[Melee] [1.2.1.6] Bleeding/Physical, Hybrid Witch Hunter (Burebista)
- Damage: Physical, Bleeding
- Active Skills: Ring of Steel, Curse of Frailty
Pros:
- Great Physical Resistance for a Dual-Wielding characeter ~32 - 39%
- Excellent Armor, even with Budget gear it has 3700+ Armor, Non-Budget 4000 Armor.
- Decent OA/DA
- Ok’ish HP regeneration
- Good Bleeding Damage
Note: Quite fast leveling, it took me 13 hours to clear both Normal and Ultimate with DLCs. (Usually to level a SSF character it takes me about 16-17h.)
Cons:
- Small HP pool
- Low Physical Damage
Hello everyone, today i want to show you an experimental build, a Hybrid Bleeding and Physical oriented Witchblade.
I can also label it as Beginner friendly because you can obtain all items you need in the first 2 Acts, and that’s it, once you get them you are complete, the only thing you might want to do is to farm high level 94 variants on Ultimate difficulty once you level to 100.
In order to create a powerful character you need to focus on one damage type (like Fire, Cold, Lightning … etc.), but in this build i will try to use 2 damage types like Physical - Trauma and Bleeding Damage.
Usually when you try to create a Hybrid build (for example a character that uses both Acid/Poison and Cold/Frost damage types), in the best case scenario you will have a build as good as a ‘Pure’ one damage type character or in the worst case scenario you will have a build that deals only half as much damage.
But that’s not quite the case for Hybrid builds that uses Bleeding or Retaliation. You can create a hybrid Bleeding or Retaliation builds which has the potential to rival or even over-perform ‘Pure’ one damage type builds, this is exactly what im trying to do, to create a Hybrid build which performs better.
If you are interested to see its performance on Normal difficulty, you can check this short video. At the end of the post i will attach a section with performance on Ultimate Difficulty with bosses, Dungeons/Nemesis and Celestial bosses.
This is a mini-guide so i won’t post in depth explanation to in-game mechanics for this specific build, but if you still interested in reading more about the mechanics you can check the section below, its a snippet from my previous guide with some explanation on how to select better gear, what are affixes, constellations etc.
More details about mechanics
During your play
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First, i must say if its your first Grim Dawn playthrough, then try to reveal and clear every location, without being overzealous, you will be fine if you miss a hidden chest or a breakable wall, you can also skip all Skeleton Key dungeons on Normal and Elite. Even if you have a couple of unfinished quests, it doesnt matter all that much. No quests or quest choices matter.
With the exception of Barrowholm faction, its important to join it and not destroy the location because we need the blueprints they offer for this specific build. -
If its your first character and you plan to play more GD later, then pick up every Rare item and sell it, you will need lots of coins to purchase every Blueprint/Recipe from factions, and they are expensive, you will need like 2 000 000 coins to purchase every blueprint from every faction.
Additionally you need coins to Gamble, similar to how Diablo 2 gambling is but slightly different.
If you want to see how i waste 5 000 000 coins i was collecting for 20 hours in under 3 minutes you can check this https://youtu.be/EZ-nO1zb3Ic?t=6231 
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Try to store every component into the Shared Stash, especially on Hardcore, if your character dies carrying all those components inside his inventory or Personal stash you lose them, additionally if they all are stored in one shared stash, its easier to use them for crafting for all of your characters, the components will be used directly from your shared stash, so you dont have to drag any components manually into your inventory. Similar to how i do. Also, try turning your coins into Bars and also store them when you reach level 100.
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Try to not loot hoard everything, the 99% of the items between lvls 1-84 are useless and too weak, maybe some low level sets are worth keeping like Explorer’s Garments, Herald’s Regalia, Royal Exuberance, The Praetorian, Adornments of Valiance. All other sets are ok’ish, but in my opinion too weak, only listed sets are decent. And even these sets are sort of obsolete after you get the Lokarr’s spoils set at level 100 on Ultimate from a secret quests, i usually dedicate only 2 stash windows for equipment and they are sufficient to level 90% of all builds.
