Vitality Non-Pet Cabalist bad?

Grim Dawn General Discussion
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I have a pet cabalist character, which is fine, but I duplicated it to try a vitality caster/fighter with zero pets…but it kinda sucks.
I can see why this has not made it to top 20 builds (and likely will not).

Before I begin, I understand the issues, cabalist has a million possible combinations (multiple pet options, aether, chaos, vitality, cold, melee, spells) but at the end of the day this just is not a good option.
My thoughts:
-little synergy between skills: solael’s witchfire gives attack speed, but a lot of the other skills rely on spellcasting (doom bolt, siphon souls, sigil of consumption, ravenous earth, bone harvest)
-bone harvest on 0 sec cd with dual wield bonescythes seems good but it needs to be interrupted every 6 secs for debuff application
-few options for non-pet and pure-melee builds
-multiple damage types that realistically cannot all be converted (cold, chaos, aether, vitality, physical, acid)
-difficult choices with vitality having high adcth but lower damage, chaos not benefitting from a lot of skills, pets not viable, and a lot of options just being superior with other masteries (aether with arcanist, vitality with shaman, chaos with demolitionist, cold with nightblade or berserker etc.)
-most items for this build are very high level (84/94)

In case you’re curious, here is my sucky grimcalc Cabalist, Level 91 (GD 1.3.0.6) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator which is NOT complete nor viable for ultimate.

2

Vitality non pet cabalist could be really powerfull to kill all celestial, not talking about ascendant difficulty

Insanely high lifesteal mean that only one wey you could be killed is getting oneshot, otherwise he is immortal

Example of our build Cabalist, Level 100 (GD 1.3.0.6) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator

1 Like
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Not at all - is it top build - probably not, but it is one of the stronger ones and it can clear everything and farm safely with full altar just not as fast as others: [1.3.0.6] Dark One Raveneous Earth Vitality Cabalist All Celestials, SR31 safe - help me optimize it

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I had the same experience the past few days playing the character, I sometimes die to one shots, even though my resistances are overcapped. I also play melee and my DA is 2.8k but I cannot beat foa mogdrogen even in veteran difficulty, which is weird because I can beat nemesis kubacabra in ascendant difficulty (and Aleksandr).
Thank you for the grimcalc link, I’ve bookmarked it, although I don’t have much gear (your build has the full valgruul set, I don’t have any pieces of it yet).

Thanks for the link, I have the lunal’valgoth belt and the blood orb of ch’thon but not the dark one set.

For reference here’s my current build Cabalist, Level 100 (GD 1.3.0.7) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator
I’m melee and both of your builds are spellcasters but this is what I don’t like about this build, both solael witchfire and harbinger of souls give attack speed, which without melee or ranged attacks are pointless.

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I theorycrafted vitality Drain Essence + Doom Bolt. Looks promising.

Also Clairvoyant set Cabalist will work for sure.