i started playing again a few days ago and saw that i started a DEE / shield witchblade , one year ago,ca level 35, tested it and i think i will try it.
i am sure there was a guide or a thread about a build like that but i can´t find it while searching the forum.
can someone help me? or at least give me a working build ( just a example is enough, i like to play around with skills)
There is no build in WB, that work well with DEE, instead of u can see Phisical build. Dreeg is now one of the most weakest set in the game.
You were probably looking for this, though it’s quite old now:
http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/showthread.php?t=52149
If you are going for a Witchblade, don’t play DEE. That build you are referencing is super outdated and irrelevant. DEE Witchblade simply put gonna suck if you put it together today.
i will try it anyway, i am thinking about skipping the shield later and using a offhand
If you skip shield you don’t need Soldier then.
Please don’t be discouraged by what others are saying and keep experimenting! DEE Witchblade is perfectly viable for the main campaign and just because it can’t do something as retarded as 150-170 crucible in 3 minutes it does not mean that it will suck. Just experiment with it and you will find for yourself whether you enjoy it or not (yes enjoyment may be more important to some than crucible times).
i am totally not interested in crucible anyway. but thats what you alway get in most games, people that tell you that your builds won´t work in ultrapower endgame content.
if the build works in the maingame and i have fun,good enough for me!
No idea what this is capable of doing in 150-170 crucible, but even it is somewhat old it should still be pretty good for most content, campaign for sure. My advice is just play whatever builds you find fun and ignore the crucible fanatics with their crazy standards, if they can’t do 150-170 under 6 min they are not happy…
Come on. Yes there’s a lot of recent builds that do under 6 min cruci nowadays. Yes many builders now play mostly cruci. But to ignore someone experienced in the game saying DEE witchblade isn’t as good as it used to be because you guys think he’s just talking about cruci is pure bullshit. Even in campaign when you compare DEE with supporting gear to other skills with supporting gear DEE still lags behind.
I’m not saying DEE witchblade won’t work. Any build works in campaign as long as you yourself are flexible in defining what’s working or not. If you think killing theodin in 3 mins is what works then good for you. But if you expect 20-30 second kills then you better lower those expectations.
PS. If you’re even thinking of ditching shield then don’t play WB. The shield is the entire point of soldier there. Incoming comments about what do you care if he uses offhand on a soldier lmao he thinks it’s fun.
DEE Witchblade will work to some extent for campaign but it is by no means the best way to play DEE now. You’re trading a lot of damage/RR from a second mastery like Nightblade for a lot of added tankiness in Soldier that you don’t really want or need on a Poison DoT build due to it’s nature.
DEE Witchblade is a relic from when Crucible used to be much tougher such that only the tankiest characters could farm and complete it, even casters were regularly seen using shields because they needed as much as they could get. Since then, the difficulty has been loosened up so that this is no longer the case.
But hey, if you still want to go for it because you find the playstyle closer to what you enjoy, more power to you. I’m just giving advice on why people here advice against DEE Witchblade nowadays when it used to be a popular build long ago.
That’s how happens someone crying he can’t do in game some boss and die plenty of time or post build, that’s how good is it and totally screwed up things. Still campaing able, but me, x1x1x1x2, mad_lee, whose always building and trying out any concept stated that it’s weak compare to others.
And if u just get some suggestion to try out celsital monsters or cruci and die. It will be disapointment for u.
This doesn’t mean to not try out something new or concept, but nowdays in grim dawn there are few things that’s clear for the builders, that we don’t try, cause we know won’t work. Like building a DW commando, insta die… U can try, may be will work in cruci, but a blademaster always will be better.
To the OP: more power to you man, I am glad there are still players like this around.
DEE Witchblade is perfectly viable and by viable I mean: First, it does “not suck” Second, it is perfectly capable of clearing and farming the main campaign except mogdrogen/ravager. It might not be the best at what you want it to do but it can still do many things reasonably well. And yes you can play him without a shield with no regret.
Just to avoid some misunderstanding: I like to read builds by Mad_Lee and other experienced players as they often come up with very interesting ideas. On the other hand, there is a widespread tendency to attribute some kind of divine insight to them which may sometime cause more damage than good. For this reason, when they claim that some builds “suck” I do not take them at the face value because I know that their threshold for “sucking” is (IMO) unnecessarily low.
Nobody is ignoring mad_lee opinions. He is by far one of the best build makers out there, but his opinion is flawed by his extremely high standards. Not everybody plays crucible, as unbelievable it may sound to you. OP was not asking for a crucible build, he said he just wants to continue where he left off.
Since he asked for a witchblade shield DEE build, and this is the only one I ever seen posted here, I provided that link. If there are others, feel free to add a link and add something actually constructive to this discussion.
I think something along this concept would be agreeable for MC: Grimtools: DEE-spam witchblade
Long ago I made a pyro (because I had an existing 100 pyro) with a similar idea, and demo is probably the most useless support class ever for DEE spam. DEE has its issues, but it was a fun experiment - I didn’t even have the full DEE set and used 4/5 with whatever I had.
For the above Witchblade I went Oleron’s Rage rather than Possession for OA (and some IT will convert to poison); you definitely want decent OA if you are going the Hungering Void route(which is simply my preferred default route…). This compromise loses out on some %acid and I didn’t punch the actual numbers, but I have a feeling that this will prove advantageous.