Resistances
During your Leveling 1 up to lvl 94, just focus on Resistances and Skill Modifiers, having lots of Resistances on items is what you want. Damage and self-sustain will be secured by Constellations and your Class Skills.
And this can be applied to ALL builds, not just this one, Resistances play a vital role in all Builds.
The upper resistances highlighted by Red are more common, and as a result slightly less valuable, and the lower resistance highlighted by Blue are less common, and more valuable.
Dont get me wrong, you want ALL of you resistances to be maxed 80%+ with some overcap +20% or so, except Physical Resistance which will play an important role when you are High level, but can be neglected during early leveling.
The Physical damage is the most valuable resistance in the late game, its rare and ALL enemies in the game deal Physical damage, and i mean ALL of them.
You see a Fire Mage Skeleton shooting a Fire Ball, the Fire Ball will deal 50% Fire damage and 50% Physical damage, this will be important later when you will switch the difficulty to Ultimate, around level 70+, so don’t worry too much about it, simply keep in mind that it’s important.
Itemization
When choosing your items, prioritize resistances, try mentally filtering the stats on an item like I do
Original item:
What i look at:
even though the item has tons of stats on it, it only grants 8% Aether Resistance , and the skill bonuses do not match the ones i use, so this item goes to the garbage bin.
Let’s try another example,
the original item:
The stats i look at:
Even though the item grants Fire damage which is useless for us, it also has High Resistances, the Pierce and Chaos resistance is why i used it. If you look at the lvl 23 Grimtools link you might notice that all my items have somewhat decent resistances (dont forget to switch the difficulty in grimtools to Normal), and even with minimal number of components i already have lots of resistances capped at 80%.
Attributes
For simplification, you will be fine on an average build if you invest 20 Points into Spirit (to be able to use Jewelry and Robes/ have extra Energy and Energy regeneration), 20 into Cunning (to be able to use Daggers, our final build is going to use a Dagger which requires 511 Cunning) and the rest of the points 80+ or so into Physique for HP and Defense Ability (DA is Dodge) for survivability.
Constellations
To unlock the constellations, you need Affinity.
The different colored globes on the left side, at the beginning you have 0 affinites, as a result ALL constellations are locked, you can earn some affinity by investing Devotion points into Crossroad and unlock the weakest/lowest tier constellations.
To earn Devotion points, you need to Restore Shrines in the game
The game has around 200 shrines across all 3 difficulties, while your character can have only 55 devotion points, even if you miss a shrine or two, its not a big deal, do try to clear everything tho, constellations makes your intredibly powerful, its like 50% of your character strength.
Due to 55 devotion points limit, you have to select your constellations carefully and sparingly.
The constellations might appear scary at the start, because there are many of them, but in reality they are much, much more simple than they look like.
The constellations are simply skills or passives which are available to ALL characters, there are many of them because they support All damage types.
For example a Vitality oriented character, you will not need 85% of the constellations, you wont need Fire constellations like Fiend or Imp, or Acid constellations like Scorpion, you will want only Vitality oriented Constellations which you can filter in the game.
Skills
Grim Dawn game encourages you to use One main damaging skills, for example for Demolitionist, you can use Fire Strike or Cocktail, or maybe Cluster Bomb and Grenade, but never everything at once. You will not have enough Skill Points to use everything.
So if you use Fire strike dont use Grenades, another example Soldier, If you use Cadence then dont use Forcewave and Blade Arc. Chose something one. You can use Auxiliary skills which Debuff the enemy. There are exceptions ofcourse, but the idea is that you must use one skill and try to empower it as much as you can.
Components
Components are extremely powerful and vital for any build, at level 20-25 you can craft most mid-level components, its easy to get confused and tangled up in all of the components and stuff, that’s why the community made a Components guide on Steam Forum Steam Community :: Guide :: Resistances by Components and Augments
If you dont want to spend much time understanding the components, you can use low level neutral components which fits all characters up to level 84.
