[1.0.6.1] Crimson Soviet: 2H Blood Knight, 4buffs/no banners Cruc. 150-170 in 10 min. (Death Knight)

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
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*Mad Lee playing soldier based build??

Foreword

That’s going to be a short guide since I never really play Soldier builds and this character is entirely GDstashed and GDdefiled from Veteragna’s Markovian Witchblade that I was testing earlier (actually green boots are one thing that are not GD stashed). I was actually trying out my old concept of 2H Physical Death Knight with a rotation of nuke skills (turned out to be meh), but decided to try 2H Blood Knight instead and it turned out to be a pretty fun and strong build.

Build Concept

In your face 2-handed melee combat playstyle

This build can withstand a lot of heat and facetank most Crucible Nemeses combinations and it has two big nuke skills for players who like big damage numbers! And you are swinging very big two-handed weapon very fast!

Tonns of ADTCH and a lot of fail-safe mechanisms

While having already decent DA/Armor/Physical resist we also have Mark of Torment/Menhir’s Will/Bloodthirster to fall back on when shit hits the fan.

No green items needed

I actually tested it both with green boots and with legendary boots and both setups performed the same more or less.

The Build

<<<<<GRIMTOOLS>>>>>

<<<<<GRIMTOOLS (NO GREENS)>>>>>

Gear/Skill and Devotions

I am not going into details here since it’s a short guide, but I have tested quite a few combinations of items/skill points allocations/devotion setups before coming to this. This is the setup that I found optimal. Feel free to change stuff to your liking or suggest anything in the comments though.

The Showdown

How to play

Usually it’s in your face and straight forward. We do have to position smartly though and time our Mark of Torment/Bloodthirster versus dangerous waves that have Grava and Reaper. Just move out of the Grava’s fumble and finish him first, than kill Reaper. Maybe dodge Alex’s meteors. Maybe don’t.

Stats:

With all permanent buffs

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Bone Harvest tooltip with Hungering Void, Deadly Momentum and Soul Harvest (plus almost capped attack speed)

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Builds Pros and Cons:

Pros:

  • Unkillable if played smartly
  • Consistent Crucible farmer
  • Easy to play

Cons

  • Vitality damage is the weakest among all damage types when supported by just one mastery

Videos

>>>[COLOR=“Red”]This soundtrack is required[/COLOR]<<< to be played in another tab while watching the runs without sound
150-170 Crucible (with green boots)

150-170 Crucible (no greens setup)

Mad Queen 12 seconds kill


In Conclusion

That was a fun experience, making a 2H Blood Knight, but I am still not playing Soldiers and removing it from my save folder :p.

Thanks to Valinov for pointing out that Wildblood Crusher is very powerful for vitality Bone Harvest because modifier doesn’t affect its damage type.

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Bonus physical 2-handed Death Knight build (no green items needed)

>>>>GRIMTOOLS<<<<

That’s the build that I came to after playing with a concept of a Death Knight with a lot of nuke like skills Rotation. Setup is very tanky as you can see from the video below, self-sufficient (mana problems solved by Harp), got two circuit breakers (Ghoul and Menhir’s Wall) and Mark of Torment for tough fights. Empyrion works wonders with a big weapon.

I don’t think it deserves a separate guide, since build is just ok, and a bit dull, because of the lack of special effects and slow attack speed. But if you like seeing big numbers and swinging biggest weapon in the game, you can try it, it’s a very cheap build to make.

You can choose a more defensive devotion setup and take Quill instead of Falcon and take 5% DA nod in Menhir’s Obelisk.

150-170 Crucible Run ~10 to 10:30 minutes with 4 buffs/no banner

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> Death Knight
> Cadence
…
> TRIGGERED

Well done, my friend.
The only thing I can recommend is to bind Manticore to Soul of Nazaran. It works well

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Does it? I just noticed that Nazaran keeps dying and I keep forgetting to revive him. At least with Bone Harvest it’s 51% chance to proc it and given that it hits multiple enemies and occassionally double casts, so felt like an okayish way to proc it. But you maybe are right though.

But gosh, how I hate having to put Manticore on vitality builds. So annoying.

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well u killed it dude nice build great work, maybe u can make same build but with 2h ranged or pistol dw

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Thanks. I actually made probably the strongest 2h ranged build in-game, here it is.

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How oftenly does that extra Bone Harvest proc from gauntlets?
Voidsteels came to my mind obviously.

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Often enough to be well worth taking :slight_smile:

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Apparently Voidsteel’s 55% weapon damage to Cadence only affects every third hit or so I’ve been told in a thread I made. Extra Bone Harvests procs ~12% of the time more or less. Statwise Iceskorns are a better fit especially since they help us hard cap Bone Harvest.

