When does Demo/Inquisitor become really strong ?

[oui]

My friend and I are only level 23 but so far I deal much more damage as a Shaman with Primal Strike than he does with his Demo/Inquis dual pistol Fire Strike build,

Honestly he's getting discouraged because we saw everywhere that Demo/Inquis was stupidly strong, and i'm afraid hes gonna quit because of that lol

We both invested all our points in a single spell branch (+ points in Inquisitor dmg procs) and i dont have like crazy gear and no devotion at all, so we must be doing something wrong somewhere else ?

ty :>

[frdnwsm]

Demo + Inquisitor => Purifier. Check out some references for how to construct such builds. I am running 14 characters at the moment; my highest level guy is a level 85 Purifier. I have another Inquisitor build (Apostate) who is level 66.

No Devotions is bad, although at 23 trains you won't have access to that many Shrines/Devotion points at the moment. I like Falcon Swoop for pistol builds; gives your weapons an AoE.

Do not judge things by DPS alone. Melee THWs will usually yield a higher DPS than two pistols. The benefit of two pistols is the high rate of fire, which in turn yields a greater number of critical hits.

Purifier is a ranged build. Kite around instead of staying in one place. Inquisitor builds have defensive skills like Inquisitor Seal and Word of Renewal. Use them.

When you say that he is going for a single "spell" branch, what do you mean? Demolitionist instead of Inquisitor Mastery? If you want to wield dual pistols, prioritize Inquisitor skills. If you go mostly Demo, you will probably be better off going with grenade type attacks.

You won't get much good gear early in the game. Francis's gun is a pistol you can find fairly early in Act I.

[YoshiKombat]

I'm a relatively new player and I started with Shaman and the Primal Strike skill was so strong from the get go. I played some Demolitionist and it wasn't as powerful but I got some strong AoE damage by adding the Searing Ember to my weapon and using the Fireblast skill that comes with it. It was pretty fun hurling Fireballs at enemies.I'm sure there's a way to make Dem/Inquis more powerful but I wouldn't know. I would have gone with Shaman's Savagery to make things more balanced with Dem's Fire Strike so as not to outshine your friend and make him discouraged. I heard Blackwater Cocktail is supposed to be really good so he may want to look into that.

[Faust Wither]

when you reach level 50 and have all devotion point.

[frdnwsm]

Purifiers can be strong before level 50. It's all about the gear. Purifier is all about elemental damage, especially fire and lightning, so look for pistols that do that type of damage. Load the appropriate ammunition: Devil-touched ammo and Hellbane ammo.

Devil-touched will give him the ability to launch Demon Breath attacks, while Hellbane lets you give your weapons the electrify weapon damage buff. Later on, you can learn to craft Oleron's Blood, which will give your pistol a massive damage boost.

If you are playing with your friend, you two need to coordinate your attacks. Your Shaman can tie the enemy down with melee, while he kites around and attacks from a distance. There is no "friendly fire" damage; his pistol shots won't hit you.

[frdnwsm]

>"Also you got something wrong.. Purifier is good, but nowhere near OP as some think.
For weapons: Melee > Ranged .. still ranged can kite and take less damage, which makes it fair"<

I don't think anyone ever claimed that Purifiers were OP. They are, however, pretty effective. As you mentioned, ranged builds have different tactical options than melee. I have a Shaman build who is rated with a DPS around 2.5X that of my Purifier, but they are both, IMO, equally effective in combat.

[SchnitzelTruck]

Level 23 is a bit early for autoattack builds reliant on point intensive skills like firestrike. By level 30 you should be laying down some solid hurt if you focus purely on getting the inquisitor weapon skills to their max activation chance and dumping the rest of your points into firestrike. Make sure your friend also has a pair of guns with attack speed as that's what really matters in auto attack builds

[Shao]

Dual Pistol is realy bad early on, you need to invest alot of Points to reach higher level Skills and you are super dependend on good Gear and even devotion procs.

Its much better to use Skills like Storm Box, Word of Pain or Blackwater Cocktail early on, not many Points needed, no good Gear needed, just realy strong AoE from the get go.

Later on when you reach lvl 50 you can farm some lvl 50 Gear in Steps of Torment and you should have enough devotion points.
Then you can respec into dual wield Pistols.

I must say dual wield Pistols was the only way which made me not enjoying leveling up in Grim Dawn, so unlucky pick for your Friend.

[Faust Wither]

Originally posted by oui:

Honestly he's getting discouraged because we saw everywhere that Demo/Inquis was stupidly strong, and i'm afraid hes gonna quit because of that lol

that was endgame build, sadly. try watch a leveling video instead.

