[1.0.6.1] 2H Cadence Battlemage - the Blade of Aether

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
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Meet, the Blade of Aether - 2h melee battle mage on aether cadence

Grim tools

Battle Mage - https://www.grimtools.com/calc/w26wYPxV

  • Screenshot with Maiven’s Sphere, Fighting Spirit and Prowess active

Pros:

  • No green items in gear setup
  • No problems to complete campaign content except some super bosses
  • Saves: Mirror of Ereoctes and Menhir’s Will
  • Nullification - useful skill in many situations

Cons:

  • No skill disraption resist
  • Not so effective (killing time) against strong Aetherials
  • Can’t beat Avatar of Mog, Lokkar and Ravager on Ultimate

Gameplay (campaign)

You can faceroll most campaign stuff. Use blitz to burst into the crowd if there are no enemies with shotgun. Use AoE skills (Krieg’s Wrath and CT/Blitz) to apply RR against mobs. Cadence and other procs will do the remain part.

The default physical resistence and ADctH are not high - only 12%, but Ghoulish Hunger and Giant’s blood procs (plus Driad blessing in deffensive setup) will make the gamepaly more comfortable in many situations.

Gear setup

Krieg’s Armament set

BiS for melee aether builds, especially for Battle Mage build:

  • Grants +1 to all skills in Soldier and Arcanist mastery
  • Grants 12% physical resistence in average
  • Grants flat health boost
  • Higher armor and DA rating
  • Good skill with RR that can be used instead of Manticore proc and save 5 devotion points for us

Amulet

Mythical Avenger of Cairn - grants us resistences, flat OA and DA, and +1 to all skills in Soldier needed to max Cadence. The alternative can be Conduit of Warring Whispers with appropriate suffixes and prefixes.

Rings

Mythical Band of Eternal Haunt - BiS for this build taking into account lack of aether RR sources.

Mythical Albrecht’s Duality - BiS if you would like to get more flat aether damage from Fabric of Reality and Dying God. Otherwise you can try another variants like (Mythical) Screams of the Aether, Allagast’s Stormgem and etc.

Weapon

Mythical Temporal Arcblade - BiS and the only choice for Battle Mage build. Wrathmourne is good while leveling up to 75 lvl, but is useless since mythical version does not grant “to all skils in” bonus.

Belt

Mythical Cord of Violent Decay - BiS if you need to cover the gap in resistences or would like to max CT damage. Other alternatives could be Mythical Soulweave Gridle, Mythical Phantom-Thread Gridle and Mythical Reforged Chains of Oleron.

Medal

Badge of Mastery - grants +5 to Cadence, OA and total damage boost and is BiS for the build.

Pants

Mythical Wrathborne Legwraps - BiS: boosts aether damage, grants additional flat aether damage (+2 to RP), boosts % OA and grants flat DA bonus. Alsjohas a nice proc with crowd control effect.

Relic

Agrivix’s Malice - BiS for the build. It grants useful proc for melee aether builds and boosts our damage against aetherials.

Devotions setup

Must have devotions:

  1. Kraken - the best constellation to boost damage for 2H builds.

  2. Widow - grants proc to reduce not only aether resistence, but also enemie’s OA.

  3. Spear of the Heavens - in addition to resistences, aether damage boost and OA boost, the constellation grants nice proc with good damage low CD in 1 second ( 0.7-0.8 second with CDR from Arcblade).

Highly recommended devotions:

  1. Solemn Watcher - the constellation is not only valuable for resistences & solid DA boost, but more important it grants % reflected damage reduction.

  2. Ghoul - the proc Ghoulish Hunger can be considered as good save for melee builds: it grants solid bonuses for ADctH and physical resistence.

  3. Dying God - invest at least 4 points to boost OA; if you have good HP regeneration - invest more points to get Hungring Void proc; invest 7 points into the constellation if you use Albrecht’s Duality ring to get more flat aether damage.

Alternative build variants

Description: More “agressive” setup focused on damage - with full Dying God constellation and maxed Blitz instead of CT.

