[Grim Dawn SSF Beginner Guide] Struggling with Bosses? Reassessing Damage, Resistances, and Skill Efficiency with Grim Tools [Warder from a Fresh Start #5]

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Welcome back to my series on raising a Warder from a fresh start in Grim Dawn, with no shared gear or other assets to rely on.

This is entry number five.

Last time, everything had been going smoothly—until I reached Act 2 and suddenly started struggling against bosses.

This time, I’m going to use Grim Tools to take another look at my leveling strategy and figure out where to go from here.

So, What Exactly Is Grim Tools?

Grim Dawn Tools

Grim Tools is a website containing pretty much every piece of data you could possibly need for Grim Dawn.

You can search through enormous databases and perform detailed build simulations.

You don’t need to download a special app, and you don’t even need to create an account.

In this article, I’ll be using Grim Tools to rethink my leveling plan.

Step 1: Look Up the Enemy That Gave You Trouble

To start planning our build, let’s use the Monster Database to look up the enemy that gave us trouble.

I wrote a separate guide explaining how to search the database, complete with screenshots. Give that a read if you aren’t sure how to use it.

How to Use the Grim Tools Monster Database

Kilrian, the Tainted Soul – Grim Dawn Monster Database

This time, I’m going to look at the data for the boss who made me eat dirt in the previous entry.

At a glance, it looks like Kilrian:

• Deals Physical, Fire, and Vitality damage
• Has 0% Lightning Resistance

Keep this page open, and then move over to the Build Calculator.

Step 2: Import Your Character and Check Their Stats

Next, import your own build into the Grim Dawn Build Calculator.

I explained how to import your save data, change the settings, and operate the calculator in a separate article, so refer back to it whenever you get stuck.

Here is the character data I imported.

Do you notice anything?

That’s right.

My resistance to the Vitality damage used by the boss we just looked up is only 8%.

Most of my other resistances are at least high enough to reduce their respective damage types by around 10–20%.

My Lightning and Pierce Resistances are even close to the 80% cap.

But Vitality Resistance is sitting at just 8%.

This tells us that insufficient resistance was one of the reasons I struggled so much.

Unfortunately, neither Shaman nor Soldier has a skill that increases Vitality Resistance.

I’ll therefore have to make up the difference through equipment and components.

Resistance-boosting augments are basically unavailable at this point on Normal difficulty, so we can forget about those for now.

Step 3: Experiment with Skill Points to See How Much You Can Increase Your Damage

From here, I’m going to put points into different skills in the calculator while keeping a close eye on the character sheet.

The goal is to figure out how I can increase my damage as quickly as possible.

We’ve already discovered that insufficient resistance is the main reason my survivability is falling behind.

With that in mind, I’m going to prioritize increasing my damage so that I can kill enemies faster while also recovering more health through ADCtH.

Step 4: Review the Different Ways to Increase Your Damage

When developing your skills, there are basically six ways to increase your damage:

1. Level up your main attack skill and its modifier skills.
2. Take passive skills that add flat base damage, such as “30 Lightning Damage,” or percentage bonuses such as “+40% Lightning Damage.”
3. Increase your Offensive Ability and reduce the enemy’s Defensive Ability.
4. Reduce the enemy’s resistance to your damage type.
5. Use damage conversion to consolidate your attacks into fewer damage types.
6. Take advantage of mastery-specific mechanics to set up powerful combinations.

The first option is simple: directly increase the damage dealt by your active attack skill.

The second strengthens your overall damage through passive bonuses.

The third increases your expected damage by improving your chance to hit and your critical hit chance.

The amount of Offensive Ability you need varies considerably depending on what enemy you’re testing against. Unless you’re building specifically around critical hits or approaching the later stages of leveling, you can generally get away with thinking:

“I’ll raise it once my attacks start missing.”

The fourth option may look indirect at first, but it increases your damage very directly.

Bleeding damage is a particularly extreme example. Even basic skeleton enemies in the early game can have 100% Bleeding Resistance.

If you want to deal consistent damage, resistance reduction can therefore be one of your strongest options.

The fifth and sixth approaches are slightly more advanced.

For example, you can convert your damage into the type your build specializes in, allowing you to focus your percentage damage bonuses on a single damage type.

You can also use mastery-specific mechanics, such as buffs that become stronger as you build up charges, to raise your damage.

For this experiment, I’m going to consider options one, two, and four.

Step 5: Level Up Skills in the Build Calculator

For now, I want to plan out roughly the next five character levels.

Let’s try putting 15 skill points into various skills and see what happens.

Primal Strike Scales Like Crazy

First, I started clicking points into Primal Strike, my main attack skill.

Its Energy Cost triples, but the percentage of Weapon Damage it deals rises from 179% to 415%.

Its Lightning Damage also increases by roughly 350 points.

By comparison, Storm Surge gains around 150 Lightning Damage, while its Electrocute Damage increases by 750 over three seconds—or 250 damage per second.

