Background: When I started playing the game the first legendary my conjurer found was a Guillotine. I wanted to use that weapon and since it does bleeding damage and has +1 to soldier and shaman skill, I had to make a warder.
Since I was new to the game and was a bit scared of not being able to get mastery points back, I decided to not go to 50 in either class and since it seemed to work out well for me I kept it that way. I have 40 points in Soldier and 25 points in Shaman. I don’t think spending 22 points to get Oleron’s Rage is worth is and I don’t think spending 45 points to get Blood Pact and Primal Bond is worth it.
Build without gear: http://grimcalc.com/build/nxT6I4
Build with gear: http://grimcalc.com/build/Bip3CD
The build does great damage against trash. Normally it’s enough to throw one Grasping Vines at mobs and they all get hit by Rend and die. If you get mobbed, Counter Strike does a lot of AoE damage as well. The build does decent damage against single target mobs. It has very good survivability since I have Turtle Shell, Giant’s Blood and Healing Rain from devotions. I can facetank most things. If there is something that’s hard to tank I can still do decent damage by kiting and throwing Grasping Vines and Devouring Swarm on them to keep the bleeds going and then going in and hitting the mobs once in a while when I have cooldowns up. The main weakness with this build is killing undead mobs. Even with a lot of reduction of resists they don’t take full damage in Ultimate. I’d rather play another character if I have to do Steps of Torment, even if I have done it in Ultimate with this character. It’s just frustrating to see half the damage numbers you normally do even with up to -115% reduction to bleed resistance.
The playing style is very simple since I have so few skills. Walk in, plant Wendigo Totem, use Grasping Wines, Devoring Swarm and Behead/Decapitate (from Blessed Whetstone/Bloody Whetstone on your weapon). If you want you can add a point to Blitz or War Cry but I don’t feel they are necessary and spending energy on skills that aren’t needed drains your energy bar.
Devotion path:
Yellow crossroads
Tortoise (skill: Turtle Shell)
Purple crossroads
Falcon (skill: Falcon Swoop)
Red crossroads
Jackal
Sailors Guide
Green crossroads
Behemoth (skill: Giant’s Blood)
Huntress but skip the node that gives damage to beasts/health/pierce resistance (skill: Rend)
Kraken
Remove all three points from Jackal
Remove red crossroads
Remove purple crossroads
Assassins Blade (skill: Assassin’s Mark)
Eel
Solemn Watcher
Blue crossroads
Tree of Life 4 points (skill: Healing Rain)
I think it’s a good mix of bleeding skills and lots of defense, which you are going to need.
Devotion Assignments:
Assassin’s Mark on Savagery.
Falcon Swoop on Devouring Swarm
Rend on Grasping Vines (this is a must)
Giant’s Blood on Field Command
Healing Rain on Mogdrogen’s Pact
Turtle Shell on Counter Strike
Gear: I haven’t played the game enough to know what is best in slot. Things that have worked well for me are of course The Guillotine as your main weapon. I like Tinker’s Ingenuity for Belt. Not only does it give great resists, it also adds another tank proc. If I were to use a defensive relic, I could use a belt with +bleeding on it. It’s a matter of preference. You basically want as much damage as you can get away with without dying. Vileblood Mantle as shoulder armor is great since it gives another bleeding resist debuff.
Other than that, I like stuff that give bleed procs. I’m using Korvoran’s Chestguard and Empowered Brawler’s Gloves mainly for the bleed procs. The more sources of bleed you can get, the better.