[Build Guide] - The Bleeding Conjurer (with video)

Greetings everybody! Today I bring to you another build guide. I’ve done a full video on all the in’s and out’s of it, click here to check it out. Or, click here for the Grimcalc link.

This build is probably my personal favourite, to-date. It achieves a monstrous amount of bleeding (and some vitality) damage and a wide variety of debuffs, all with very solid crowd control. I’ve taken a bit of a different tact by selecting three reasonably offensive Devotion constellations (with % chance to activate attacks) to make it all come together. And yes, the build is most certainly viable against the undead - the amount (and variety) of debuffs means that even they melt pretty quickly :smiley:

Skill selection
Curse of Frailty + Vulnerability
Used, of course for the debuffs to bleeding and vitality damage to our enemies. The slowness is also quite nice.

Blood of Dreeg + Aspect of the Guardian
In effect, this is our heal spell. Some of the extra stats are “nice to have”, but we mostly want this for the healz.

Doom Bolt
Our single target nuke. Most of the build is focused around relying on crowds of enemies to spread damage as quickly as possible. So, this can come in handy if you’re 1 vs. 1 with a hero/boss.

Devouring Swarm + Falcon Swoop from Devotion
One of our main attack skills. At max level, this offers a decent amount of bleed + vitality damage as well as a nice debuff. However, more important is that it’s a great carrier for Falcon Swoop, as it passes through enemies and “ticks” for several seconds. This means Falcon Swoop triggers very frequently.

Grasping/Entangling Vines + Rend from Devotion
Decent bleed damage and has an really great slow/entrapment to keep crowds under control. Also, the amount that it ticks makes it perfect for triggering Rend almost all the time :smiley:

Storm Totem + Corrupted Storm + Acid Spray from Devotion
Does a decent amount of Vitality damage, but the solid range as well as being able to have multiple of them summoned makes it great at spreading Acid Spray, which we use for it’s enemy debuffs (making our other skills more effective)

Primal Bond
Tasty amount of %bleed damage and extra survivability, why not?

Mogdrogen’s Pact skill line
EVEN MOAR survivability, especially useful as you get to late Elite/Ultimate. Also, the energy regen is very helpful as this build is pretty heavy on the skill spam.

Devotions
The primary constellations to choose are:

  • Falcon
  • Huntress
  • Manticore

As discussed above, this is to get their triggered skills in action. When used as described above they form a delicious medley of debuffs and damage.

Falcon Swoop does massive bleed damage and uses a percentage of our weapon damage (nice!!). Huntress does a heap of bleeding damage, but also debuffs enemy Offensive ability and bleeding resistance. And finally, Manticore serves as another layer of debuffing goodness, taking down enemy resistances and armor.

The consellations to “unlock” our primary constellations are:

  • Jackal
  • Fox

And finally, other helpful constellations for resistances/survivability are:

  • Empty Throne
  • Lion
  • Crane
  • Scales of Ulcama (unlocked by getting Lion + Crane)

Gear
I’m not big on recommending specific pieces of gear, this should work as long as you’re selecting gear relevant to the damage types being done. The kinds of stuff you should be keeping an eye out for includes:

  • %bleeding damage (which often comes with %vitality damage)
  • %total damage
  • Extra energy regen or -%skill costs
  • +Shaman skills
  • The usual stuff (extra offensive ability, crit damage)

Defensively, it’s the standard fare: resistances, defensive ability and armor value :wink:

I will give a special mention to the Wildblood Vanguard Legendary set, as it’s perfect for the build. If you can get your hand on all of that goodness… Well, it’s awesome. Links below!

Also, make sure you’re using a 2-handed weapon ASAP once you have Falcon Swoop. As it uses a % of our main hand damage, we want to have as much main hand damage as possible! This makes Falcon Swoop demolish most enemies very quickly.

So, yeah! I hope this is helpful and I hope you have fun trying this yourselves. If you have the time, I would recommend watching the video as it’s a bit more detailed than what I’ve provided here. Cheers!

Attachment: Conjurer_All_Buffs.jpg

Holy shit, this sounds awesome! I have a lvl 80 Conjurer (unfortunately with 50 in each mastery), I’m going to try this out.

Yeah, it is pretty neat! You should still be OK even though you’ve maxed out both masteries. You’ll probably still have enough points to get everything you need.

Very nice idea, Kluga.
I am very interested in the final 85 build. :wink:
…and sorry in advance. I never intended to hijack your thread nor intend to “downgrade” your very nice idea!

But I see someone in trouble who helped me with his tips.

Then maybe my build can help you to solve your problem. :wink:

Conjurer without gear
http://grimcalc.com/build/Nu9e1K

Conjurer with gear
http://grimcalc.com/build/4j8FSd

My “final” gear for now.