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nice build the 2h i can tell that he is to much powerfull 9sec mad xD thats insane damage

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mad_lee and GDstashed builds? That’s a new pair! Welcome to the club hehe.

Anyways have you tried Death’s reach? I use it on my 2h Cabalist. Wildblood will still probably be better here considering it’s a hybrid with cadence but CDR is really great with BH so I’m interested.

Also, how’s max damage?

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I am bored out of my mind without patch 1.0.7, ended up testing Veteragna’s build and then decided to play with some Death Knight concepts. My previous GDstashed builds were failures (to my standards). Even this one is not that much of a top-tier build, imo, just a solid one.

I haven’t and although 19% cdr is nice, with 30% attack speed and huge weapon damage I am swinging that Cadence at 200% attack speed cap, which means faster ADtCH and faster Will of Rattosh procs. Maybe you can make some kind of Blood Knight Ritualist with Death’s Reach and Storm Totem and Ravenous Earth, hmmmm.

Max damage, do you mean like biggest hits? I don’t know, Bone Harvest hits like a truck, you can see for yourself in the video. But it’s a vitality damage with Soldier, so obviously limited.

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It’s hard to discover another top-tier build now even with GDstash. Most have already been discovered so many future testings are all bound to be disappointing.

I haven’t and although 19% cdr is nice, with 30% attack speed and huge weapon damage I am swinging that Cadence at 200% attack speed cap, which means faster ADtCH and faster Will of Rattosh procs. Maybe you can make some kind of Blood Knight Ritualist with Death’s Reach and Storm Totem and Ravenous Earth, hmmmm.

With Deat’h reach you’re sacrificing around 1 attack per 2 seconds which is fine by me, but we all have different tastes About Ritualist, I don’t really have an affinity for hybrids but that’s a neat concept. Had that once actually but gave it up in favor of Cabalist cause y’kno, not a fan of hybrids

Max damage, do you mean like biggest hits? I don’t know, Bone Harvest hits like a truck, you can see for yourself in the video. But it’s a vitality damage with Soldier, so obviously limited.

The one you see on 3rd page :slight_smile:

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Ghouls will be better.

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In Soviet Russia, Bone Harvest you! You knew a Russian Reversal was incoming, c’mon. :stuck_out_tongue:

I’m still farming for the BK chest; RNGsus hates my heathen ass.

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You don’t really need ghoul with bloodthirster on, but it could be useful.

@lee how about TD route? Never liked Ulo constellation.

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18% physical resistance is very powerfull,In the face of many Nemesis, such as reapers, iron maiden and ravager, there is more protection for survival.In crucible,You will have 6 seconds of reckless time to kill some one.

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Unfortunately when you are playing a Vitality build you absolutely have to take Manticore and Will of Rattosh AND Dying God. There is not much room for anything else, believe me, I spent more time than a grown man with family and job should in those damn Grimtools, especially with my other vitality build: PB Trickster. :smiley:

Can’t look at top damage since I already swapped back to my legit save folder and removed this Soldier build. Besides, it used to be Witchblade and physical Death Knight so can’t really tell what is top damage for this build.

Well, I think my Vitality Trickster that I keep shamelessly plugging is at least close to top-tier, as close as you can be without being an Inquisitor or a Spellbinder (yet noone has shown any interest in it but markovian witchblade gathered 12 pages already)

There is no place for Ghoul in this build I am afraid, devotion map is very strict, got to have Dying God + Will of Rattosh + Manticore. And build has enough fail-safes to hold its own against any combinations of nemeses. You can see that in the video, there were some nasty combos there.

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Forgot you’re not playing a double RR build. Cabalist and Trickster don’t need it tho, unless you really wanna squeeze in that 7 min run.

Can’t look at top damage since I already swapped back to my legit save folder and removed this Soldier build. Besides, it used to be Witchblade and physical Death Knight so can’t really tell what is top damage for this build.

Well, I think my Vitality Trickster that I keep shamelessly plugging is at least close to top-tier, as close as you can be without being an Inquisitor or a Spellbinder (yet noone has shown any interest in it but markovian witchblade gathered 12 pages already)

Lol this easily exceeds the top damage of any cadence build. Veretragna’s Markovian had 300k. My BH Cabalist has 1.2m. I expect this to have 800k-1M damage max on cruci.

Anyways, build popularity doesn’t just depend on being the best. S&B soldiers are testament to that. Add to that the ease of understanding the build. S&B soldier is like: Equip Warborn/Markovian, get cadence, get tanky skills and you’re done. Historically powerful builds also tend to be popular even now. S&b (again), Pierce BM, Ultos Druid/Conjurer/whatever during the DA meta.

Also, WH is still better PB vit build :stuck_out_tongue:

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Leviathan witchblade though