Introduction
- Tired of seeing your HP bar move?
- Don’t want to dodge sunder attacks?
- Want to complete HC achievements?
- Want to slay Celestials without investing 100 hours?
Then this is the build for you.
This Witchblade aims to beat the game, not with skill, but rather with raw stats.
Playing it will also teach you a lot about the game’s mechanics, as it makes the benefits of stats like ‘offensive ability’ and the interaction of armor, physical damage and resistance plainly obvious.
It comes in two versions:
Full focus on HP regeneration for extra safety ← Grim Tools
Higher focus on DPS, lower regen for more dynamic gameplay ← Grim Tools 
Strengths and Weaknesses
- Relatively easy to gear
- Near invincible in campaign content
- Can defeat Ravager of Flesh, Callagadra in green and blue gear
- Improving your gear and stats will show results very clearly, “number go up” is strong for this build
- Controller friendly
- Very forgiving to play, good for players with slow reaction time
However
- Low DPS
- You have to min-max gear a bit, to achieve the best results
- If built poorly, it will not perform well. (see: Build Mechanics)
- You can not trust the DPS tooltip. It is a filthy liar.
Build Mechanics
On the surface, this build is very simple. You use Blitz to charge into enemies, then cast War Cry and Curse of Frailty to debuff them. Then we use Blade Arc as the main attack skill, to deal AoE damage in a small circle until every enemy is defeated.For defense, we built for a massive amount of health regeneration, combined with high armor and physical resistances, as well as damage reduction from War Cry and Menhir’s Bulwark.
Dealing damage is the tricky part!
The class and attack skill only need very few points to be maxed, which allows us to invest a lot of points into defensive skills.
However, it also puts us in a bad situation for DPS.
Physical damage is complicated!
Every single number of physical damage on our gear, devotions and skills needs to get past the enemies armor. They are not added up.
Which means that small numbers of flat damage do not contribute much to our actual DPS, despite what the tooltip says. They will not be able to get a lot of damage past the 1000-2000 armor on most enemies.
The build scales damage on 4 factors:
- Percentage based physical damage increases
- Big chunky flat damage added to our weapon or Blade Arc
- Offensive ability and crit damage
- Lowering the enemy armor and physical resistance as much as possible
Attack speed is nice, but secondary.
Defensively we stack armor and physical resistance high enough to ignore most incoming physical damage. Other damage is reduced by 80% through resistances anyway and only gets dangerous in rare scenarios.
All damage is further reduced by War Cry and Menhir’s Bulwark.
Health regeneration is pushed to the point where it can keep up with most incoming damage.
Bursts of damage can be healed with life leech, or by using a potion or Blood of Dreeg in emergencies.
If all else fails, Menhir’s Will and Prismatic Diamond are safeguards against extreme damage spikes and can save the character from most sudden deaths.
For the final build, we aim to
- have enough crit chance to trigger Assassin’s Mark reliably (3k - 3.5k)
- have over 3k defensive ability
- have 3-4k passive health regen
- 40% or more Physical resistance and ~3k armor
- as much %physical damage increase as possible
- attack speed as high as we can get it
This build is about min-maxing your stats and winning the game that way.
You may have to put in more effort thinking about gear, less effort on playing the character well.
General advice for new players
- Do all the quests, at least on your first play-through. They give you reputation with factions and keep you on track to level 100.
- Explore the map, especially if it’s your first time playing. Finding stuff like shrines is quite important.
- Prioritize resistances first, damage second
- Use crafted components from the smith to fix missing resistances
- Use 2x Scaled Hide (crafted) in pants, chest or shoulders to fix your armor absorption
- once you have the Soldier passive Scars of Battle at 6 or 7, you only need 1 Scaled Hide
- The inventor can recover components from your outdated gear, whenever you swap to a better piece
- Additionally to components, you can apply augments, which you buy from the faction vendors. They also sell great gear and blueprints, for leveling and even late-game setups.
