What to look out for when building characters?

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
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Hi there, I discovered this wonderful game two weeks ago and have more or less been consumed by it (scratches so many itches just right) - I’m well into ultimate playing a DEE Warlock, which is fine and all, but I’m getting to a point where I want to do more build-wise than “random bullshit go” (which has worked splendidly so far, but more on that later).

I’ve played a lot of PoE back in the day so I’m no stranger to calcing and tcing a build, it’s just a bit hard when you don’t know what to look out for. I know you want to cap resistances, but what about other defensive stats? Is there something like single hit in this game, aka the highest possible single hit damage your build can survive? Is there recommended values here to calc around?
I understand this will vary from content to content, but it still feels like quite a fundamental thing to plan a build around.

Damage types: as Warlock playing DEE, it’s mainly acid/poison for me. However, I randomly got vitality/chaos damage from some pieces at some point, and it skyrocketed my DPS. I understand there will be diminishing returns stacking acid/poison multipliers, but this in turn makes it way harder for me to decide if a drop is worthwile, because I don’t understand why the chaos/vitality damage seems to be so valuable in my damage output.

Damage conversion: i.e. Vitality to Acid/Poison - from what I gather, it’s a way to additively stack multipliers involved in conversion? I don’t see how this ends up being super insane (because it’s “just” additive) though, unless you have a lot of otherwise useless damage modifiers on your gear (which, for all I know, could totally happen).

The way I’d usually go about learning about all of these concepts would be following guides until I grasp the key things they all have in common, however my first attempt at trying a guide in this game was such a disaster, I’m not really looking forward to trying it again, at least not on my current character.
Around half-way into Elite, I looked into an AAR Warlock build using sigil of consumption and Doom bolt - I grinded some totems and Cultists for relevant gear, once I hit lv 82 I did the swap and… It was awful. My wonderful, one-button-explodes-a-pack DEE had been replaced with a stationary AAR, a negative damage Sigil of Consumption and a disturbing lack of doom bolt (for lack of skill points). On paper, AAR should be better, because you get way more modifiers and conversions going for Chaos/Elemental damage types as Warlock than Acid/Poison/Vitality, but it was just awful to play (and did way less damage, to boot!)

I went back to DEE and zoom through everything on ultimate, even defensively I’m doing fine for now (I’ve played flicker in PoE before, randomly exploding is part of the fun) - not being forced to be stationary like with AAR helps a lot.
I know the Status-tab DPS-“counter” is worthless, but I’m sitting at 160k for DEE now, and there’s still so much room to grow - I’m just not sure where to take it, and it’d be nice to have a clearer direction for what gear I even bother picking up.

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I can give you my opinion, although I’m not an expert. Probably the more experienced people on the forum will give you even better pointers. Finally, “what to look for” could be quite subjective, so I can tell you what I look for.

  1. Max resistances.
  2. 100% reflection damage reduction, so you won’t have to worry about reflecting enemies, especially in groups where you can’t isolate them. I achieve this with 2x Titan plate components and one or two constellations.
  3. Max damage bonus as much as possible for your final damage type.
  4. Convert as much damage as possible to the final damage type. Conversion applied through skill modifiers to a default attack replacer (like Righteous fervor, but with the exception of Cadence, which is broken as a DAR) is carried to all the attacks triggered by it (like Smite), so it’s easier to aim for the conversion of the DAR, instead of every single one of the triggered attacks (WPS). Or you can convert everything with global conversion.
  5. Try to get one effect for each of the defensive/offensive layers, such as “reduced enemy damage”, “chance for the enemy to miss attacks” etc. But not more than one because most of them don’t stack.
  6. Try to get above 2.8k offensive ability if you have skills that trigger on critical strikes. Or just try to do that in general.
  7. Try to add as many skill modifiers as possible from gear to your main skill(s).
  8. Internal damage scaling (done in the skill’s nodes) is more important than having slightly more global damage scaling.
  9. Try to apply as much lower resistance debuffs as possible to your damage type(s).
  10. Try to increase your health to at least 18k.
  11. Life steal is essential for survival. Some skills have inner life stealing, while the ones that have % weapon damage can use the global life stealing bonus.
  12. Try to have fewer and more powerful active secondary skills, so you won’t feel overwhelmed by constantly activating more than 3 or 4 of them.
  13. Your main skill usually (if not always) has to be without a cooldown, so you can spam at least one attack. You either choose one that doesn’t have a cooldown or you eliminate the cooldown with the skill’s extension or skill modifiers from gear.

