[Battlemage] Wraith Warrior [v1.0.0.5 HC]

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
1

Aether melee build work!! I read that the general opinion of the build seems to be negative from this thread. So I got really curious to try it myself after Cadence buff and as I finally got Iskandra’s Focusing Prism to drop so I could get some elemental damage into the mix. As a result this build had come to together as aether/elemental melee S&B build. Although it was planned to be caster hybrid with CT and OFF. I ended up dropping CT and OFF as it contradict with nature of shield build which is to be attacked to proc shield devotion like Targo’s Hammer and Stone Form. The build brought me a good vibe of my old Templar Knight build but with evil look to it… Enjoy!! :wink:

Below is a quote from one of my video description.

"I have 100% physical converted to Aether/Elemental damage even without Mindwarp proc. Here’s the list of conversion from items and skills :

  1. Iskandra’s Elemental Exchange - 25% Phys to Elemental
  2. Reckless Power - 15% Phys to Aether
  3. Iskandra’s Focusing Prism - 22% Phys to Elemental
  4. Mindwarp - 15% Phys to Aether
  5. Will of the Living - 17% Phys to Aether
  6. Maiven’s Sphere of Protection - 6% Phys to Nothing (This is how Physical damage reduction on MSP works)

Total Phys to Aether - 47%
Total Phys to Elemental - 47%
Total Phys to Nothing - 6%
Total Conversion - 100%

When Mindwarp proc it increase Phys to Aether to 147%, when total conversion is over 100%, they become weight (ratio), at 147% Phys to Aether out of 200% total conversion roughly equal to 73.5% Phys to Aether out of 100% conversion.

But the truth is I have Cadence transmuter Discord, this transmuter convert Phys to Elemental before skills and items. For example, Discord level 1 convert 15% Phys to Elemental. This means my Cadence hit will have 15% Phys to Elemental right off the bat before skills like IEE and items can convert anything, this portion of damage that is converted by Discord is then separated from skills and items conversion, it is its own damage now and the other portion of physical damage left after Discord then count as 100% of physical damage that skills and items can convert.

In the other word Discord cut % portion of the cake, that piece of cake is now not count as part of the whole cake anymore, the rest of the cake now become 100% of the physical damage that conversion from skills and items have to convert up to 100%. For example level 3 Discord converts 50% Phys to Elemental and if you have 50% Phys to Elemental, you will not end up with 100% Phys to Elemental but will end up with 50 + [(50 * 50)/100] = 75% Phys to Elemental. You still have to have 100% conversion from skills and items in order to reach 100% conversion, with or without Discord.

Knowing this I can manage to put some point in Discord to guarantee that a portion of my damage will be Elemental damage with or without Mindwarp proc. This helps me deal better at dealing with high aether resistance enemies like Aether Crystal and Flesh Hulk…"


BATTLEMAGE THE WRAITH WARRIOR
VIDEO
BATTLEMAGE THE WRAITH WARRIOR GAMEPLAY [ULTIMATE BASTION OF CHAOS]
BATTLEMAGE THE WRAITH WARRIOR GAMEPLAY [VS AETHERIALS]
BATTLEMAGE THE WRAITH WARRIOR GAMEPLAY [CRUCIBLE GLADIATOR WAVE 131-150]

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[LEFT][INDENT][INDENT]GRIM CALC[/INDENT][/INDENT][/LEFT][LEFT]

[INDENT][INDENT]Base skills http://grimcalc.com/build/glItuUb
Base skills + Bonuses http://grimcalc.com/build/2tlYgvf[/INDENT][/INDENT][/LEFT]

[LEFT][INDENT][INDENT]CONCEPT OF THE BUILD[/INDENT][/INDENT][/LEFT][LEFT][INDENT][INDENT]-Aether/elemental as main damage types
-Melee Sword and Shield built around Mindwarp and Will of the Living
-With necessary items that gives cooldown reduction this build can reach 25%+ cooldown reduction, which can reduces Overguard to about 13-14 seconds. This mean it can reaches 100% block recovery for about 75% of the time. This is then affects Targo’s Hammer proc greatly
-Wraith like soldier looks cool when everything proc[/INDENT][/INDENT][/LEFT]
[b]

[INDENT][INDENT]SKILLS[/INDENT][/INDENT]

[INDENT][INDENT]- Cadence + Modifiers(Single Target/AoE/Buff)

