Nidalla's Witch Hunter: Guide + Video!

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
1

Huzzah! I return with another build guide. For the full, in-depth video guide please click over here!

The theory behind this build isn’t too complicated, but it’s certainly a busy playstyle. Offensively, it’s all about whacking stuff as quickly as possible to spread the poison/acid pain, but since it’s a dual-wielding build it’s a touch on the squishy side. So, jumping around with Shadow Strike and spamming both healing spells that are on offer should help with keeping you alive!

I’ve got fairly close to best-in-slot gear, and the build’s certainly ultimate viable. Things start getting a little tough towards the end though, so possibly tweaking gear and setting up devotions in a more defensive manner could help with making things a little more comfortable.

Skills

Blood of Dreeg + Aspect of the Guardian
One of the two heal spells for this build, but should be treated more as a passive buff that you’ll just constantly need to cast. Too many good buffs come from this skill not to have it switched on all the time!

Possession
The only other skill we grab from Occultist. Near-perfect passive ability for the build!

Dual-wielding line
Nidalla’s hidden hand is the main interest here. But of course it only triggers for certain dual-wielding skills! Nevertheless, investing the points as per the Grimcalc link should mean default attacks are doing plenty of damage!

Amarasta’s Blade Burst + Lethal Assault
Lethal Assault is the main interest here. When it triggers it offers a lot of really valuable bonuses that help this build shred. Having this skill as the LMB attack should mean it triggers as often as possible, which is exactly what we want.

Ring of Steel + Circle of Slaughter + Ring of Frost
A solid crowd control/stun option.

Shadow Strike + Nidalla’s Justifiable Ends
An excellent skill for general mobility, but NJE actually does HUGE amounts of damage once maxed out and paired with Tainted Eruption devotion skill (more on that later).

Pneumatic Burst line + Breath of Belgothian
The other heal + “should always have switched on because awesome buffs” skill!

Veil of Shadow + Night’s Chill
A solid passive debuff for all enemies within our radius. One could argue for using Curse of Frailty from Occultist instead, but I prefer VoS because it doesn’t require casting.

Blade Barrier
The “panic button” as I like to call it. Press it when you’re in a pinch!

Phantasmal Armor + Anatomy of Murder
Decent skills, worth a point as they should receive boosts from gear.

Merciless Repetoire
Another excellent source of damage-boosting goodness!


Malediction (granted by the Malediction relic)
If you choose to go with this relic, it offers a really great passive skill. Some brilliant debuffs on offer!

Devotions
Currently, I have Chaos, Eldritch and Order all selected in the Crossroads.

The main devotion goals for this build were:

  • Tainted Eruption from “Abomination”. This skill is bound to Shadow Strike. Important to note: don’t select everything from this constellation. Only take the necessary nodes to get Tainted Eruption.
  • Acid Spray from “Manticore”. This is bound to Amarasta’s Blade Burst.
  • Giant’s Blood is quite important too. This can be bound to any passive skill.

The other “active” skills offered from devotions are:

  • Scorpion Sting from “Akeron’s Scorpion”. This is bound to Ring of Steel.
  • Turtle Shell from “Tortoise”. This can be bound to any passive.

The remaining selected constellations are:

  • Jackal
  • Rat
  • Spider
  • Empty Throne
  • Eel

Gear
So, by far the best option for this build is The Venomblade Pact. It just aligns with the build’s needs so perfectly. I unsuccessfully tried to grind for it, but massive shoutouts to the legit trading thread on this very forum. Life savers!

I’ll certainly mention the Venomlash daggers too. They’re super badass! I was dual-wielding these up until I got my hands on the Venomblade stuff.

That said, I made this build work with mostly self-found stuff. The kind of stats you’re looking for is reasonably self-explanatory, but in any case:

  • Poison/acid damage buffs
  • Offensive ability boosts
  • Attack speed
  • Total speed/total damage
  • Resistances/defensive ability/health buffs

You may need to give particular care to the defensive side of things. The offensive output tends to take care of itself, so try to make sure your defensive stats are in a reasonable state, or you could end up getting really messed up! Various augments (once available) are really great for this, they can offer a lot of health and resistance boosts.

OK! So, I guess that’s it. This is certainly a summarized run down, if you have the time I’d certainly recommend watching the video. A lot more detail is covered within :wink:

Thanks, and see ya!

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BiS pants in this build imo is Nidalla Legwraps. Too bad it will be less useful because the 20% poison/acid resist reduction in the proc is being removed in the next update.

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They certainly would be! I’m yet to find them, though :frowning:

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why do you not use curse of frailty with vulnerability for more debuff?

anyone knows?

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I did explain this in the build video :wink:

Veil of Shadow is used instead, which debuffs almost as much as Curse of Frailty, except it’s a passive that you don’t need to keep re-casting all the time. If you wanted to use CoF instead of VoS you probably could, you’ll just be casting even more spells.

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Or you can just use both. Resist reduction is the thing can greatly multiply your damage and if you have it available just use it. Plus Vulnerability lowers DA leading to more crits.

7

+1

10/chars

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Do the different sources of resist reduction stack in that way? I was under the impression that they didn’t…

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If they say -20% poison/acid resistance (basically, if they mention a specific resistance) and if they come from different sources, they do stack.

Like Night’s Chill and Vulnerability poison/acid resistance debuff stack.

10

That’s very interesting. Would it also stack with the resist reductions in the Manticore constellation then too?

I was reading this build and remembered that I have a couple of Legendary swords/daggers (Venomlash and something else that I can’t recall the name of) with lots of poison/acid damage on them.

Come to think of it, I have a lot of poison/acid gear tucked away…

I was wondering whether it would be better to go Witch Hunter or a poison/acid based Saboteur. I think the resist reduction issue has answered that question.

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Hi.I’m planning to build a char following this build. How should I distribute my stat points? Thanks :smiley:

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Finally gotten around to try a poison/acid build. This is a good one.

How well does Dreeg’s Infinite Gaze hold up at higher level? Currently, it works really well, especially when there’s a Mark of Dreeg in each weapon - So you can cast it twice:cool:

What relics do you use while leveling up?

13

Acid and poison damage is your primary - why you dont learn Vulnerability then? -33% resist will make killing bosses much faster…
And i see no reasons to use Ring of Steel… it doesnt deal poison/acid damage, even! If you want some fumble, get Mark of Apostate, 50% fumble/impared, and nice stats as well…

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By my calculations, I can get to Tainted Corruption by 40 devotion spent. This would include everything you have except Tortoise and Empty Throne.

I’m thinking of replacing those, this leaves me with 10 free points. Any suggestions to spend it on (possibly a power I’ve never used in another build)?

Lizard?
Eye of the Guardian?
Affliction?
Chariot?

15

I’ve tried Dw poison build myself, damage is great, but surviveability kinda sucks, i barely could squeeze 10k HP from it, and i still feel squishy as paper…

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Imho a poison tank witchblade seem better balanced in the current state of the game.