Faction choices
- Kymon’s Chosen or Death’s Vigil, player’s choice. You can choose one faction and buy all their stuff after you reach ‘Revered’. Then betray them on Ultimate, to also get the other faction’s augments and Mandates
- this works best if you already have a Mandate from another character.
- not a hugely important choice. If you’re on your first play-through, either faction choice works fine. I prefer being allied with Death’s Vigil for their hybrid resistance augment on this build.
- I prefer Cult of Bysmiel on normal, for the Emblem of the Leaping Mantis. If you desire a different movement skill, the choice is all yours. Alternate cults between difficulties to rank them up evenly.
- Friendly or hostile with Barrowholm, both work. (Friendly if you want to test your mettle vs Ravager)
- Outcasts do not matter much, do as you please. Hostile with Outcasts gives you access to a quick dungeon with good drop rates for some of the key items.
Progression through the game
We start as a Soldier using Forcewave for the first few levels, then quickly swapping to Blade Arc. The first ~40 levels I will strongly recommend to use a 2-handed weapon, then swapping to sword & board (or axe & board).
Stat points are mostly invested into physique to wear armor at the start, with a few into spirit for gear requirements.
Then cunning is pumped with the remaining points, to boost offensive ability and physical damage.
In the end, the build needs about 800 physique, 400 spirit. Every other point is put into cunning.
Devotion progression is included in the GT links, open the devotion tree with (S) (D) and then scroll through the bar on the bottom.
Items used will usually drop along the way while questing, or are purchased from faction vendors.
Farm an upgrade for your green items, if the level falls too far behind (~15+ levels).
When you reach level 90+ you can put in some extra effort to farm a version of these items with good affixes.
(For this build, I will have a section for good affixes at the bottom of the build guide.)
Normal difficulty progression:
(links lead to the map with the drop location)
Act 1:
- Milton’s Casque from Milton Hart
- Shambler’s Heart from the Ancient Shambler
- any 2-handed melee weapon with physical damage increases. Attack speed is not as important. (Do not trust the DPS tooltip)
Act 2:
- Balthazar’s Crest from Nicholas Balthazar
- (respec skills from Forcewave to Blade Arc after getting the medal)
- Cronley’s Signet from Darius Cronley
- Craft the Guile Relic as soon as possible, it is a massive DPS boost. If you don’t have it, try Rampage instead.
Don’t forget your components, most of them crafted at the smith.
– Level 25 Snapshot –
Leveling for 1-25 -- Act 1 & 2
Leveling up in order:
-
1 point Soldier
- 6 points into Forcewave
-
Soldier to 5
- Take the Forcewave mutator Tremor
-
Soldier to 10
- 1 point into Blitz
- 1-3 points into Fighting Spirit
- 2-3 points into Military Conditioning
- 1 Point into Menhir’s Will
- remaining points into Forcewave
- respec into Blade Arc: Remove all points from Forcewave
- then max out Blade Arc
- Soldier to 20
- 1 Point into Field Command
- Soldier to 25
- 1 Point into Blindside
- some points into Decorated Soldier for resists
- Soldier to 32
- remaining points into Laceration, Squad Tactics, Decorated Soldier
Act 3-4:
- Gollus’ Ring from the Deepdweller
- Mogara’s Fang from the Prime Matriarch
- Dreeg-Sect Legguards (You have to start the Quest “The Hidden Path” by blowing up the barrier to the area with Dynamite)
- Fleshwarped Casque (drops from Fleshwarped Commanders around Homestead and Fort Ikon)
- Harvest Footpads, Harvest Grips (buy those from Homestead faction vendor as soon as you have the rep)
- try to get a good roll for offensive ability on the gloves (3%)
- Devil’s Chestguard (more defense) or Devil’s Cuirass (if you need more OA) from the Devil’s Crossing faction vendor
- Devil’s Shoulderguard or Fleshwarped Pauldrons (if a nice pair drops)
The following weapons will likely be upgrades along the way:
- guaranteed 1 drop of Troll Bonecrusher from Gulgoth the Rampaging
- guaranteed and farmable, Voldrak’s Crusher
- not guaranteed but a likely drop, Obsidian War Cleaver from Totems around the Blood Grove and monsters near the Necropolis.