If you are level 20-35:
For Chest, Shoulders, Pants use 3x Silk Swatch
For Belt, Boots,Helmet use 3x Antivenom Salve
For gloves use 1x Unholy Inscription
For rings use 2x Soul Shard
For medal, amulet 2x Wardstone
For weapon(s) Purified Salt or Imbued Silver depending on what you need more.
If you are level 35-84:
Not really much changes, but you can start using:
For Chest and Helmet Runestone or Sanctified Bone
For Medal and Amulet Aether Soul or Black Tallow
To craft these components you will require a Blueprint which can be bought from a Faction.
With these neutral components you will have decent amount of Resistances to survive most Bosses and areas. If you find some good Items with resistances you should be gucci.
At level 94+ you will need to use level 75 components in order to be strong, more about that later.
Item Rarity/Affixes
One important thing i must highlight is that White(common) and Yellow(magic) items past level 10 are obsolete, you can filter them, they are simply too weak to be considered viable. The filter button is in the left corner of the UI, looks like a ring.
Second, Epic (Blue) items are NOT always better than the Green items, think of Epic Items as Extremely Specific build oriented items, in most cases the Epic (Blue) items you find will not fit your character, and usually the Epic (Blue) items do not have high resistances, as a result many Green items are simply better, especially if its a Monster Inferquent.
This is why you can see me often selling Blue items during the playthrough, if its not Vitality or Bleeding oriented, they go to the trash.
Monster Infrequent items, are items that drop from a specific monster, for example the Spectral Weapons like Spectral Longsword, Spectral Battle Axe, Spectral Bludgeon drops only and only from Ghosts which usually resides in the Ruins of Arkovia and sometimes from Totems.
And even though Monster Infrequent items [MI’s] share the same color as Green items they are way stronger than normal Rare Green items because they have innate stats. Also MI’s have a small distinctive gem in the name of the item to differentiate normal green items from MI’s.
Normal green items do not have gems.
Let me show how a normal item becomes green(rare):
Normal items do not have innate stats, are white/gray and start just like this
and when you kill an enemy, the item can roll 2 affixes (bonus stats) which can be Magical or Rare.
Magical affixes are generally speaking are weaker than Rare affixes.
If both Affixes (Bonus stats) are Magical, for example Puncturing of Alacrity
The item turns into yellow
If one of the affixes is Rare like Heart Piercing , the item color changes to Green(rare)
then the items turn Green
But even as a green item, at the core, the item is the same poopy white item, ha-ha :D.
Monster Infrequent Items are similar, they roll 2 random Affixes, but they have innate stats, which are Always present and have sometimes insanely strong Bonuses to Skills, like Spectral Warmaul
The ‘naked’ weapon without affixes looks like this
Look at the Siphon Souls part, it grants Extra damage to the Skill itself, the bonus granted is INSANE, lets look at the numbers.
The level 12 Siphon Souls deals 284 Vitality Damage per second, the item grants extra 180 on top of it, that’s 60% more damage. If you stack multiple Monster Infrequent items which empowers Just one skill, the skill will become incomparably stronger than the original Unbuffed skill.
A brief build explanation
My main skill is the Ring of Steel from Nightblade,
Its base damage is Pierce but it can be converted to Physical with the help of a special item Pit Master’s Axe
which can be obtained here from a boss [Map], the boss does not always spawn, so you will have to enter the Main Menu of the game, reset the world and try to spawn it, kill it 2 times and use 2 Pit Master’s Axe axes.
The axes have excellent Basic Physical damage and increases its Bleeding damage output. You want 2 of them, and that’s it, no Epic/Legendary item will be better than these weapons, dont trust the game even if it a legendary item you randomly got shows +Damage.
