GrimTools: Blademaster, Level 100 (GD 1.1.9.6) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator
This is a highly defensive, tanky melee axe ‘n’ board build. It is primarily built around the concept of dodge and fumble, to entirely negate incoming melee damage.
Features include:
- Highish DA: ~3300-3480 DA, so it’s not going to be hit as much, or crit very often
- 43% Dodge chance without proc buffs.
– This goes up to 60% dodge chance with Burst of Speed, or 100% dodge chance with Windshear - 22% reflect chance.
- 45% chance to fumble to enemies
- -38% DA debuff to enemies with Blade Trap using Rimetongue set
- High HP (17k hp so ya boi can take a hit)
- Mehir’s Bulwark for 15% damage absorption
- War cry for 25% reduced target’s damage
- Overguard for 90 damage absorption
- Menhir’s Bastion for additional (multiplicative) 20% damage absorption
- Menhir’s Wall as a panic-relief HP boost
- Blade Barrier as a panic button while you’re waiting for cooldowns and the like
- Three living shadows to assist with damage and healing
- Twin Fangs for lifesteal
- 10% lifesteal on Blade Arc plus 8% global lifesteal to keep that HP topped up
- Nice AOE lifesteal from Blade Trap
- Pneumatic Burst for the occasional heal
As you can see, this build is TANKY. Tankiness was the aim. With high DA and some OA debuffs to enemies, there’s potentially a 60% chance for enemies to hit their attack. Then there’s the 45% chance to fumble applied, so if it’s a melee attack, then I believe that’s a multiplicative effect, so something like (60 * (1 - 0.45)) = 33% chance to hit. Then there’s the resting 43% chance to dodge melee as well, so (33*(1-0.43)) = 18.81% chance to hit.
If I’ve messed up the maths here, please let me know, but this is my current understanding of how it works. 
So that means most enemies have less than a 1 in 5 chance of hitting. If that’s not the very best form of damage reduction (beyond 100% damage absorption), I don’t know what is. When you’re taking a fifth of the damage from all melee sources, your build becomes quite tanky.
I built this tank with the intention of being a part of a team (team builds TBC), and wanted to explore how viable skills and debuffs like Dodge/Deflect Chance and Fumble/Impaired Aim were. But, I also wanted the build to be viable as a solo build, and not be entirely team dependent. And so here it is, with the ability to solo SR 90, albeit slowly.
It’s benefits to the team would include the Blade Trap for the DA debuff for greater team damage, Field Command, Fumble and War Cry to reduce enemy damage, Menhir’s Bastion for 20% damage absorption to the team, and Inspiration for added energy regen, OA/DA buffs and Trap/Slow resists.
Here’s a video of SR 90 boss room with silly mistakes included:
Drawbacks of the build
The downfall of this build is in it’s damage. It’s slow, and has low OA. It has low pierce damage % of 1400-1600 depending on buffs which is, plainly, quite terrible. Some of it’s procs are crit dependent, or on-hit proc dependent. The build dodges a lot, significantly reducing the chance for on-hit procs to actually proc. It’s very low OA (2500) is countered by the amazing DA debuffs that it can apply. But even then, these debuffs do not apply for long versing tough bosses, so the chances of procing Assassin’s Mark or Living Shadow are also low in some circumstances. Thankfully these procs have a great uptime once they have been proc’d. Even with OA debuffs, fighting foes like Fabius, this build can still crit and proc what it needs to, but not as often as one would like.
But for the intended purpose of the build - To test the survival capabilities of dodge and fumble in a tank build - The build is quite successful, and I’m very happy with it. Even if it all feels a bit “slow and steady”. It is an “unexciting” playstyle with HP rarely yo-yoing too heavily, but it certainly gets the job done.
Enjoy~