[Warlock](u) Insane dps Glass Cannon Fire Build, beat Port Valbury Ultimate but very squishy

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
1

I updated this build. http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/showthread.php?t=49723

Caster(vid) Fire Warlock

Great fun kiting dps build; don’t try to facetank.

No screenshots… sorry but I can’t get them to work. I do have videos though! (below)

Videos (apologies for the muted audios, had copyrighted music playing)

Port Valbury Ultimate Solo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVcL3d2JMTs&t=1s
Crucible Gladiator extra spawn waves 1-150 14.5m score (multiplayer): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INcRhHU-mwo&t=4s
Failed Attempted Speedrun at Port Valbury (Damn you flesh hulks): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wpotq8MDafo

Pros
-Insane AoE and single target dps. +2000% fire damage modifier.
-Nice CC with flash freeze and nice invulnerability for 3 secs with mirror of erections oops I mean erectes.

Cons
-Squishballs, unless u have max resistances; even then low health, so squishballs.
-Runs out of energy at times with aether ray.
-Need to spend all augments on resistances or you die.

End Gear
-Full Iskandra’s Set and Iskandra’s mythical relic.
-Tinker’s Ingenuity belt for acid resist
-Mark of Anathema for medal
-other good lvl 75 legendaries for boots, pants, rings, and gloves.
-Warpfire or a better fire dmg legendary for weapon.

Skills
Fun Fire skills with 4 fun devotion actives that proc off them

Grim Dawn Calc: http://grimcalc.com/build/1007-653Sg0

Commentary on skills:
Curse of Frailty lowers their fire resist by 30%, then just devastation and aether ray all the time and mirror/flash freeze when needed. Pretty straightforward.

Auras and Passives
I got aether-ward aura and fire aura from components.

Devotions
Refer to grimcalc but here’s the order I got them:

-Crossroads (Chaos)
-Fiend
-Scholar’s Light
-Raven
-Magi
-Vulture
-Ulzuin’s Torch
-Hawk
-Crossroads (Ascendant)
-Hammer
-Owl
-Blind Sage

Leveling Guide
Max out devastation first, destroy everything. Arcanist OP

Conclusion
I love this build but if you don’t like the challenge of a squishy hero I wouldn’t play it. I play this a lot on twitch – http://www.twitch.tv/parashara
Also, there are many twitch archived videos of this build if you want to check them out.

Thanks for reading!

–Orion (parashara steam id)

2

glass cannon at its best! thanks for sharing thiz one :cool:

3

NP dude, thanks for playing some crucible with me :slight_smile:

4

I think I can help you out a bit.

  1. Get Occultist mastery to lvl 32 and pick up as many points as you can in Blood of Dreeg and 12/12 into Aspect of the Guardian. This is absolutely non-negotiable, this is the best passive tree in the game. 138 offensive ability (+152 in your case because of Inner Focus) is insane for an AAR build because that skill is so crit-oriented (more on that later). Also, it solves a lot of survivability issues with 12% physical resist (!!!), regeneration and an on-demand heal. As a bonus, it caps your poison resist leaving you more wiggle room in the augment/components department.

  2. You have the wrong idea about how to stack damage in GD. It is unintuitive, so I will go into a lot of details, don’t think I’m being patronizing. For example, you say you have +2000% fire damage modifier, but you take Overload for +80% fire damage. That’s less than a 5% fire damage increase because all % damage bonuses ADD instead of multiplying each other. Since your damage is not pure fire, it’s more like 2% total damage increase. Worthless. On the other hand, you can put those points into Elemental Balance for +25% crit damage, which is (assuming your build sits around 2500 OA, so around 25% chance for 1.5x multiplier on an average non-trash mob) around 13% total damage increase, since all damage types crit and multiply in the same way. It’s less vs bosses, more vs absolute trash, but still astronomical for what is essentially a 7 skill point investment. For the same reason you should definitely max Disintegration. Obviously, all of this is pointless if your offensive ability is too low, you want at least 2500 for an AAR build.

  3. Second important damage multiplier in GD is resistance reduction. Unlike crit damage, it applies to only specific damage types, but the multiplier is insane. It’s also hard to quantify it because it depends on monster resistances, but since the nastier the monster, the more effective it is (see here), you absolutely want as much as you can stack. In your case, the best source of resistance reduction are devotions (most notably Widow and Solael’s Witchblade constellations) and the Black Star of Deceit medal, and maybe the Band of the Eternal Haunt ring.

