How to defeat Grigoire, the Galvanic Saint in Diablo 4 Season 2

The new endgame bosses added with Season 2 of Diablo 4 represent the biggest challenges players have faced in Sanctuary yet. Each of these five fiendish foes brings not only a hugely difficult battle, but also an extensive summoning process that must be completed before you can even attempt to take them on.

After defeating Echo of Varshan, the next of these bosses the player will likely come up against is Grigoire, the Galvanic Saint. While comparable in terms of difficulty, his summoning process is far, far more challenging than Varshan’s, requiring a huge time commitment that makes failure during the fight itself far from ideal. If you’re ready to snuff out another endgame boss’s spark, then read on to learn how to defeat Grigoire, the Galvanic Saint in Diablo 4 Season 2.

How to summon Grigoire, the Galvanic Saint in Diablo 4 Season 2

The summoning ritual for Grigoire is by far the most time-consuming part of the process of defeating him. In order to do so, you’ll need to collect two pieces of Living Steel and offer them up in an altar in the new Hall of the Penitent Dungeon. Sounds simple enough, until you learn what goes into actually getting said Steel. It’s worth noting that this process can only be completed on World Tier 3 or higher.

Living Steel can only be found in one place: in Tortured Gift of Living Steel chests in Helltide Events. These are new chests introduced in Season 2, and they behave similarly to Mystery chests of the past in that they don’t appear on the map. Also similar to Mystery chests, they cost a huge amount of Aberrant Cinders to open, with each one demanding 300 Cinders before their hinges will swing open. 

What this means is that, in order to get a piece of Living Steel you’ll need to spend a good 20 minutes grinding out Aberrant Cinders in a Helltide, being careful not to die and lose half of your stash, before tracking down the unmarked chest containing the Living Steel and opening it. As if that wasn’t challenging enough, the chests containing Living Steel are all guarded by a powerful mini-boss known as He-Grins-Wide-and-Waits, who can easily take you down if you’re not careful. This can be a very tedious process, so many players, myself included, make use of Helltide tracker sites, such as Helltides.com, to locate the chests.

When you finally open a Tortured Gift of Living Steel, you’ll be rewarded with a grand total of one piece of Living Steel. This means that you’ll need to repeat this process twice, or five times once you reach World Tier 4 and the ritual starts demanding 5 pieces of Living Steel instead, before you can get one attempt at Grigoire. For this reason, I’d recommend being extra careful and crafting the best Elixir of Lightning Resistance you can at an Alchemist in town, then drinking it before you begin the fight. This will dull the damage from his powerful suite of lightning attacks.

Once you’ve gathered the necessary materials, you’ll need to make your way to the Hall of the Penitent, a new Dungeon located south of Ked Bardu in the Dry Steppes. Fight your way through a few groups of enemies, and you’ll arrive at the Light-Touched Altar, where you can perform the ritual to summon Grigoire forth.

How to conquer Grigoire, the Galvanic Saint in Diablo 4 Season 2

Once the battle proper starts, Grigoire has a wide range of attacks he can use to fry your poor wanderer to a crisp. Before his summoning is even complete, you’ll get a taste of his moveset in the lightning squares that start cropping up around the central altar. These aren’t just for show: they can do real damage to you if you don’t move out of the way fast enough. Thankfully, they’re telegraphed well in advance by the red area on the floor, so just start moving as soon as you see it and Evade if you need to. These will come up again later, so it’s good to know how to dodge them.

For the most part, he’ll walk slowly around the arena performing his basic melee swing attack. This deals a good chunk of damage, but it only hits a small area right in front of him, so you can dodge behind him to avoid the worst of it. This attack will also release a wave of bouncing lightning orbs along the ground in front of Grigoire, which are fairly easy to dodge too, but don’t deal much damage if they do hit you. You can generally get a few hits in after a melee attack, but don’t be too aggressive here, as it’s easy to lose a lot of healing potions to his swings.

He also has a more telegraphed melee attack, wherein he lifts his mace above his head and slams it down in front of him. Again, the melee portion of this attack deals a lot of damage, so keep your distance when you see him winding it up. This version also causes lightning bolts to rain down at random across the arena. These are telegraphed in advance by circles on the ground, so try and dodge out of their reach if you can.

One of Grigoire’s most interesting attacks is his lightning grid move. Here, he sends up lighting into the air, which then strikes the conductors across the arena, spreading out between them to create a damaging lightning grid with a random pattern each time. This grid lasts for a while, and changes how you navigate the arena and fight the boss, but this is also one of the best damage windows you’ll get during the fight. As long as you’re not standing between two conductors, you won’t take damage here, so you can really go to town on Grigoire if he’s standing in a good position when he uses this attack.

The lightning squares that heralded Grigoire’s summoning can also make an appearance in the fight itself, albeit rarely. For this attack, Grigoire will teleport out of the arena, the camera will zoom out slightly, and lightning squares will start to form on the grid between the conductors. Again, these are well-telegraphed, so you should be able to get out of the way in time. The squares deal damage over time rather than damage in one big chunk, so as long as you keep moving and evading you shouldn’t take much damage here.

Grigoire can also summon help in the form of a wave of mechanical knight enemies, who arrive pre-formed into ranks. These are very basic enemies who shouldn’t take much to wipe out, but you should prioritize doing so as soon as possible, since they can get in the way and cause you to make mistakes on other attacks if you don’t.

Grigoire lacks anything as dangerous as Varshan’s Triangle of Death attack, so you’re rarely at risk of being totally wiped out during this fight. This means you can be a bit more aggressive in general, getting hits in after his melee swings and summon moves. The lightning grid attack presents a natural window to go all-in, so try and save your best skills for then, but don’t waste opportunities to use them during his melee phase either, since he doesn’t use the grid attack very often.

Rewards – Grigoire, the Galvanic Saint loot drops

Once Grigoire falls, you can claim your rewards. If you’re facing him on World Tier 4 he’ll drop a Shard of Agony, one of the summoning items necessary to challenge Duriel, the most powerful of the new endgame bosses. In addition he drops a nice selection of Legendary gear, all of which comes with high Item Power for your current World Tier, and he has a 50% chance to drop one of the following Unique items as well:

So there you have it: a full guide on how to defeat Grigoire, the Galvanic Saint in Diablo 4 Season 2. Despite the summoning process being too drawn-out for my taste, he’s an incredibly fun boss to actually fight, and a great source for some powerful Unique items too.