[1.1.4.2] Sigil Of Doom - Black Scorch Warlock [g4] [sr+]

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
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Introduction:

I noticed a severe lack of Chaos Warlocks on this board, in a quick search I found only Nery’s AAR build. So here’s a different approach for y’all :slight_smile:

This is my first attempt at a Warlock, but it turned out to be better than I expected after I read so much about how Warlock sucks. Maybe it doesn’t? :stuck_out_tongue:

The Build:

This build is kinda like a somewhat tanky kite caster (if that wasn’t a thing, now it is). It’s almost impossible to die in the main campaign unless you go for Celestials or go AFK while standing next to the Mad Queen. While damage output isn’t the best compared to other builds, it’s decent enough for higher SR shards. I’m no Crucible player so I have no idea how it performs there.

[Caster] [1.1.4.2] (g4) (sr+) [Sigil of Doom - Black Scorch Warlock] (Volek)

  • Damage: Chaos
  • Active Skills: Sigil of Consumption, Doom Bolt, Curse of Frailty, Bloody Pox, Ritual Circle, Blood of Dreeg, Wendigo Rush, Mirror of Ereoctes, Nullification
  • Passive Skills: Maiven’s Sphere of Protection, Iskandra’s Elemental Exchange, Possession, Severed Faith, Void Weapons, Arcane Resonance

GD%20Build%20-%20Sigil%20of%20Doom
Temporary skills active in this screenshot: Blood of Dreeg, Dryad’s Blessing, Hungering Void, Arcane Will. Sorry, I forgot to cast Ritual Circle but I can’t be arsed to take another screenshot, do you even know how hard it is to proc Arcane Will? :sweat_smile:

Grimtools: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/4VxmyPvZ

The main attack method is alternating between Sigil of Consumption and Doom Bolt. Drop a sigil, shoot a bolt, rinse and repeat.
The build has only 53% RR from gear, 35% from Eldritch Fire and 25 flat from Revenant. I tried to compensate this with high OA and Crit damage, which works well enough. I beat SR65 quite easily, SR75-76 is no problem either with decent mutators and boss combos.
Health is sustained by massive lifesteal from the Sigil and by healing procs from Dryad and Behemoth.

Video of SR75-76 run: https://youtu.be/MwM0_VfE4Jg

Here’s more detailed info about the build, click the headlines to read.

Skill usage:
  • Debuff the mob with Bloody Pox and Curse of Frailty
  • Keep rotating Sigil and Doom Bolt (it works very well since both have exactly the same cooldown length)
  • Drop a Ritual Circle when facing Bosses, Nemeses and larger mobs
  • Between casts, dash around with Wendigo Rush (I tried other runes but this one works best for me personally)
  • If in panic, use Nullification and Mirror of Ereoctes (I rarely used it though, certainly not outside of SR)

NOTE: In my personal setup I use Bloody Pox’s transmuter, Fevered Rage. This significantly increases kill speed (3k DA really helps with survival here), but in SR shards above 50 it’s just too dangerous. In lower shards it’s already totally bonkers if the pox spreads all over and aggroes all enemies at once, I had that happen a few times and my FPS went down to a crawl (using GrimCam is probably to blame for that though) :crazy_face:
So yeah if you wanna go higher than SR50 I strongly recommend not using Fevered Rage.
Playing Hardcore up to SR50 should be perfectly possible too. Keep monster aggro in check, mind your positioning and time your Ritual Circle well and you’ll easily survive.

Devotions:
  • During leveling I used Bat and Aeon’s Hourglass, but in the end I went to the yellow side for the extra defense. Of course Aeon is better for Ritual Circle uptime but I don’t feel like I really need that buff constantly, especially when I’m moving around a lot and won’t stay in the circle anyway. But that’s just me.
  • I tried binding Giant’s Blood to Arcane Will, so it only has a chance to proc if health just dropped below 75%. But I’m not sure if that really prevents unnecessary proccing, at least I didn’t notice any difference in survivability during my testing so I bound it to a permanent buff instead.
Attributes:
  • I put some points into Cunning to get above 3500 OA, the rest into Physique. If playing entirely without Fevered Rage, investing into Spirit might be a good idea, I have yet to try that.
Gear:

Apart from some mandatory items like the set, gloves and belt, this build is quite flexible when it comes to gearing so I’ll mentioned other items that you could use instead if the recommended items are not available yet.

