[v1.0.0.2] [Witch Hunter] Dreeg's Kiss (Hybrid caster/melee Acid/cDot Poison)

Witch-hunter Hybrid caster/melee Acid/cDot Poison

~

“A Dreeg’s kiss is most likely similar to a Frenchkiss, exept it involves Slithtongues and that you have to find a new partner each time you perform it, no matter how careful you are with your oral hygiene.”

[RIGHT]Anonymous Witch-Hunter[/RIGHT]

~

You will notice this quickly, this build is very similar to Caedas’ Handmaiden of Dreeg, in many ways, including gear choice and devotion setup.
To a certain extent, this present build could even be considered a caster/melee hybrid variation of it.
However, The Dreeg’s Kiss proposes a different approach to building an Ultimate viable Poison DoT Witch-Hunter.

This build is mainly based on dual-wielding Slithtongues

~

TL;DR :

Step 1) Collect Slithtongues

Step 3) PROFIT

~

VIDEOS : Dreeg’s Kiss Build Playlist

Gear (Soon to be added)
Bastion Of Chaos Ultimate :
Bastion Of Chaos Devotion Shrine Fight and Meeting with Mr. Blok’Anatu
Part 1/3 Discord and Fields Of Despair
Part 2/3 Anarchy
Part 3/3 Entropy
Nemesis Hunt :
Episode 01 : Benn’Jahr (Chthonic)

~

The Gear :

Best in Slots, Must haves and recommended gear (end-game) :

Weapon #1 :
Slithtongue
Augmented with : Outcast’s-Venom
Materia : Mark-of-Dreeg

Weapon #2 :
Slithtongue
Augmented with : Outcast’s-Venom
Materia : Vitriolic-Gallstone

Pants :
Nidalla’s Legwraps
Gloves :
Viperfang-Grips
Boots :
Venomspine-Greaves

Ring #1 :
Empowered-Ring-of-Eternal-Rot
with Ectoplasm (mandatory due to high mana consumption)
and Mogdrogen’s-Sanctity

Ring #2 :
Ring-of-the-Black-Matriarch
with Ectoplasm (mandatory due to high mana consumption)
and Mogdrogen’s-Sanctity

Amulet :
Avatar-of-Mercy
with Focusing Prism
and Mogdrogen’s-Sanctity

Recommended :

Armor :
Vestments-of-the-Great-Guardian
Spidersilk-Hauberk
Fiendscale-Jacket

Belt :
Thorn-Girdle-of-the-Misty-Glade
Boneweave-Girdle
Tinker’s-Ingenuity

Head :
Empowered-Mask-of-Delirium
Whisperer-of-Secrets
Demonslayer’s-Hat
Exalted Helm with “- of Blight” Suffixe and a decent Prefixe

Medal :
Black-Star-of-Deceit
Mark-of-the-Apostate
Badge-of-Mastery
Ikrix-Scale if you can find a nice combo of Prefixe + Suffixe

Pauldrons :
Zantarin’s-Shoulderguard (Nemessis drop)
Deathmarked-Shoulderguard

~

Skillset :

GRIM CALC LINK w/o gear

At the moment, Stats distribution is 75 Physique, 12 points left unassigned

Character Sheet :

Buffs On : Devout Of Dreeg, Poison Aura, Malediction, Veil Of Shadow, Possession, Solael’s Witchfire, Pneumatic Burst, Blood Of Dreeg, Lethal Assault

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Devotion Route :

¤ Crossroads -> Eldritch
¤ Complete Akeron’s Scorpion -> Reclaim former Eldritch point on Crossroads
¤ Crossroads -> Ascendant
¤ Complete Empty Throne -> Reclaim former Ascendant point on Crossroads
¤ Complete Chariot of The Dead
¤ Complete Rat
¤ Complete Manticore
¤ Complete Eye Of The Guardian
¤ Complete Hawk
¤ Complete Jackal
¤ Crossroads -> Chaos
¤ Complete Abomination
¤ 3 nodes on Affliction (to get Fetid Pool)
¤ 1 point left, either Spider (10 Cunning, 10 Spirit) or Crossroads Order (5% health)

~

Theory Crafting and Details : How and Why it works ?

