Grim Dawn - An ARPG from Crate (ex Iron Lore aka Titan Quest devs)

Hey very cool, Grimtools has an import character feature. And here I was thinking you’d given me a Herculean task tonight trying to recreate my character in the character builder.

https://www.grimtools.com/calc/nZorjbGV

Notice the haphazard spreading of points in the Devotion tree at this point. Now that I’ve got the Meteors and the two big other things I was aiming for. Now I’m just grabbing random defensive and offensive nodes here and there.

My Petless Conjurer build is now level 29, and still alive (hardcore is so tense in this game). That’s my attempt at the Vitality Tank. I haven’t reached high enough level to get the vitality Storm Totem yet.

I did test Ultrazen’s theory and confirmed it by putting a Hollowed Fang on both my shield and my Gorefeast axe. And I assigned one Blood drinker to Left Thumbstick press, and the other to Right thumbstick press. Theoretically this allows me to have stacked 20% life steal on each of those. So it does work.

However, I’m wondering when I finally get my Storm Totem, turned into a Vitality totem instead, will that also steal life for me when I activate Blood drinker twice and am stealing over 50% attack damage as health?

Only frustrating thing about that build is that I have no default attack move. I’m using the little sword symbol as my default attack. It’s the only character I’ve ever created who has had to use that as a default attack. It feels so weird. Like I’m leaving something on the table.

A couple of points into savagery and tenacity of the boar won’t hurt anything if you want a default weapon attack.

p.s. Twin Fangs devotion assigned to bloody pox is amazing.

RIP my Vindicator. I was rolling through stuff pretty easily, and even took down that Aetherial human that sometimes kills characters easily in Act 2. Darius Cronley or something.

And then some random Wasp with a star on its head killed me really fast. I guess I was getting cocky. Must have been bleeding damage? It was only Act 2, so my bleeding resist was really low.

Meanwhile my Petless Conjurer (what Ultrazen calls the DOT Warlock, for some reason) has not been close to death yet, and he’s in the same point in the campaign. He kills stuff much slower than my Vindicator, but the life-steal means that he can stand there and wait and keep swinging until stuff dies to devouring swarm or the new corrupted storm totem he just got. Meanwhile the Vindicator used to rely on everything dying really fast while she shotgunned people and brought down lightning from above and through totems.

Oh well, she’ll be missed. DELETE.

My highest level hardcore character that continues to live on is my second try at the Petless Conjurer, which is basically the Vitality tank Warlock that @Ultrazen described above. She is level 33 now, and has a pretty good Occultist debuff going as well as that Corrupted Storm Totem and Windigo Totem that adds Vitality damage.

Plus every time she plays, she teams up with a Nightblade friend of mine who’s got that debuff Aura that Nightblades have that’s so awesome. So together we really debuff the shit out of all the enemies, and I’m able to Vitality tank most enemies, and help my Nightblade friend tank as well, since the Windigo totem and the SIgil of Consumption help add lifesteal to his attacks as well.

Overall, it’s a really wicked combination. The other night we reached the bottom of the Arkovian Dungeon, with that enemy down there that used to kill all my softcore characters a lot, especially my Purifier. But with the two of us working together, we had no scares with him.

We’re getting close to the Steps of Torment, and I’m actually getting cocky, thinking that maybe, even though we’re hardcore, we should do the Steps, including the Rogue-like dungeon part. I know that none of my softcore characters have ever survived a run in the Steps of Torment, but surely, this combination of two characters is really solid and they can do it.

Countdown to RIP post lol. I wish you luck!!!

I rolled @Rock8man’s fire purifier for grins - even took Veteran mode - and have had no real isues so far. However at level 14 I have one question. I don’t dispute that Fire Strike is powerful, and I’ve got one or two points in Explosive Strike - but I feel like I’m doing a ton of attacks to kill the packs that I’m now facing. Fire Strike feels like a souped-up single target ability. It kills stuff, but at best I’m hitting each target once as opposed to lobbing out some AOEs and worrying about stragglers (like uh, Devouring Swarm fr’instance). Are the Fire/Ice runes used as AOE abilities or is there something I’m missing or what?

Yep. I lay down those runes all the time as I’m firing. And it’s true, I use those as crowd control, while I fire and proc all those abilities under the dual pistol side of the tree on the Inquisitor.

We came to our senses. We just went down to the door, but didn’t actually use the Skeleton Key. We backed out and kept going towards Homestead instead of dying in the Steps of Torment.

