2H Bleed Warder
So I finally got a warder and I chose to go with a 2h version of the bleed build. After weeks of trying, revising, failing, giving up, moving on to other builds and getting back to this again, I finally arrived at what I can say a competent setup for gladiator 170. Unfortunately, this is not as smooth as the s&b version (the witchblade, never tried s&b on warder) and you will havesome trouble if you’re not caredul, even with the great-ish stats this build has on paper.
Pros:
- 2h melee (I mean, who doesn’t love that?)
- Bloodrager supports warder better
- better relic proc and adcth in general
- higher (theoretical) dps than s&b
Cons (which apply to all 2h melee in general):
- kinda squishy - even with 4.5k DA, this felt squishier compared to the 3.5k DA s&b version.
- awful attack speed - this is a big deal because you need savagery stacking and this leads to not delivering full damage potential
- uncapped movement speed and slow res is a big deal (will be explained later).
Grimtools - https://www.grimtools.com/calc/YZe1k7kZ
Char sheet with permanent buffs, no tenacity and savagery charges.
Skills and Devotions:
Most are pretty standard as far as Blade arc builds go, I got Feral Hunger to 10/10 and Zolhan’s/Markovian’s to 5/10 cause WPS just works well with savagery and Feral Hunger adds bleed and ADCTH. Took points from CS to those three, CS becomes less powerful cause 2h isn’t as tanky as s&b. Vines is mainly to get more chances to proc Blood spines which is a great help for sustain.
For the exclusives, I actually tried all three. Primal Bond seemed the best fit for bleed but it didn’t really add much to survivability. Stormcaller’s Pact was what I really wanted to make work and it produces really wonderful numbers (got ~800k tick once) but you end up too squishy and RNG dependent. Some times I’d die at 154, sometimes I breeze through everything till 170. But it’s like 90% bad 10% lucky so I dropped Stormcaller’s Pact. Oleron’s rage was my last choice and it turned out to be superior to the other two. OA bonus means I can build more defensively and the movement speed is huge. From what I have observed, the lack of movespeed is the greatest weakness of shaman-based 2h melee builds. You’re not as tanky as a shield build, you don’t have consistent circuit breakers like arcanists (druid has but still only one compared to sorcs and spellbinders 2) and you’re slow as fuck. Oleron’s rage fixes the movespeed issue and even then if you got low rolls (like me), you’ll not have maxed movement. Still it’s good to have it.
Devotions is just the same as the witchblade. You can take a more offensive route and get Kraken but it lessens your chances at 170. I don’t think the devotions can also be done more defensively without sacrificing Mogdrogen. I bound Rend to Savagery and Acid Spray to Feral Hunger cause both swarm doesn’t proc them enough and vines are a PITA to cast all the time.
Crucible 170
Cleartime for 150-170 using this build is from 19-23 mins depending on the arena, mutators and spawns. Big arenas like Crucible of the Legion is best for this build cause the big guys don’t clump as fast as they do in smaller areas like Dead or Void.
For the gameplay, I think that playing more aggressively is best for this build. This is something that I can’t even do cause I’m used to kiting but your main source of survivability is ADCTH, some facetanking is advisable even against very dangerous nemesis combos.
Closing
I like this build a lot, despite all its flaws in crucible. It’s not as easy as s&b bleed wb, but still challenging enough to play while providing a decent cleartime, if you clear. Thanks for reading this post.