You can check your Weapon Attack value on the second tab of the character sheet.

Hover your mouse over the displayed value, and you can also see which damage types make up your Weapon Attack.

Looking at the image, we can see that most of my Weapon Attack consists of Lightning Damage.

When a skill deals a percentage of Weapon Damage, that percentage tells you how much of this value the skill uses.

For example, if your Weapon Damage is 600–776 and a skill deals 179% Weapon Damage, the calculation would be:

600 × 1.79 to 776 × 1.79

That gives us approximately:

1,074–1,389 damage

So, if I put more skill points into Primal Strike and raise its Weapon Damage from 179% to 415%, that should give me:

600 × 4.15 to 776 × 4.15

That comes to:

2,490–3,220 damage

An enormous power boost!

…Except it doesn’t quite work that way.

To use Primal Strike repeatedly, I’ve taken the Thunderous Strike transmuter.

Thunderous Strike applies the following modifiers:

• -110% Weapon Damage
• -45% Total Damage Modified

The first modifier reduces the Weapon Damage portion by 110 percentage points.

The second then reduces the final damage total by an additional 45%.

In other words, my current Primal Strike only deals 69% Weapon Damage.

After the other Lightning Damage is added, the entire result is then reduced by 45%.

Let’s calculate it.

The Weapon Damage portion of my current Primal Strike is 414–535.

It also deals 63–98 Lightning Damage.

That gives us:

{(414 + 535) / 2 + (63 + 98) / 2} × (1 – 0.45) ≈ 305

That is a pretty sad number.

With penalties this severe, surely putting more points into Primal Strike won’t make that much of a difference.

Let’s check:

{3.05 × (600 + 776) / 2 + (322 + 435) / 2} × (1 – 0.45) ≈ 1,361

Huh?

That is more than four times the damage.

It looks like I was seriously overestimating the effect of the penalties.

The difference between leveling Primal Strike and leaving it as it is comes to almost 1,000 damage.

At this point, I don’t even need to keep calculating.

Primal Strike clearly gives me more damage than Storm Surge.

Torrent Isn’t Affected by Thunderous Strike, but Its Growth Is Weak

We’ve basically already found our answer, but let’s check Torrent anyway.

Torrent is treated as a separate damage source from Primal Strike, so it isn’t affected by Thunderous Strike’s Total Damage Modified penalty.

My current Torrent deals 31% Weapon Damage and 73–146 Lightning Damage.

Its average damage is therefore:

(600 + 776) / 2 × 0.31 + (73 + 146) / 2 ≈ 322

After putting more points into it, Torrent deals 38% Weapon Damage and 131–232 Lightning Damage.

The average becomes:

(600 + 776) / 2 × 0.38 + (131 + 232) / 2 ≈ 442

That is an increase of only 120 damage.

Yeah.

I should just level Primal Strike.

Brute Force Gives a Decent Boost, but…

Brute Force adds Lightning Damage directly to your Weapon Damage.

This kind of damage is commonly called flat damage on wikis and forums.

For now, let’s raise Brute Force to its maximum level.

My Weapon Damage increases from:

600–776

to:

843–1,018

Taking the averages, that is an increase from roughly 688 to 930.

That is about a 1.35× increase.

Yeah.

Primal Strike is still better.

What About Resistance Reduction?

Raging Tempest reduces the enemy’s Elemental Resistance.

In other words, it reduces Fire, Cold, and Lightning Resistance at the same time.

At its current level, it reduces those resistances by 3%.

Our hypothetical enemy has 0% Lightning Resistance.

That means Raging Tempest is currently increasing my damage against that enemy by a factor of 1.03.

If I put as many points as possible into Raging Tempest, it can reduce Elemental Resistance by 30%.

That would give me a 1.3× damage multiplier from resistance reduction.

Compared with my current multiplier, the improvement would be:

1.3 / 1.03 ≈ 1.26

Yeah.

Primal Strike is still better.

After that, I also experimented with Fighting Spirit and Squad Tactics.

But once again, I couldn’t find any method of increasing my damage that was more effective than directly leveling Primal Strike.

Conclusion: Don’t Go by Vibes—Calculate Your Damage Before Choosing a Leveling Path

And so, my contrarian streak has once again tripped me up.

The results of this experiment have taught me a valuable lesson:

Power is justice.

I’ll continue leveling my character based on what I discovered here.

For anyone interested in the detailed damage calculation formulas, the community-run Japanese wiki has compiled almost all of them on the following page:

Combat Mechanics – Grim Dawn Japanese Wiki Wiki*

Until next time,

Enjoy your gaming life!!

Thank you so much for reading to the end!!

Previous Log: Boosting Your Damage and Stabilizing Your Survivability[Warder from a Fresh Start #4]

Next Log: Patch Up Your Resistances and Clear Normal Difficulty [Warder from a Fresh Start #6]

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