I) Gear + Synergy

The gear provides lots of procs, but the very base of the build is that :

One of our main source of damage will come from dual-wielding Slithtongue, which offers an amazing proc on attack :

Poison Bolt (15% Chance on Attack)
[i]"Launches a bolt of toxins at your enemies."[/i]

1 Second Skill Recharge
1.2 Meter Radius (1 projectile)
# Acid Damage (Base = 107)
# Poison Damage (Base = 870 over 5 seconds)

(Normal is 8% ; Elite is 10% ; Ultimate is 15%)

Now, let’s add (Veil of Shadow + Night’s Chill) into the mix, and we will be throwing those Poison Bolts all other the place without any effort, in a 6 meters radius.
In the meantime, all enemies caught in the Veil will suffer penalties to Total Speed, Offensive Ability, Pierce + Cold + Acid + Poison Resistances and some Cold damage for each tick from Night’s Chill.

Hence the hybrid Caster/Melee title, you will have to be quite close to the mobs in order to maximize your damage output.

II) A devotion set-up almost entirely dedicated to Poison/Acid Damage enhancement

¤ Akeron’s Scorpion -> “Scorpion Sting” to Amarasta’s Blade Burst #OA
%Poison dmg
%Acid dmg¤ Empty Throne %Reduced Stun duration
%Pierce Resist
%Aether Resit
%Chaos Resist¤ Chariot of The Dead -> “Wayward Soul” to Veil of Shadow
#Cunning
#OA
%OA
Vitality Resist¤ Rat
#Cunning
#Spirit
#Poison dmg
%Poison dmg
%Poison & Acid Resist¤ Manticore -> “Acid Spray” to Bloody Pox
#OA
%Acid dmg
%Poison dmg
%Health
#OA
%Poison & Acid Resist
#Poison dmg¤ Eye Of The Guardian -> “Guardian’s Gaze” to Blade Trap
%Poison dmg
%Acid dmg
%Chaos dmg ¤ Hawk
#OA
%Critical dmg
%OA¤ Jackal
%Energy
#OA
%Attack Speed
%Total Damage¤ Crossroads -> Chaos
%Health¤ Abomination -> “Tainted Eruption” to Blade Spirit ; “Abominable Might” to Shadow Strike %Vitality dmg
%Poison dmg
%Acid dmg
%Chaos dmg
#OA
%Poison & Acid Resist
#Health¤ Affliction -> “Fetid Pool” to Possession
%Vitality dmg
%Poison dmg
#Spirit¤ 1 point left, either Spider (10 Cunning, 10 Spirit) or Crossroads Order (5% health)


III) Active Skills rotation based on maximizing Aera of Effect crowd-control/damage (a.k.a. the combo routine)

1) Curse of Frailty + Vulnerability

[ - %Physical Res | - %Bleeding Res | - %Movement Speed | - #Defensive Ability | - %Vitality Res | - %Poison Res | - %Acid Res | - %Elemental Res ]

This is our opening skill, used to “pull” packs of mobs, but in a safely fashion.
(Note : I have honnestly no idea how or if the - %Res even stack or just overwrite one another, could use advices on that)

At this point, enemies may have already entered the (Veil of Shadow + Night’s Chill) AoE and chances are pretty good that Poison Bolts start being spit on some of them


2) Blade Trap + Devouring Blades -> “Guardian’s Gaze” from Eye of The Guardian

[ - %Defensive Ability | #Bleeding Dmg | #Piercing Dmg ]

That should paralyze a good chunk of the mobs you just pulled.
And if you’re lucky, the Gaze will proc mutiple times, surrounding you with orbiting eyeballs (doing %Wep dmg, #Poison, #Chaos to any mobs colliding with them)
Also, it will greatly help Bloody Pox, allowing it to spread easier and faster.

