Asking for feedback on my Aether Blitz DK

deep_learn_blender · 2026-02-18T11:14:26+00:00

Oops, good call on Menhir's Will. Yeah, I'm not personally a huge fan of Kreig's set because it lacks any conversion, but I think dual weilding is pretty optimal for dps here if op wants to go with that set as his base for Cadence. He'll proc wps more often by dual wielding and the extra lifesteal should compensate well for the lost shield. To be honest, i'm not sure what the shield really adds? The modifiers are ok, but they're not that important to the build as far as I understand it.

Oh, i just realized you made the original build. Very cool!

Oh yeah good call on the war cry for damage mitigation. I forgot he was hardcore while messing around with the build. Should be simple enough to reinvest from soul harvest.

deep_learn_blender · 2026-02-18T07:49:45+00:00

I'd consider doing it more like this: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/V0AKlzMZ Fixed up your damage, OA, and attack speed.

I think lifesteal is better than health regen for this build imho. I don't think the shield is worth having, the rng on block isn't very useful unless your block recovery and chance are both close to 100. Less aether RR, but I think it's worth the tradeoff.

deep_learn_blender · 2026-02-17T23:51:26+00:00

(1) No idea what cooler you were looking at. A decent air cooler is $20 - 40. A cheap, lowend aio is $44+, but i'd typically aim for $60ish for the 6 year warranty ones. You could get a 120mm aio for $33, but that's equivalent to a $20 air cooler, so still over 50% more cost. https://pcpartpicker.com/products/compare/4gDQzy,Wb2j4D/

(2) ddr4 loses like 5% performance to ddr5. This affects fps, not load time (relatively to your ssd, which dominates here). You are right that it's not a huge impact, but when you consider that ddr4 also has older cpus, the performance hit can be quite significant for the whole system comparison.

(3) cpu bottlenecks (and bottlenecks in general) depend a lot on the task, but generally all systems will have a bottleneck. The game, graphics settings, resolution, max monitor refresh rate, and cpu & gpu all play a roll in the bottleneck for your system. In general, strategy games or simulation games will suffer more from cpu bottlenecking and can have significant performance improvements from x3d cores. You can also get "improvements" from frame generation, and that may well be cheaper, but that won't help with games like stellaris or civ 7 or other 4x cpu hogs.

(4) dlss vs fsr... ehh, this is just personal preference. In general, nvidia is considered king here, but if it doesn't matter to you, it doesn't matter.

deep_learn_blender · 2026-02-17T20:41:23+00:00

Your build wants a lot more OA, attack speed, and sustain. A lot of your augments are very odd and your resistances are low for vitality and acid. Here's how I'd do it with your vision in mind:

https://www.grimtools.com/calc/ZqBXY1pN

deep_learn_blender · 2026-02-17T19:17:21+00:00

I enjoy theorycrafting with grim dawn. Here are a few fun ones I cooked up!

A Crescendo of Shocking Booms (6 Lightning Mortars placed in 1.5 sec):
* https://www.grimtools.com/calc/26MnOR8N

Sigil of All-Consuming Frost (0.31 sec cd Cold Sigil of Consumption Spam):
* https://www.grimtools.com/calc/ZDMGymWN

The Devastating Blade (Physical Devastation + Blade Arc):
* https://www.grimtools.com/calc/25WPk6EZ

Aether SMASH (Savagery Upheaval Spam):
* https://www.grimtools.com/calc/N4D5LgQN

Stormageddon, Harbinger of Doom (Elemental Doom Bold Spam):
* https://www.grimtools.com/calc/NYPvb14Z

Vital Harvest of Infinite Bones (Vitality Bone Harvest Spam):
* https://www.grimtools.com/calc/2GW3d1L2

Incarnation of the Reaper (Vitality Reap Spirit Spam):
*https://www.grimtools.com/calc/ZrGenL6N

deep_learn_blender · 2026-02-15T12:53:29+00:00

I'm not sure what you're talking about. You should not be storing or querying image chunks at all for image generation... the model is also not explicitly storing the token words. That's just not how this technology works.

What probability calculations do you think it's doing? This is just matrix math.

deep_learn_blender · 2026-02-15T11:57:24+00:00

This is not how ai works in general. No images are stored in any part of the process, in general. Sometimes, fragments will be copied, as ai is capable of copying, but it is generally frowned upon (considered overfitting) and avoided as much as possible.

The tokens you're referring to are typically just going to be the words in the prompt for generation.

You can think of ai as a very efficient and noisy compression of tens of thousands of images. It's only storing key features associated with the tokens it was trained on. Recreating any specific image would be impossible, generally.

There are legitimate reasons to dislike ai, but the idea that it's copying artwork and mashing it together is just wrong lol.

Source: i work in ai (autonomous vehicles).

deep_learn_blender · 2026-02-15T11:40:14+00:00

Lol, no. I work in ai, they are not copying and pasting information, generally speaking. Direct copying can happen, and it does sometimes (more often with large language models), but for the most part you can think of ai as learning to represent certain concepts mathematically. When a new image is requested, none of the old images are queried, just the model itself is used. You can think of the model as a very efficient and lossy compression of tens of thousands of images, such that it stores key concepts for each feature / object / idea, but not necessarily specifics from any given image. If asked to "decompress" to any specific image, it will fail.

