[1.0.4.1] Belgothian Warlock -Dual-Wield Melee(This wasn't supposed to work)

About the Build

So I’ve been playing Grim Dawn since open beta (off and on I’ll admit) but I fell in love with dual-wield melee characters from the inception. Back then level 35 Nightblades were king.

A lot has changed and when the Arcanist was introduced I decided to try something some might call, well, stupid. I wanted to make a dual-wield melee chaos/vitality Warlock.

It was rather successful up until The Hidden Path was introduced and I found myself unable to do much with it and shelved the character at 85, soon after taking a long long break (1+years).

Ashes of Malmouth brought new items that made me think I could revive Crispy the Warlock.

While doing a self-inflicted torture task of recording 100 SoT runs I was able to find the Belgothian set and my sad, masochistic wheels started turning.

Back in the day I was using a Fang of Ch’thon and the new version converted piercing to chaos…hrm…

…so I came up with this:

Grim Tools

With only auras the character stat sheet look like this

With temporary buffs from Blood of Dreeg and Hungering Void we have this

Devotion Path

+1 Crossroads Eldritch
+5 Eye of the Guardian (Guardian’s Gaze on Curse of Frailty)
+1 Crossroads Chaos
+5 Vulture
+1 Crossroads Primordial
+4 Sailor’s Guide
+3 Behemoth (Giant’s Blood on Maiven’s Sphere of Protection)
+4 Empty Throne
+3 Hawk
+7 Chariot of the Dead (Wayward Soul on Possession)
+5 Solael’s Witchblade (Eldritch Fire on Sigil of Consumption)
-3 Hawk
-1 Crossroads Eldritch
+3 Eel
+3 Hound
+3 Lizard
+6 Aeon’s Hourglass (Time Dilation on Chaos Strike)
-1 Crossroads Primordial
-1 Crossroads Chaos
+7 Dying God (Hungering Void on Belgothian Strikes)

Playstyle

Rarely do I feel myself in danger. I will Chaostrike into the melee, drop a Sigil of Consumption and then spam a few Cuses of Frailty on large packs to spawn a massive amount of Eyes from Guardian’s Gaze.

Guardian’s Gaze along with the proc from Eldritch Pact does very impressive AoE and most things melt quite quickly.

Leveling

Honestly, I like to level characters the way I intend for them to be played. I had 0 issues going melee from the get go.

Start Occultist and basically rush to Possession, picking up 1 point in every skill you’re going to use along the way. Then finish up Blood of Dreeg and then Solael’s Witchfire.

At level 25 you can equip a dual wield Relic on the cheap and it all snowballs from there. Chaostrike will carry you through almost all boss fights in the early to mid game before your gear starts to flesh out.

I played solo self-found and had little issues just mixing and matching while ensuring to prioritise resistances.

Only go into Arcanist once you find you’re missing stat points.

All stat points go into Physique save for a few that you’ll use for cunning to wield your weapons. I manage with 2 because I have high rolls for cunning on my gear, but 3-4 might be required with lower rolls, but you can change that later with a potion once your gear changes.

I’ll include a detailed guide of how to spend points as you go along with a devotion guide at a later date if there’s interest in the build.

Viability

Now it’s true, Warlock has the lowest health and physique of any 2 class combinations and really I am gimping myself in a way, but the idea of overcoming the shortcomings along with using chaos (a seemingly under-represented damage type for melee in my opinion) was too much of a challenge to pass up.

I wanted to do it my way, and damn it, I did!

I’ve completed the entire campaign and expansion along with the first secret boss on my first try. The second secret boss along with the Mad Queen are stalemates, so I need to figure something out there.

0 Chance on Ravager sorry. He ate me for breakfast while laughing.

Nemesis:

Moosilauke - Easy with Antifreeze
Benn’jhar - Easy, just move a little
Fabius - Just move off a bit when he shields, but overall easy

I’ve not tried the other Nemesis bosses yet, I still need to farm some rep.