With some extra components we are ready to take on the boss:
– Level 40 Snapshot –
Leveling for 26-40 -- Act 3 & 4
Leveling:
- max out Squad Tactics and Laceration, Decorated Soldier
- Soldier to 40
- a few Points into Scars of Battle
- 1 Point into War Cry
- max out Break Morale
DLCs and prep for Elite/Ultimate:
At any point we can go into the Forgotten Gods DLC and the East March to pick up our one-handed axe and shield for the rest of the playthrough. I recommend to do so around level 40 and then stashing them until you can use both.
You can go there earlier, if you want swap to go sword & board sooner.
- Kalis’Ka’s Harvest from the Bonehunter
- Sandclaw Slicer from the Korvan Titanovore
- Alternative shield: Fleshwarped Bulwark from monsters around Homestead and Fort Ikon (gets extra health regen as we spec into Occultist, but it’s a bit overkill on regen)
- Legion Greaves (bought from the Black Legion)
- Legion Chestguard (bought from the Black Legion)
- Ugdenbog Girdle from Carraxus Foul or bought from Vinelton in the Ancient Grove)
- (optional) grab a Galakros Singe Plating from Galakros (50% drop chance)
- (optional) any of the great blue pants that can drop ( Hulking Legguards, Legplates of Valor, etc)
- (alternatively) update your Dreeg-Sect pants to current level
- craft the Juggernaut Relic (blueprint can sometimes be bought from Vinelton or the vendor Hyrram in the Steelcap District, at the end of Ashes of Malmouth)
– Level 50 Snapshot –
Leveling for 41-50+ -- DLCs & Elite prep
- Soldier to 50
- max out Menhir’s Bulwark
- take Scars of Battle to 6 or 7
- take War Cry to 12/12
Elite & Ultimate
- just update all gear to versions of the current level
- at level 65-70, if you have the faction rep:
- buy Elite Devil’s Chestguard and Elite Devil’s Spaulders from Devil’s Crossing
- or, buy Malmouth Vanguard Cuirass or Malmouth Defender Cuirass and Malmouth Defender Pauldrons from the Malmouth Resistance
- Gloves should probably be Elite Harvest Grips from Homestead, unless you find great gloves with a lot of offensive ability.
– Level 75 Snapshot –
Leveling for 50-75 -- Elite, Prep for Ultimate
-
Occultist to 1
- max out Curse of Frailty
-
Occultist to 15
- max out Blood of Dreeg
- put a few more points into Military Conditioning in Soldier for HP and physique
-
remaining points into Occultist mastery bar (up to 32)
Level 90+
After hitting level 90, it can be worthwhile to start farming for some upgrades.
- Collect 2-3 blue lvl 82 set pieces for transmutation (see chapter below: Transmutation)
- Transmute 1 or 2 of the pieces into Baldir’s Mantle and (optionally) Baldir’s armor
Ultimate equipment setup:
- Weapon: Sandclaw Slicer
- Shield: Kalis’Ka’s Harvest or Fleshwarped Bulwark
- Helmet: Fleshwarped Casque
- Chest: Mythical Baldir’s Armor or Galakros Singed Plating with good affixes
- Shoulders: Mythical Baldir’s Mantle or well-rolled Chosen Spaulders or Benn’Jahr’s Mantle (late game)
- Gloves: crafted Plagueguard Grips with attack speed and useful stats or Mythical Turin’s Grips
- Pants: Mythical Hulking Legguards or Dreeg-Sect Legguards with good stats
- Boots: Crafted Intrepid Warboots or crafted Mythical Magelord’s Greaves for slow resistance.
