The Build
https://www.grimtools.com/calc/aZq3WO52
Screenshot with all permanent buff + Blood of Dreeg, Pneumatic Burst, and Secrets of the Guardian.
DPS shown is Biting Blades.
Build Feature
Upside:
- Insane cruci clear speed
- Full spellcaster gameplay
- Acid and poison hybrid, can kite efficiently while also resilient enough to stand the ground
Downside:
- Witch hunter has no good flat absorb skill (blade barrier doesn’t count), cannot facetank Mad Queen’s rage mode.
- Not arcanist, cannot dump more points in spirit…
- Acid/Poison caster, only few good item support.
- A lot of item choices are constraint by res and cc res.
Build Overview
Dreeg set has been long forgotten since the late AoM. Many threads have been made to push for some buff to Acid/Poison gameplay. A lot of threads ranting about how bad DEE and dreeg set is. A lot of ppl has judged that Acid is worse than Chaos now. Then there’s me who just want to make it works.
Dreeg set was used in vanilla GD by Drizzto as a witchblade to overcome the squishiness nature of Witch Hunter. Literally NO ONE in this forum can make this work since AoM released. Lo and behold, here comes an Acid/Poison Witch Hunter with full Dreeg set equipped!
Acid/poison Dreeg witch hunter problem is the usual lack of status, lack of res, lack of CC res, not many good itemization, phys res problem, RR is not that high, and freakin huge energy cost in every occultist spell. This build attempts to solve most of them. Well, the main problem is always squishiness though.
Note that the build did not pursue spam DEE. At the current state of the game, spam DEE can never work because its direct damage is very low, super huge energy consumption, and a lot of points needed to max out. Transmuted DEE is the way to go. With it, you just need the first two nodes to max out and maybe some points to softcap the third nodes.
As it stand, the set doesn’t provide any CDR, and DEE cannot work on their own as a stand alone skill, thus a lot of procs and all occultist skill except DB are used. Usual acid devo is still the best here, SoC is used for more sustain with most of its damage get converted to Acid, bloody pox is used as usual OA debuff and additional damage, and lastly biting blades as filler and more leech. This build used all of the tricks to survive. The Key trick here is sigil of consumption, allowing the build to stand its ground in front of multiple nemeses in cruci.
Equipment Choices
Craft all for stun res, get 100% Chaos>Acid conversion, and get as much as Vitality>Acid conversion as possible.
Core Items:
Deception of Dreeg Set.
Off Hand: Mythical Wretched Tome of Nar’Adin. [Just the best in slot for any transmuted DEE build]
Supporting Items:
Pants: Mythical Legwraps of the Tranquil Mind. [More Spirit, OA, and slow res. All the status we need]
Boots: Mythical Venomspine Greaves. [I wanted to use stonetreaders, but this boots gives more relevant skill bonus, res, and also DA]
Gloves: Dark One’s Grasp. [Always good in occultist to give Bloody pox a damage reduction.]
Belt: Mythical Girdle of Stolen Dreams. [I wanted to use Deadly Means belt but the build need more OA and +1 Occultist]
Rings: Mythical Ring of Eternal Rot + Mythical Ring of the Black Matriarch. [Ring slot is used for more %Acid, poison duration, Res, more poison proc, and relevant skill bonus]
Medal: Mythical Mark of The Forbidden. [The Bloody pox modifier makes Kuba a child play, also the proc is so good with more poison and Fumble, thus we can skip RoS.]
Relic: Nidalla’s Outbreak. [Deathstalker will be nice but I need more aether res and nightblade’s skill tree provide more elemental res . Completion bonus to night’s chill is the best, but I am just too lazy to craft another relic]
Movement Rune: Use whatever you like. I use Rune of Amatok’s Breath currently.
Devotions
Usual Acid Devo
Guardian’s Gaze > to Bloody Pox
Rumor > to Curse of Frailty
Scorpion Sting > to Biting Blades
Tainted Eruption > to Sigil of Consumption
Raise the Dead > to Dreeg’s Evil Eye
Ghoulish Hunger > to whatever permanent buff
Black Blood of Yugol > to whatever permanent buff
Gameplay
Keybind:
LMB: Biting Blades
RMB: Point to Move
Mouse scroll up: Curse of Frailty
Mouse scroll down: Bloody Pox
Keyboard 1: Movement Rune
Keyboard 2: Sigil of Consumption
Keyboard 3: Dreeg’s Evil Eye
Keyboard 4: Blood of Dreeg
Keyboard 5: Pneumatic Burst
Standard procedure:
- Always have Blood of Dreeg and Pneumatic Burst active
- Scroll up and down to spread curse of frailty and bloody pox.
- Movement rune in/out
- Hold your Biting Blades button while mashing SoC and DEE button, also casting CoF to new incoming enemy.
In Trash waves, you want the enemies to surround you. In boss/nemesis wave, you want the enemies to be in front of you.
You want to leave the enemy at its half health and move on to others. Except in nemesis wave where in most cases you want to kill one nemesis as fast as possible.
YOU CANNOT FACETANK MADQUEEN’S RAGE MODE
When she comes in wave 162, she will almost immediately goes in to rage mode. Cast CoF and blood pox to her and kite her while killing other enemies, after the red aura dies down, focus all your attack on her. This build takes a while to kill MQ because it has more Acid res. If she doesn’t die and activated its second aura, just kite again and let the poison do the job.
Build Performance
Crucible: For 170 Crucible, video with 4 buff without banner:6:33 clear time. As usual, this is a NO BANNER run.
The build need some time to get used to, but after that, it is a consistent cruci farmer with 80-90% cruci clear rate. With unfavorable mutator, how many alek, and how many enemies stuck in its spawn zone, the slowest clear time will be about 7 minutes. The average clear time is 6:45 minutes.
Shattered Realm:
Haven’t checked yet.
The Dreeg Witch Hunter you’ve been waiting for… 