3) Bloody Pox + Wasting + Black Death -> “Acid Spray” from Manticore
[spoiler]
[ #Bleeding | %Reduction to health | - #Offensive Ability | #Vitality Dmg | #Poison Dmg | %Chance to Confuse ]

Assigning “Acid Spray” to Bloody Pox, will allow the proc to occur often, up to 5 times (theoretically) per skill usage, hitting multiples enemies while spreading,
and doing so, damaging them with poison and acid while lowering their armor and applying a #flat reduction to their resistances.

4) Blade Spirit -> “Tainted Eruption” from Abomination

Aim right in the middle of the pack (evenif you have to move towards the first enemy’s line)

The Blade Spirit will proc “Tainted Eruption” very shortly after being summoned, performing a kind of “poison nova” (centered on itself) applying Poison damage for 5 seconds on a 10 meter radius.
…and -that’s kind of the whole point here- confusing enemies for 1.8 seconds, which is what we want, because, by that time, the trap should wear off. Thus we get an additional period of Crowd-control.

5) Shadow Strike + Nidalla’s Justifiable Ends + Nightfall -> “Abominable Might” from Abomination

[ %Wep Dmg | #Pierce dmg | #Cold dmg | Stun | #Poison dmg | #Frostburn dmg | #Cold dmg | #Life Leech | %Chance to apply Sleep ]

Either you aim for a sure kill (any white trash mob still standing or a yellow one with low hp) so you trigger “Abominable Might” ( +20% Health at max lvl, + #Chaos dmg, +%Chaos dmg to you)
or
you directly aim for the Big Guy, staggering him (Stun will have an extremely reduced duration on heroes, down to non-existing at all on bosses) and then proceed

Anyway, now you’re in the midst of the battle and Poison bolts are still shooting at every one’s faces. Time to stick out your Slithtongues at them all, for real.

6) Amarasta’s Blade Burst -> “Scorpion Sting” from Akeron’s Scorpion

[ %Wep Dmg | #Frostburn dmg | #Cold dmg | %Chance to freeze ]

“Scorpion Sting” has a 25% chance to proc (so binding it to Amarasta BB might look like sub-optimal, as the skill has a 1.8 sec Cooldown, but it’s actually a good bet.
(Plus it reminds me of the old version of the skill Lethal Gambit)
So, if Luck is with you, young DreegKisser, “Scorpion Sting” will proc, adding %Wep Dmg, #Poison dmg and #Defensive Ability Reduction.

7) Auto-attacks under the buff from Letahl Assault.

Still reading ? Good :wink: You are probably either having a good laugh at the build or just wondering why the heck would you use Amarasta’s BB + Lethal Assault, don’t you?

Well, for 4 seconds after the initial use of A’s bb, ALL of your ATTACKS are being buffed as follows : #Acid dmg, #Offensive Ability, + %Poison dmg (and + %Cold/Frostburn but we don’t really care)

A quick recap of how much D.A. we’ve managed to take away from our enemies, so far : (¤ - #DA from CoF) (¤ - %DA from Blade Trap) (¤ - #DA from “Scorpion Sting”)

Because you have additionnal OA and they suffer DA penalties, That’s how (well, I’m assuming there), all of the sudden, your Poison Bolts start critting, along with every subsequent auto-attacks or skills used for those 4 seconds.

Added that, you may be under the effect of “Abominable Might”, and probably have at least 1 orbiting eyeball, “ehanced” auto-attacks will do the job, but don’t be to greedy : up to 2 or 3 seconds max and then retreat.

[b]8)
a) There’s no one left to kiss. Go Go Pneumatic Burst and Blood of Dreeg ! Proceed to the next pack of mobs.

b) Tactical Retreat !!! [/b]

Start moving away from troubles, just run if you can’t Shadow Strike away (most probably still under CD if you’re through your 1st cycle)
Keep in mind : the (Critical)DoTs and Poison Bolts are still working for you, so you can just kite a bit untill you’re the last one standing.