Credits: Thanks to mad_lee for the idea.

https://www.grimtools.com/calc/RZR4DLK2

  • Screenshot with Whirling Blades off and Maiven’s Sphere, Fighting Spirit, Prowess, Deadly Momentum and Hungering Void active

In closing

Special thanks to Veretragna for help with Krieg’s set pieces. :smiley:

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Herald of Aether Storm

https://www.grimtools.com/calc/dVbDKd8N

  • Screenshot with Maiven’s Sphere and Fighting Spirit active

Gameplay (campaign)

The core idea of the build is to use triple powerful AoE combo against enemies twice with no CD. With Maiven’s Sphere active we have:

  • Blade Arc - up to 68K aether damage
  • CT - up to ~76K aether damage
  • Blitz - up to 82K aether damage

Rush into the crowd with Blitz activating Widow proc. Use CT and Krieg’s Wrath and the final blow will be Blade Arc. The last attack will activate Time Dilation proc and make possible to repeat the previous combo. :smiley:

Albrecht’s Duality ring is used due to it’s % chance to reduce CD of used skills by 50%.

P.S: Credits to Veretragna for productive build discussion.

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Aetherials Slayer

https://www.grimtools.com/calc/a2d61kGZ

  • Screenshot with Maiven’s Sphere, Fighting Spirit and Deadly Momentum active

Gameplay (campaign)

The core idea of the range build is to max the Cadence damage and at the same time make the build effective against Aetherials.
Use Cadence as main attack skill and CT with OFF for crowd control. The max damage dealt is 292K againts aetherials in Malmouth.

Gear setup

  • Mythical Vortex of Souls - BiS weapon: grants +30% damage to aetherials, 100% chance to pass through enemies and other very useful bonuses.
  • Magelord set - grants flat aether damage, +3 to CT and Cadence and nice proc.
  • Conduit of Warring Whispers - with prefix granting skill mod for Markovian’s Advantage we get good aether WPS.
  • Agrivix’s Malice relic - grants +15% damage to aetherials and other useful bonuses.
  • Mythical Mark of Anathema - grants flat aether damage, +15% damage to aetherials and boost CT.
  • Clairvoyant set pieces - grant additional flat damage from FR, boost OA nad aether damage.
  • Krieg’s gloves and boots - best combination in terms max Cadence damage, in addition we get nice proc.
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[1.0.6.1] Blade of Chaos

2H chaos Cadence build

Damage: chaos and some IT
Active skills: Cadence, Oblivion, Blitz, Ravager’s Deathgaze, Battle cry, Nullification and Mirror of Ereoctes
Passive skills: Reckless Power, Field Command and Iskandra’s Elemental Exchange

https://www.grimtools.com/calc/aZqvA35N

  • Screenshot with Fighting Spirit, Deadly Momentum, Wayward Soul and Prowess active

The main concept of the build is chaos Cadence with Scythe of Tenebris.

For more damage focused setup you could invest 1 devotion point from Manticore to Dying God to take Hungering Void.

Maximum damage dealt during testing was 336K.

Credits: Veretragna for components adjustment

Pros:

[ul]
[li]No non-legendary or non-epic items in gear setup[/li]
[li]Can complete campaign content except some super bosses[/li]
[li]Nullification - useful skill in many situations[/li]
[li]Saves: Mirror of Ereoctes and Menhir’s Wi[/li]
[/ul]ll

Cons:

  • No skill disruption protection
  • Lack of RR. Cursed Tincture can help against strong enemies
  • Low physical resistence
  • Not the highest possible chaos damage
  • Badge of Mastery with +5 to skill bonus is required - not an easy to craft it
  • Probably can’t win fight against Avatar, Lokkar and Ravager on Ultimate - didn’t test it
4

nice build!

What do you mean by “Can’t beat Avatar of Mog, Lokkar and Ravager on Absolute”?

5

He can’t beat them while drunk on absolut vodka.

6

Gratz on making it! Nice Battlemage, I know these things :slight_smile:

7

So it’s a nice cool looking build and sorry for trying to improve it, but I just can’t help myself, you are not using it to it’s maximum potential, in my opinion. Just don’t think of it as harsh critisism, I just want to help you make your build better (I am always happy when someone comes up with really good suggestion for my builds).

Firstly, binding Arcane Mine to a skill with 4 second cooldown and not to Cadence is a big mistake, imo. RR devotion is the thing you have to proc first and as often as possible, especially given how it will have shorter cooldown than usual (I hope you have rolled maximum 22% cdr on your weapon, it’s huge for this build).

Secondly, Benemoth on melee build? Absolutely and utterly useless. You heal back with every hit of Cadence more than you get healed once in blue moon by the proc of Benemoth. I think it’s a caster’s devotion, it’s good when you have a lot of cdr and you kite a lot. It’s just a waste of points on melee builds. My suggestion - take Aldanar’s Phoenix. It’s gonna be up about 60-65% of the time, it’s an ok damage mitigation help, as well as some straight up Aether damage (and 5% crit damage).

