Good secondary classes for shaman and nightblade?

[Division By Zero]

Sorry to bother you all again.

Turns out making my first character a demolitioner was a mistake since their main no-cooldown skills are largely a dud compared to other options.

Fire strike damage is unimpressive and its maximum upgrade only makes it produce extra pieces that unpredictably fly everywhere which means most of them will be wasted.
Stun jacks lose most of their AoE if you take the -100% cooldown modifier. Additionally when I tested a build based around spamming stun jacks, most of them missed.

Demolitioner has a lot of good skills with short cooldowns, making it better as a secondary class.

I'm finding shaman and nightblade to be much more reliable.


Shaman primal strike is amazing especially with a ranged weapon. It produces a heavy damage AoE on impact and chain lightning with further upgrades. General rule of thumb is that the impact AoE wipes out enemy melee while the chain lightning goes into their back ranks. I use it as a "basic attack" and it wrecks most enemies.
Other perks of the shaman class: regeneration and armor buffs, and a built-in pet tank.
Problems with the shaman class: Poor self-healing and mediocre survivability. Shamans use 2-handed weapons and their built-in mitigation is modest at best. Devouring Swarm is a laughably weak skill with no upgrade path, and Wendigo Totem is partially broken - it doesn't heal you when standing next to it. The other problem with relying on a totem for healing is how it hampers your ability to dodge.


I generally don't like playing rogue-type characters in most RPGs. You all know (or should know) the stereotype: poor self healing, relying on flanking, bad AoE damage, bad damage mitigation. The Nightblade class here turned out to be a refreshing departure from the standard. My current build uses phantasmal daggers as a regular ranged attack skill which has everything you would want: self-healing, pierce-through, and tons on damage. Nightblades have serious self healing on demand via Pneumatic Burst and extremely viable talent options for both damage mitigation and elemental damage increase. Later, you get Blade Trap, Ring of Steel, and Blade Spirit, all of which are broken levels of OP.


Secondary classes being considered for shaman:

Demolitionist: As mentioned above, demolitionists have plenty of good nuking skills with a short cooldown. Most of these skills can be configured to do lightning damage, which combos perfectly with a shaman build. This would turn the shaman build into a glass cannon, adding almost no self healing and damage mitigation while adding numerous dangerous short-cooldown AoEs.

Occultist: Besides adding strong and reliable self healing on demand via Blood of Dreeg, it adds 2 extra summons - a lightning ranged attacker + healer (again works perfectly with shaman as base class) and an additional tank, in case the briarthorn wasn't enough. The disadvantage is how shamans have almost no damage-type overlap with occultists: Shamans mainly do physical/cold/lightning damage with a hint of vitality damage on niche skills; occultists mainly do poison, vitality, and chaos damage with a hint of fire and lightning.

Nightblade:Features a better self-heal compared to Blood of Dreeg backed up with numeric buffs and plenty more side utility. Potentially adds damage mitigation, extra bleeding damage for grasping vine and storm surge, or cold damage to make raging tempest extra obnoxious. If you're willing to invest a lot of skill points, Ring of Steel with upgrades does cold and bleeding damage with a stun, Blade Trap immobilizes a crowd of enemies at range while healing you, and Blade Spirit gives you an extra Wind Devil clone on a separate cooldown and better damage.

Secondary classes being considered for nightblade:

Shaman: Adds a briarthorn tank along with cold/vitality damage snare skills.

Occultist: Adds 2 summons plus ridiculous levels of self-healing to a build already good at healing itself. Extremely good damage synergy due to both classes favoring vitality, chaos, and poison damage.


If the expansion classes are better than these, let me know and I will hold off on picking a secondary class while waiting for the expansions to go on sale..

[Valkez]

There's a lot of misinformation here, mostly due to your lack of experience at higher levels.

Just a few things that caught a piece of my mind:
- Blade Trap doesn't work against bosses, most heroes and the toughest commoners;
- Blade Spirit is quite weak on Ultimate unless you heavily invest into it with a Demonslayer's set;
- Devouring Swarm is possibly the skill with the highest amount of Resistance Reduction in the game (for Vitality and Bleeding);
- Fire Strike hits pretty hard on the right build, and even though it's the modifier I like the least on melee builds, it's totally my top pick on any ranged guy;
- Shaman is arguably one of the tankiest masteries in the game, I would place it 3rd after Soldier and Inquisitor.

Just to make it clear, I'm not attacking you. At the beginning everyone sees things from a different perspective.

That said, the secondary class mostly depends on what you want your build to be.