That was a big and dense pack ? Some are still asking for more kisses ?
Now is a good time to use the Mark of Dreeg Skill, drink coffee or refresh Pneumatic Burst / Blood of Dreeg

9 ) Rince and repeat from step 1 untill “There’s no one left to kiss”

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IV ) Ultimate viability

a) The good

As mentionned above, the devotion set-up is mostly damage-dealing oriented.
The only defensive celestial power in use is the one from “Chariot of The Dead” (Wayward Soul bound to Veil of Shadow)
It will provide -only in case you are critically hit- healing and a bonus to your Defensive Ability for a short period of time.

Then, we have 2 ‘healing skill’ at our disposal, and they are more than simple “healing pots” substitute :

Pneumatic Burst : 32% Health restored + 33 (base) health regen per second at lvl 12/12 (Self-only)

  • Shadow Dance modifer at lvl 12/12, 20% chance to avoïd melee and projectiles, +85 DA
  • Breath of Belgothian transmuter, -5s cooldown, 33% more Health Regen

Blood Of Dreeg : 28% Health restored + 106 (base) health regen per second at lvl 16/16 (Party members included)

  • Aspect of The Guardian at lvl 12/12, 12% Physical res, 100% Poison/Acid res

The last but not least, is an amulet, the life-savior Avatar of Mercy
It has good resitances (Elemental, Vitality, Reduced status duration and a #bonus to DA, and can be rolled with + % to maximum All Res) but it’s really the granted skill that makes it so great :


Activates when Health drops below 30%
40 Seconds Skill Recharge
5 second Duration
50% Health Restored
30% Damage Absorption
50% Reduced Stun, Freeze, Petrity Duration

You can’t really expect to survive without that amulet, if you find yourself fighting Nemessises (or just being suddenly ambushed by +10 Skeletons with crossbows)

b) The bad

Health Pool is quite low, so be cautious when you want to stick out your slithtongue.
Bosses and Nemessises are to be engaged from afar, avoïd close-combat as much as you can.

Time to talk about Reflective enemies.
(Aether Crystals, Mages with Mirror of E, Skeletons with shields…)
You must find a way to get to 80% Poison resistances (and more if you can).
The reflected dots are going to hurt you (negating any health regen you may have) but the worst part is that they’re going to hurt you for a long time (Seen it up to about 23sec)
There’s no way to survive this without Pneumatic Burst + Blood Of Dreeg both maxed. And you will probably still need to drink a Hpot.

c) The ugly

The build only starts to truly shine once you get those last devotion points, and Tainted Eruption, so you can start to perfom the “Combo Routine” and your clear-speed finally sky-rockets.
Also, you really need those : the Avatar-of-Mercy, the Viperfang-Grips and the Venomspine-Greaves, their granted procs bring a lot to the build.

[/spoiler]

~

Attachment: Nexal the Guardian.jpg

reserved for further info

Dreeg shall be pleased. :slight_smile:

You’re on the right path thinking about the Slithtongue proc and how awesome it is. But why stop there? You can get up to 11 ‘of Blight’ green armor pieces and all the DOTs will stack.

…now that someone else is close to discovering how great stacked boogerbombs are, I’m going to have to rush out my own character guide soon before someone beats me to the punch.

how would you level a new char for this? looks really neat!

This seems hilarious, please make a video!

I’m interested to see how this build will survive, great find on the tongues though

so i started lvling a lvl 9 occ i had made while back.
He had hellhound pretty much maxed so i did that and got soulfire bloody pox both 1 point and then went nightblade and lvled mastery to 15 and putting 1 point in like blade burst+modifier, shadow strike, the heal and few others. will spec out of hell hound soon.

Currently lvl 17 and this is the fastest i have killed warden lvling an fresh char and on the lvl 14 dummy i have seen 1k posion crits tick on him.