Btw, my friend’s other class is a Necromancer. And he’s using no pets from that class. Only the fabulous de-buff abilities of the Necro. So he’s got a Reaper with no pets, and I have a conjurer with no pets. We debuff stuff so much, it gives us a real fighting chance against everyone.

Why didn’t someone tell me the Occultist is so damn much fun to play? Sigil of Consumption and Soleil’s Witchfire, along with the Pox, are teh only skills I’m using and it’s been a blast. Just hit level 36.

People need to stop saying how much fun their characters are. I can’t even remember which of my characters does what anymore, so I don’t need to be creating more alts.

I also started a Vitality Reaper as described above. Phantasmal blades with the cooldown reduction is pretty strong and the build feels so far like a lot of fun but I’m blowing through energy like nobody’s business. Is there something I can do to alleviate that (aside from “stop spamming phantasmal blades”)? I’m level 10 so not a lot of points in anything (nothing in Necromancer at all). Or will leveling and some regen gear solve my issues?

I’m also finding Energy/Mana management my main concern in all the builds that I’ve been trying recently.

For all the characters I’ve made with the Shaman as one of the characters, it’s really important to realize that I can’t put too many points into Devouring Swarm too fast. Basically it’s overkill. Enemies die left and right, and then I’m out of Energy/Mana and have to constantly drink potions to replenish it.

So then, the less points I put into Devouring Swarm, the less damage it does, but then it takes less energy, and I can put those points into improving a base class, which also increases the energy I have at my disposal. Overall I prefer to make characters that don’t need to drink energy potions at all. But that might be going too far. My Petless Conjurer is at 34, and she has Devouring swarm at 12 out of 16 possible points, and occasionally has to drink a potion during a big fight.

The character that I created at @Gendal’s urging, i.e., any character with an Arcanist as one of the classes, who uses Flash Freeze + Greater Fireblast (from Flintcore bolts) is kind of brilliant in a way precisely because you hardly ever need an energy potion. You just freeze stuff, and if they’re still alive, you finish them off with fireballs. And it usually doesn’t take many. Later on you can turn that character into something else entirely, but it’s a great way to level up any Arcanist because it’s fun and you kick ass.

I don’t personally know the solution to the Phantasmal blades conundrum. Maybe put less points into it if it’s overkilling enemies? If it’s not, maybe just start putting more points into a base class that gives you more energy for each point you put into it? I’m not sure if that’s the Necro or the Nightblade. I’m guessing, probably the Necro.

The easiest way to level a reaper is to make a beeline for ravenous earth in the necro spec, and only use blades for boss kills. One cast of ravenous earth will kill anything while you are leveling. You can get through even elite with just ravenous earth and pneumatic burst.

Even at later levels, I just use blades for burst damage. I’ve been playing the Alternative reaper build lately and it’s pretty cake for leveling. Other than that, just getting a lot of mana regen via ectoplasm etc will help, and look for things that give you spell absorb.

Necro in general is really strong for leveling, heck, you could even level as a skeleton/ravenous earth build, which is completely overpowered for leveling.

I have a dude who uses Ravenous Earth, and I didn’t like it as much as I thought I would. It was powerful but doesn’t it have a small cooldown? Or limit you to 3 at once? Or something like that? I’m terrible with targeting and I vaguely remember that I kept getting frustrated at having to twiddle my thumbs waiting to cast it. Whatever the limitation was, it sort of annoyed me. Skellies + ravenous earth does sound like a pretty easy leveling spec though.

Alternating ravenous earth and blades is pretty much the routine with that character, depending on how fast you want to go through stuff. Once you get some decent + vitality and poison, ravenous earth is pretty strong, and makes for a super easy kiting sort of build. Ravenous earth is also ridiculous once you put the twin fangs devotion on it (which I would also do as soon as possible).

All that being said, there are a ton of ways to level that combo, so whatever is the most fun! Blades are really strong, but they are a mana sucker.

For later levels and energy management, I’ve found that Dryad and/or Bard’s Harp devotions also help a great deal.

Grim Dawn turns two! Also, they have some kind of MAJOR announcement coming on March 5th. I wonder what that might be about… ;)

http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/showthread.php?t=68727

console version?

We’ll know in a week, I guess. I prefer the thought that the announcement will be about a new expansion, but hey, console releases would be fine too. ;)

Console release is a good guess given the recent controller support.