more points into it. If not back to Nightblade and max it.

    During that process put 1 point into Ring of Steel, Ring of Frost and Circle of Slaughter. Max Nightfall. After that back to shaman and put points into Mastery until Raging Tempest. Max it. Max out shaman and max out Stormcaller’s Pact.

    After that you can start to put points into whatever you need the most.

    More survability? Hearth of the Wild/Blade Barrier/Oak Skin/Tenacity of the Boar/Pneumatic Burst
    More Damage? Tenacity of the Boar/Elemental Awakening/Storm Touched

  • Attributes
    Physique=90
    Spirit=15

    Focus Physique until 60, after that start to put some points into Spirit. If you don’t need any spirit for your gear, you can put all of them into Physique.

  • Gear
    Try to always cap resistance. Gear with +Frostburn damage or Frostburn Procs are preferable. Glacier is an easy relic to get. If you do have Deathchill, it’s a nice levelling relic. Nemesis/Ignaffar’s Combustion is another good option later on.

  • General Tips

    [ol]
  • Hyram, the rare goods vendor in the Steelcap District sells random old relic recipes(Ultimate)
  • Farm Routes
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    Start at Burrwitch Village Rift and go up, follow the route until the portal, 2 guaranteeed heroes, more possible on that way. Enter the building - 1 guaranteed hero, most of the time more and 1 treasure chest. If you’re out of the building, check if there is a hero on the right sight of the building, if not go up to the shrine, there’s sometimes a treasure chest/hero or Kuba.

    Enter the cellar and complete it, 1 guaranteed hero. Follow the route. There are 2 tree stumps on the route that might give you Ugdenbloom. Enter the dungeon, 1 guaranteed hero. Follow the route down to the building and finish the run.



    The common Twin Falls farm route. Enter the dungeon at the end.

  • Grim Dawn Debuff Sheet

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Thank you for your time. Feel free to leave comments/suggestions.

2

Interesting, although I hate having to resort to a shield to survive. If I was you I would go up Primordial after taking Murmur for more tankiness though, Leviathan seems rather unimpressive for me beside the decent proc.
How is your clear speed with this setup? I’ve been playing with my full Korba guy for a while now, damage is actually pretty good after the buff, IM and Fabius goes down very fast thanks to human damage however when two Moomoo’s appear it turns into a shit show very quickly http://www.grimtools.com/calc/d2jezarN .

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The shield is not necessary. You could go Dual Wield. I tried it out for campaign ultimate content and I didn’t had any issues. I just prefer the shield option above the dual wield solution. Because you would need to move points around. Execution and other talents are must have if you want to go dual wield.

I wouldn’t use Korba Weapons for the build, because the main damage is Frostburn and Korba doesn’t offer a lot for that. But there are a lot of nice Frostburn Weapons out there.

Crescent Moon
Witch Moon
Beacon of the Winter’s Veil

If you would get one of the two two hand weapons Bane of the Winter King or Soulrend I would totally give it a go. With Savagery you have the the possibility to get 8% physical Resistance if you would wear a two hand weapon.

I didn’t tried Crucible a lot because I prefer to have different settings/farm routes and not always the same area. I’ve done Challenger but didn’t tried Gladiator. Killing speed on Crucible Challenger with Vanguard Banner active was not an issue. Everything died really fast.

For normal ultimate campaign content. Everything dies super fast because of Frostburn Damage. For Nemesis, it depends. Zantarin was just facetank and he died fast. For Moosilauke I did need to change the room during phase 2 because I couldn’t kill the crystals. Not sure if Frostburn Damage doesn’t work on them or if they just have an insane amount of cold resistance.

The build has an insane amount of Cold RR and the damage on every other cold opponent is nice, but not for those crystals.

