Comparing Lightning/Physical/Bleeding damages for leveling a Warder

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
1

I am currently leveling a melee Warder character, I went so far for a more physical/bleed oriented build. I first started by rushing for max blade arc at low level, drop 6 points in Menhir’s Will for defense, equipped the strongest 2H weapons I could find, and used Falcon devotion at first. Rest of skill points went to mastery bar for the Health and the stats. It was efficient for early leveling, but a bit boring.

As soon as I had enough points, I switch to a Savagery based build (cheers to MortalKombat for convincing me of its power in this thread), with maxed Savagery, Might of the Bear and Feral Hunger (+ Upheaval after some time). Still physical/Bleed damages oriented, I felt I was doing more damage, bit less but still good AoE, but add a strong Life steal effect to keep me alive. Plus it made my life easier with dealing with mana. And it was more fun to play for some reasons (cooler effects?). As soon as I could afford (11 or 12 devotion points), I respect my devotion to rush Kraken (with Fox for green requirement, adding Bleed damage), and it made leveling from there a piece of cake. I kept pumping the mastery bar for health, stopping to max Heart of the Wild and field command, as well as 5 points in Wendigo Totem, and everything was easy.

I am not sure which way I want to go from now. Warder can go either lightning or physical (with or without bleeding). Whereas it is easy to switch skills for one or the other setup according to the items you drop (I could keep the Savagery version for both), it would require very different devotion setup, which I can’t just respec constantly. Also, I would like to level my final devotions as soon as possible. The devotion setup for lightning build includes a lot of reduction resistance, which is cool, but skills are all doing fixed damage (no %Weapon Damage component – I am thinking of Elemental Storm, Arcane Bomb or Reckless Tempest). On the other hand, going the physical road, I could stack things like Falcon Swoop, Maul or Blind Fury, which seems to scale better later on. And I would also have resistance reduction with Assassin’s Mark and Break Moral. So without all the procs from the (very late) Ultos set, can lightning be competitive compared to physical?

I dropped an Alvarick’s Rebuck and I am currently level 38 (and without considering new drops, I can buy a Legion Warblade at level 50 to upgrade it), meaning I could equip it soon. It seems my DPS would suffer from equipping it (according to the tool tip), but this might be because I am more Physical oriented so far. Maybe by respecing to lightning damage, I could increase my DPS. Also, Savagery and Upheaval add some flat lightning damage, which would benefit from the lightning setup. However, only 30% of the weapon base damage is converted to lightning (might be raised a bit by binding Amber to it), so most damage would still be physical.

So, what should I do? Without knowing what I will drop, Physical seems more reliable. I could take Falcon again, Hammer, Assassin’s Blade and Dire Bear for good damage. And/or Huntress as soon as possible to make good use of all this Bleeding Damage (could respec it later). OR I could respec to lightning/elemental damage, go for Tempest and then Rhowan’s Crown, and stick to lightning weapons. I have read somewhere that Lighting Warder are OP, but I wonder if it is not mainly due to the Ultos set, which needs to drop first and is only for level 75. Could it still be good/fun at lower level?

Maybe I did not fully understand the concept of lightning Warder. Please correct any statement I made which could be wrong. Would love any comments or thoughs on the topic! Looking forward to hear others opinions!

2

Having played both lightning and physical warders, I think the lightning option is superior for 2handing, the physical option is superior for s+b, and the physical/bleed option is inferior overall but is best done 2handed. This is just my personal opinion though, YMMV.

Assuming you want to play with Savagery, you want the Ultos set. And if you want the Ultos set, you want to go lightning. Plus, stormreaver and ultos’ axe are both lightning based, as is raka’jax if you really want to use it (not recommended). Physical options seem to favor s+b (warborn gavel) or other class combos (worldeater for commando for example)

Having resist reduction is a must for any build but especially so for a common damage type like lightning, to which many enemies are resistant (I’m looking at you, aetherial nemesis!). That said, a physical build needs resist reduction as well, but can usually get away with just using warcry or manticore’s acid splash and assassin’s mark.

In summary, you can go either way with success but I would personally recommend lightning. Physical is very powerful but I just find lightning to be more fun to play and better supported by end game gearing.

3

This is cool, I have been trying Bloodrager s+b now (also mixed some retaliate) - the dps is worst, but it seems very tanky. I do enjoy lightning more - do you think its possible to do Ultos with s+b as a lightning retaliate type toon? (Eye of the storm is very nice with retaliate) and there is some pieces that fit this theme well (Dawnbreaker 3pc, thornhide pants, titan threads boots).
I tried doing elemantalist 4pc Lights defender + 2pc Dawnbreaker + accessories, it had very good damage for a tank, but for what I wanted to do, it was not tanky enough. And you can get better results for Lights defender going another route (caster stunjacks yes, than savagery).

So I like retaliate builds, but there weak point is versus ranged enemies - I need to make a build that can clear ranged enemies ok - while completely murdering melee monsters and being able to facetank.