High DPS Witch Hunter (easily kill Fabius)

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
1

Scouring the forums I couldn’t find any melee Witch Hunter builds that were focused on Chaos and Vitality damage. The one I did find had < 10K DPS. I am sure they are out there, but nothing was popping up. If anything it was nice to not be biased by other builds when creating this one.

I find that going all poison yields amazing screen clearing at the expensive of being somewhat fragile due to the devotion paths and lack of defense in poison based gear.

Going chaos/vitality on the other hand allows you to pick up almost all defensive devotions (including behemoth, solemn, and tree of life), while still allowing you to pick up the top tier chaos/vitality devotion (The Dying God). This provides for awesome health regen (1130/sec before giant’s blood and healing rain kick in) as well as damage (35K/sec before procs).

Pros:

  • Awesome health regen (1130/sec BEFORE devotions kick in)
  • 2 maxed healing spells
  • Awesome life leech from gear, spells, and devotions
  • High Damage (35k/sec before procs)
  • High OA (over 2600). Procs take it to 2900. You will be criting constantly.
  • Fairly tanky because of solid DA (>2200 w\procs), massive life leech, and massive health regen
  • Easily Kill Fabius in around 30-60 secs :wink:
  • Good all around build for both offense and defense

Cons:

  • Not a lot of AOE. The relic does help quite a bit though.
  • Uses monster uniques, although I imagine there are some close equivalents laying around that can cover the same huge resistance gaps.
  • Low stun resistance (see my notes on Iron Maiden below to fix this). Everything else is about capped except Aether.
  • Not the most exciting build to play but still pretty fun.

Gearing:
Weapon Left: Fang of Ch’thon (w/riftstone)
Weapon Right: Fang of Ch’thon or Crimson Spike (w/shard of beronath) <-- crimson spike more leech but less damage
Head: Clairvoyant’s Hat (w/prismatic diamond) <-- mainly for +1 all skills and Aether resist
Amulet: Empowered Essence of Beronath (w/arcane spark)
Chest: Empowered Fanatics Overcoat (w/chains of oleron)
Belt: Girdle of Stolen Dreams (w/rigid shell)
Hands: Harbringer’s Grasp (w/unholy inscription)
Legs: Wraithborne Leggwraps (w/silk swatch) <-- +6% OA…yowwssa… Plus nice defensive proc and some good resistances
Boots: Golemborn Greaves or Elite Rhowari Greaves (w/Mark of Mogdrogen)
Ring 1: Open Hand of Mercy or Resistant Cronley’s Signet of Destruction (w/corpse dust)

Ring 2: Closed Fist of Vengeance or Thunderstruck Cronley’s Signet of Readiness (w/corpse dust) <-- You really want the whole Judiactor’s Signets if you can swing it. The health regen and OA/DA boost is HUGE.

Medal: Black Star of Deceit (w/wardstone)
This medal was tailor made for this build. Aside from the -resist, you get a nice boost to skills and damage.

Relic: Solael’s Decimation
I prefer this over Necrosis. but feel free to experiment. One less spell to cast and the overall clearing speed seems faster because of the AOE from Decimation. Also the +1 to Occultist is nice. Necrosis is probably better for bosses for the -chaos resist but I stick with the former and it suits me fine.

Shoulder: Fabius Resistant Pauldron of Mending (w/silk swatch)
This and Ring 1 are really critical for covering resistances, but anything similar should do. These pauldrons are simply amazing. The resistances are crazy high plus you get health regen.

Fabius:
For the most part you can just face tank. Use good timing with your healing spells and it’s a breeze. Depending on his weapons you can kill him in 30-60 seconds. If he has really good weapons you may have to kite a bit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Tp2nYKzteo

Iron Maiden:
Way trickier than Fabius IMO. Switch to Avatar of Mercy and Elite Legion Greaves to cover the stun resist. This is crucial because of the blitz. Run in circles around her to avoid blitz then tank and repeat as heals allow.

Rashalga:
Switch to Avatar of Mercy. You can almost tank her but not quite. You’ll need to back off periodically and chaos strike back in. Get some hits in and then back off to regen your health and spell cooldowns.

Shar’Zul:
Switch to Avatar of Mercy. You can face tank him as I show in the video below, but feel free to play it safe and kite a bit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YljsGIo_6zA

Other notes:
Huge health regen (which is always good) helps to offset hungering void devotion proc and vampirism from crimson spike. However, I’ve been sticking with two fangs lately and I prefer it for the extra damage (over crimson spike) and +1 to skills.