To further increase the damage output you also want Murderer’s Cowl, which also drop the Bandits in the same area, you might try to farm them a bit either from Cronley Hideout or from Halion “The Rat” [Map]
The next piece we need for our Exodia is the
Bloodbriar’s Thorn drops from Ol’ Bloodbriar [Map], the area is located before Homestead.
We need it even if it might look shabby, the Ring of Steel has 3 second cooldown, with 2 axes its reduced to 2 seconds, with the Briar its reduced to 1 second. 1 second cooldown Ring of Steel is insane.
Our last EXODIAAA!!! piece is the
Gutworm’s Mark which can be obtained from the Gutworm, the Maneater [Map], the Gutworm dungeon has 3-4 random spawn points located between Burrwitch Outskirts Rift and Burrwitch Village Rift, roam around and you will find it.
With these 4 items you will be unstoppable.
Other powerful supportive items are Legion Belt which can be bought from Legion once you get enough reputation.
And the relic Slaughter, its random drop but blueprints drops often so you will get it eventually.
The last thing im going to mention, you might have noticed that my Ring of Steel is level 26
This is not a bug, you can level it normally up to level 16, but you cannot level it with skill points any further. To raise its level to the maximum of 26 you will need items, like the ones mentioned before above, for example the Murderer’s Cowl, has +3 to Ring of Steel, which will raise the level of Ring of Steel from 16 to 19.
Increasing the skill level this way is extremely important, difference in damage output between a level 16 Ring of Steel and lvl 26 is like sky and earth, the damage increases dramatically, you will deal 2-3 times more damage with lvl 26 Ring of Steel compared to lvl 16.
Constellations
The link below is a GrimTools build link
Witch Hunter, Level 100 (GD 1.2.1.6) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator
Navigate to the Constellation section to see its progression
Use the slider to see in what order to pick the constellations.
Why these specific constellations? This is a Hybrid build which uses both Bleeding and Physical damage types, so ideally we need Hybrid Constellations.
We need Assassin Blade for the debuff it applies, -Physical Resistance reduction is vital for us, many bosses have high Physical Resistance, reducing it will increase our damage output.
Same story with Huntress, it applies an excellent curse which lowers Bleeding Resistance and deals Bleeding damage.
Other constellations are just fillers.
-Berserker and Oleron excellent Hybrid Bleeding and Physical Constellations.
-Behemoth and Scythe are excellent for HP regeneration builds.
-Owl for its Reflect Resistance bonuses, the Mirror Reflect enemies are our bane, we will deal lots of damage, and if its reflected back on us, it can kill us ,
-Lion and Turtle are decent neutral constellation
-Hammer is just for Affinity, additionally it has +8% armor.
Class
Why this class is a Witch Hunter?
I’m trying to create a Hybrid, Nightblade + a class which supports both Physical Damage and Bleeding Resistance.
Soldier fits well, it has bleeding damage on Blade arc, has some Flat Physical Resistance Reduction on Break Morale, but it has no Bleeding Resistance Reduction, and the class in general specializes on Shields and Two-handed melee weapons. We dual-wield and as result we cannot use Overguard, Menhir’s Will and Menhir’s Bulwark.
Oathkeeper is a good fit, it has both Bleeding and Physical Resistance Reduction on the Celestial Presence. The class has some Bleeding Damage on Presence of Virtue and Tectonic Shift, but it lacks Health Regeneration.
Shaman is a decent fit, excellent Bleeding damage and resistance reduction from Devouring Swarm and Primal Bond with some decent HP regeneration from Mogdrogen’s Pact, but it completely lacks Physical resistance reduction.
I have settled on Occultist, it has Excellent debuff for both Bleeding and Physical damage types on Curse of Frailty. Blood of Dreeg grants decent amounts of HP regeneration and most importantly 10% Physical Resistance. The Possession grants Damage Absorption and Disruption Resistance. With one downside that the Occultist lacks offensive spells which deals Bleeding and Physical damage, but we dont need them for this specific build, Nightblade already has what we need, we will spam Ring of Seel and Bloodbath, so we wont even have time for other skills.