Head____ - Clairvoyant’s Hat
Shoulders - Bloodfury Spaulders
Chest____ - Dread Armor of Azragor
Hands____ - Voidsteel Gauntlets
Legs_____ - Boneweave Leggings
Feet_____ - Boneshatter Treads
Waist____ - Girdle of Stolen Dreams
Weapon___ - Soulbearer (Forget everything else!)
Off-Hand_ - Elite Harvest’s Ledger
Amulet___ - Pendant of the Royal Crown
Ring 1___ - Seal of the Royal Crown
Ring 2___ - Jewel of the Royal Crown
Medal____ - Badge of Mastery
Relic____ - Necrosis / Solael’s Decimation

Alternate Off-Hand: Deathlord’s Tome

EDIT:
Wendigo’s Mark bound to Devouring Swarm
Twin Fangs to Bloody Pox
…but you can bind them to whatever you see fit, seriously. :wink:

Note:
The Soulbearer is a must!
The 3% of Health & Energy restored per dead enemy doesn’t sound that great or even helpful at first glance…
BUT this is so damn powerful, because of dozens of mobs dying within 1-2 seconds, that I NEVER need any potions or make a small pause during my “complete clear” farming runs. :wink:

It is no exaggeration, if I tell you that this build can face-tank nearly everything in ultimate, but Nemesis.

With all Auras and Buffs activated (NO potions!)

Yea, that’s similar to the build I’m trying to recycle. Soulbearer is indeed amazing. I went full caster with 22/12 Sigil because it’s insane.

Thanks! I definitely want to see it through to 85. I shall post again once that happens.

No worries on the “hijacking” - I’m not too fussed :wink:

Saw your video guide and decided to give this a try. Currently only level 30, but (apart from a very boring full retaliation build) this is the furthest I’ve got with zero deaths.

Looking forward to getting Rend and seeing how far I can get!

Awesome, nice work. If you can get through the earlier game then it should only get easier from there. Rend really starts to break things open :smiley:

what’s the attributes I should use? phys, cunning or spirit?

Ok, I dicked around with this setup for a while yesterday. It’s actually quite effective, even with the random items i equipped for testing. However, i find the play style too taxing, way too many skills i have to cast on every mob i come across.

That’s fair enough, it might not be everyone’s cup of tea. I find it fun to be spamming so much - nice change of pace :slight_smile:

I’ve had a bleeding conjurer for a while now and imho its one of the most powerful builds. Its taken down all bosses and heroes in ultimate with no problems including all nemesis (except Kymons) and Bourbon’s final form (a small bit or trouble there :stuck_out_tongue: ).

Its energy intensive and button pushy, it would be nice to have a button flasher, but once you get used to it it steam rolls everything.

Hello there first time poster and a fairly new player in Grim Dawn.

I am trying this build currently and I am at level 37 in Homestead area and was curious if it matters any as far as which order to choose from?

That’s exactly how I’m finding it. Super powerful, but consumes heaps of energy. I’m trying to offset that issue without sacrificing much of anything else.

Hi there! If you mean which skills to choose - not too much, but starting out with Devouring Swarm and Grasping Vines is probably the best place to start. If you have a chance to watch the video version, I talk about levelling progressions a little bit in there.

Always Kymon! You want to be able to buy Kymon’s will augment.

This is what I was trying to get to.Wasnt sure if I should have called it faction or not but since in quest says “order” I went with that wording.:stuck_out_tongue:

Edit:Even though I already chose Kymons faction,why would I want Kymon’s Will which is fire damage when I do all bleeding/Vitality type of damage?

For the most part put attribute points into physique, but as you level you’ll want to hold back some points till you have around 15 or 20 saved. You want to target 970 physique for Empowered Legplates of Valor (Flesheater Legwraps are an excellent and cheaper alternative) and 481 spirit for Abyssal Mask.

I’ve got my Action buttons mapped to keyboard letters such as the traditional movement keys and others so its a lot easier to hit the skills. But for the most part your really only hitting 3 keys for the majority, placing the AOEs CoF and GV together and launching DS from RMB isn’t that taxing. Its only for the bosses and heroes that you need more but the added only amounts to one or two occasional. But your right it is more buttons, my ranged builds are mostly holding down the LMB and the occasional KB button, so it did get a bit to get used to.

20% reduced damage is equivalent to a lvl 10 War cry. Even if you only trigger it off of Falcon, 12% reduced damage is nothing to sneer at. And if you ever want to change the build to something that does more LMB attacks, you will mis having Kymon. There is nothing good from the Order shop, and their nemesis is the most annoying in the game with constant stuns and 1323545734534 health.

would like to know what are the components on your gears? I only spotted a few on your gears, but it’d be nice to see all of it, cuz hard to figure which resists go to which.