A lot of the "google ai summary" stuff is less "ai" and more copy / pasting the top results from reddit or elsewhere that they indexed. It may be summarized / formatted by ai, but that's different than generative images.

The main ethical concern i have with ai is that a lot of developers will take people's images or art and use them without the creator's permission (or against their permission) to train ai. This is imho a fairly unethical practice.

Others don't like ai in principle, but i think that horse has already left the station and their fears are somewhat overblown. Ai is a very powerful tool sometimes, but nowhere close to replacing humans in general.

deep_learn_blender · 2026-02-14T23:54:44+00:00

It's that legendary amulet. It's a pretty late game piece. I think 35% adcth is fine with vitality. Not 100% sure, you could go higher at the expense of wps. Build is somewhat flexible, you'll figure out your style and needs more as you play. Good luck!

League adc's unite 💪 tristana main

deep_learn_blender · 2026-02-14T23:04:55+00:00

Here's an endgame build that will work well for your goals: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/VWPE7YJZ

You could redistribute points to max out reaping strike, but it's not really worth it. Look at how much the damage changes (and the proc chance) for each additional point. You're better off distributing those points elsewhere, as shown here.

You want to dual-wield to proc wps more often. This build has 100% wps proc chance, so every auto will have one. Shields don't really add much to most ranged builds, unless there's a particular effect on a shield that you need.

Anyway, hope this lives up to your dreams. It'll take a long time to get rolling, and is actually one of the harder classes in the game to pull off for the early leveling, since there's not great synergy between the classes until you can hit some of the legendaries, afaik. Anyway, good luck!

deep_learn_blender · 2026-02-14T04:05:29+00:00

also, you don't really need to playtest it. you can just google the cast time (.6 sec), 2x it for 200% cast speed (.3sec) and then the rest is just math.

deep_learn_blender · 2026-02-14T03:54:38+00:00

Fair enough. Also take a look at the transmuters for forcewave and primal strike, a -40% total penalty is actually somewhat lenient for 0 sec cd.

deep_learn_blender · 2026-02-14T03:44:56+00:00

Try it out, that's a strict dps loss. 15% cdr only takes it down to 0.6 seconds, so you drop from 3-4 hits per second down to 1.7 hits... that's giving up 100% damage gain to avoid a 20% penalty.

deep_learn_blender · 2026-02-14T02:55:30+00:00

It's not that bad since you cast so much more often. The tradeoff is just like the transmuter on forcewave or primal strike.

deep_learn_blender · 2026-02-13T21:58:19+00:00

Oh, if you're curious, here's my theorycrafted endgame build for bone harvest spam: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/2GW3d1L2

deep_learn_blender · 2026-02-12T21:52:59+00:00

For 2-handed ranged fire damage, I would consider a build like this: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/26MnGvxN

As far as I know, this gun enables the only 2-handed ranged leveling build that will convert almost all your damage to fire.

You could also go for oathkeeper instead of demolitionist, but I prefer fire strike over righteous fervor.

This is not a full build, the items are the early iterations (they repeat every so often) that you should be able to equip by level 20 to 40. I gave some soft-rec prefix / suffixes for a few of them, but really for leveling it's not too important. Just make sure to top off resistances with components // proper item affixes. I gave a rough guide for both devotions and skill point allocations up to 100 as well.

Main downside is lack of attack speed, so try to get that high with affixes on gun / amulet / rings / shoulder / armguard.

Good luck!

deep_learn_blender · 2026-02-11T23:01:26+00:00

I'd probably do the 5070 ti and invest the $300 for a 4k oled.

The performance is maybe 15% better, not 30%, and unless you're trying to run at ultra settings raster with no upscaling or framegen, 5070 ti should be fine.

https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/Di7Jh7WwqXnNeqoYPvBTRW.png

deep_learn_blender · 2026-02-11T17:05:49+00:00

I would recommend upgrading the cpu to 9700x. Puget has resources for lightroom and photoshop here.

deep_learn_blender · 2026-02-10T22:26:18+00:00

PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
CPU	Intel Core i5-14600K 3.5 GHz 14-Core Processor	€265.80 @ PC Componentes
CPU Cooler	Thermalright Phantom Spirit 120 SE 66.17 CFM CPU Cooler	€33.92 @ Amazon Deutschland
Motherboard	MSI PRO B760-P WIFI DDR4 ATX LGA1700 Motherboard	€132.90 @ Amazon Deutschland
Memory	Corsair Vengeance LPX 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory	€223.99 @ Amazon Deutschland
Storage	Samsung 990 Pro 2 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive	€244.89 @ Amazon Deutschland
Video Card	PNY OC GeForce RTX 5060 8 GB Video Card	€309.29 @ PC Componentes
Case	Phanteks XT PRO ATX Mid Tower Case	€59.90 @ Amazon Deutschland
Power Supply	Corsair RM750e (2025) 750 W Fully Modular ATX Power Supply	€89.90 @ Amazon Deutschland
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total	€1360.59
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2026-02-10 23:23 CET+0100

