Grim Dawn, a Diablo-style Action RPG

[Bobchillingworth]

I'm interested in any input anyone can give me on my build. I'm now level 23, I use the "Slithbane" 2-hander sword equipped with some item which further boosts its lightning damage.

My skills are mostly invested in the Soldier tree. Maxed Forcewave, modified it with Tremor, the remainder of my points are split about evenly between various buffs + the class itself, with five or so also in the skill which heals me when I drop under a certain health percentage. I also have a large number of points in the Shaman's 2-hander passive damage buff skill. Most of my devotion point are in Vulture and Jackal, for the lifesteal + damage buffs.


All I do in combat is spam Forcewave in chokepoints.


Does any of the above make sense for a coherent build? Most enemies die quickly and I can chew through mobs in a few seconds, but this may just be a function of playing on "normal" difficulty. Bosses usually take a lot longer to go down, some of the non-randomly generated ones have given me some trouble (no deaths yet though). I have no idea if Tremor is even benefiting from my lifesteal abilities or if my 16 or so points in Forcewave are doing much for me. None of the character stat screens are particularly illuminating. I tried looking for information elsewhere, but most of the people posting Tremor builds are working with characters far more developed than mine, plus some of the ARPG vet jargon is borderline inscrutable.


I really want to like this game, but right now everything feels extremely repetitive, like I'm playing Pokemon with a single character party and beating every encounter with the same one attack.

[Boro]

Get 2-3 lups of blitz. It's a great way to manipulate the battlefield. If you can add blindside, even better.

I personally dont use tremor, as early on I rely on my weapon damage and I love the stun. It might be worth it if you have a low-recharge devotion skill like bat's fangs.

Finally, 1pt savagery is just worth it as a filler, charge yourself up, then forcewave-blitz to cash in on the enemies.

Feral hunger, zolhan's, markovian advantage, upheaval only work with savagery, firestrike, and cadence (2/3 of the time) from what I know. Dont put points into them yet.

[Bobchillingworth]

Thanks for the advice. I've decided to go all-in on buffing Tremor, which seems to be working well enough (I did suffer my first death in the "Room of Death" on level 4 of the Steps of Torment, though- probably not going to go through the trouble of trying that again). The game has gotten a lot more fun with the introduction of the Undead faction; they seem to have a much greater variety of troops, and ones which I can easily identify visually in the middle of combat (glows yellow or purple = kill that guy first).


I do wish there was some option to turn off enemy respawns though. I understand that grinding levels is an expected part of the ARPG experience, but I have no time for that, don't need to on only Normal difficulty, and having the levels constantly repopulate with enemies makes backtracking an incredible chore.

[Sirian]

I do wish there was some option to turn off enemy respawns though.  I understand that grinding levels is an expected part of the ARPG experience, but I have no time for that, don't need to on only Normal difficulty, and having the levels constantly repopulate with enemies makes backtracking an incredible chore.

I believe that multiplayer is the reason for this design choice. There is so much less information to transfer and synch if all the mobs reset on a fresh game instance.

Single-player-only ARPGs (and some dual ones, in single player mode) do preserve your kills and clears. Grim Dawn apparently went all-in on multiplayer style.


- Sirian

[Rowain]

I do wish there was some option to turn off enemy respawns though.  I understand that grinding levels is an expected part of the ARPG experience, but I have no time for that, don't need to on only Normal difficulty, and having the levels constantly repopulate with enemies makes backtracking an incredible chore.

The writs do send you sometimes back into past territories so keeping them empty would make those meaningless. Besides you will need to redo some parts else you won't have the level to beat the final encounters. ( You should be around lvl 50 then ). You also have to think about the hardcore-mode where people do extensive grinding to stay alive.

[Boro]

Okay, I deleted all my original starting characters back in last summer, and finished up most of Veteran and Elite with my main - a Pet Conjurer. It's a bit like the D2 druid, except more summons, and more being focused on by enemy bosses, but a couple points back into ground slam should deal with that issue. That, plus a pair of other chars who did vet, and yet more to finish it, I feel a bit of a similarity between playstyles and builds, namely that most tend to converge towards a facetank-y very untactile mess, so to speak, due to the DLC crucible's particularities, and how very high level enemies/nemesis encounters don't disengage, or if they do, they are on top of you the moment you engage them. Or both, forcing a protracted hit-taking back and forth.