The general idea is to curse > blade trap (for -DA) > sigil (for even more leech) > tank away. Simply chaos strike around if you are between heals and the regen will keep you alive.

The hellhound while doing almost no damage give us another 2.2K/DPS (via the aura) plus retaliation for only 2 points invested. Set to defensive mode. You can always use as a warcry type grenade when needed as well.

Procing devotions:
Use Chaos Strike for Hungering Void and Beronath’s Fury for Flame Torrent. You can replace Flame Torrent with Twin Fangs for even more life leech, but I prefer the faster clearing speed of Flame Torrent.

Grim calc with gear +devotions:
http://grimcalc.com/build/65DhTrd

Grim calc without gear +devotions:
http://grimcalc.com/build/jgibaB7

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2

I still prefer my pure poison caster Witch Hunter. I’m the epitome of a glass cannon as I can stay away (until I Shadow Strike in the middle of a mob for my Vile Eruption proc) and douse them in poison until I see 100K+ ticks or they die. Most mobs don’t last long enough to reach me, though I haven’t tried all the Nemesis bosses yet with this build.

3

Yeah my poison build is a major glass cannon but it’s melee based. It’s admittedly more fun to play than this chaos/vit build but I think glass cannons in general are.

4

good work.
if you can load more videos:rolleyes:

5

Well damn, this is a build i am currently leveling. Glad to know it is viable. I may post my version of this down the road when i finish it. Nice job :).

6

Since Mark of Dreeg is redundant with Black Star of Deceit, you could drop it in favor of a Riftstone. Chaos Strike is far better than Shadow Strike for this build.

7

Good suggestion! Black star alone would require you to be criting every 3 seconds which with the high OA of this build should work fine I imagine. It gave me a another 800/sec dmg and with the %chaos bonuses it actually does some decent damage.

8

Thanks! I tried to make a video yesterday but I need to research and find a good screen recorder. The one I tried was free and didn’t work very well. I am going to try some more later and link some videos on youtube.

9

Thanks! Definitely viable! Not the fastest mob clearing speeds in the world (but still really good I think), but the fact you are pretty tanky makes this a great stress-free farming character. Be sure to reply here when you are done with your new character so I can take a look :).

10

I will for sure, it will probably be a while though, as I am leveling it with someone I work with and we do not play every night. I will say on your offhand though, have you checked out the green scepters that drop off caster enemies? Like your main hand, they deal pure damage types (chaos being very common) and that may be a better weapon if you can find one with good rolls. I found a ton farming death’s vigil rep on my main character, which is actually why I wanted to make this build. I wanted to see if I could make dual wielding caster weapons viable, haha.

As for gameplay recording software, I use plays.tv to record and I have found it to be pretty good. It’s free, and doesn’t destroy my framerate when I record, which is obviously very important.

11

I’d have to see the scepters you are referring to. I could go with two blades of ch’thon which is pure chaos damage, but I went with the Crimson Spike for the life leech (via vampirism). Even though the build already has a lot of leech, the extra 15% does help a lot. Plus the extra life leech per second it gives you, which can come from multiple enemies while you are surrounded. I’ll check out that recorder. Thanks for the tip!

12

How about your attribute points? Currently levelling up a witchhunter, going to follow this build. How do I put the attribute points?

13

You want to go all physique for the extra health which is critical because the gearing and devotions barely cover it as it is. That’s why the fanatics overcoat or something with health is really important gear-wise. I would save 10 points or so until level 85 just in case you need some spirit or cunning for gear, etc., although I didn’t need it. Your gear may not end up exact to mine so this is always a good practice.

14

Thank you. I may be posting more questions about it on the following days. Would be cool if you added a levelling section, to show what you chose as you levelled.

15

I added a video showing a Fabius kill. :wink:

16

I made some tweaks to the devotions and gear. I also added videos for Fabius and Shar’Zul (including the last level of Bastion of Chaos). I plan to post more videos over the next week.

17

Nice build. John Bourbon video please.

18

I haven’t tried fighting John Bourbon yet. I’ll take a crack at it and see how it goes ;).

19

Hello Spaz,

I would like to know how many points do you put into Physique, Cunning, and Spirit. Also, what is does your ability bar look like.

Let me know when you get a chance.

Thanks!

20

This guide looks great. Could I ask you to set devotion step by step and also replacements of items on lower lvl?