Best Grandmaster armor & weapon set for their bonus ?

[Cato Sicarius]

So IMHO Wolven looks the coolest, especially when dyed black. But for the maximum survivability and hitting like a truck, Bear set seems btter. Although that +300 Armor pierce on the Manticore swords is awesome, too bad the Manticore set on NG Plus looks like crap lol.

[private1028]

Witcher sets - including the grandmaster are useless in NG+ with the Blood and Wine Expansion. They become tolet paper. Geralt's level is capped at 100 while the monsters are not. The best armor is always random loot. Doing treasure hunts amounts to a waste of time. I can't get past simple monster quests like the Sarasti vampire in Byways because its average damage is 2000 points. No armor, potion, or quen shield - using even the maxed out version available in Blood and Wine makes the encounter survivable. Blood and Wine breaks the NG+ completely. No point in even using using it. All your encounters with a red skull are guaranteed death. The game becomes unplayable. Looking for witcher armor only has value below character level 60. After that it's worthless to even attempt it when random loot becomes much more powerful.

My first NG+ game with the Blood and Wine Expansion I had Wolven grandmaster armor and got eaten by 6 wolves. My sword barely did any damage and my armor was worthless. I sold it and bought the low level sword at the outpost because it was way more powerful at level 80. My character is capped at level 100 and gains experience but no development points. The only way to get more talent points is to meditate at places of power. Gaining level 100 made my character weaker then when I was level 60.

[Gracey Face]

Due to how focused the sets are, there can't really be a best one, right? Cause it depends on what you are looking to do. Signs = Griffin. Gank = Cat. Survivability = Manticore. Adren/Quen = Ursine.

Personally my favourite though is the Griffin armour because I like the sign build and also the grandmaster level griffin armour actually looks nice(ish). At this point I can cast a sign every ~0.8s and the damage is pretty reasonable (ie 1100+ odd base igni damage (though it is supposed to be higher)).

Its a shame all of the witcher armour looks horrid and the nice looking armour provides no worthwhile bonuses. Prettymuch only Ursine and GM Griffin that look half decent.

[Freedom's Flame]

I was disappointed that for the insane cost of them (they cost like 10K in materials and labour to make a set) by the time you had the cash to make them they were already obsolete and the random drops in the world were more powerful. And honestly, the special abilities on them aren't enough to warrant the price either, as they aren't that great. CDPR should have made them higher-level items you could seek out and be able to use by the end of the expansion, rather than at the start of it.

[Cato Sicarius]

Actually there are mods, and edits you can do to the game's files using the QuickBMS tool to change stats or make these items scale with your level.

[Freedom's Flame]

Right, but we're talking vanilla here. With mods I could make my swords do millions of damage, but I'm not going to.

[Armos]

Początkowo opublikowane przez private1028:

Witcher sets - including the grandmaster are useless in NG+ with the Blood and Wine Expansion. They become tolet paper. Geralt's level is capped at 100 while the monsters are not. The best armor is always random loot. Doing treasure hunts amounts to a waste of time. I can't get past simple monster quests like the Sarasti vampire in Byways because its average damage is 2000 points. No armor, potion, or quen shield - using even the maxed out version available in Blood and Wine makes the encounter survivable. Blood and Wine breaks the NG+ completely. No point in even using using it. All your encounters with a red skull are guaranteed death. The game becomes unplayable. Looking for witcher armor only has value below character level 60. After that it's worthless to even attempt it when random loot becomes much more powerful.

My first NG+ game with the Blood and Wine Expansion I had Wolven grandmaster armor and got eaten by 6 wolves. My sword barely did any damage and my armor was worthless. I sold it and bought the low level sword at the outpost because it was way more powerful at level 80. My character is capped at level 100 and gains experience but no development points. The only way to get more talent points is to meditate at places of power. Gaining level 100 made my character weaker then when I was level 60.

Byways? Isn't that in Velen, a weak area? Guessing you've got enemy upscaling on? As for wolves, the 2nd Aard ability allows you to knock over even higher leveled wolves, and do finishers on each whilst they're stuck on the ground for about 6 seconds each.

Also, there's that mutation that reflects damage based on your toxicity- What most people don't know, is that the reflected damage is actually removed from you, and placed on the enemy, thus having the player take less damage. No more 1HKOs and the like. Probably the best Mutation at the moment since Euphoria turns itself off after every fight due to bugs.

[private1028]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Armos:

Początkowo opublikowane przez private1028:

Witcher sets - including the grandmaster are useless in NG+ with the Blood and Wine Expansion. They become tolet paper. Geralt's level is capped at 100 while the monsters are not. The best armor is always random loot. Doing treasure hunts amounts to a waste of time. I can't get past simple monster quests like the Sarasti vampire in Byways because its average damage is 2000 points. No armor, potion, or quen shield - using even the maxed out version available in Blood and Wine makes the encounter survivable. Blood and Wine breaks the NG+ completely. No point in even using using it. All your encounters with a red skull are guaranteed death. The game becomes unplayable. Looking for witcher armor only has value below character level 60. After that it's worthless to even attempt it when random loot becomes much more powerful.