Amongst this, with act boss, nemesis, and superboss resists sometimes going over to "immune to all" territories, resist reduction becomes a big deal. Elemental Storm or Manticore are mandatory, etc etc, and within this environment, Chaos and Elemental damage are seen as a weaker, less efficient way of dealing with the cream of the crop when it comes to the enemies.

Panetti's Replicating Missile is seen as by far the most crippled: Dealing three damage types due to elemental (1/3 each of fire, cold, lightning), plus Aether from it's modifiers, it's ridiculously hard to get Reduced Enemy Resists for all of them. At least in theory. Add to that how it's not exactly a boss killing wonder, and how any character can just pick a large AoE skill to clear away the "trash" encounters on the road, it becomes clear why other skills, with things like %weapon damage to transfer lifesteal, flat damage, etc effects onto the skill's base damage, are more popular, and why Panetti's is relegated to a second rate at best.

Similarly, because Physique is both Strength (To equip better armor that can absorb more damage) and Vitality at once (More hp), most builds tend to skim on spirit and cunning, and only get enough to equip their gear, because high damage nemesis and superboss enemies can wreck one easily...

Therefore a Panetti's character with a load of spirit must be a pretty bad choice, right?

Not a good choice at all?

I'm sold.

[Bobchillingworth]

Finally finished off the Ashes of Malmouth expansion on Ultimate, after spending almost exactly 1 1/2 years sporadically playing the same character.  Here's my toon:








Build calculator propagated from my most recent save



Fairly happy with how she turned out, given that I didn't have much of a clue what I was doing when I first started playing, and used minimal recourse to guides.  Build is a Warder (Shaman + Soldier), using Tremor-modified Forcewave spam.  Two circuit-breakers for emergency health recovery (one from a Soldier ability, another from the "Mythical Avatar of Mercy" legendary amulet), totem for tanking, blitz for rapid re-positioning.  I tried to equip as many modifiers as possible to extend the duration and output of my "Internal Trauma" damage, as I believe very few if any enemies carry a resistance to it.  


I was able to defeat every major campaign boss without issue.  Also killed the vanilla Cthonian and Aetherial nemesis bosses; didn't encounter the rest, except for the AoM Cthonian nemesis who repeatedly flattened me with embarrassing ease.  The superbosses were unfortunately beyond me (although I did beat Ulgrim on Normal difficulty once I reached level 100, heh).  Cleared most of the challenge dungeons, but I couldn't defeat the end-bosses for Port Valbury or the new Bog dungeon.  I also suffered a few surprising deaths to enemies with reflection abilities- even eating 10% of my own damage from a single attack would drain at least half my health.  


Most of the gear I got from lucky drops, and should be best-in-slot; I did trade for a couple of the Mythical Legendary items.  Speaking of which, I now have a fairly large stockpile of end-game gear which I have no real use for, so if someone is looking to gear up their own character with a particular item I'm happy to see if I've got it.  



Not sure what's next; will probably eventually start a new character- my very last drop was a "Mythical Witching Hour", a rifle with some impressive skill bonuses, so maybe I'll try playing as a summoner.  It's a shame there's so much of a grind getting to level 94+; I just want to try out a maxed Ultimate build without having to bother with Normal and Epic modes first!  


Interested in seeing other RBer's completed characters too, assuming anyone is still playing this game.  Doesn't seem like Grim Dawn ever caught on with the community.

[Japper007]

I think you suffered against the superbosses because your base attributes are low-ish, 15 K health is low for a lvl 100 Warder, I'd suggest at least dropping the 12/12 in modrogens pact (just leave it at 1/12 to enable the much better enhancers) and maxing out the Shaman Mastery bar instead  for extra hp and physique, the 34 health regen really isn't worth it  unless you go for a lot of +%hp regen stuff (besides, you'd probably get more from the extra physique you pick up this way...) Same for Veterancy in Soldier really.

I'd show you one of my builds but I play exclusively on Hardcore so most of them are pretty low-level (and dead), and I lost my high-level saves when I reinstalled my pc 

[Bobchillingworth]

Thanks for the advice! I'll pick up this character again when the new expansion rolls out, will do some optimization then.


Frustratingly, for the "Mad Queen" superboss and the final remaining Port Valbury endboss, I could take their damage well enough, but my damage over time from Internal Trauma wasn't sufficient to overcome their healing abilities.

[Japper007]

Hmm if you intend to go with Internal Trauma as a bosskiller you should max Charging Bull in the devotions, that constellation is a cheap source of very strong IT modifiers and the ability it grants is insanely strong if you are set up for a lot of leftclick damage and internal trauma (as your gear seems to be)