  • Blitz + Blindside (Mobility/CC)
  • Field Command + Squad Tactics (Buff)
  • Warcry + Break Morale (Debuff/AoE)
  • Overguard (Buff)
  • Iskandra’s Elemental Exchange + Modifiers (Buff/Conversion)
  • Mirror of Ereoctes (Escape)
  • Maiven’s Sphere of Protection + Conversion (Damage Absorption/Buff)
  • Reckless Power (Buff/Conversion)
  • Nullification (Debuff)
  • Brutal Shield Slam (CC/AoE/Devotion proc) from Serrated Shell
  • Bloodthirster (Life steal) from Haunted Steel
    [/INDENT][/INDENT]

[LEFT][INDENT][INDENT]ITEMIZATION[/INDENT][/INDENT][/LEFT]

[INDENT][INDENT]Head
-Maw of Despair

Shoulders
-Iron Maiden’s Shoulderguard/Fateweaver’s Mantle/Iskandra’s Pauldrons

Chest
-Divinesteel Hauberk/Iskandra’s Vestments

Hands
-Voidsteel Gauntlets/Grasp of Unchained Might/Handguards of Justice

Legs
-Wraithborne Legwraps/Arcane Harmony Leggings/
Empowered Legplates of Valor

Feet
-Golemborn Greaves/Wraithwalkers

Weapon
-Mindwarp

Shield
-Will of the Living

Amulet
-Iskandra’s Focusing Prism

  • Component : Dread Skull The build lacks of movement speed so this helps

Medal
-Badge of Mastery with Cadenc/Warcry/Maiven’s Sphere

Rings
-Band of the Eternal Haunt/Lifegiver Signet/Any good green ring with OA or resist

Waist
-Phantom-Thread Girdle

Relic
-Agrivix’s Malice/Necrosis (Haven’t tried Necrosis yet, but I think in term of DPS it will be better than Agrivix, but Agrivix proc is too cool:cool:)[/INDENT][/INDENT]

[INDENT][INDENT]

Augments

Jewelry : Survivor’s Resilience/Survivor’s Ingenuity

Weapon & Shield: Outcast’s Wrath

Armors(Head):
Kingsguard Power

Armors(Waist):
Mogdrogen’s Touch

Armors(Chest/Legs/Shoulders/Hands/Feet):
Bladeward Powder

DEVOTION[/INDENT][/INDENT]

[INDENT][INDENT]
I chose shield oriented devotion to complement my playstyle Shieldmaiden is required to reaches 100% block recovery when Overguard is activated. Stone Form greatly increase Armor, I’d like to get to Tree of Life but too much point I had to sacrifice to get there, so I get Behemoth for Healing proc instead. You can try Spear of the Heavens but I’m not too fond of it small radius.

Devotion Route

Need I say more rush Targo’s Hammer guys!!

[ul]1 point in Ascendant Crossroad
[/ul]

[ul]Complete Anvil (Targo’s Hammer assigned to Field Command)
[/ul]

[ul]Remove point in Ascendantl Crossroad
[/ul]

[ul]1 point in Eldritchl Crossroad
[/ul]

[ul]Complete Spdier
[/ul]

[ul]Remove points in Eldritch Crossroad
[/ul]

[ul]1 point in Primodial Crossroad
[/ul]

[ul]Complete Sailor’s Guide
[/ul]

[ul]Complete Widow (Arcane Bomb assigned to Cadence)
[/ul]

[ul]1 point in Chaos
[/ul]

[ul]Complete Jackal
[/ul]

[ul]Complete Behemoth and Hawk
[/ul]

[ul]Remove all points in Jackal and Spider
[/ul]

[ul]3 points in Rhowan’s Crown (Elemental Storm Assigned to Brutal Shield Slam)
[/ul]

[ul]1 point in Order Crossroad
[/ul]

[ul]Complete Lion and Turtle (Turtle Shell assigned to Iskandra’s Elemental Exchange)
[/ul]

[ul]Complete Shieldmaiden
[/ul]

[ul]6 points in Obelisk of Menhir (Stone Form assigned to Reckless Power)
[/ul]
[/INDENT][/INDENT]

[INDENT][INDENT]ATTRIBUTE DISTRIBUTION
1 Point in Cunning (With Badge of Mastery the sword requires 341 cunning but I have 340 cunning :mad:. I need 1 cunning for that sword, if you wear Iskandra’s Vestment along with Badge of Mastery go full Physique), the rest in Physique… If you get to use the sword at level 65 try to get cunning from other slot or use Wolverine devotion until you can use it without items with cunning[/INDENT][/INDENT]

