[1.0.3.2] Wendigo - 2h Vitality Ritualist

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
1

Hello folks, I guess that’s my first build that I post here. Have to start somewhere…

I do acknowledge magic and trickery are a great means in defeating threats to humanity, but I prefer to end the brawls in an old-fashioned way - by crushing a skull of an enemy with some huge and scary stick.
It’s been a while since I wanted to make something out of the Wildblood Crusher, but my Wildblood Conjurer ultimately failed to deliver the same level of fun and effectiveness as other builds, so I abandoned it.
But, to my great pleasure, AoM introduced a whole new mastery with some melee Vitality support, so I just had to do a second try. Here’s what came out:

GrimTools: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/YVWJez52

(Old) Average Sentinel run vid: https://youtu.be/KYWfpR3_ad4
(Old) Average Cronley+Fabius run vid: https://youtu.be/QOuYRU6aeZA

Alternative gear for some of the slots (updated to 1.0.7.1):
Head: Ravager’s Dreadgaze / (Mythical) Clairvoyeant’s Hat. Those break the set but give some valuable skillpoints. The build will be more AA-focused, which is still viable.
Amulet: Old setup was using Aether Savagery conduit, which worked relatively fine for AA build. But since the Blood Knight’s Set arrival, 3pc Blood Knight’s bonus is too good to pass on. And out of all pieces amulet is relatively good stat-wise. You can also try (Mythical) Death Ward or (Mythical) Wretched Necessity, but the difference will be significant.
Rings: (Mythical) Signet of the Fallen, any resist fillers
Medal: Any you find fit. Rylok ones are pretty good. Mark of Divinity is always good.
Pants: (Mythical) Wendigomane Leggings, (Mythical) Dread Knight’s Legplates

The summary of the good and bad about the build is as follows:

Good:

  • ADCTH. Actually, it’s build around it. With my items it has base 33% ADCTH. One of 4 hits proc Feral Hunger, which adds another 49%. Second one procs Reaping Strike, with another 42%. And, if you’re feeling bad, Ghoulish Hunger will skyrocket your ADCTH to the top. Basically, as long as you hit things, you live.
  • Damage. As comes from the first point, your sustain scales from damage. And you have A LOT of damage. With full Blood Knight’s set I’ve got 900k BH crit in crucible.
    And with better gear and maxed BH (through different skill bonuses on relic and different medal) I bet it can go over 1m BH crits.
  • Attack speed: 190% when Savagery is up, 198% with Hungering Void. And you can theoretically cap it. With a 2hander. Like, WUT??? If there’s an on attack proc, you will proc it real quick.
  • No dependency on single items or skills. Any future nerfs will not make the build useless, unless some of the core mechanics change.

Bad:

  • Itemization. Outside of a weapon and a few occasional items, there’s little support for melee vitality. All the armor is either medium or caster, which leads to inability to tank huge physical hits. With the addition of the Blood Knight’s set we have some heavy Vitality set, but unfortunately it is strongly focused on one mastery combo and two particular skills, giving no support bonuses to other skills/masteries.
  • CC resists. Masteries do not have any CC resists outside of Slow Res from Savagery line. You’ll have to sacrifice a lot of things to get Stun/Freeze to a decent level.
  • Enemy resists. Unlike many other damage types, this one is hot or cold only. Things are either blowing up from a single hit, or are heavily resistant. And there’s a huge group of the latter ones… Some of them are very resistant to ADCTH as well, and are quite dangerous, even though we have a 13% Life Leech resist shread.
  • Defensive options: No mobility skill (at least not until the Forgotten Gods), no hard circuit breaker, low armor, low DA, no absorbtion… Mark of Torment is good, but only works against single target. And, if you happen to need it, it means you don’t have enough sustain, and you have nothing in your pocket except the MoT. So you’d better kill the ting before it ends.


Crucible:
Glad 150 Viable (3 blessings / no banners / no consumables).
I’m a poor Crucible pilot, so it’s quite likely that someone skilled enough can do 170. But it will not be reliable in any case.
Better greens would certainly help. The Cronley’s ring and Grava’s pants need a better suffix, and the medal should be replaced with a double rare Rylok’s for better results. With those changes OA/DA can be improved significantly.

I play this char whenever I feel sad or irritated, because it is a simple concept and it hits like a truck. Out of what I’ve had a chance to meet, I did:

  • Sentinel: easy
  • Mad Queen: can facetank red aura under MoT if you’re lucky, 50/50. I think will be more reliable with better gear.
  • Fabius: easy
  • Grava’Thul: facetankable, but scary at times
  • Kubacabra: will have to reposition to keep yourself outside of pools, but still reliable, just takes longer
  • Avatar of Mog: Got him to half health once. Burst damage kills most of the time, plus this guy likes to reposition often. With all the procs going off I sometimes lose cursor and start hitting the wrong things.