My first NG+ game with the Blood and Wine Expansion I had Wolven grandmaster armor and got eaten by 6 wolves. My sword barely did any damage and my armor was worthless. I sold it and bought the low level sword at the outpost because it was way more powerful at level 80. My character is capped at level 100 and gains experience but no development points. The only way to get more talent points is to meditate at places of power. Gaining level 100 made my character weaker then when I was level 60.

Byways? Isn't that in Velen, a weak area? Guessing you've got enemy upscaling on? As for wolves, the 2nd Aard ability allows you to knock over even higher leveled wolves, and do finishers on each whilst they're stuck on the ground for about 6 seconds each.

Also, there's that mutation that reflects damage based on your toxicity- What most people don't know, is that the reflected damage is actually removed from you, and placed on the enemy, thus having the player take less damage. No more 1HKOs and the like. Probably the best Mutation at the moment since Euphoria turns itself off after every fight due to bugs.

The problem with this is my ability point load out. I suppose I could use a potion of clearance to optimize my character for each monster but that ends up becoming ridiculous. Is there a way to turn off enemy upscaling in NG+??

[MartianPotato]

Początkowo opublikowane przez private1028:

Początkowo opublikowane przez Armos:

Byways? Isn't that in Velen, a weak area? Guessing you've got enemy upscaling on? As for wolves, the 2nd Aard ability allows you to knock over even higher leveled wolves, and do finishers on each whilst they're stuck on the ground for about 6 seconds each.

Also, there's that mutation that reflects damage based on your toxicity- What most people don't know, is that the reflected damage is actually removed from you, and placed on the enemy, thus having the player take less damage. No more 1HKOs and the like. Probably the best Mutation at the moment since Euphoria turns itself off after every fight due to bugs.

The problem with this is my ability point load out. I suppose I could use a potion of clearance to optimize my character for each monster but that ends up becoming ridiculous. Is there a way to turn off enemy upscaling in NG+??

Its off by default as far as i know, you have to turn it on, NG+ does'nt change thst, the option is under the gameplay tab in the options menu. Also if you call NG+ broken in blood and wine, try anything past mid skellige on death march NG+, where some random enemies were tougher than imlerith and regularly pierced active shield quen, i still have nightmares about the "Iris`s worst fear boss" who would pierce normal quen and half health me with one attack. and this is without upscaling on.

[Senkise]

I like the Griffin grandmaster set, you can use twice as much signs, has a nice synergy with Entanglement, and i use Replenishment on the swords (Enchantments from from hearts of stone), now if I have adrenaline point I can use a sign three times for 1 stamina use, and that means when i finished with the sword blow i have full stamina again. + with Sustained Glyph and Magic trap on yarden: Two (+40% bigger) yarden which is follows my enemy if i use magic trap. Maybe not the most OP build in the game, but works nice and FUN, enemies always slowed and when you stand in your (bigger) yarden circles, you have ~ 300% sign intensity, stunlock flying monsters with aard, quen is always on.

My build is:

2 Greater blue mutagen with: Melt Armor, Active Shield, Sustained Glyph, Magic Trap, Delusion, Griffin School Techniques

1 Greater red mutagen with: Muscle Memory, Whirl, Resolve

1 Greater green mutagen with: Poisoned Blades, Protective Coating, Acqvired Tolerance

It means only ~1500 Dps on fast attacks but your enemies are constantly on fire, or on the ground (if you have adrenaline points, and used aard, your next sword attack sends the enemie on the ground too) and you can finish with them there (you're in a yarden trap, so you have time for that usually).

[The Tempted Man]

Grandmaster wolf set suck massive ass, they really got lazy at this point. Basically just use mods to get 4 items in order to have the bonus and tell the stupid system to go ♥♥♥♥ itself. Because only the Cat and Griffon are actually good. Bear is meh, Manticore is even more meh.

[jeuwlz]

For me, I prefer the grandmaster Griffin armor. Throwing down Yrden then Quen right after is great. Wait the literal 2 seconds for my stamina to regen, and begin spamming peircing cold Aard or Igni. It's a very fun build

[Karlmeister]

Yesterday I finished my first journey (base + HOS + WAB in 220 hours, all missions completed except Collect'em All and all locations discovered except a bunch on Skellige) with GM Griffin set too, the enhanced Yrden, double signal and fast stamina regen are deadly.

I tried changing to some other sets, but the GM perks are simple awesome even against lvl50 sets like the one you find when visit the Unseen Elder cave.

One thing I noted was all the lvl46+ are heavy armors and I like light/medium types.