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

With inquis seal, and aura of censure, any class that deals elemental damage is a great choice. You can also go the DW route.

Here are a few choices.

This continues on the path you are on, with NB added in.
Cold Infiltrator

Dual Wield piercing Infiltrator

Cold/Pierce infiltrator

There are quite a few builds with that combo, but here are a few examples to get you started.

Inquisitor has so many possible builds…and so many classes that work with it depending on how you play it. You can use INQ for nothing but INQ seal, Aura of Censure, and Word of Renewal, and pretty much put any class with it. All 3 of those are really powerful in almost any build, especially word of renewal, and inquisitors seal.

Here’s a “mage” variant on INQ
Caster INQ

I am a little obsessed with this game. I “discovered” it last week, meaning it had been sitting uninstalled in my Steam library for I don’t know how many years. It’s fantastic. The build depth is freaking catnip for me. It’s the POE version I always wanted.

It’s also surprisingly well written. I don’t know how many people play ARPG’s and actually read all the scattered lore notes and quests texts, but they’re all worth your time here. There are a whole lot of very short, very sad tales packed into the landscape “For sale, baby shoes – baby eaten by demons.”

Yah, my 1000 hours concurs with this statement lol.

The one negative im finding is just how high the level cap is. My guy is up to 48, and while im still having fun levelling is starting to really slow down and there’s many many more hours to go till true “end game” is reached.

One way to level reasonably fast is via Crucible. Assuming you have decent gear, DPS and survivability, getting to the higher waves yields some good exp.

In my personal opinion, GD sucks post 50. By level 50 or so, you have your build to the point where the soundness or lack of it is proven. Everything after that point is just incremental versions of “better”, and trying to keep up with the idiotic damage sponge mobs that can also one shot you.

The sweet spot in GD for me, is when you are developing a build, and getting new skills often enough that you can really feel your build progressing. I have probably 100 characters between 50-60, and a handful that are 85+. They could have done a much better job of getting you to end game, and then that end game meaning something. That entire slog from 60-100 is garbage for me.

Reign of Terror 0.7 just dropped a few days ago. Gonna download it, see how I feel.

Killed Andariel.

Balance is still just ridiculously all over the place. I have a particular hate for the design decision to make all elite packs and bosses double-speed or faster on top of doing 5-10x the raw damage of normal monsters, which are so weak as to be nonexistent. Hope your ranged character likes facetanking!

I want to love it, but they just added a ton of skills and such and it still needs a good 6 months of focused playtesting and active balancing AFTER content lock to get it feeling right, and that’d be with a dedicated dev team. I dunno, man.

Wait, they added skills? I thought all the skills were from Diablo 2? How can they add more?

They added some mutators and passives. I don’t disagree with the design thinking, I just think the whole system is so massively out of balance that it’s mostly impossible to evaluate.

Good news! Regular Grim Dawn is still an absolutely fan-freakin-tastic ARPG that scratches the hell out of this itch. I might finally have a shield-based build that doesn’t suck all the butts! Maybe!

Oh yeah, the Oathkeeper makes awesome shield builds possible. One of the classes is an Oathkeeper, right?

Yeah, this is a Warlord (Oathkeeper/Soldier) focused on physical.

Got my Cabalist to 100 today and so far it’s been my favorite build. I used this as a guide.

I love, so much, that this dude wrote a novel of an email to the Crate dudes about their forum culture (which I have little trouble believing may have problems) and then collated a ton of posts and emails and shit into some kind of exhibit to Not Letting Shit Go, Ever.

The reason I’m writing this overview is because the community needs to be aware of what happened (which is covered in detail below).

It really, really is. Covered in detail below, I mean. Woof.

I mean, I get that you’re frustrated and that you love the game, homes. But if a forum sucks, walk away. Life’s too short for that shit.

I read some of that, not all of it though–there’s a ton, as you note. It is probably the most heavily-documented and well-organized screed about forums I’ve ever seen. Though I’m not sure that in the grand scheme of things it was worth the time and effort, but hey, whatever floats his boat!

Did I miss something? Where is this screed?

Linked in a banner at the top of @abidingdude 's guide he posted just upthread.

It’s honest to goodness hilarious if you’ve any experience with nerds on the internet (cough, cough). Absolutely rager of a tempest in the tiniest teacup imaginable.

And he might well be “right” as far as the core merits of his claims! Wouldn’t surprise me a bit! But writing pages upon pages of emails to the CEO (I think? It’s unclear and I’m not that plugged into Crate forum drama, lol) and demanding public flagellation and firing of the dev who spends the most time there, bans of the people he’s arguing with, the whole thing is just crazypants.

I’m so here for it.

Ah nice. Thanks!

It looks like all his emails are to the lead designer of the game, for some reason.

Drama aside, this looks like a great guide. Pet/summoner builds are my favorite in games like this.