When I first learned about grim dawn and started reading with a consideration to buy it, it was the nightblade that really took my interest as a class. Having played around with a bunch of other builds and class combinations I have come back to the nightblade. I picked up most of the perdition set and I picked up a pair of venomspines as my second legendary. Having messed around with a bloody pox occultist and an evil eye of dreeg occultist I have come to realise how powerful poison is as an element. With the gear listed above and the legendary it seemed like a great time to come back to the nightblade but then I hit a wall.
I have two decent blues though they don’t provide any poison damage except for the two marks of dreeg on each weapon. I will eventually pair this build with a soldier to get the most out of the shield I have it in mind to use. So here are my questions.
It seems that my build is not putting out as much acid/poison damage as it should be with the investment in repertoire and nidalla’s along with the bonuses from the scorpion constellation. Have I missed something here? Also shouldn’t the enemy be taking even more damage due to the debuff from the maxed night’s chill?
How does shadow strike work with a shield? Does shadow strike damage when dual wielding register the damage from both weapons and thereby I’d be losing a lot of damage shadow striking with a shield based character?
I thought cunning was important to nightblade builds? Or is that only if you want to do a lot of pierce damage? Or is it that you can get enough cunning just from correct gearing? I’ve seen a few excellent build guides using soldier/nightblade and most of the points always go into physique, wouldn’t this mean you’d have a hard time landing attacks and crits?
This build will end up as a cold/poison build primarily with a view to use nightfall because it seems like an awesome skill. I am moving into the harpy constellation with a view to getting manticore and also behemoth as that heal seems like a great option for a close combat character.
You may need some more flat poison source to get more damage. You didn’t give your devotion setup so I don’t know, but I suggest picking up Rat + Scorpion, those 2 should get you through early game just fine.
And don’t go for soldier if you intend to go cold/poison, soldier doesn’t help that.
Cunning is not important, it is nice to have 10-15 points in cunning so you can equip all kind of swords, but put everything else into physique
The Nightblade weapon pool skills are for dual wielding and will not work with a shield. If you want to specialize in Poison, I suggest choosing Occultist as your second mastery. You can use transmuted cooldown Dreeg’s Evil Eye between your regular attacks, and Blood of Dreeg will give you additional flat Acid damage while it is active.
Thanks for the replies, guys. Sorry thought I made it more clear that I picked scorpion as my first constellation. I was going to go into harpy next to unlock manticore but I think the heal from the behemoth is really powerful as well.
Transmuted cooldown? Is that an ability or something?
I was talking about the Focused Gaze modifier for Dreeg’s Evil Eye. I didn’t remember its name at the time. It turns Dreeg’s Evil Eye from a spammable skill into a cool down skill.
You got no reliable AoE, thus the low clear speed, low exp gain, low progression in general, getting swarmed and wrecked in fights. The scorpion alone won’t cut it.
Either pick occu + DEE as suggested, or temporary play with RoS until you grow in power.
You really need to take your second class and put points into Pneumatic Burst asap. PB is one of the main reasons, you want NB as your first Mastery!
On top of that, go dual wielding. Otherwise, your WPS are wasted. Plus, Shadow Strike will only hit with one weapon while having a shield equipped. Also, the transmuted shorter cooldown on Pneumatic Burst won’t work without dual wielding.
Look at this leveling guide for a general idea, how to level up as a Witch Hunter, going Nightblade first.
If you want to switch to a pure Acid/Poison build later on, feel free to do so.
Jager: thanks for the reply. Looks like an excellent guide though I can’t really follow it as I’ve put too many points into the nightblade mastery to be able to get the required points in occultist. Was planning to just go nightblade til level 50 and then respect as necessary.
I see you are using the blade burst, wouldn’t this chew through your spirit? Also is blade burst your main attack skill? Doesn’t blade burst overwrite your dual wield attacks?
I started with nightblade, wasn’t planning to get pneumatic burst until later on. Why is pneumatic burst such a good skill? I can see it gives some decent healing if you put enough points into it but isn’t blood of dreeg a stronger option?
You might be right about going into the end game poison build around level 40 when my perdition set becomes able to be used.
Do you not think nightfall is a good skill to rush to?
Blade Burst can be a bit Energy intensive, but not especially so. I use it to level most of my Nightblades. The Frostburn on it can carry you through Cronley, though it pans out in effectiveness in the Arkovian Undercity, where you want more instant damage. Blade Burst overwrites WPS, but they can still trigger in the downtime of Blade Burst’s cooldown.
Nightfall is ok for leveling but takes too long to get there and have it invested well enough.
Pneumatic Burst is arguably stronger healing than Blood of Dreeg due to PB’s lower cooldown (with its DW transmuter). BoD is a better sustain skill for its massive regen.
Levels come fast in the beginning, so you might want to put some points into Occultist from now on.
If you don’t have a Mistborn Talisman as your Relic, you can use ABB all the way, yes. As Ceno said, it only overrides your WPS when it’s out of cooldown.
PB provides a short CD burst heal, health regen and total speed. The total speed alone is pretty nice, cause you run and hit faster all the time. You really should use it all the time.
Try to keep your Attack Speed as high as possible, it really helps any WPS Nightblade DPS wise. The faster you hit, the more your WPS will proc. With some Attack Damage converted to Health and two decent weapons, you can plow through Normal Difficulty. Not having good (Acid) weapons, you might want to craft yourself two decent rare Enchanted Acid Implements for the beginning at your local blacksmith. But any nicely rolled weapon can do the trick. Just look out for +AS, good base damage and best case ADCTH on those (crafted Omen BiS).
To give you some individual tips: Skill completely out of Nidalla’s Justifiable Ends for now and put those points into PB and the transmuter. Keep up PB 24/7. Wear two fast weapons to enable your dual wielding skills. Deskill Nightfall to 5 points, put those points into ABB and mainly Lethal Assault. Deskill Merciless Repertoire to 1 point, bring your WPS to 5/8 for the maximum 20% proc chance. Start putting points into your second Mastery for the stats and skills. You might want to aim for my recommended level 40 skill setup. Pick up the Jackal Devotion for AS or simply follow my recommended Devotion Route. You can keep Skorpion instead of Fiend, if you like.
Ceno answered to the rest, I think. If you are really running into energy issues, put a Focusing Prism into your Amulet. Shouldn’t be the case though.