Originally posted by oui:

We both invested all our points in a single spell branch (+ points in Inquisitor dmg procs) and i dont have like crazy gear and no devotion at all, so we must be doing something wrong somewhere else ?

ty :>

try to invest it on survival skill first. like increasing health regeneration, and then a skill that can easly dealing damage to crowd. and craft 2 scaled hide and 4 anti venom salve. i never tired to tell this to any new player.

[Sin]

Primal Strike will plateau soon if it hasn't already, while the Purifier will keep building. When you're around level 35-40, you'll see what I mean. It'll be a pretty balanced pair depending on how you've built them and what item drops you get.

[frdnwsm]

>"I must say dual wield Pistols was the only way which made me not enjoying leveling up in Grim Dawn, so unlucky pick for your Friend."<

This is, of course, rather an exaggeration. I'm not sure why people are hating on early game Purifiers. I will agree that they don't get on a par with other builds until later on, like level 30 or so, but they are certainly viable from the outset.

Just for laughs, I created a new Inquisitor. At level 5, I had farmed 2 of Francis' pistols and stuck searing embers on each. By level 8 I had 4 ranks in Storm Box, 4 ranks in Ranged Expertise, with the rest of my points placed into the Mastery bar, and had cleared out Burial Hill. If I stick purely with Inquisitor Mastery, I'm pretty sure I can take out the Warden by 24-25, even without Firestrike. (I really don't want another Purifier ... been there, done that. Have to think about what other build I might want to try).

Mind you, I do have a bit of an advantage in that I know where everything is, what the stats on all the Bosses are, and have access to a huge stash of components and gear.

[Aurelia]

Honestly, if you're playing together, and your friend runs fire strike, explosive strike and flame touched from the demo, and Ranged expertise from the inquisitor, your friend should already do a metric ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of damage to single targets, adn some okay damage in AoE.

Purifier can be played several ways, but dual pistols purifier should be all about fire strike and the fire or lightning based dual wield tehcniques from the inquisitor.

as they level they should get deadly aim, for mass crit shenanigans, busting round for extra AoE and pick up word of renewal for some party support for both of you, from the inquis.
In demo i'd also go for static strike and temper, maybe also a single level or two in vindictive flame.

also you should really look into completing one or two devotions at your level, they add a whole lot of extra beef to your builds, one way or another, there are several good options for early levelling with a purifier.
the imp, or the tsunami, depending on which damage they want to focus on.
also, when looking at pistols, look for pistols with high attack speed.

When i did mine i often used white or yellow pistols rather than green ones, simply because their attack speed was better, and with fire strike and temper stacking in, attack speed becomes king.

Dual pistols purifier can do a LOT of damage, but it requires pretty mcuh focusing exclusively on turning your character into a walking minigun

[Azunai]

DW pistols builds are very gear dependent and will be cery underpowered with bad gear. simple as that. you need a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of flat damage for a DW pistols build to get into its own.

switching over to a rifle / xbow would likely fix all your issues right away. makes a huge difference. use dev points to unlock kraken devotion to supercharge your dps while using a twohand and you're set all the way up to endgame.

[Wintermute]

From my experience, autoattack builds universally have a horrible start compared to ability casters. It will even out roughly by act 3-4, but your friend will need to find some proper weapons.

[frdnwsm]

>"switching over to a rifle / xbow would likely fix all your issues right away. makes a huge difference. use dev points to unlock kraken devotion to supercharge your dps while using a twohand and you're set all the way up to endgame "<

I would like to comment that I have tried a Purifier using a rifle (2 handed ranged weapon) and Kraken Devotion. The assessed DPS was a good 12K+ more than a Dual Pistol build. However, displayed DPS isn't everything, and I eventually switched back. The pistols, though doing less flat damage, fired significantly more shots. With skills like Deadly Aim and Bursting Round maxxed out, there were significantly more critical/extra damage hits inflicted.

Having said that, admittedly this was at level 72, which might be defined as at or near endgame. I haven't tried using a two handed ranged weapon Purifier early on, so I have no basis for comparison. It may well be more effective.

[Azunai]

dual pistols can eventually catch up with rifles because the weapon pool skills always use both guns (and normal autoshots in between also have a 50% chance to use both), so every point of flat damage you get from gear or devotions or buffs basically applies twice if you dualwield.

you need a lot of flat damage for that effect to overcome the much higher base damage of a rifle and other passives that just favor rifles (such as the neat +15% total damage transmuter on firestrike that only works for twohanded, or the good old kraken devotion that has no equivalent for DW builds)

i actually played a purifier to (more or less) endgame levels and tbh i really can't make up my mind if it's even worthwhile to switch from rifle to pistols then. for the DW variant i actually had the dagallon set (4pc mythical set) which i guess is actually quite decent. the rfile version used other lower quality stuff but i had some mythical rifle with +2 to both demo and inq skills which kinda trumps the combined skill bonuses from the DW set. the two variants seemed to perform similarly.

at lower gear levels there's really no contest, though. rifles >> DW.