4

Wow, nice build! I’m so glad that I helped give you the inspiration for this, it makes all the effort I put into making/maintaining that guide worthwhile =)

Trickster is definitely a solid combo for this Frostburn style due to the gobs and gobs of RR. Some points I wanted to make…

  • The Oleron’s Blood component is mainly for magnifying your Flat Frostburn damage by 355%. I love the idea of turning Storm Touched into a sick Frostburn proc, but unfortunately it can’t be magnified with Oleron’s Blood because it’s a Savagery attack. To make the most of this route, I’d really recommend investing more in Savagery (by taking points out of ABB) and replacing Oleron’s Blood with some other component, maybe a Seal of some sort.

  • Going a 2h route for that 8% phys resist is a good idea, but also because Soulrend is amaaaazing for this build and the total damage modified by 15% stacks with the damage modifier for Savagery and helps you get beefy magnifiers for that Flat Frostburn. If you also went Feral Hunger for 160% WD modifier, multiplying everything would give you a 317% damage modifier, which is comparable to Oleron’s Blood and lets you make the most of Storm Touched.

  • A big part of what makes the shield really good for survivability is Overguard and Shield Training. Without those, classes using a shield need some extra help to make the most out of it. Targo the Builder is a great constellation for this because his proc really makes your shield soak a lot more damage, and his nodes are just great defensive/health oriented anyway. If you can find gear with Overguard proc on hit, that would be good as well.

  • My Blademaster was a lot easier to gear/build optimally because my choices to maximize damage were pretty limited. Soldier doesn’t really bring much to the table DPS-wise and is solely there for survivability. As a Trickster, you have a ton more options that can benefit from a variety of different things, making it much less straightforward. For example, Stormcaller’s Pact gives you a TON of crit damage which can be a great resource for DPS if you utilize it correctly by building for a lot of extra OA. The Savagery/Storm Touched route for more Flat Frostburn is another option. My Blademaster focused on getting as many Frostburn procs as possible because he needed the base damage, but you can actually try forgoing some Frostburn proc gear/skills to maximize your OA and Savagery to take more advantage of your crit damage and Flat Frostburn specifically. Or even ditching Leviathan and all that affinity to focus on different devotions that give more OA. I’m not quite sure what would be more effective TBH, but it’s worth considering.

What I would recommend if you really want to figure out how to optimize this build is to create a little spreadsheet. List out every item of gear you have, and every Frostburn related skill or devotion. Then have 4 columns; Base Frostburn damage, +% Frostburn damage, -% Cold RR, and +% Crit damage. Fill in each column for all your skills/devotion abilities/gear, then add up the 4 columns and multiply the sums (except for the Cold RR and Crit columns treat them as a percentage, i.e. if you have 110 Cold RR total then your multiplier should be 2.1). This ends up being a good estimate for your total damage. From this spreadsheet, it’s pretty easy to move skills around or swap gear and see what impact it should have on your overall damage.

Anyway, this build is very…cool :cool: Glad to hear that you were able to clear Ultimate content with it :slight_smile:

5

Thank you for the feedback, really appreciated it. I’m going to give targo a try and move some of the affinity points into OA constellations to see if it does increase the damage and to justify the use of the shield. With the ability of Taro I might not need the damage reduction of Oleron’s Blood anymore and I going to swap it.

I would like to give that shield a go if I should get it Aegis Defender, the shield is for ranged weapons. But the resistance on it and the +1 to all skills makes it one of the rare good defence options.

Soulrend was always a weapon that I did want to try out. Going to farm Alkamos for it.

I’ve already tried to swap all the points from ABB into savagery and the damage of savagery is a bit higher with it. However, ABB does no damage at all any more.

If I put all the points into ABB and just let 1 point into savagery, the overall damage is higher for me at the moment.

Some other gear consideration that I had was to use 2 set of Korba(Hood+chest) and 2 set of the Mageslayer set (amuletand shoulders)

I’m going to do a little spreadsheet. The reason I’ve put the build out before I’ve got all the perfect gear that I would like to have is that I did want to share a build that does use low or normal gear and nothing really fancy and still is able to clear the content and can kill nemesis opponents.