  4. Now that we covered damage multipliers, it’s important to mention that they are useles without base damage (duh…). The way most damage skills scale in GD is kinda weird. It’s usually linear increase until max level. Then it’s a slower initial progress as you pass max, except for the last few points which usually add huge bonuses. In your case, it is extremely important that you get AAR to 26/16, it’s not hard to do with the Iskandra set. In total, getting AAR to 26/16 increases it’s damage by around 65% over having it at 16/16. Yes, the mana cost skyrockets, but it can be somewhat mitigated by getting Mental Alacrity and one of the amulet components that reduces mana cost. There is also the Owl constellation.

  5. Finally, cast speed and procs. Cast speed is straight forward, get it to 200%. AAR is affected by cast speed. Procs are things that have a chance to activate when you attack or get hit. In your case, you are missing one of the strongest offensive procs in the game: Agrivix’s Mallice. There is absolutely no excuse not to use it, Iskandra’s Balance is awful because % damage bonuses are weak as explained before. This monster crits for 15k damage, activates every second or so, it’s easy to control what it hits and stacks with itself if you stand still. You can further increase the damage it does by using theAlbrecht’s Duality ring to convert chaos to aether.

  6. Ok, I told you to invest a bunch of skill points, you can’t just conjure them out of thin air. True, but without the proper GrimCalc (with all +skills bonuses) I can’t tell you exactly. In either case, you don’t need maxed Curse of Fragility and definitely not Flash Freeze. 1 point is enough. Overload is awful as stated before. Reckless Power should be at 11/12. Peerless Eye is a much better amulet for you than Iskandra’s, and you only need 4/5 for the +2 Arcanist bonus.

  7. Finally, devotion. I honestly don’t know where to start. Magi is awful (just try and make it kill any trash mob on it’s own), Torch is a waste of points, Flame Torrent is for builds that have a multi-component spell (like Stun Jacks) or a fast melee attack, otherwise it’s low cooldown is wasted. The whole Blind Sage is pointless, the only decent node is the one with crit damage and skill disruption protection. If you want a glass cannon Arcanist, go into the blue+red side of the chart, finishing up with Spear of the Heavens and 4 points into Dying God. Also get points into Behemoth because you need some form of regeneration and Solael’s Witchblade if you want to rely on fire damage. Something like this.

5

Hmm thanks for all the advice! I’ll definitely take the advice about spreading out to more damage types than just fire and maxing disintegration. I disagree on some of your other points but that’s alright! :wink:

Also, I tried out some new devotions based on ur advice. It kicks ass!!!

http://grimcalc.com/build/1007-QxgdsI

Thanks
Orion

6

The flat damage (when it just says “x-y damage”) does nothing for you. It only applies to your weapon. Aether Ray isn’t a default attack and it doesn’t have the “x% weapon damage” in it, so its base damage is only determined by the level of the skill. Because of this, nodes like the last one in Dying God do literally nothing. For the same reason, Hawk is much, much better than the candle (Scholar’s Light). Actually, not just for that reason, Hawk is probably the best low tier constellation: 15 + 3% OA, 8% crit damage for 3 points and no requirements, that’s just silly.

7

Drop occultist, go battlemage, stack OA up to 3800+, enjoy your dipies.
Drop useless conselation, anything that dont give you OA or -%res is useless.
http://grimcalc.com/build/1007-Jo5jah
Perhaps Scorpion proc would be more beneficial that Eldrich fire? -140 enemy DA is a huge dps boost, for AAR , in most cases it would be better that -20% fire res from eldrich.

8

[QUOTE=Ptirodaktill;465249]Drop occultist, go battlemage, stack OA up to 3800+, enjoy your dipies.
Drop useless conselation, anything that dont give you OA or -%res is useless.
http://grimcalc.com/build/1007-Jo5jah
Perhaps Scorpion proc would be more beneficial that Eldrich fire? -140 enemy DA is a huge dps boost, for AAR , in most cases it would be better that -20% fire res from eldrich.

9

Changed grimcalc one more time based on suggestions. I think this is probably my final build unless I got back to blind seer (it’s a really fun devotion proc with aether ray, u get like 10 little elemental balls killing stuff)

https://grimcalc.com/build/1007-Uf51mY

10

Thanks again to GeneralCash for the very constructive criticism. Some people on forums/reddit are such idiots as you can see here https://www.reddit.com/r/Grimdawn/comments/5m4u5m/grim_dawn_massive_dps_fireaether_warlock_build/