- If you can max out slow res with affixes on your other gear: Crafted Stoneplate Greaves or Mythical Dreadnought Footpads
- Rings: 2x Gollus’ Ring
- if you happen to find one, the Seal of Sethris can act as a fine replacement for a Gollus’ Ring (you lose a bunch of regen, but gain decent offensive stats)
- Amulet: Mogara’s Fangs
- Medal: Mark of Harvoul is the best for endgame content
- alternatively, Balthazar’s Crest or Wendigo Glare also have useful properties, if you find a well-rolled one
- Belt: Ugdenbog Girdle
- Relic: Juggernaut until you find Doom or Oleron’s Wrath or Deathstalker.
Leveling to 100
- Occultist to 32
- max out Aspect of the Guardian
- max out Field Command
- max out Veterancy
- one point each into Overguard and Shield Training in Soldier
- remaining points go into Solael’s Witchfire for speed and defensive ability or Blindside for DA-shred
- alternatively you can put a few extra points into Fighting Spirit or Menhir’s Will, but points are already spread thin.
I had to drink a potion to reset my attributes as well, to get the requirements for my gear in physique and spirit. Every spare point went into cunning.
– Level 100 snapshot before grinding for some upgrades –
Augments for the final setup
Our desired augments are sold by all factions at ‘Revered’ standing. If you play through all three difficulties, you’ll reach that rep either late in Elite or after you have done their quests on Ultimate.
If you buy and read a “Writ” after you reach Honored with a faction, you will get bonus reputation for your future actions. Strongly recommended.
Various armor augments are used to fix our resistances, until they are all ~33% over the maximum cap, ideally.
After we have reached our desired overcaps, we can use Solael Bloodbinding (Cult of Solael) or Wendigo Lifescent Powder (Barrowholm), to improve our pool of HP and Defensive Ability.
Bysmiel Silversand (Cult of Bysmiel) can also be used for extra HP regen.
Rings and amulets are enhanced with damage augments, our main augments are:
- Steelbloom Powder (Malmouth Resistance) for offensive ability
- Hammerfall Powder (Malmouth Resistance), for defensive ability
- Arcanum Dust (Malmouth Resistance) for elemental resistances and defensive ability
- Survivor’s Ingenuity (Devil’s Crossing) for offensive and defensive ability
Weapon augments are:
- Bysmiel’s Shroud (Cult of Bysmiel) for offensive ability
- Coven’s Terror (Coven of Ugdenbog) for massive HP
- Malmouth’s Will (Malmouth Resistance) for HP and vitality resistance
Farming and Crafting Guide
Selecting affixes and stacking stats
This build tries to stack offensive and defensive ability (OA, DA) as well as health regen and physical defenses.
All of those have affixes with percentage based increases and other affixes with flat values.
The more flat stat value your character has, the better percentage base increases will be.
And the more percentage increases you have, the better additional flat values will become.
This can lead to a compounding effect, which allows you to reach very high stats in OA, DA and regen, but also armor and HP.
Try to find a balance that gives you the desired stats, especially offensively.
If you don’t crit, you will not be able to trigger Assassin’s Mark and deal very little damage.
And if your physical damage increases aren’t high enough, you will have a harder time to get past the monster’s armor.
Farming for affixes
-
This build benefits greatly from having the right kind of affixes in the right places!
- Offensive ability and defensive ability are best on rings amulets, medals and belts, their values will be higher. Try to get at least 2-3 pieces with “of Attack” or “of Readiness” and maybe one or two with “Aggressive” or “Stalwart”.
- The same slot can also get “of Mending” for a massive HP regen boost, but it competes with OA, so I would not recommend more than one of those
- You can also get attack speed on amulets and rings, which is your only source of additional attack speed.
-
Several rare affixes can have percentage-based increases of OA or DA. So look out for “Formidable” and the rare affixes with class names (even if the class is not “Witchblade”)
-
You’d like at least 2400% physical damage overall, plus cunning. But higher is better.
