[DW melee] Beginner's Virulent Dervish

Appreciate the build & detailed leveling section! As a former D2/D3 player this has been super helpful to learn the game mechanics and some of the interactions between damage/skills/conversions/etc.

Wanted to get your & the community’s thoughts on the Lethal Assault/Pneumatic Burst change in the latest patch. Do you think switching the early investment from Lethal Assault to Pneumatic Burst would be warranted, or is the Acid damage increase from LA the more important aspect than the OA? New to the game so trying to get a feel for the higher priority boosts/stats.

Having a ton of fun with this build so far! Got lucky with Mutagenic Ichors and steamrolled Warden Krieg with maxed Nidalla’s & Night’s Chill + Envenomed Weapons.

OA isn’t super important early on, focus on flat and %damage.

Glad you’re having fun :slightly_smiling_face:

Do you have a guide for everything??

Thanks for ANOTHER distraction from the work I’m supposed to be doing right now…

You’re welcome!

Advice:

after reset the game for the new patch. I choose this build for my starter and You can easy farm the mad queen claws. All you need to to is: attack for 6 seconds. run away for 6 seconds. attack for 6seconds. run away for 6seconds. attack … etc… I never tried to kite her but if you get the timing right you can kill her and farm the weapon.
I found the weapons a huge upgrade.

1 Like

I’m probably just missing it, but where to stat points go on this build? Are they all physique?

you can open grim tools. then put mouse over the stats and you see number of points invested in each stat. That is what I do when figuring out build stat points

Awesome! I never noticed that!

Starting with 2 Viloth rings :slight_smile: abb has good Power than… Zhareth when you Push CTRL + Shift you can see how many skill points were unvested without + Skills from The items in Grim tools

And Zhareth. Dont forget to Download Grim internals+Full rainbow and ITem assistant. You will love it :slight_smile:

Im now 23 standing at last Devotion Shrine of Act1 … works very good :slight_smile:

Hi. I played this build around January of 2020, but because of COVID I was unable to play ANYHING at all.
I finished the sstory on normal with it and I liked it a lot.
Is the build still viable to get to end-game (not farm it, just to get to it) in the current patch?

Yes, it is still viable.

1 Like

Thank you!!

I have been loving this guide so far, thanks! For the Devotions, why did you choose Revenant as opposed to something that may simply boost Poison/Acid damage, or OA/DA?

Revenant’s skill at the end Raise the Dead lowers the resistances on enemies for all damage types making them take more damage, including the build’s Acid/Poison damage. It’s one of the strongest ways of increasing a character’s damage output and especially helps when it comes to dealing with enemies or Bosses that heavily resist your damage type - meeting something with 100+% Acid resistance without any way of lowering that is gonna sting :wink:.

Acid/Poison characters usually take Revenant or Manticore for the specific kind of resistance reduction it provides. What tips Revenant over here is that it also provides attack speed and life steal for auto-attackers.

1 Like

Hmm I see, thanks for the reply. One of the main things I am trying to learn is just how to make general decisions like whether to go with one constellation over another. And for this build, it seems like Manticore would be something to prioritize, but it doesn’t even make the cut. I guess acid spray just isn’t quite as good as Black Blood.

I wouldn’t really compare Black Blood and Acid Spray. Regardless of whether you do pick Acid Spray or not, any Acid/Poison character would want to go for Yugol’s constellation (or Tainted Eruption in Abomination, typically both) as the damage and stat boost both offer is great and they share extremely similar requirements.

Besides damage, Black Blood also has utility in lowing the damage effected enemies deal which is important for DW Acid Dervish here. Manticore reduces enemy resistance but that’s already covered by Revenant. In terms of damage procs here, Guardian’s Gaze or Scorpion Sting strike me as better and do get taken by Acid/Poison builds sometimes alongside Rumor/Black Blood/Tainted Eruption if they can find enough binds for them. Acid Spray too if the attack/cast speed and global life steal on Revenant isn’t needed.

1 Like

Gotcha. I see that Manticore actually lowers the resistances twice as much as Revenant. So the main tradeoff seems to be that Revenant provides some survivability that Manticore does not (life-steal). So when I work on my own builds, perhaps by end-game I will have to reduce some offensive devotions for more health/survivability by the end.

Not trying to be rude so forgive me for asking but are you sure you’re looking in the right places there?
acidspray

1 Like