Overall, it’s really fun to play, I enjoyed every minute of it and, probably, this is my go-to farming toon.

I will add some vids and leveling guide later.

2

Reserved for possible levelling guide and final thoughts

3

Nice, I was thinking of doing something quite similar. Some notable differences:

  • Completely dropped Grasping Vines
  • Strong emphasis on Blood Pact, Dread, and Soul Harvest
  • Used Riftstone
  • Used Time Dilation (example devotion setup)

The above devotion setup in particular will help mitigate some of your cons. For example, TD will allow you to use MoT with higher frequency. While Ulo will help with MQ, etc. Obviously things can be swapped around to suit your needs but the point is that it’s not impossible to get Hourglass, Dying God, and Rattosh all at once while only having 3 completely useless nodes (in Stag + Scholar’s Light).

One con is that there’s no source of RR in the manner of Acid Spray unless you use something weird like Blessed Steel or Black Star of Deceit.

Some sort of Eldritch Spectral Warmaul of something could be used for leveling.

4

Hey if you decide to bring out the conjour I HIGHLY recommend a build like this. http://www.grimtools.com/calc/M2gWKp62 would be best in slot. Definitely other items that can be filled and the build will still work…

Can be played like a dot caster if you really want to play safe… or facetanking savagery smashing stuff. Higher phys resist( ~30%) and absorb from possession help, but iron maidens/moosi can still hit ya hard AF.
I was able to do crucible without buffs. I failed extra spawn no buffs on 150 when I got x2 moosi x1 zan… and i didnt have any hoarfrost potions rip.
I wanted to do a build write up called “Wildblood Savage” or something like that, but ill just leave it here
Pros: [ul]
[li]Huge Adcth [] Solid Phys Resist [] -126 vitality and bleeding resist + a 10% reduction from the judicator’s ring set [] over 3k OA/DA [] Great HP regen even with dying god proc’d [*] Top tier damage[/li]
[/ul]
Cons: [ul]
[li]Low armor[/li]
[li]Low Health Pool[/li]
[li] Lots of skills that must be spammed to be played to maximum efficiency (Although I personally enjoy busy keybind builds)[/li]
[/ul]

5

I left Grasping Vines because it works well with necrotic edge. You hit a group with the latter, they are terrified and run away, but can’t because of the vines. Easy kills. The vines sometimes root bosses as well. Those two things help significantly in crucible.
Plus, I see no other places to drop points into effectively.

6

Looks pretty good, but man you really need soul harvest max on this build it’s a huge dps boost. I think you have the points to max out bone harvest as well. Maxed bone harvest with the transmuter = should hit like a fuckin truck

7

Thanks, I’ll definitely try that and get back with my opinion.
I think I have points for Soul Harvest, but not the Bone Harvest itself.

Added a few videos as well. Didn’t do multiple tries to choose the best one, just went, killed and recorded the first runs. I think that’s an honest way to do videos.

8

So, I did a tests with 14/12 Soul Harvest and it indeed boosts the DPS significantly. There is a downside, however - this is another temporary proc to keep track of, which I have 4 now - Devouring Swarm and Soul Harvest both with 5sec uptime and Ravager’s Deathgaze and Ravenous Earth with 4sec uptime. And I’m not even counting the Grasping Vines that are useless on red things.
As for the Soul Harvest itself - I can try (don’t know where to get points, though), but let’s try some approximate math. At 18/12 it does 260% WD + 262 Vit. If we add 30% WD and 20% multiplier from transmuter it will be ~ 348% WD and 315 Vit dmg once per 3 sec. 315 vit dmg will approximately equate to another 30% WD, so let’s say it’s 380% WD each 3sec.
At the same time, if I just hit some poor thing for 3sec straight I will deal 9 hits (with my current aspd). Which will trigger ~ 3 regular Savagery hits (160% wd), 2 FH procs (160200=320% wd), 2 Reaping Strike hits (160144~=230% wd) and 2 Necrotic Edges (160*140~235% WD). So in total I’ll do ~2250% WD. If I add SH I will miss 1 attack to cast it, so with SH but 1 less regular Savagery I’ll deal ~ 2470% wd. It’s ~10% damage increase. However, I don’t really know where I take that points from, so it may or may not be worth it. Plus, I ommitted bleeding and aether dmg from regular attacks, so I’d rather say it’s 5% dmg increase.
Let me know if my math is wrong.