NOTE: Devil’s Cage Hauberk is a great alternative for a more defensive setup, the armor and the CC proc really help surviving massive mobs in high SR. Damage is much better with Vestments of Severed Faith though.

Components & Augments:
  • I’m no fan of being slowed and stunned so I’m using a Seal of Resonance. If you don’t care about that, you can use a 2nd Riftstone for more damage or a Symbol of Solael if you like Piano playing.
  • Boot, belt and glove components are somewhat flexible, I went with movement speed and more health regeneration. Feel free to use something else if it’s already enough of those stats for you.
  • Since I managed to reasonably overcap all resistances without using any augments whatsoever, I put Dreeg’s Omen (+30 DA) on each armor piece. That way I got over 3k DA unbuffed :slight_smile:
Bonus info - Leveling gear:

This is a list of noteworthy items that I used or considered using during leveling. I won’t list slots that were occupied by Lokarr’s set, there you can use anything that gives +%chaos damage or +skills. Between level 75 and 94 you can wear the Black Flame Covenant set before switching to Black Scorch.

  • Weapon: Ascendant Source, Bloodsworn Scepter, Bloodsworn Repeater, Twilight’s Veil, Grim Fate (NOT the mythical version, it has wrong conversion), Exterminus
  • Offhand: Vampiric Bonewall (yes it’s shield, but until you can wear Black Flame at lvl 75 it’s BiS since it got +damage and +duration to Sigil)
  • Pants: Hermit’s Legguards
  • Gloves: Riftwarped Grasp
  • Belt: Sash of the Bloodlord
  • Rings: Rhowari Void Seal, Sigil of the Depraved, Entropic Coil
  • Amulet: Tainted Ruby of Gardal
  • Medal: Rylok Mark, Defiled Chosen Star
  • Relic: Equilibrium (only to boost movement speed in early game), Terror, Blight, Solael’s Decimation

Many of these items are farmable or buyable from faction vendors, so finding good gear that supports this build is really easy, no matter what level you are. Good luck and have fun!

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With 176% Casting speed in Ritual Circle you neglect Restless Remains and Mental Alacrity? That’s a bit of a blunder, mate.

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How does Casting speed help if I can only cast Doom Bolt and SoC every 2.1 seconds? It’s not like I’m spam-casting or channeling something like AAR.

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Oh wait, it’s not AAR Build? Lol, you really went for the Doom Bolt and Sigil of Consumption there, my bad.

Kind of a suboptimal use for Black Flame set tho.

Still, even for rotation casters casting speed matters. But I would drop a point into Mental Alacrity more for cast cost reduction.

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How is beating SR75 with ease suboptimal? Stop talking BS mate :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

Actually I had to use Mental Alacrity during leveling, and 1 point in it might still be necessary if you’re using Devil’s Cage Hauberk instead of Vestments of Severed Faith but for the setup presented in the GT link it’s not necessary at all, no energy issues whatsoever.

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I said using Black Flame on Warlock and not using AAR is suboptimal. Beating SR75 with beefy caster built for defense is whatever, to each his own.

I see. I would still go for Restless Remains or Spellwoven in gloves tho, more casting speed = smoother gameplay.

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As mentioned in OP, @Nery already posted a Black Scorch AAR Warlock. I wouldn’t have taken the time to post my build if it was similar to his. This is a different approach and it works great. I’d appreciate it if you stopped shitting on other ppl’s builds. And maybe started reading posts in their entirety before answering, just a thought :stuck_out_tongue:

I will try and see if it makes a difference.

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I haven’t even started tho, you are reading something that is not there, mate.

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And here I was about to post a Fire Sigil build…

Looking purple good.

Don’t suppose you’ve got a video of gameplay? I’d be curious to know how your energy sustain handles.