I have a wep plagueblood carver hs 10% chance for 735 posion retal dmg over 5 sec and +2 bloody pox and 54%posion dmg at lvl 25 would that be better then 1x slithtongue?

Any other tips for lvling or items to look out for would be great.

Thank you for the fun build!

Hey Thanks for this awesome build, created a fresh character for it and it owns. Was a bit sceptical about the Slithtongues especially bringing them to the later acts but hey it works fine.

BTW the poison bolt chance is 8% on normal. might want to edit that.

Well, I crafted a Mighty helm of Blight this morning, :wink:
But, no, I don’t think replacing each slots with a -of Blight would be wise. Unless you can come with the perfect set of Affixes on each, which would give you the stats you need to have a balanced and viable character.
Still, that deserves some testing, just for the fun of it.

While leveling, I recommend you just use what seems the most effective to you.
I remember I was using some other swords and daggers while leveling, I will try to make a leveling guide later, with gear suggestions.

By the way, if it’s not clear for every one, you can have 2 slithtongues (if you want/can dual-wield) You just have to exit your current game and then reload your char. Chances are good you will find another Slithtongue right where you found the first one. (That’s how I found my Slithtongue of the Swamp)

Thanks :wink: Edited the poison bolt %chance.
Added more blahblahblah (Ultimate and viablity)
Will add more videos, probably next week.

Well I have an 81 conjurer with 8 pieces of Blight gear on - you’re right that so many green items makes melee survival difficult, though I’m still around 9500 HP and 30-40 points away from maxed resists in ultimate. That’s why I went shaman instead of nightblade, so I can spam GV and get off more snot procs from a safe range.

hi, can you post your character sheet first and secondary (acid poison)?

I made some changes in my gear,
now using Vestments-of-the-Great-Guardian instead of Spidersilk-Hauberk
also, got a nice Ring-of-the-Black-Matriarch to replace my green ring
crafted a Might exalted helm of Blight and some green pauldrons.
I’m still looking for Zantarin’s-Shoulderguard

I will post screenshots of the tabs when I can.

Hm Slithtounges are 15% on Elite though? At least the one I just fetched. Thanks for the tip :slight_smile:

Edit: Well this is weird, went to the location to get another one, this time I probably got the elite one which has lvl req 50 and 10% chance, the other was 70. Odd how I got the “ultimate” version on elite, oh well.

psyclown I have to tell you some things about my experience. I had leveled up a witch hunter before occultist became awesome and it just didn’t work. Now that it is more viable I took some ideas from your build and added some of my own. My witch hunter has 10k hp, a much more defensive devotion set than yours, almost all maxed resists except for vit and pierce (just waiting for the fix to get zantarin’s shoulderguards to drop). I changed some gear pieces from yours and took a freaking long time to find a plaguebearer’s slithtongue and a resistant slithtongue (to fill out res). This build can facetank Fabius and I haven’t officially timed it but it looks like about a 25-30 second kill. I get between 80-100k poison ticks on Fabius and I get 125k poison ticks on Cronley. I can facetank ultimate Log and its about a 75-90 second kill. This build is so much fun, so active with multiple buttons to press and kills shit so quick. I just wanted to give you props and I can share some of my build and gear specifics if you want.

Hey Primeval,

I’m very interested in your customization of this build, by all means, feel free to share.
I will edit the 1st post with possible/viable changes to the build.

I’ve been a bit busy, playing another char to reach Nemesis with Kymon so I could farm Zantarin, among other things Grim dawn related. (I went in some sort of chain-crafting trance, but nothing really good came out of it for this char) Also still working on some sort of leveling guide.

Taking time to pull out a better pair of Slithtongue is still on my “to do list” :wink:

I finally reached Nemesis with Cronley’s only yesterday. I met Fabius and killed him easily, but I didn’t really pay attention to the time to kill. It was probably arround 30 seconds. (and well, no face-tanking for me, obviously)

I’ve seen poison ticks beyond 100k on the Cronley (purple) guy with a shield, Nicholas Something, in the mine (where you first get the dynamite, I can’t remember the name) but most of the time, except a few ones with shields and high HP, heroes and bosses are dead before I can stack enough critical dots on them to reach that point.