I’ll update as I clear things.

I do apologise for no videos but I’m stuck on using a laptop that doesn’t record very well on quality since my desktop exploded.

In Closing…

This is my first build that I’m making public, so I expect a lot of criticism and that’s ok. I hope someone can find a way to make this build even better.

The boots, pants and left ring are all items I need to replace with Stoneplate, Better Solael & a Double Rare Gollus, so there’s a lot of grinding left to go.

reserved for stuffs

Nice build i’m actually quite interested on your point allocations for devotion!
damn…this should be higher up it its a really cool build now that I look at it as no one has said anything yet lol

Hey thanks for the interest man, been away from GD for a few weeks. Just 0 luck with drops and needed a break.

I’ll get back to it soon. I’ll work on a detailed list of how I did my devotions tonight and tomorrow and post it.

This looks tasty…

Thanks!

Really hoping someone will try it out and find some improvements. Other than perfectly rolled stats and finding my 3 God Tier Rare Affix/Suffix ring boots and legs I’m at a loss on how to improve.

Devotion allocation added.

Did you try it with two Fangs? The life-leech would be pretty high? I might be missing something, but all I’m seeing from the fourth set item would be the armour pierce 50%. How much of an impact does that have?

I experimented with a dual wield high leech Warlock and it had high survivability but low damage output. I also tried out a S&B variant with ridiculous survivability but, again, crap damage output. My issue was gearing but I could see either being viable with the right drops.

*edit some more thoughts

The two points overcap in MSoP seem wasted unless you add another point but even then it’s only an additional 1% dr. Also, was there a reason you kept the Familiar around as it also looks like a waste. Putting these salvaged points into Nullification or Arcane Will might be of greater benefit.

If I use a second Fang the build is no longer a Belgothian Warlock since I lose Belgothian Strikes AAR which is a substantial chunk of my DPS and kind of the focus of the build.

My life steal is already really good though with the Fang and Sigil of Consumption my issue isn’t staying alive except against Ravager and Lokkar. My issue I think is more so not having enough damage and the second Fang would sadly reduce my damage.

Ah, my bad. I overlooked that. I struggled with damage output too with my Warlock; you see these crazy numbers on some builds and then look at your own wimpy 128k max damage and start to think: “Where did it all go wrong”.

My build is mostly DoT though, and other than Doom Bolt there’s not much else for us unless we fully speck into ARR, AFF or CT+Inf. There’s a sort of half way house if you go 50% into CT+Inf with transmuter. It’s a real task to manage all of these things in your head!

My max damage with this build is 220k or so.

It really excels at aoe damage with the Guardian Eyes, it’s easy to get them up using Curse of Frailty and I can literally tank entire screens while not losing much if any HP. Most things just explode attacking me even if I just stand still and do nothing.

I’ll download OBS and see if I can get some gameplay footage. That might help encourage folks to try it. Leveling up a Warlock might not seem that fun if you’ve no idea what it’ll even look like.

This build looks awesome. I’ve only beaten the game once, and mainly have fucked around with different failed attempts at necromancer, occultist, arcanist etc. Warlock is fun and I’m using the Iskandra’s necromancer build but this melee variant you’ve created fits what I’d like to play more. Any chance you finished a leveling guide for the skills? 1 point in each usable skill until (maxing?) Possession seems like I’d be getting owned but like I said I am FAR from an expert in this game. Thanks a lot for creating and sharing this!

cool idea liked it;)

i have similar concept while ago but its sabo with quite similar itemsofc no belgothian set… using fang + 1 chaos dagger and converting all fire and pierce to chaos and using fire devo setup for massive aeo aswell as it has absurd single target aswell…

have you tried or theorycrafted sabo version of this, also sabo offers da shred and more rr and korvaak blitz deals absurd dmg aswell…

might try belgo setup on my toon aswell