Sacred 2:Grim Ward

NOTE: The contents of this page are exclusive content found only by installing the player-made mega-mod Diablo 2 Fallen.

Summoning the ancient powers known to his people, a Barbarian This skill allows the Barbarian to fashion a totem out of the carcass of his slain enemies. The crippling damage caused by the resulting talisman serves as a grave warning to all foes. With additional training the warrior can increase the potency of the ward. This is a Spell Damage Based Combat Art. Aspect - War Cries Innate Abilities (Lvl 1) Total Damage: 4-4 Physical Causes opponents to flee in fear Dispels opponent buffs Firing Frequency: 1.0/s Duration: 15.1s Projectiles: #3 (3 simultaneous shots per firing) Projectiles seek and pierce through targets (cannot miss) Cooldown + Regeneration Time: 20.0s + 2.9s = 22.9s Modifications See also: Sacred 2:Combat Art Modifications Bronze Hamstring - Decreases opponent movement speed by 30% + 0.2% per level. Power - Doubles the base damage of Grim Ward. Silver Dire - Increases the chance for critical hits by 9.9% + 0.1% per level. Kindle - Increases the opponent's sensitivity to fire damage by 10% + 0.2% per level. Gold Perforate - Increases the chance to inflict open wounds by 20% + 0.2% per level. Expose - Increases the opponent's sensitivity to ice damage by 10% + 0.2% per level.

Grim Ward

Skills and Attributes

The following skills will affect this combat art:

• War Cries Lore - increases damage, critical chance, casting speed, and allows for modification points.

• War Cries Focus - reduces regeneration time and allows for higher level combat art without penalty, allows for modification points.

• Concentration - will lower this combat art's regeneration time.

• Ancient Magic - increases the damage and lowers opponent's resistances to its damage.

• Combat Discipline - will increase its damage and reduce its regeneration time if this Combat Art is placed within a combo.

• Damage Lore - will improve the chance, duration, and strength of open wounds (secondary damage effect) triggered by Grim Ward's physical damage.

The following attributes will affect this combat art:

• Intelligence will increase the damage and spell intensity

• Stamina will lower regeneration time

Usage Strategies

• Grim Ward is intentionally designed with minuscule token damage. The projectiles mainly serve to inflict the various debuffs on enemies.
• The simultaneous shots along with the seeking and piercing behavior ensures that several enemies can be hit with each firing.
• The fear effect reapplies with each hit, meaning the enemy is often caught helplessly running back and forth, first one direction, then the other.
• Enemies like to immediately re-cast their buffs if they are stripped. Each hit of Grim Ward will debuff them yet again, which can catch enemies in a loop of trying to recast their buff.
• To maximize the damage take the modifications Power - Dire - Perforate. Using Grim Ward for killing requires these modifications plus investment in War Cries Lore, Ancient Magic, Combat Discipline, and lots of Damage +X% gear.
• To maximize the debuffing effects take the modifications Hamstring - Kindle - Expose. These latter two debuffs increase enemy damage sensitivity (like Damage Mitigation in reverse).
• Grim Ward duration gains 1 second every 10 levels. At combat art level 50 the duration will catch up with the cooldown, which means if regen times are kept low the Barbarian can begin to have two wards active at once.

Pros and Cons

Pros

• Renders most enemies fairly helpless unless they are immune to fear.
• Strips enemy buffs
• Reapplies its effects with every shot

Cons

• Extremely low damage make it very hard to actually kill enemies with it

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