GrimTools: Warder, Level 100 (GD 1.2.1.2) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator
Lead your undead shadow army to bloody battle as the Blood Knight Commander. This is a tanky, high bleed-tick achieving bleed build with a tonne of AOE dot damage, and a tonne of self healing. It comes with a shadow army of ghosts, skeletons and living shadows to spread further carnage, and can achieve very high dot ticks, and is over all very fun to play!
Key Features
- 1.78m bleed ticks with a ~5.8x duration
- 39% Life Steal and a 71% Healing Effects Increase
- Counter Strike deals 80% weapon damage, a tonne of additional bleed damage
- Counter strike procs up to ~2x per second
- Counter Strike heals for 12% of non-bleed damage per proc
- Cadence uses the Discord modifier, boosting all Cadence-based (or weapon damage from Cadence) bleed tick damage by 18%
- Can win fights against Moosilauke even when freeze-locked for the entire duration of the fight.
Shadow Army
This build comes with a range of pseudo pets, all of which contribute to healing and bleed damage. It includes:
- 3x Living Shadows (Lifesteal and bleed damage)
- 4x Bloodbathed Servants (Bleed damage)
- 1x Soul of Nazaran (Lifesteal, Bleed damage, Bleed/Vitality RR)
SR 75-76 Video
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6:04
1.75m bleed tick crit versus Reaper -
7:32
Moosilauke fight while entirely freeze-locked, still dealing damage and healing throughout, while basically unmanned (despite me frantically trying to put down another wendigo totem or deal some damage or something
)
The Strategy
- Wendigo Rush into the middle of a large group of enemies
- Win
Exceptions to this rule:
- Valdaran’s shotguns
- Mad Queen’s shotguns
In these instances, hit and run is your best approach - Jump in, drop dots on 'em, then keep moving the moment you anticipate your HP is about to drop (don’t try to wait until your HP drops, anticipate their attacks; the incoming shotgun damage spikes down your HP too quickly). The shotgun hits come out very quickly and very often because four of your skeleton pseudopets use ranged attacks , each of which can trigger the shotgun.
That aside, generally because of the long duration on bleed dots, you generally only need to get the dot tick to 1/10th of their hp and, provided they don’t heal or get healed, you can safely presume that they will die. So within a few attacks if you get an enemy with 8mil hp down to 4mil, and your dots are ticking for ~400-500ish, you can move on knowing that they’ll be dead within ten seconds. Otherwise you can stay and fight them to speed up the process and try to get your dot ticks higher. It’s common to get dot ticks of anywhere between ~400-800k damage, uncommon to get it ~900k-1.2m, and rare to get it higher (but clearly possible!)
It’s fun being able to move on from an enemy when they’re still at 50% hp thinking “Omae wa mou shindeiru.”
1,787,679 Bleed Tick vs Reaper (6:04 of the video above)
Ridiculous Healing
With 80% of attack damage on Counter Strike, and 39% life steal with 71% healing increased, you’re getting about 51% of your weapon damage attacks as healing from every enemy in a 4 meter target around you, two times per second, plus additional healing for the flat vitality damage (and phys damage converted to vital) on the skill with the 12% modifier that Blood Knight set adds to it. This healing is separate to your normal attacks and lifesteal, the lifesteal from Soul of Nazaran’s attacks, the lifesteal from Living Shadows, your healing from Wendigo Totem, and your healing from other sources like your 1170 regen or Menhir’s Will proccing.
Additional Thoughts
If you wanted to make this build significantly tankier, you’d find a way to include reduction to enemy damage. This would help immensley against the shotgun spike attacks, and would potentially make this build feel generally immortal (it nearly does).
Enjoy! 
