[1.1.9.6] No-Set! S&B Physical Blade Arc Warlord - SR 90/Ravager of Minds/Callagadra

Hi everyone, I like to share my S&B Blade Arc with you. Everyone knows except Spellscourge and Targo, one hand BA sucks, well not anymore!

Image from the game with perma buffs and Ulzaad proc

GRIMTOOLS


Build is very tanky, ofc it requires some good greens to provide such performance but even without double-rare weapon, build should be good enough and other MIs should not be hard to get.

SR 90 Complete Run

Ravager of Minds Kill

No gear or devotion change maded. Used OA&DA and health consumables.

Callagadra Kill

No gear or devotion change maded. Used OA&DA, health, lifesteal and armor consumables; added aether clustere on skillbar but didn’t need it.

PS: Couldn’t try Mogdrogen since character is already killed him but I’m pretty sure build can kill him with some augment changes and lightning resist oilment.

Thanks for reading, any comment & feedback is welcome

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hello mate, i’m kinda new on this game and i liked your work! could you please help me on the level up path (skills/masteries and devo)?

Hey, welcome to the forum. You don’t have to level as the final build works which requires certain items to work. There are multiple alternatives how you level with warlord so there is no right path here. Check these;

If nothing feels right, you go standart pyhsical shield & blade build; first pick Oathkeeper skills likes RF and shield WPS then go for soldier side for support skills, it should work for every situtation. I definitely do not recomment S&B Blade Arc leveling, if you insist on BA then go for 2H until you get the full gear.

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Would slightly disagree - with Mogara, Sandclaw and Kali’sKa - around level 30 - 50 (Warlord, Level 40 (GD 1.1.9.6) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator), it should start to work and be fun @Stupid_Dragon has prepared one - but unfortunately never published the guide.

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Yes it’s possible to level with those, but these are not the gears you can get at 15-20 lvl so you need to use different setup until you get those items and most people do not go to FG until ultimate and farming Kalis’ka is pretty optional aswell since you can just use merit to get those points after finishing homestead or so.

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Well yes. I tried S&B BA leveling. It was… quite lackluster in early levels (before getting the Slicer and Harvest), despite highly noticeable damage support from Milton’s Casque (Shield Training mods) and Safeguard. However, both the helmet bonuses and Safeguard flat phys got nerfed in 1.1.9.6, making this way of leveling even more lackluster.

The culprit here is the BA skill itself. If you look at its tooltip carefully, you notice the skill only takes weapon damage and adds some bleed dmg to it. No flat phys dmg like on Forcewave or other bonuses. And sice early 1h weapons have a rather low damage… yeah. Better go with 2h BA or 2h Forcewave (likely the spam version, even though CD FW got some nice buffs).

On the other hand, BA has a slew of easy-to-get support items, like Mogara’s Fangs (amulet, available at lvl. 32) or Balthazar’s medal. Both give flat dmg to BA, which is what the skill needs a lot. However, the whole setup really clicks in around level 35 - 40, when you have all the core items: Slicer, Harvest, Fangs and Baltha’s medal. Rush the Laceration node in the skill tree, too. It adds the so needed flat phys to the base skill.

So, level with two-handers (either BA or FW) first and get the items, then switch to S&B BA. I quite like the S&B BA leveling, it’s fun but not as efficient as FW or Shaman’s Primal Strike in early levels.

2 Likes

Hey man, thanks for sharing, your build seems pretty solid and I wanted to try it myself. But I ran into a problem with devotion, that I could not figure out how you activated the Berserker. It needs 5 Eldritch but it seems other devotions you chose provide less than that. Could you help me out here?

There are 5 total greens taken in this devotion map, 2 coming from Ulzaad, and 3 coming from Berserker itself.

In general, devotion completion bonuses for a given constellation can count towards its affinity requirement, but only AFTER the constellation has been completed.

So in this case, in order to get Berserker, we can acquire Ulzaad first for 2 greens, but in order to start putting points into Berserker, we need to temporarily get 3 more greens from somewhere else.

One thing we might do is take Hawk first, complete Berserker, and then remove Hawk, since we no longer need the 3 extra greens.

(Remember, you can remove devotion points!)

Alternately, if you’re looking for a complete devotion route, here is one (but not the only) possibility:

Crossroads Yellow
Assassin’s Blade
Remove Crossroads Yellow
Crossroads Blue
Sailor’s Guide
Remove Crossroads Blue
Toad (This is our choice for the extra greens we’ll need for Berserker.)
Dire Bear
Crossroads Purple
Ulzaad
Remove Crossroads Purple
Berserker
Empty Throne
Remove Toad
Ghoul (4/5)
Dryad
Crab
Panther
Azrakaa

There are ways to route the devotion path that end up removing points fewer times, but this route gets you RR (Assassin’s Blade), movement speed (Sailor’s Guide), and ADCtH (Toad) early as well as relatively early Dire Bear and Ulzaad.

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Whoa, didn’t know it worked like that! Thanks a bunch man!

This build is very good for HC , sturdy & very solid damage.
I tried Callagadra in HC ( swap gloves to colossus for extra safety) , very doable

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No-Set!

uses 3p Warborn:grin:

6 Likes

It’s not a BA set :zantai:

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Hi there, first thanks so much for taking time to make this build, im a new player and I would like to know what kind of gear I should grab. could you explain what damage type this build uses? and what the skill rotation looks like? Is there defensive stats I should prioritize first ?

First off all, look on you’re resistances (very important), then your damage. this art of build got phys damage, piercing damage, internal trauma damage and slight bleeding damage

AO and DA comes with your founded gear, choosen Skills on your Level and Devotions and later, physical resistance (around lvl 20+)

Which Gear, Rings, Weapon, Shield etc. will you choose while leveling? grimtools.com (item database) is the adress for specific items, otherwise wear what you found.

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