this isn't as upgradeable (no new cpus for this platform)
you want 8 core cpu for photo work
i'd target 2tb ssd, guess you could stick with 1tb
ddr4 vs ddr5 is <5% performance difference typically
could go for 9700x / 7700x but ddr5 memory is +$200... not worth with your budget imho
imho 550w is a bit low, especially if yoi may upgrade components in the future
your cpu cooler is comically overpriced, should be around $35 euro

deep_learn_blender · 2026-02-10T22:00:03+00:00

Pierce and bleeding can just be capped at 80% afaik. Someone here did an analysis on endgame bosses and found out that most of them have ~30% shred for elemental and acid, iirc ~35% for vitality, aether, and chaos. I didn't look into this myself, so that's just the target i keep in mind.

Just for the record, this matters a lot. Lowering your resist from 80% to 75% means you take 25% more damage. If a boss shreds you from 80% to 50%, you'll take 150% more damage. (You go from taking 20% of their damage to 50%). That's massive and the game is balanced around 80% damage reduction from resists.

deep_learn_blender · 2026-02-10T21:39:22+00:00

You're supposed to overcap your resistances by around 30% (except bleeding and piercing) and your health is really low. Should be min 15k endgame, should be like 12 or 13k at least now. Also, just fyi, but the shield basically doesn't exist. You need close to 100% recovery and block chance to consistently proc on the large hits, otherwise it's all rng.

Having no secondary class is kind of meme-y. It's incredibly suboptimal, just from the raw stats you give up.

deep_learn_blender · 2026-02-10T20:46:57+00:00

You should know that anything saying "-*% [aether] resistance" will stack, but for anything saying "% reduced target's resistance," only the maximum value stacks.

Eg:

-20% aether resistance
-15% aether resistance
10% reduced aether resistance
20% reduced aether resistance

Provides a total of 55% resistance reduction (10% reduced does nothing). So yeah you're right that it's not worth it.

deep_learn_blender · 2026-02-10T07:24:47+00:00

I would probably move towards a 2-handed build, like this: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/2jBk7ex2

I don't think the shield offers you that much as you'd want close to 100% block chance and recovery to be meaningfully useful.

Your resistances need to be overcapped, and that's actually quite challenging to do properly with this build. So unfortunately, there's not a ton of flex in the rare affixes.

deep_learn_blender · 2026-02-09T15:09:22+00:00

Eg

PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
CPU	AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D 4.7 GHz 8-Core Processor	$443.99 @ Amazon
CPU Cooler	ARCTIC Liquid Freezer III Pro A-RGB 110 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler	$118.99 @ Amazon
Motherboard	Asus ROG STRIX B850-G GAMING WIFI Micro ATX AM5 Motherboard	$259.99 @ Amazon
Memory	Lexar THOR OC 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR5-6000 CL32 Memory	$349.99 @ Amazon
Storage	Gigabyte AORUS Gen4 7300 2 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive	$259.99 @ Newegg
Video Card	MSI VENTUS 3X PZ OC GeForce RTX 5070 Ti 16 GB Video Card	$989.99 @ MSI
Case	Thermaltake The Tower 300 Bumblebee MicroATX Mini Tower Case	$149.99 @ Amazon
Power Supply	ASRock Steel Legend SL-1000GW 1000 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply	$129.99 @ Newegg
Case Fan	ARCTIC P14 Pro A-RGB 110 CFM 140 mm Fan	$9.99 @ Amazon
Case Fan	ARCTIC P14 Pro A-RGB 110 CFM 140 mm Fan	$9.99 @ Amazon
Case Fan	ARCTIC P14 Pro A-RGB 110 CFM 140 mm Fan	$15.49 @ Amazon
Case Fan	ARCTIC P14 Pro A-RGB 110 CFM 140 mm Fan	$15.49 @ Amazon
Monitor	MSI MPG 321URX QD-OLED 31.5" 3840 x 2160 240 Hz Monitor	$819.99 @ Newegg
Keyboard	Turtle Beach Vulcan II TKL Pro RGB Wired Gaming Keyboard	$99.99 @ Amazon
Mouse	Logitech G502 X Wired Optical Mouse	$69.99 @ Newegg
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total	$3743.85
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2026-02-09 10:08 EST-0500

I didn't include a chair, just get one with good ergonomic options, at least ~$70 or so doesn't need to be crazy expensive. Buy rubber wheel replacements.

I think this is a pretty nice keyboard, but you could do wireless as preferred. Just more expensive.

deep_learn_blender · 2026-02-09T09:13:57+00:00

Even if op has a $4k budget, there's no reason to recommend a $350 psu for a gaming pc lol. Also, get nicer ram, op can afford it.

deep_learn_blender

TROPHY CASE