Thirdly, you have an amazing access to slow resist and you are not using it. Having limited average attack speed and a big two hander you absolutely have to grab as much slow resist as possible, not being slowed down directly transfers into much more damage dealt and better ADCtH, thus better survivability. Mark of Modrogen in boots is useless and worse than Traveller’s mark because of that.

I don’t know to say it, but fourthly?.. Anyway, transmuted Callidor’s Tempest is definitely a weaker choice than Devastation. It just is. Yes, I understand, big weapon damage, etc. But it still just can’t compete. There is a reason Devastation is level 50 skill and CT is level 4 skill. I am a noob and forgot we can’t use Devastation on this build

So I did my best without messing with your gear choices or your concept in general, just tweaked some skills and changed devotion path.

Here is what I got

So what we have lost:

  1. 230 hp/100 armor/4 DA (lol) - absolutely meaningless
  2. Benemoth and Dryad (Benemoth is gargabe and I explained why, Dryad is just too much in a way of our devotion path, plus I don’t think it can compete with gains from ADCtH)

What we have gained

  1. 40 OA/ 38 Slow Resist/ 3% phys res (Slow Resist is crucial, OA gain is miniscule but is important because…)

  2. Dying God. Yes, tap into that power, get yourself 40% crit damage and 10% attack speed for about 75% uptime.

  3. Aldanar’s Phoenix - more crit damage, more aether damage and a cute defensive proc that does some damage too.

  4. Arcane mines is now bound to Cadence, as it should be

  5. 1 point in Markovian just to proc that DA shred sometimes to get more from our boosted crit damage.

  6. Almost forgot, your walking speed is now capped or almost capped (depending on the roll on the boots). That’s huge QoL increase.

EDIT: Sorry about devastation suggestion, forgot that we can’t use it.

8

Devastation needs a book iirc

9

Shit, keep forgetting that. Fixed initial suggestion post.

10

Yes, Devastation suggestion was a rookie mistake. Scratch that. Blitz, just use Blitz instead of Callidor’s tempest, so much more damage.

11

Thanks. By “can’t beat” I mean can’t win the fight with these guys.

12

Thanks for feedback. Will take a closer look at the evening today.

13

@mad_lee

Well, I tried your variant and came up to slightly different build (full Dying God constellation, Behemoth and etc) - you can find it in section “Alternative build variants” from the first post. For more details please see my comments below.

Yes, that’s right. However the first build was made in concept of paranoia - to get as much healing sources as possible to hold out till the end having not high physical resistence. :smiley: As for weapon - I have only 16% or 18% of CDR for now.

Can’t agree that Benemoth is useless for melee builds. Especially in case of battle mage fighting against Ravager. My physical BM dreams about such wonderful healing skills as BoG, PB or WoR.

I tried Aldanar’s Phoenix but personally did not find it too useful for this build. Cadence and maxed Blitz (or CT) with other procs are quite enough for most enemies. As for damage absorbtion, it is good against DoTs but we have mirror and nullification, not taking into account ADctH, and it seems to be enough for campaign content.

I always was wondering why such high level component does not grant slow resist. In this build we can use Traveller’s mark instead.

P.S: The max damage dealt by this build variant is 242k.

14

Why did you take eel instead of sailor’s guide in your "alternative setup? Missing out on that slow/freeze/physical resist.

I didn’t get about the part where your physical battlemage is fighting Ravager and Benemoth is of any help there. What did you mean?

So at the end, did my suggestions work, I am curious.

15

Because of the defense bonuses. We can invest 2 points from Crossroads into sailor’s guide to take slow/freeze/ resist.

Because the fight with Ravager is not short and healing sources like proc from Behemoth or BoG, PB seems to be very useful in this case.

Yes. I checked your variant (pretty close to original proposal) and it was capabale to complete campaign content. Howevere without healing constellation I had to use healing portions more frequently (nemesis, some bosses or other strong enemies without minions). I also invested additional point into Dying God to get one more source of flat aether damage (due to ring of duality).

16

I am a bit in disbelief you can fight Ravager with that char. With 14% phys res and 2600 armor and slow attack speed and no seal is it even possible?

17

Have you considered manticore instead of spear of the heavens? I know its a lot of oa/aether dmg but it’d help a lot vs aether resistance targets.

18

Krieg’s Wrath and Manticore don’t stack

19

Doh completely missed Kriegs Wrath

20

As it was already mentioned by Veretragna the procs from Krieg’s Wrath and Manticore don’t stack. So we can invest 5 devotion points in something more useful. Cursed Tincture can be used in case you feel lack of RR.

P.S: I updated guide section on gear setup.