[Build critique] S&B Chaos Witchblade - Gladiator completed

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
1

Hello all,

I’ve been playing and silently lurking the forums for a while, leeching from this knowledge compendium. As such, I would like to thank all the people that actively share their builds and knowledge, taking the time to comment on other people’s build or requests.

I make this thread as much to share this build as to receive comments to improve it. This started of a concept trying to exploit the life steal from sigil of consumption to make the most of witchblade tankiness. From there started a long and defying journey - with several 180º turns - that culminated a few days ago when I finished gladiator crucible. As Gladiator crucible was my goal, I made a lot of compromises to increase tankiness.

I took this as a personal challenge, and now that it is over - while satisfied with the build - I am aware that there’s much room for improvement. In its current form it is by no means a tier 1 crucible farmer (no extra spawn, had to use def and off banners and 4 buffs), but it breezes through vanilla (nemesis included) and can kill Rashalga with ease, as long as you take the time to kite a little. More importantly - after playing several classes to 85 - I think it is a solid build for begginners, rather straightforward and easy to itemize. It is also fun to play, requiring a lot of attention with many cooldowns (although some people don’t like this :eek:). However rotation is not spammy, as you need to make strategic use of some cooldowns and rely mostly on cadence for your damage.

Here’s the grimtools link: http://www.grimtools.com/calc/O2GP1XVd

As a summary of the build, tankiness is amazing. Even though I don’t get many overcapped resistances, the combination of high armor and DA, moderate health regen, ADTH and Sigil give us incredible resilience, and let us shrug off most damage received in a few hits. With overguard active (even if not maxed) I just don’t die, being even able to tank Rashalga through her red aura. Most room for improvement lies in increasing damage, and after trying a lot of stuff, I am not sure on how to do that. We have rather decent Chaos RR (-50% chaos from fang of chton, symbol of solael and EF, 13% reduced resistances from open hand of mercy and 15 reduced resistances from blackstar of deceit, all of them should stack as far as I have reserached). I already checked both Thrasheur’s and Soprano’s DW witchblades, but haven’t got a definite answer as to what to tweak in my char.

A few comments on some of my decisions:

  • Mark of the myrmidon; Hammerfall girdle; boneshatter threads, demonbone legplates and divinisteel hauberk were taken mostly for the defensive stats and resistance balancing. A few of them also provide useful stats for our main damage sources (chaos/vit). I tried a few more offensive setups, but felt there was too much tankiness loss and damage returns didn’t feel that great. And of course, there’s resistance balancing :rolleyes:.
  • Ghould and revenant: Both provide much needed AS and ADTH. Proc from ghoul is a life saver and while I was skeptic about the skeleton summons, they seem to do their damage and more importantly help you managing the mobs, even if taking aggro for only a few secs or holding groups of thrash in place. I tried different combinations, including Bat, Chariot and Hawk, but in the end felt this setup was better.
  • I bind Eldritch Fire to Warcry for the guaranteed AOE proc. As EF shows no CD I assume it is applied to all units affected by Warcry. While it is active only 60% of the time aprox., this allows me to time all my active RR (Eldritch Fire 100% proc on aprox. 7 secs CD, COF and Solael’s flame) and allows me to use Warcry’s CD as a timer to reapply them. Besides, I would have no other good way to proc it, as I’d rather bound Sigil to Fiend. It might work with bloody pox, but I haven’t tried it out yet.

Well, that would be all for the time being. Sadly I don’t have as much time as I’d like to make a more detailed post, but I think I provided enough information for the build’s assessment and to provide insight on how to improve it.

Thanks in advance for your comments!!

2

Sorry don’t have a lot of time, but here’s some quick tips off the top of my head…

  • Replace Mark of Myrmidon with Haunted Steel for more ADCtH and Bloodthirster proc. That will help your survivability more than 120 health, 25 DA and -15% shield recovery.

  • Get rid of the Soleal’s transmuter because it only applies to weapon attacks, and Fang already has 100% chaos damage so it’s worthless to you.

  • I get why you like Revenant, but you’d be better off getting rid of it along with Panther and Solemn Watcher and getting Lizard, Anvil, and Chariot (except for Vit resistance point) instead. Your DA will be comparable with the Chariot proc, and your OA will be much higher. You lose attack speed and ADCtH but you get Anvil proc which is nice, and Chariot proc which helps with survivability as well.

  • Attack speed will be your biggest help in increasing DPS, since yours is at 160%. Swap Peerless Eye for Empowered Essence, put Dread Skulls in your medal/ammy slots and put Kilrian’s Soul in your chest. Your OA will drop a bit but if you make devotion swaps that will mitigate it somewhat and your attack speed will go to 177%, which is a nice boost (with Prismatic Rage and Ghoulish Hunger that will go up to 198%, which is basically capped).

Hope that helps!

3

Thanks man. A lot of good tips in there. I’ll give them a try and report back to let you know how it went.

A few comments:

  • I thought Solael’s witchfire transmuter conversion also applied to flat damage from cadence. Damn.
  • I am not sure I’ll be able to replace the components in amulet/medal, one of them provides me with much needed aether resist and the other one might be crucial for energy management. I’ll certainly try changing arcane spark for a dread skull.
  • Losing the OA and crit dmge from the peerless eye is gona hurt, but you’re right: AS is king here.

Thanks again!!

4

Solaels wf transmuter does apply on all phys dmg you have so on cadence and deadly momentum flat phys dmg also.

Long ago I made chaos WB setup and some time ago i tweaked it for crucible purposes, since it uses cadence as main attack I chose to pick abominable might over hungering void for that 50% phys to chaos and also because it doesn’t have negative impact on HP regeneration.

With AM and judic signet proc up

For vanilla purpose I was using different setup. Major differences were in devotion department it had both tier3 chaos devotion (AM and HV) and rifstone instead of HS as weapon component for additional to chaos conversion.