Nightblade doesnt have any Resistance Reduction for Bleeding nor Physical damage types, but there is a trick we can use to Maximize Nightblade Bleeding and Physical damage bonuses, the secret lies in Cunning attribute and Anatomy of Murder.
If i get lucky with Affixes and get a Balanced Steel with +2 to Ring of Steel, then i can massively invest into Cunning, ~82 Attribute points
Cunning bonus stats to both Bleed and Physical are quite brilliant and will help us with lacking %bonuses.
Grimtools low level
Nightblade, Level 27 (GD 1.2.1.6) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator
Witch Hunter, Level 39 (GD 1.2.1.6) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator
Witch Hunter, Level 45 (GD 1.2.1.6) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator
Witch Hunter, Level 47 (GD 1.2.1.6) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator
Witch Hunter, Level 51 (GD 1.2.1.6) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator
Witch Hunter, Level 60 (GD 1.2.1.6) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator
Witch Hunter, Level 63 (GD 1.2.1.6) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator
Witch Hunter, Level 68 (GD 1.2.1.6) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator
Witch Hunter, Level 72 (GD 1.2.1.6) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator
Witch Hunter, Level 75 (GD 1.2.1.6) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator
Witch Hunter, Level 87 (GD 1.2.1.6) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator
Witch Hunter, Level 100 (GD 1.2.1.6) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator
Witch Hunter, Level 100 (GD 1.2.1.6) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator
Witch Hunter, Level 100 (GD 1.2.1.6) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator
Youtube leveling 1-100 playlist
Performance Dungeons:
Alkamos - Steps of Torment: ~30 seconds kill
Overlord van Aldritch - Port Valbury ~40 seconds kill
Shar’Zul - Bastion of Chaos ~18 seconds kill
Gargabol - Feral Thicket ~30 seconds kill
Morgoneth - Conduit of Eternal Night ~ 35 seconds kill
Performance Nemesis:
Valdaran - Aether nemesis ~ 18 seconds kill
Cubacabra - beast nemesis ~ 30 seconds kill
Fabius - Cronley nemesis ~ 20 seconds kill
Kaisan - Eldritch nemesis ~ 22 seconds kill
Moosilake - Arkovian Nemesis ~ 20 seconds kill
Benn’Jahr - First Chthonian Nemesis ~ 12 seconds kill
Grava’Thul - Second Chthonian Nemesis ~ 23 seconds kill
Aleksander - Aether Corruption Nemesis ~ 10 seconds kill
Celestial Super Bosses:
Mogdrogen ~5 minutes kill
Ravager of Flesh ~ 7 minutes kill
Callagadra - Failed to kill
Notes:
Despite my best efforts to bring Physical Damage to the same level as Bleeding Damage, i have failed, the majority of DPS comes from Bleeding Damage from Circle of Slaughter and not from the Physical Ring of Steel.
I would say the distribution would be 30% Physical Damage and 70% Bleeding Damage.
I have tried to heavily invest into Cunning and equip MI’s with Cunning oriented affixes, but even with 1500 Cunning the Physical Damage part was lacking. ~1300% Physical Damage bonus +650% from Cunning (Doesnt even reach 2000%, disappointing.)
Even if i were to change the Occultist class for a different one, the Physical Damage part will still be lacking.
Im pretty certain if you build this character into a pure Bleeding Damage character the DPS will be much greater. No Oleron/Assassin Blade shenanigans, just Huntress and Mogdrogen, Nightblade + Shaman or Oathkeeper and it will rock.
Final Verdict:
Not good enough. As a Hybrid build its underperforming.
If you build it as a pure Bleeding Damage, it will slice through enemies like butter.
Experiment failed successfully ._.
- all you’re gonna lose is like 300 AR
