[1.0.0.9] Poison Blademaster - Simple & Fun - Crucible & Madqueen viable

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
1

I. Concept

This is a melee fighter/caster hybrid build. It is simple to play as most of the time you will only press LMB + RMB + num 1 and num 2, with occasional num 3 to keep Pneumatic burst up.

This build combine the tankiness of soldier and the damage + mobility of nightblade. While having only a few buttons to press, all of the skills are on low cooldown so it is still very engaging to play

This is also relatively easy to gear as it is not dependent on set item bonus (meaning you can replace any item if you find a better green)

  1. Pros:
  • Tanky with 11k HP or more
  • Safe, with Menhir’s Will, Behemoth, Wayward’s soul and Pneumatic burst
  • High single target damage with Shadow Strike
  • Fun and fluid game play
  • Not gear dependent
  • Trivial energy management
  • Relatively easy to cap resistances
  1. Cons:
  • Depend on components and devotions for AoE
  • Lower damage comparing to other nightblade combination
  • Cannot ultimately cap skills due to lack of set bonus

II. Skills and Gears

  1. Skills and devotions:

http://www.grimtools.com/calc/pZrv4OZ6
Grimcalc build (with +skills)
Grimcalc build (without +skills)

Stats: 69 Physique and 21 Spirit or 70 physique and 20 spirit

Note that you can have less spirit if you get lucky with gears, for example Malediction can have 3% spirit bonus, and some green affixes can give bonus to spirit as well. But that is not all that important.

Devotion bindings:

  • Scorpion Sting —> Shadow strike: Since we do not have night fall, this gives shadow strike some AoE
  • Acid Spray --> ABB: The only RR proc will go on most used skill
  • Tainted Eruption —> Dreeg’s Infinitive Gaze: You have almost 100% chance to proc eruption if gaze hit 2 or more enemies
  • The rest: just bind to any aura
  1. Alternative builds:
    Alternative build http://www.grimtools.com/calc/bVAOJwND
    This requires you to have 2 venomblade pieces, but doesn’t require any spirit. This version has 100 less OA comparing to the above, but can deck out 200 more DA and around 2000 more flat acid damage, with a bit longer poison duration. Consider this carefully depending on what gears you have.

And of course, if your control is good enough and you are willing to take risk, you can always replace Menhir’ Bulwark with Oleron Rage for massive amount of OA boost, plus some more poison converted from trauma damage http://www.grimtools.com/calc/eVLEbGZG

The latter would ultimately be my end game build, when I can find a good shoulder and the cowl blue print (I will probably need GDStash to spec out the stat point at that time)

  1. Gears:

Head: Clairvoyant’s Hat (Sanctified Bone / Mankind’s Vigil (Black Legion))
Shoulders: Mantle of Dreeg (Dense Fur / Spiritguard Powder (Death’s Vigil))
Chest: Vestments of the Great Guardian (Chains of Oleron / Mankind’s Vigil (Black Legion))
Main hand: Venomlash (Mark of Dreeg / Outcast’s Venom (Outcasts))
Offhand: Siegebreaker (Vitriolic Gallstone / Outcast’s Venom (Outcasts))
Hands: Viperfang Grips (Consecrated Wrappings / Spiritguard Powder (Death’s Vigil))
Waist: Sash of the Immortal Sage (Dense Fur / Wraithtouch Powder (Death’s Vigil))
Legs: Seraphim Solael-Sect Legguards of Incantations (Scaled Hide / Spiritguard Powder (Death’s Vigil))
Feet: Stonehide Exalted Treads of Nature’s Bounty (Mark of Mogdrogen / Wraithtouch Powder (Death’s Vigil))
Amulet: The Peerless Eye of Beronath (Soul Shard / Survivor’s Ingenuity (Devil’s Crossing))
Rings: Ring of the Black Matriarch (Corpse Dust / Survivor’s Ingenuity (Devil’s Crossing))
Rings: Ring of the Black Matriarch (Corpse Dust / Survivor’s Ingenuity (Devil’s Crossing))
Medal: Mark of the Apostate (Arcane Spark)
Relic: Malediction

Click here to view equipment configuration

Since we are not using any set, the +skill from Clairvoyant hat, Eye of Beronath and Siegebreaker are all very good to have to cap skills. Other than that just use anything complimenting the build

For example I would definitely replace my shoulder with this Blighted Zantarin’s Shoulderguard of the Dranghoul

  1. Future expansion:
    With the next expansion where level cap get raised to 100, we will have 30 extra skill points, we can safely add 50/50 Nightblade mastery with a point into nightfall for Shadow Strike AoE damage, plus increasing several other good skills like Pneumatic Burst

http://grimcalc.com/build/1009-SBdZw6

III. Leveling and Combat

Start with Soldier mastery, you can use either Blade Arc or Cadence + Blitz combo to get through early level. When you are comfortable with Soldier (i.e. 40 points in mastery) then you can start adding Nightblade.

The combat rotation is very simple:

  • Open by casting Siegebreaker (to spread the poison)
  • Shadow strike in
  • Hit with ABB (LMB)
  • Cast Gaze
  • Rinse and repeat till everything dies
  • If things get sticky, pop Overguard
  • Always keep Pneumatic Burst up

IV. Dungeons & Bosses tips

Steps of Torment:
You can face tank everything, the death room included. If Alkamos damage is too much, just back out for a second and shadow strike back in, rinse and repeat

Bastion of Chaos:
The only place that will threaten your life is the gate guardian at the end of Field of Despair, mainly because he has an entourage of Cthonian Bloodletter/Harbinger that take a good chunk of your HP when they die and explode.