[INDENT][INDENT]LEVELING[/INDENT][/INDENT]

[INDENT][INDENT]I started of with 3 points in Cadence then rush to get Fighting Form and Blitz stop soldier mastery at 1 point in Field Command. Get Arcanist mastery to Wrath of Agrivix, I used OFF + CT combo to do AoE in between Cadence hit can clear mobs pretty quickly.
Level 20

After that rush Arcanist mastery to get Reckless Power, OFF + CT is still a good combo, we’ll be using this combo up to Ultimate. At level 35+ be sure to buy Solar Edge from Homestead Faction if you haven’t got any good weapon to use. OFF + CT combo might contradict Targo’s Hammer but at this point Targo’s Hammer have low chance to proc anyway, don’t worry we’ll get to max out Shield Training and Overguard latter on
Level 40

At level 50+ or in Elite, Max Reckless Power then, continue to level up Soldier mastery to gain more HP, stop Maiven’s Sphere at level 3 and max out CT for AoE nuke combo.
Level 60

At level 70, If you have the items beforehand this is going to be an easy ride as you can use many items that + skills to CT and OFF, the combo is really strong can blow the screen up, if you want to go full melee now then drop CT and OFF altogether and max out Overguard and Shield Training instead
Level 70

At level 80, get Deadly Momentum to max level and start using Warcry. Reduce some points from Arcanist skills like IEE and Maiven’s Sphere. If you don’t have Badge of Mastery for Warcry or Maiven’s Sphere then leave Military Conditioning at 5 or reduce points in Field Command, and use them to boost Arcanist skills
Level 80[/INDENT][/INDENT]

[INDENT][INDENT]PLAYSTYLE/FIGHT SEQUENCE

Blitz into the fray and Warcry to cut 33% of enemies health, Shield Slam to proc Elemental Storm, use Overguard when ever it off cooldown, the rest is face tank and activate MoE/Bloodthirster whenever needed. Try stay in the middle of the enemies and constantly moving to spread Agrivix proc and Targo’s Hammer to hit as much enemies as possible.[/INDENT][/INDENT]

[INDENT]CLOSING STATEMENT [/INDENT]

[INDENT]Well there goes melee build again…where are casters? I want more caster builds…Oh why…:cry:[/INDENT]

2

I’m doing a very similar build but instead i’m going full Aether. So far it deals nice damage, i’m level 37, Cadence is dealing 5k-6k crits and i’m with crap gear.

3

That pretty much my initial thought as well but consider this… how hard it’s going be to deal with aetherial enemies like Flesh Hulk and Herald of Flame. It’s going to be really painful…

4

Eh, i can kill Valdaran with my full Lighting Warder in around a minute or so. So far only one of my characters has no issue with any enemy. The others have always trouble killing a very specific type of enemy.

I’m also gonna stack around 3 debuffs, which will lower the Aether resist of those enemies by a lot. Still, it’s going to be somewhat painful to kill the Heralds and Amalgamation even with those debuffs.

5

I feel like you can do better item wise. Particularly in the hands area. Ima play with ti myself and see as I’ve been wanting to figure out how to make a proper battlemage.

6

There really isn’t a better glove for Aether BM right now.

I run a 2H Aether BM with Reckless Power and I’m using those same gloves.

Good resistances, a lot of attack speed, +Cadence, and the proc is not terrible as part of it is fire.

Both of the aether gloves are caster-only with no attack speed to speak of, and the +Skills are nothing to speak of as you’d not be running AAE or whatever.

The % Attack Speed does more than you’d get from a +50% aether damage, by far.

Well, Grasp of Unchained Might can sub in - you don’t naturally cap on pierce with this build/gear - but you’ll lose a bit of DPS from the loss of +Cadence and having to use more resist augments.

7

Crucible Gladiator wave 131-150 video added!! So much hammers. :cool:

Yep, Voidsteel Gauntlets is one of the few legendary gloves worth wearing for this build, the other being Grasp of Unchained Might and to some degree Handguards of Justice is good too. Other gloves lack attack speed (which is arguably the most valuable stat on gloves) and don’t have good resistances.

8

Should be possible like this, if you drop Obelisk for Targo.

Not sure if its better to go all the way to tree though; it is rather expensive as you said.

I don’t think Targo is inherently inferior to Stone Form - its 6 of one and half a dozen of the other, as Targo gives about half as much +% armor, but about twice as much +% shield damage blocked.