From your post you seem to want a pet while still dealing damage yourself, and that's pretty much a no-go on Ultimate, although possible on Normal (and to a lower degree on Elite, I guess). Nightblade offers absolutely nothing to pets, unless you go the Winter King + Heart of the Mountain route, which still isn't particularly good. Trickster would be the class, but I wouldn't suggest it on vanilla.
Occultist combined with Shaman or Demo is probably your best bet at a pet build on vanilla, but don't expect to deal much damage yourself (your pets, on the other hand, can deal a real lot of damage).

If you want to go the ranged route, and deal damage yourself, you would do best giving up on pets. On a Shaman ranged build, your best secondary classes are Demo and Soldier. Demo if you want to go full elemental/lightning damage, Soldier if you want to go physical or be tankier. If you go for Soldier, I would totally suggest going for a rifle.
Nightblade is pretty bad as ranged on vanilla, but I suppose you could keep going with Phantasmal Blades, which are pretty great. For that purpose, I would suggest Arcanist (for cold PB) or Occultist/Shaman (for vitality/bleeding PB).

With a Trickster (Shaman+Nightblade) you can also consider going melee lightning dualwield. As weird as it may seem, Savagery is pretty damn good when combined with Nightblade's WPS (Belgothian's Shears, Execution, etc...), and you can easily get x2 Stormhearts (you get 1 for each character on Ultimate difficulty).

[Anathema]

Trickster would be great for bleed damage, too.

[Division By Zero]

No offense or insult taken, I got the impression from the start that this was one of those mediocre-on-the-inside games on a B-grade budget where most of the effortwent into the graphics and game world. Divinity II: Developer's Cut was the exact same way - massive game world with almost top-tier graphics for its era, brought down by a poorly designed dumpster fire of a character build system where half of the skills were inviable as they didn't scale properly.

I'm only planning on using pets to tank. They don't have to do a lot of damage. In most other ARPGs I would be fine ditching the pet and going pure ranged but this game has severe problems with invisible damage mechanics and most AoEs (referred to in WoW as "the bad") aren't telegraphed with clearly visible warning areas on the ground.

I also know blade trap is nerfed on "difficult" enemies. Usually it has heavily decreased duration on elites and most bosses are thoroughly immune to the immobilize. I use it to stop large packs of melee trash.

For a shaman/demolitionist lightning ranged character: how do I fix the lousy levels of self-healing? Both classes only have a regen bonus on the baseline, then shamans have the devouring swarm (low damage and lower regeneration) and the largely broken wendigo totem. I would also need a briarthorn able to tank everything competently.

General rule of thumb for what build I'm going for: ranged + pet tank (or some other form of heavy mitigation) + heavy self-healing = win


I generally don't like melee builds in ARPGs, simply because it effectively prevents dodging most of the time.

Almost every other ARPG I know of has serious problems with melee having it much more difficult than ranged. Even on Diablo III, melee characters have a built-in buff where they take 30% decreased damage across the board (compared to ranged) and they had problems with low survivability anyway the last time I checked.

Only ARPG I know of where you can truly play a melee build into extreme-level endgame and have viable survivability is Chronicon, which I suggest that everyone here get if they don't have it already. Be warned: you might enjoy it so much that you quit Grim Dawn outright for the next 2 months.

[Anathema]

There's a lot going on in your post, but just some quick points:

1. Pet survivability is also determined by pet stats, so without investment, they aren't going to tank for you either. Pet stats are for more than just pet damage.

2. If you're finding that melee isn't survivable, then you just screwed up your build, plain and simple. Post more details about your build and the people here can help you git gud.

[ZarahNeander]

Originally posted by Division By Zero:

....how do I fix the lousy levels of self-healing?

By abandoning the idea, that you *absolutely* need self-heal. Out of all the masteries only 3 have it (not counting wendigo) and the occu one is mostly used for OA boost and maybe poison resist, the healing is a nice side-effect. You have constitution, potions, devotions, life-steal (which is a good way to self heal), for most builds that's more than enough

[baddog993]

Shaman have a good healing system with a totem. Just buff up your health regeneration via amor pieces and or devotions. Plus like other have stated stealing life is also an effective way to heal.

[Division By Zero]

After some research I have determined that this game is mechanically flawed in terms of class design and balance. Can you recommend a good and thorough overhaul? could be new classes or a ground-up rewrite of the existing ones.

I would also appreciate a mod that does free respecs and mastery point refunds since it doesn't make sense to have mastery refund costs on a game that's supposedly about creative character builds.

[Valkez]

Originally posted by Division By Zero:

After some research I have determined that this game is mechanically flawed in terms of class design and balance. Can you recommend a good and thorough overhaul? could be new classes or a ground-up rewrite of the existing ones.