As for Shar’Zul, he doesn’t do a lot of damage himself, but his Wind Devils are another story. You cannot kill them, and they deal great amount of damage. Be sure to stay away from the Wind Devils, and Shar’Zul should be a walk in the park

Port Valbury:
You can face tank pretty much everything, including the Flame of Valbury, the 3 watchers and that big bald dude I never remember the name. As for the final 3 bosses, lure Van Aldritch out to the stair and kill him, this way you don’t have to deal with the poison puddles by his 2 henchmen. After that go in and kill those 2. Councilman Garl has an annoying rotation of healing + Maiven so it will take a while to kill him, unless you have high life leech resistance

Mad Queen:
Handle her like your girl friend, avoid her on her period, then pamper her after that :smiley:

Nemesis:
You can face tank Valdaran, Benn’Jhar and Moonsilauke. I haven’t met others on this char, but Fabius in crucible is a piece of cake. They take a while to kill for obvious reason. If they deal more damage than expected, just back out, shadow strike back in -> gaze -> back out again. Your poison will do all the work.

V. Crucible tips
Always fight in Crucible of the Dead, it’s faster that way. If you enter crucible and it’s not the Dead, exit to main menu and try again.

I use 2 crucible buffs: the HP buff (Empyrion?) and the damage buff (Amatok?), those should be enough for farming wave 100-110, restart at check point then go up to 110 again. You don’t lose tribute this way.

At higher waves 80+, stand infront of a spawn point instead of the middle, you can kill a spawn point before other spawns can reach you, effectively reducing the total damage you have to deal with by 25%

Example of Crucible wave 100-110 (can’t record higher waves because the drop in FPS would kill me). You can see I can handle everything with ease, no real threats received.

You can safely farm wave 100-110 for items before moving on. I’m not a crucible expert so I never intended to finish wave 150 gladiator.

2

I give points for oddball of gear choices and still managing to what you claim to do (I did it with Nightshade’s Reach and gear was vastly different)

Grats on the build

Of Course please consider adding it to Build Compendium V

3

I don’t choose gears, I work with what I have :smiley: my pants and boots are shared among like 10 characters :smiley: All legendary items are crucible drop and random crafting at the Celestial Smith

4

Very oddball. SS with shield?? o_O Isn’t Blitz better in this case??

P.S.:

So why have you posted build with rundom gear?? Find BiS and then post.

5

BiS is simple

Venomblade Chest and Helm to maximize SS potential

6

Wow gear is like meh cause this is a proc build unlike pierce + bleed crossbow grenadier that is non proc build this one really needs it’s set

7

Blitz doesn’t have any poison, I want poison

And it’s not random gear, although it’s not BiS it’s still really reasonable. For example the guardian vestment provides a lot of OA along with some poison damage. While not giving high skill boosts, it gives a good overall damage boost

My experience with set is really bad, the only set I can really completed is the infernal knight, every other set have been eluding me ever since

8

Sure blitz doesn’t have any poison, but according of game mechanics DoT’s are convertible too, so if you have conversion like “x% physics converted to acid” than IT will be converted into poison. True for the ability to “siege” from the shield.

9

SS is a better choice for what he is aiming since NJE is a big flat poison source & have a lower CD than blitz.
Consider also that poison build are heavily supported by devo proc that mean he can apply his different source dots & run where SS shine in this kind of gameplay.

10

If you have pieces of Venomblade set, than SS obviosly becomes more effective than blitz (at least against single target). Personally I would consider more offensive and risky build variant, on the first glance like that: http://www.grimtools.com/calc/8NKeEWVD.

11

I haven’t found the cowl blueprint yet, I just have the chest, and that alone isn’t better than the guardian vestment. But I will consider that

12

I hope you will get cowl blueprint soon and will be able to experiment with pieces of Venomblade set. I know that sometimes it is hard to get blueprint for the required item - still farming for Faceguard of Justice blueprint.

13

Added videos for all dungeons run and mad queen

Also added an alternative version of build

14

This is really neat. I’ve been looking into a poison blade master setup myself and you’ve given me some good insight into what I may do :slight_smile:

15

Nice one love the build might try this out sometime after my bleeder soldier build which no one has done yet. http://www.grimtools.com/calc/bVAOd7ND .

16

Tested this build on a lvl 75 blank character eh even my plaugebearer’s manticore longsword of the hunt is better than your venomlash has 40% more damage to beastkin & beast and has more poison damage than your weapon. i’m not giving this up it’s a rare quest reward usually it has no suffix and prefix

17

When you fight harder bosses, the poison duration becomes more important because you can’t just stand and whack (although you see me stand and whack, don’t believe it)

18

I’m currently playing a poison BM but it’s DW (can’t post grimtools coz i’m new) so it’s squishier and I definitely agree with this statement. At the endgame, you get a lot of poison bonuses that the DoT does more damage than your attacks and in my case, since DW isn’t defensive, the poison duration really does most of the work against tough bosses.

I have a question, though. How do you do against reflect mobs/bosses? I’m having a particularly hard time against undead and SoT is kinda hard for me because a lot of mobs there have a high reflect and my own poison DoT just melts me. I tried getting Dryad and it helps but only by a bit.

19

Isn’t Runed Dagger of Dreeg better than Venomlash?