Uploaded more videos : a “funny” Bastion Of Chaos run (which I did too early in the morning for sure) in which I just get a bit lost sometimes, hesitating between clearing all the trash or just Shadow striking my way to the bosses fights :smiley:
I still have to edit and upload the last 3rd part, though.

I’m still delaying “the Gear” video, because I don’t want to make another-one for each “major” update to my stuff. The build works wonder with what I have now, but there is still room for testing and improvement.

Dreeg is pleased

I have i quite similar build but focusing more on Shadow Strike and abusing the fact that the blight Aura from the namely Relic Seems to proc Dreegs evil Eyes Devotion bonus over and over again. Sometimes i get more than 20 Eyeballs orbiting me which basically makes me a living dead zone for enemies.

I dont use Blade spirit though even if its great at procing stuff like that.
Instead i Use Blade Barrier and just like you did the beautiful Amastras blade burst ( though only for the buff to OA and Poison)

Devotion setup is actually almost exactly the same except for abominal might which i scrapped for a few points in defensive devotions.

The rotation is .: CoF -> Blade Trap-> Blight -> Shadow strike (which through nightfall guaranteedly procs The Poison nova from Abomination) -> ABB -> Attack till debuff wears of ( by now youll have tons of eyes orbiting you -> Blade barrier if needed( anyone hitting you just dies now).

Basically I use an additional defensive Oh Shit button combined with Blight aura + Dreeg devotion.

  • To all skills compensates a a few things in this grimcalc and i think grabbing 9% of damage dealt to health is better than fetid pool as it triggers on beeing hit and with pneumatic burst you wont be hit that much + you dont really want to be hit all that much too.

http://grimcalc.com/build/ltPh7V

Only thing im bothering is that i cant grab posession … it would be another nice % dmg modifier to acid and poison AND 12% damage reduction

I’ll write more when I get home but caedas just wanted to say one quick thing. Adcth just doesn’t work for these builds… My on hit damage is about 2-3k even with 1400% acid damage. There just isn’t enough raw damage to translate to health, that’s why these builds need to use other sources of healing.

And I was using blight for a while but it’s bonuses just aren’t that good, especially when bloody pox gets me six to eight eyeballs in like four seconds :slight_smile: malediction relic is nice and I would use dreegs relic if the spines didn’t have such a long Cooldown now. Also the fumble and miss chance on night is covered by Mark of the apostate

I see your points here.

And honestly i dont feel the 9 % on hit heal too much. On the other hand i was looking for some pseudo defence along with vit resists and the revenant just seemed to cover that with %hp, 20 vit Res, and the %9 dmg to hp. Though its right it it doesnt work of dots. Il be looking into my devotion a bit.

In case of malediction… I was a bit unlucky with the recipies lets say it just lukr that … I got uzulins pyroclsm dropped over and over but almost nothing else.

That should be fixed with 1.002 though and i hope ill get lucky to see something else than eyey of the storm/uzulins

Thing with blood pox is that i dont like that skill . it spreads awkwardly. But ill try it as soon as i have malediction.

Eventually i have enough points left. To get a few points into other passive bonuses and stuff as soon as i grab it.

I still like Blade barrier though. It just synergizes extremely well with the dots and the eyeyballs.

Hey now, let’s not get us confused. I’m not a part of this convo! When I noticed this I didn’t know what to think of Ceadeus’ and his awkwardly similar-yet-different name. Then there was his “Dreeg is pleased” comment that mirrors my “Dreeg shall be pleased” early on in the thread… Hmm. Still not sure what to think. Probably nothing.

Carry on.


[v1.0.0.2] Witch Hunter: Handmaiden of Dreeg