I would also appreciate a mod that does free respecs and mastery point refunds since it doesn't make sense to have mastery refund costs on a game that's supposedly about creative character builds.

In short, you're asking for another ARPG.
I don't know what your beef with GD classes is, but they're pretty fine as they are. Probably you have to get to know them a bit more, get used to them, find some gear, discover the synergies between the masteries.
Don't be another one of those guys who played a Defiler for 5 hours and then came to the forums to complain about how unbalanced the game is.

[Raviel]

Shaman + inquisitor is amazing for ranged. High damage and very tanky. Wendigo totem is one of the best healing options in game. Way better then 1 time heals.

Nightblade is indeed very squishy. Even with lifesteal you can end up dead quite fast. Seems very item dependant and hard to build properly.
Damage is so hight, you can make anything work with it:
Soldier - for cold or bleed or build
Arcanyst - for cold build dual whield
Shaman - cold, bleed 2 handed
Occultist - for poison or chaos / vitality dual wield.

I don't recommend nightblade for beginner as it seems hardest to play without good items.

Shaman however can manage pretty well, especially combined with inquisitor. Other options could work as well. Like mentioned otherwise.

* You can respec mastery points in expansion, but not change class.
If you really need to, there is a save editor available

[Division By Zero]

I won't invest large amounts of time in a game that is fundamentally mechanically broken. Right now, I'm putting this game completely on hold until I get a serious recommendation for a full balance overhaul. New classes or overhaul of existing ones to make everything scale fully to endgame.

I won't be getting the expansions for the new classes either. No further investment until existing issues are fixed.

So far, Grim Dawn has been one giant reminder of how good D3 is.

[Division By Zero]

Update: Found this mod called "Project Cornucopia" that appears to be what I'm looking for.

It's intended to "stay true to Crate's vision" (maintain the original themes for characters the way the devs envisioned), puts "Fun > Balance), and rebalances around stats and skills first instead of forcing people to build around items.

Most importantly, it makes the difficulty more "fair". The first thing is that it appears to make the game "easier" simply because Ultimate builds aren't as restrictive (more things are viable - exactly what I asked for). The mod description specifically mentions it improves the quality of "bad" things and throws in further quality-of-life changes.

More amusing: the Cornucopia project writers "know this will disappoint many of you who like a challenge." Good. Elitist salt is best salt.

"A stat wall is not the most interesting form of challenge. Having to have ~80% in the majority of your resists, or 10k+ Health, or 2k+ OA to feel even remotely comfortable in Ultimate is not a good feeling, it just feels forced upon us.
Challenge is more fun in the form of enemy mechanics: Reflect mobs with visual indicators of when not to attack, mobs that heal tanky dangerous mobs, mobs and traps with curses and debuffs, enemy tactics, dodge-able damage, etc. A stat wall is definitely necessary, but we think it's currently too steep.
" Exactly. tl;dr; these guys are going all-out and fixing every bad design flaw in favor of mechanics that are actually fun, fair, and skill-based.

Other balance features: making non-tanky builds more viable in Ultimate.

[Legion66]

Originally posted by Division By Zero:

I won't invest large amounts of time in a game that is fundamentally mechanically broken. Right now, I'm putting this game completely on hold until I get a serious recommendation for a full balance overhaul. New classes or overhaul of existing ones to make everything scale fully to endgame.

I won't be getting the expansions for the new classes either. No further investment until existing issues are fixed.

So far, Grim Dawn has been one giant reminder of how good D3 is.

What do you consider "fundamentally mechanically broken"? Because that would mean the game is unplayable.

[Anathema]

Originally posted by Division By Zero:

I won't invest large amounts of time in a game that is fundamentally mechanically broken. Right now, I'm putting this game completely on hold until I get a serious recommendation for a full balance overhaul. New classes or overhaul of existing ones to make everything scale fully to endgame.

I won't be getting the expansions for the new classes either. No further investment until existing issues are fixed.

So far, Grim Dawn has been one giant reminder of how good D3 is.

Translation: I am bad at Grim Dawn and I don't want to accept that I am doing something wrong.

[Legion66]

Originally posted by Anathema:

Originally posted by Division By Zero:

I won't invest large amounts of time in a game that is fundamentally mechanically broken. Right now, I'm putting this game completely on hold until I get a serious recommendation for a full balance overhaul. New classes or overhaul of existing ones to make everything scale fully to endgame.

I won't be getting the expansions for the new classes either. No further investment until existing issues are fixed.

So far, Grim Dawn has been one giant reminder of how good D3 is.

Translation: I am bad at Grim Dawn and I don't want to accept that I am doing something wrong.

Most likely, especially when saying that D3 is good.

[Dyer1981]

I think I smell a rat.