Gone are the days of glorious blademaster and saboteur, after the string of nerfs and many anti-melee mechanics in crucible, the old school DW LMB melee style chars are bit of a dying breed these days. Many melee build lovers are now forced to hide behind a shield while CDR Casters run rampant with their insta screen gibs and near permanent immunities. Whatever happened to honor and tradition?!
For those of us who still cling to the old ways, or simply enjoy the aesthetics and fluidity of a DW melee build, here I try my best to optimize an Acid based witch hunter. This is a build based on stacking flat acid damage through conversion of cold/vitality using 2x deathguard blades, chest and venomblade helm. While also utilizing some poison as supplemental dmg.
As WH is somewhat squishy naturally I seek to build it as tanky as possible without too many sacrifices in damage to make a balanced char. I will provide 2 devotion sets, 1 a bit more offensive and 1 a bit more defensive.
[v1.0.3.0]Video: Gladiator Crucible Wave 140-150, speed farm. 3:30 clear
[v1.0.3.0]Video:Gladiator Crucible Wave 140-150. No buffs, no banners
PROS:
-fluid gameplay, good quality of life
-mass hp recovery
-solid dps
CONS:
-pure melee
-difficult to get high hp pool
-did I mention melee?
GrimTools (more defensive devo setup)
http://www.grimtools.com/calc/aZqm3AmZ
GrimTools (more offensive devo setup)
http://www.grimtools.com/calc/mN4K34QZ
Overall I favor the defensive setup more, as the damage output is quite sufficient with it and we get 14.5k ish hp and giants blood proc gives us a massive amount of passive health regen ontop of our already formidable hps
Paper dps is low at 90-100k; however, with judicator rings up, and perm self auras, can get around 3.6k OA and 2.8k DA unbuffed. Nidalla’s hidden hand dmg at 16/8 also not shown on paper.
Resist reduction is very high QoL, 30 from nightschill aura, (passive), 30 from CoF very large aoe long duration, 15 from malediction(automatic), 23 from rumor proc, and additional multiplier from judicator ring.
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Gameplay:
LMB: Shard of beronath (devotion ability - akeron’s scorpion)
RMB: shadow strike (Devotion ability - rumor OR tainted eruption)
mousewheel up: Ring of steel
mousewheel down: Lethal assault
middle mouse+tilde - heal pot
keyboard 1 - curse of frailty ( rumor OR tainted eruption)
keyboard 2 - blood of dreeg
keyboard 3 - pneumatic burst
keyboard 4 - blade barrier
basically hold left click while scrolling mousewheel up and down to pop your RoS and Lethal assault on CD. Move around a bit to not let enemy AOE stack under you.
For easy content, I would bind tainted eruption on SS and rumor on CoF, so when you basically cast CoF before going in, which will spread rumors (get it?), and then SS in with an instant poison/cc bomb. Many lower hp mobs will just die to this combo, while you can focus your melee on tougher ones.
For cruci, I went with the opposite as mobs stagger and CoF will continually pop tainted eruptions for CC effect even if you have to run, and rumor on SS is a bit more reliable RR proc for tougher bosses. The downside is that CoF is long range while eruption is centered around you. the upside is that you can avoid SS getting bugged or interrupted by CC causing a gap in your fear bomb CC.
Overall i’d say its more up to your preference, give both a try and see which feels better.
Gearing:
The 2 pieces of MI gear, zantarin shoulder / kupacabra chausses are to max lethal assault. I happened to have 3 of kings on the 3 greens I have but its not a requirement nor optimal. u can pop a point into the devotion + 2x stun resist mods to get 70%+. I just happen to have those items.
You want to get nice defensive stats on them as possible. my boot+shoulder are only single rare affix and my pants’ rare prefix are pretty much the same as a nonrare affix since I can’t benefit from the %dmg. So my gear is far from optimal and with really nice rares you can achieve better stats than me; also kings proc dont stack T_T. (The best setup is probably something like thunderstruck boots of kings. then X of vitality shoulder/pants
If you have shitty rares you can still max resists as this is very easy to do with the mass resists given by occultist, you will lose some %hp enchants.
of vitality on shoulders/legs give a ton of hp and they are ideal , they are nonrare affix and not hard to obtain.
Leveling guide:
see post #2
[COLOR=“DarkOrange”]In closing:
While many caster builds nowadays can easily solo glad cruci without any tribute buffs or banner. old school melee builds have a hard time (outside of S&B builds I haven’t seen any so far). I finally did it with this build as a challenge, but it was very hard and took a number of deaths.
As a speed farming build this char clears pretty quick and reasonably safe with huge DA and life recovery+20k buffed hp. As a general farming char I quite enjoy the speed and fluidity of DW melee. I hope someday they will be on par with casters.
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