I don’t know how much value you get out of shield (overguard) but it has a point in there for the concept. I suppose points could be juggled into it, if it is of value here.
Soldier does give health, fill in a few resistance gaps, and give decent regen to offset Hungering…so there’s that. And it has Battlecry for DR and Blitz for movement.
It could be fun. Energy might be an issue which may require alternating between DEE bursts and Biting Blades - that’s something for experimentation. You could move some attribute points from physique into spirit for a larger energy pool.
Edit:
Stronghold Defender shield was also a very good option for +1 to-all-skills and pierce, vitality and elemental resist. DA will suffer a bit, but Wasting or other stuff could be tweaked as +1 to skills frees up a lot of skills.
That works out to something like this: Grimtools: DEE-spam Witchblade with Stronghold Shield
And there are various MI shields that could be useful with various affix/suffix.
If you were motivated to move from shield to offhand, then you have a few possibilities:
There are many ways to play DEE Witchblade. This is my personal Poison Knight, using Doom Bolt as secondary skill.
It’s been my favourite build, because of its unique gameplay.
You can compare it with yours and get some ideas 
It does not perform well relative to most builds the average player will make. That is why the board veterans are saying it sucks. Campaign viability is separate and a simple yes or no, but with enough time practically anything can eventually win.
You say the build can clear reasonably well. In the absolute sense maybe, but relative to other builds’ clear speed it is bad.
There is no synergy between soldier and occultist for poison/acid and this is important given the resist reduction shortcomings of the damage type.
Lastly, compare spam DEE to Seal of shadows component skill.
DEE - 25% weapon damage. and 650 flat damage. 18% +crit, costs ~120 energy, costs up to 48 skill points and requires a lot of +skill gear to reach this maximum potential.
Seal of shadows - 70% weapon damage, 525 flat damage, 25% +crit, costs 45 energy, costs a component slot but provides 8-13 flat acid, +4% casting speed and +50%acid/poison damage.
This is a major reason why spam DEE is considered a weak skill. The opportunity cost for investing in a skill where there is a cheap alternative that is ~80% as powerful as a maxed gear supported DEE is huge; you could go Raddagan acid sigil + transmute DEE for the same skill point investment (Skip last 2 passive of DEE) + still have the seal of shadows spam skill. Acid shadow strike, acid bone harvest, there are many better ways to spend skill points than spam DEE.
Before anyone says Biting blades should be nerfed, DEE is the badly designed skill that needs rebalancing.
All good points, in general. DEE has flaws. And acid is short of RR in general.
There is no synergy between soldier and occultist for poison/acid and this is important given the resist reduction shortcomings of the damage type.
Well…only Nightblade has any poison synergy in terms of RR…and not that many poison skills. Necromancer has the Ravenous skill but it competes with Manticore for RR. So overall the best possible acid synergies are rather limited and perhaps boring as a result.
Imho, some of the problem lies with the Shroud of Dreeg set, itself. It is takes a lot of important slots and doesn’t provide much in acid support other than %acid boosts. The defensive proc is meh and the weapon has no flat acid. It’s not a clear leader in the DEE/acid area.
Compare the Dark One’s set vs Shroud of Dreeg simply swapping those slots:
The Dark ones configuration has 40% more acid RR and about the same end skills with better set resistances, health, DA. Less OA and less overall % acid, but not numerically significant when the RR is factored in. Especially when dealing with very high acid-resist mobs.
(There’s also an amulet: Mythical Pestilence of Dreeg with -15% RR . To be fair, however, both conduit and amulet are not easy to roll and in FG sets could be easier to match up)
Using the Dark one’s version = 25(mace)+15(amulet)+23(Rumor)+28(Manticore)+18(Vulnerability) = 109 RR. Dreegs is only 70RR (Rumor+Mant+Vuln) = 40% less.
40% extra RR on DO set vs +500% acid on DEE set translates into slightly more damage on low acid-resist mobs and significantly more damage on high acid-resist mobs. DEE set fares worse in act5+ due to increased acid resists of mobs in MC.
Both will do MC, though. And there are probably quite a few playstyles and Soldier mixes that may appeal to others, such as the example posted by Skorpius above.
Interesting comparison of dot value:
20 skill Maxed Black Death gives ~200 poison/s whereas
60 DEE skill gives ~500 poison per second.
=DEE is more expensive for the overall dot quantity than Black Death.
Using biting blades opens up possibility of using mythical plaguebearer weapon for -25% poison res.
The Radaggan set gives -25% poison and vitality res to aura of censure, grants a fair bit of acid to sigil of consumption and has piercing damage conversion to acid (which boosts biting blades). There is synergy here, censure + vulnerability + manticore stack up both poison and vitality RR at same time so secondary vitality damage may well be a nice contribution also.
https://www.grimtools.com/db/itemsets/138
Maybe biting blades + plague bearer + Radaggan is good. Never looked into the set before.
Why do you people keep saying there’s no synergy with DEE & Soldier. Soldier synergizes with everything because it’s skills are weapon damage based. And you can use physical to acid conversion on the flat damage the skills have.
Spammable DEE with Cooldown Forcewave (you will need a green caustic of blight, venom, corrosion or spellweaving shield. crafted or MI)
Cooldown DEE with either spammable blade arc or cadence
Spammable 2h forcewave with transmuted DEE
all of these combo’s have perfect synergy with the right weapon.
Then you also have the belt that converts 100% of vitality damage to physical