- Armor is a good spot for affixes with physical damage
- You can also get “Vigorous” or “of Vitality” for extra HP, but this build already has a lot of those. Maybe one or two can be squeezed in, if you find good pieces with it.
-
The weapon should provide the extra attack speed. “Barbaric” and “Relentless” are two rare prefixes with attack speed and physical damage, which roll frequently on the Sandclaw Slicer. Additionally you want “of Alacrity” or, if you are really lucky, another rare affix like “of Fury”.
-
On the shield, you should look for extra physical resistances. “Durable”, “Enduring” or “Impassable” are the common prefixes with physical res.
Farming bosses and vendors
-
You can vendor farm at Vinelton for the Ugdenbog Girdle and the relic. Reset the vendor by leaving the area at the Northern exit, wait a couple seconds, then return and his stock will be refreshed.
-
Likewise, you can use the vendor in Port Valbury to buy Fleshwarped Caques and Fleshwarped Bulwarks. They also drop there in abundance.
-
Finally, the vendor in the Tomb of the Heretic will sell Sandclaw Slicers (but the Titanovore will be easier to farm)
-
Carraxus, The Titanovore and Galakros are spawning pretty close to a waypoint and are easily farmable for the belt, weapon and armor
-
Kalis’Ka, Mogara and Harvoul are a bit further, but the items usually drop with a reasonable bias towards physical damage affixes.
-
Gollus spawns pretty far away and has no affix-bias on his ring. Try to get him to drop something with at least OA, DA, attack speed or HP regen and (ofc) resistances.
-
On the way to Gollus you can often find heroes that can drop the Fleshwarped Casque.
- For blueprints, random legendaries and epics, hitting totems that are on your farming route is the way to go, until you can roll through the Shattered Realm.
Crafting
#### Crafted items Crafting items at the Blacksmith adds a "crafting bonus" stat, depending on the blacksmith. My recommended smiths are: - Kaylon, Steelcap District - for Freeze or Stun resistance - Egellon, Sunbane Oasis (hidden) - for Slow or Reflect resistance - Angrim, Devil's Crossing - for Armor, PhysiqueIf you don’t get your desired bonus, it’s not the end of the world, usually.
The bonus doesn’t apply to relics, they get a different bonus, unrelated to the blacksmith.
Iron (money), Scrap & crafting mats
- Collect green items and sell them all to have plenty of iron (money) for crafting
- Collect dynamite while you are leveling, to blow up Legendaries. Anything below level 84 can be blown to bits, without regrets. A lot of higher level stuff as well.
- This will provide the scrap needed for crafting and also the rare material that you don’t want to painstakingly farm
- Dynamite can be crafted from Aether Shards, shards can be crafted from crystals. Farming Aether Crystals (in the Warden’s lab for example) is going to yield more dynamite, than picking up individual sticks
Transmutation into desired set pieces:
How to transmute
The build requires 1-2 pieces of the Baldir’s Regalia set, until you can find upgrades.
Instead of praying for drop luck and sacrificing bunnies to RNGeesus, we can utilize the mechanic of transmutation to (almost) guarantee those items.
Prerequisites
- Complete the quest for Kargon in the Conclave of the Three (return his book).
- Have some level 82 set pieces, iron bits (roughly 1-2 million will be good) and Aether Crystals.
Once the quest is completed, any inventor will offer transmutation services.
- Select Transmutation
- Select the right button (green square) to transmute into a different set of the same level.
- Take any random, blue level 94 set piece and place it in the empty slot
- Press transmute to change the item to a different set piece of the same level and rarity.
If you get any Paragon set pieces, keep them and repeat the process with items from different sets.
Eventually, you will have two random Paragon of Panetti set pieces.
Then swap to the left transmute option and use it to turn those into the helmet and shoulder piece.
You can also use this process to get the Eastern set pants.
If you have spare resources, you can also reroll the values of your set items this way, but it gets very expensive quickly.
Legendary gear and endgame farming
Instant item upgrades
-
Relic: Doom or Oleron’s Wrath can drop randomly and will provide a massive offensive upgrade, however, you will lose a bunch of regen.