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Sorry no video, I don’t have any software to record. Can you recommend something lightweight and free? I used to use FRAPS in other games before but that always affected performance which is a no-no in GD.

I got 121 energy regeneration which by itself is enough to keep casting Doom Bolt, SoC, CoF and BP for minutes. On top of that I got 95% Energy Absorption from enemy attacks.

I hope you do, that’s something I was interested in as well.

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I use OBS nowadays. Used to use FRAPS but also hit performance issues, plus the output videos were too large in filesize to manage well. OBS doesn’t take a huge performance hit and produces decent quality videos that don’t take up much space.

Currently solving energy issues of my own (10 regen/s and no absorption isn’t great…), but it looks pretty alright otherwise. Hopefully I can get it workable soon.

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Here’s how my build got that energy regen and absorption, maybe it helps:

  • +1 from Dryad node
  • +2 from Conduit amulet
  • +1.8 from Combustion band
  • +7.5 from M. Vestments of Severed Faith
  • +4.5 from Black Scorch helmet
  • +89% from Black Scorch offhand
  • +15% from Iskandra’s EE
  • +15% from Panther node
  • -7% skill cost from Black Scorch offhand
  • -10% skill cost from Seal of Annihilation
  • +80% absorption from Conversion
  • +15% absorption from Revenant node

Might have missed something, that’s all i found with a quick glance

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I was a little surprised that it was not aar, but the result is good enough. congratulations.
If I build similarly, I would like to minimize Arcane Wll and Conversion investments and instead use 15/12 Wasting and soft cap BP.

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Good suggestions, thanks!

I will see how low I can go with Conversion before feeling too slowed down. 6/10 might be alright after all.
Arcane Will isn’t too important either if I don’t use Fevered Rage so deducting a few points won’t hurt I guess.

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Congrats on the post! Funnily enough I tried few days ago Chaos Sigil Deceiver. Used as filler skill- Oblivion from the relic.

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Yup that went nicely, but I still feel safer with at least 9/10 Conversion :wink:
The difference between 4/12 or 12/12 BP doesn’t feel so big anyway. But I only briefly tested it on trash mobs around the Korvan Plateau. Does the 5-7% VS. 9-13% reduction to enemy health make a difference on enemies with huge health pools? I got no idea how that works tbh.

Thanks! That Oblivion skill - I never even tried it until now, but it’s looking awesome! Now I wanna make a build that spams Oblivion and Grasping Vines all over the place :star_struck:
But first I’m gonna try and see how it does on this build.

Edit: It’s a nice bonus damage but oh those precious skill points :cry:
It’s also changing the playstyle quite a bit for me. I’d have to switch around the keybindings to make this work :sweat_smile: Originally this build wasn’t meant to be a spam caster but it’s definitely an option to consider. At least as a filler like you said, a good pilot will surely have an advantage here. If I can ever find a good way to make up for the lost skill points, I’ll edit the OP and provide an alternative setup for this relic.

Thanks for bringing this up, I’m amazed how many skills I haven’t tried yet, even though I had thousands of hours of fun with the game already.

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BP damage that has not been boosted by an item is trivial, but overall, the total amount of damage will definitely increase. This is important for builds with few damage sources. Well, if you feel you don’t need it, you can switch back to Conversion. It depends on your taste.
However, 15/12 Wasting is pretty good. -225 OA is bigger than DA that you can get from Arcane Will.

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Yep I overlooked that initially, also Wasting is much better because it’s active all the time while Arcane Will doesn’t proc too often outside of boss fights.

1 Like
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Nice going. Warlock doesn’t do a lot of damage but it’s very tanky.

May suggest going Chaos Fissure for a bit more DPS. I did it for Chaos doom bolt build and the DPS added can really be felt. Also clearing faster means you are a bit safer

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Nice build! I wouldn’t put conversion above 9/10 though and arcane will’s points (except one pointer) can be spent in other places like wasting. One pointing mental alacrity even on a cdr caster is just too good imo, have to agree with Mad Lee on that one. Also I can’t help myself but think that this build might be better as a Pyromancer or Deceiver because of the lack of RR that Warlock has, but Warlock certainly is really tanky! GJ @Volek !