I’m going to edit this response if I missed anything I couldn’t remember. I find it easier to look in the item database for skill modifiers and start from there. Once I identify a skill that’s modified nicely by gear, I build around that skill. I also look in the database for gear that helps me convert all damage to the final type. I either find gear that does a 100% conversion first and then look what skills would benefit from that or the other way around.

Here’s an example of one build I made that I posted on another thread earlier, which kind of reflects everything I look for when making a build. So far I’ve identified over 50 pretty unique builds that seem good and I’m sure there are 50 more I haven’t yet explored.

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General rule is to stack as many modifiers for your main skill as possible.

I play HC and I always stack health regen. Leech is good as a supplement. I don’t pay attention to armor. You can’t stack enough to negate the big hits anyway.

Offensively, the most important stat is resistance reduction. Every top build stacks it as high as possible. I’d say 50% is the minimum for a campaign playthrough. So 1 skill + 1 devotion.

Reflect resistance is only important for physical builds, because you can’t stack phys res very high.

I’m sure someone else is already saying this, but post your build. Go to grimtools, there’s a button there to import your character, and another button to share the link.

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You are a brave one, sir!

I agree with you that physical reflected damage is most dangerous where you’re most exposed, due to low physical resistance, but negating it entirely is even better because any extra dmg avoided is a win in my book, especially if you aim for the highest possible damage for your build. If you can afford to negate it entirely, I don’t see why not. And I always seem to afford it without sacrificing anything vital. Imagine having large damage, many attacks and even large DoT and having your life constantly chipped away, no matter by what amount. All this while your enemies hit you at the same time. I say I’m better off without any cares. I also grab the constellations as soon as possible, so I can fare better early on against reflective enemies. But I’m sure that good players can play the game even without protection against reflected damage (including physical). It just takes skill, patience and a keen eye to spot the culprits. However, I don’t really have any of these three qualities or at least the patience. For AoE skills you can’t even isolate the reflective enemies, you’d have to avoid them entirely.
Let’s assume that you have a dps of 300k and you also apply lower resist debuffs on enemies, so that you end up doubling this damage. I’ve read that hero enemies reflect 33% of the damage, so that would mean 200k that you have to deal with. If your resistance is 80%, you take 1/5 of that, which is 40k. That looks like more than enough to me, even for a resistance of 80%. Or maybe there’s something wrong somewhere in the variables I used for the calculation? In my opinion, the only way you can deal with reflective enemies without resistance to them is to wait until they turn off their aura and attack them before they activate it again. But that requires a keen eye and patience.

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That’s great to know and seems sensible enough. Resistance reduction seems like rare enough of a stat

Oh yeah, I should have added my current build to begin with.
Currently it looks like this:

I haven’t put augments on everything yet because I change gear often enough that it’s a hassle, but it’s something I’m keeping an eye on for sure. Devotions are the only thing I took from the guide I mentioned in my earlier post, at least the Order and primordial ones - they seemed good for staying alive, which is mostly what I care about right now, as my damage is good enough as is.

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In case you didnt know this, the devotion stone form will never proc without a shield equipped.

If you would like a guide to GD mechanics, i would highly suggest reading this guide from Malawiglenn. It covers just about everything a new player would want.

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If you want my opinion about the build (and I’m not sure that you do), the first things that caught my eye is that you rely on the resistances provided by the buff from the pants, which has a short duration and a large cooldown. So, it isn’t reliable. I always deactivate this kind of buffs in the builder, so I can see what my permanent resistances are at all times. Also, you should strive to convert all the damage of your main skill to a single type and then augment that type with % global bonuses. There is gear that internally converts Dreeg’s eye in one go, I think. Always look here for gear with skill modifiers Item skill modifiers - Grim Dawn Item Database .

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You probably don’t need 10 points in conversion. The last few points have brutal diminishing returns.

Your devotions seem kinda random to me. You want to decide what kind of damage you want to do, and focus on that in the devotion tree. Get the resistance reduction for your chosen type. For acid you want Murmur devotion. For vitality you want Ratosh. And Manticore RR doesn’t stack with Scales RR.

When build making, you want to go to grim tools item database, and type in “damage to Dreeg’s Evil Eye”. Look at the green and purple items. The blues don’t have the special modifiers.