Its a 25%, so it should get 100% chance attached to War Cry or maybe even Blitz?

I do intend to try this build, and I think I’ll drop Turtle & Obelisk, and the Ascendant/Chaos Crossroads and take Targo and Scales. Or keep the chaos crossroad and take Solemn Watcher instead of Scales for that %DA and resists.

9

I try to avoid Spider devotion, because it reduces enemies attack speed which reduces chance to block and proc Targo’s Hammer. I’ll also lose extra survivability from Turtle Shell.

Stone Form is great as a whole constellation, it gives high amount of armor, block chance, stun/freeze resistance and poison/bleeding duration reduction is also good.

As for Targo, I think it can be on par with Obelisk, you can easily keep Shield Wall on 100% uptime. Warcry will has 100% chance to proc but Blitz will be about 80% chance to proc, but its strong points are heavily focused on some aspect of defense stats, while Obelisk gives you comprehensive defense stats, I think it’s just my preference though.

FYI, you can use this formula to calculate % proc chance on attacking from celestial power : every 1 second cooldown (of skill you assigned to) is double the chance of the original percentage of celestial power, if the celestial power has 20% proc chance on attacking, 1 second cooldown skill doubles that to 40%, 2 seconds cooldown skills tripples that to 60%. So if you want skill that gives “20% proc on attacking celestial power” a 100% proc on attacking, look for skill that have at least 5 second cooldown. There’s an exception to certain skills that have ticks/duration or hit with multiple hits like CoF and OFF, these skills have a counter % proc chance reduction depends on its duration.

10

I’m pretty sure turtle’s shield used to happen before anything else, including resistances, so in ultimate a white mob sneezing would pop it. Did it get changed?

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11

Quote from Game Guide…

Order of Defense :

Fumble, Dodge and Projectile Deflection
Chance to hit via Offensive Ability vs. Defensive Ability
Shield
% Reduced Damage from Monster Types
Armor
Resistances
Reduced Damage from Monster Types
% Damage Absorption
Damage Absorption <<<< This is where Turtle Shell is
12

Thanks for explaining the weird conversion mechanics!
I tried something pretty similar (shield aether battlemage) the damage was really underwhelming. That was before the cadence change though, hopefully the build would perform better now.

13

Yeah.

It used to be before everything at 1.0.0.0 - I think it only dodge/deflect was before it, so a white mob sneezing in ultimate would pop it.

Well, I don’t HC so I would still drop it :slight_smile:

It should, it made a night-day difference for my 2H one.

Well, the DPS is nowhere close to what you can get with Cadence elsewhere - there just isn’t a whole lot of gear directly supporting the build, and Reckless Power could really do with some attack speed - but its viable now.

14

Mine is currently level 68 and the aumont of items that increase Aether damage with the plus damage to Aetherials pretty much nullifies the Aether resist of those enemies. Just killed Herald of Flame in around 20 secs and i’m full Aether. Biggest crit so far is 71k and i’m still missing my items of level 75. I’m thinking of trying Targo’s Hammer proc, Aether hammers must be awesome.

I honestly was expecting my build to suck so much, but the Cadence and Deadly Momentum buff really helped my build and other very similar builds.

15

Very nice build!

I know Aether BM should work. I’m doing one right now but it’s not sword and board.

That CD% reduction pretty much gives you what you need to survive crucible so great idea there.

…this build needs more hype I think

16

Thank you!!! Finally!! I’ve been theorycrafting an melee aether build for quite a while now. I have a lvl 45 BM and almost all the needed gear. I’ll definitely give it a try! :slight_smile:

I’m still wondering about Devastation not being a part of the build. Lack of skill points?

Could “Outcast Secret” be an alternative to Maw?

As we’re talking melee aether already… Has anyone ever tried an Aether-lightning two handed druid with “Temporal Arcblade”?

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17

Devastation can only be used with an off-hand and this build is sword and shield. I wish they removed the item restriction of certain skills, at least for Devastation.

My full Aether Battlemage is level 84 and so far the only Nemesis i’ve killed is Valdaran. I can kill him in around 40 secs to a minute while facetanking the whole fight. I probably could kill him faster if he didn’t had base 50% aether resist, probably more with whatever shoulders he has.

18

W - Devastation - W - block block block.

19

My bad… I was so hyped the moment I saw this post :smiley:

20

Like Guurzak said, you can use weapon swap to switch between the off-hand to the shield and vice versa. Switch to off-hand, cast Devastation and then switch back to the shield.