Deathstalker is possibly best-in-slot for the physical resistance reduction on the summon. It is target-farmed from the Manticore Deathstalker in the Ancient Grove key dungeon. -
Gloves: Mythical Grasp of Unchained Might for speed and +20% weapon damage.
-
Helm: Mythical Warborn Visor is a helm, which has to be crafted or transmuted and can replace Fleshwarped Casque. A well-rolled Casque is comparable in power.
-
Boots: Mythical Golemborn Greaves fit quite well, if you can find other sources of slow resistance.
-
Rings: Mythical Ring of the Black Matriarch or Bladetwister Signet can provide a huge damage boost with the extra physical resistance reduction.
-
Pants: Mythical Chausses of Barbaros are pretty great.
Sets to look out for
-
Set 1: Targo’s Craft is a legendary set that will support Blade Arc and also convert some more acid damage from Blood of Dreeg. 3 pieces can be fit in easily (shoulders, chest and weapon) but replacing the helm is difficult, because the build relies heavily on War Cry.
-
Set 2: Bloodrager’s Endless Frenzy also supports Blade Arc a little bit, but mostly offers defensive stats. Again, three pieces fit easily, but the helm is difficult.
What can kill the build?
You can definitely die on this character! The easiest way is to not cap your resistances or some other nonsense like that. Assuming your build doesn't have major holes:What can kill you in campaign?
- Monsters stacking pools of goo under you. In particular Riftscourges and similar monsters, the damage from their pools adds up for every pool they create. Move out of them, when you see your HP bar plummet.
- Nemesis boss’ Grava’Thul’s nullifying projectile can one-shot you, you have to run away when he strikes his menacing pose and lead the projectiles into a wall
- I’m sure I’ll find sth else.
What can kill you in challenge/endgame content:
- Celestials (all of them)
- You cannot fully face-tank Lokarr, he simply deals too much damage It’s a fairly safe fight, if you walk away to regen and reset your cooldowns every now and again
- You cannot face-tank Ravager of Flesh’s Sunder. Also, if he stacks too many pools under you, it can be nasty
- You shouldn’t face-tank Callagadra’s Sunder. Occasionally she will also stack too many cyclones on you and you have to move a little bit.
- Combinations of SR bosses and heroes with debuffs
- I haven’t died in SR yet, but it’s absolutely possible to pull too many debuffing heroes and maybe a Nemesis with Sunder, in which case you might have to press the dodge button
- I haven’t died in SR yet, but it’s absolutely possible to pull too many debuffing heroes and maybe a Nemesis with Sunder, in which case you might have to press the dodge button
Some gameplay vids:
(This only serves to showcase the playstyle and relative power level. I don’t necessarily recommend diving straight into the Shattered Realm, it’s just a way to show pure gameplay without major spoilers.)
Chonkblade in SR
- Celestial fights -
All of these were done on the regen spec.
The “dps spec” can do them as well, ~15-20% faster but squishier.
Lokarr
He is dealing exuberant amounts of damage, which makes him almost harder than the other bosses for this build. Maybe stacking more HP and having another safety-proc would be a good idea on HC
Ravager of Flesh
Requires Soul Shards in the rings to resist the energy leech. He still drains energy a lot, maybe gettinga bit more regen isn’t a bad idea (this build here only had 29/sec).
Elixir of the Ancients and Royal Jelly Ointment are used to make the fight easier.
I also strongly recommend crafting a Seal of Annihilation for your amulet, before you attempt this fight.
You need 3400+ OA to be able to crit this deer, more is better. ~3050 DA to not get crit.
Callagadra
The big angry bat is arguably easier than Ravager of Flesh for this build.
If the HP bar starts to dip, it’s probably a good idea to get away from the cyclones.
Otherwise just dodge the Sunder every couple seconds.
Ancient Elixir was used as well as a Royal Jelly Ointment, again.
you pull in all the things 