[v1.0.0.4] Beginner's Physical Warder Build - BoC/MadQueen in 100% Craftable+Vendor Gear .. etc

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
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[COLOR=“Orange”]Update: After some input from drizzto, i agree that getting transmuted blade arc as 2ndary cooldown based attack is very strong. he achieved 600k BA crit on a more cunning focused version of this build. While i think physique is still better due to soldier scaling it. getting BA is now definitely recommended. getting laceration to 12/12 is optional. some points can be taken from nonessentials or mastery.

So among the myriad of high dps deathmarked/ultos/dot builds physical dps hasn’t been getting any love. This is a physical dps savagery warder build designed to be extremely tanky and nongear reliant - 19k hp and 30+ physical resist 1.5k+ armor in vendored/crafted gear. with very easy and flexible gearing, ideal for a beginner’s 1st or 2nd farming character; or for HC. with all gear being craftable or vendorable. if you are a veteran with a bunch of legendaries, see the recommended gear section, the “ideal” gear setup is still very easy to get relative to the top builds while still being able to output decent dps while being ridiculously tanky.

While lightning savagery is very op, it requires the full ulto’s set and is squishier than this build. The basis of this builds DPS comes from the fact that we can bind TWO devotion abilities to our LMB due to on crit mechanic of upheaval.

upheaval is triggered by crits, if you bind a on crit devotion ability to upheaval it will always proc whenever upheaval procs, i guess due to upheaval being an oncrit proc itself. This is much better than binding stuff to a nightblade DW proc, as the the proc has to proc the proc rather than the proc always happening on the dw proc :slight_smile:

So we bind falconswoop to savagery and Blind fury to upheaval, effectively having 2 strong devotion skills on LMB. This combined with oleron’s wrath relic proc, gives us very good aoe as long as we can maintain a reasonable OA.

The downside of upheaval is that procs cant proc it, so feral hunger or zolhans crits do not proc upheaval and therefore do not proc blind fury. therefore we do not get zolhans at all, we still get feral hunger for the big lifesteal. Upheaval only needs 1 point to get most of its dmg, and since we are mainly needing it to trigger blind fury, its not necessary to max.

-resist comes from warcry, assassin’s mark, which is easily proced by wendigo totem’s fast hitting aoe. and additionally blackmatriach ring in the ideal gear version.

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[v1.0.0.4]Video: Mad queen kill, in fully craftable/vendor geared

[v1.0.0.4]Video: 12min BoC+nemesis run, in fully craftable/vendored gear

[v1.0.0.4]Video: Mad queen kill, in “ideal” gear

[v1.0.0.4]Video: BoC Run in “ideal” gear

With +skills. +1 shaman +5 soldier and a few singles; left over points can go to a either menhilr’s will or fighting spirit
http://grimcalc.com/build/rkbJ4Bs
Stat distribution: About ~50 spirit to use jewelry - depending which ones you want. rest in physique.

Gameplay:
LMB: Savagery (devotion ability falconswoop)
Upheaval - devotion ability Blind fury
RMB: Blitz
mousewheel up: wendigo totem (devotion ability Assassin’s mark)
mousewheel down: Warcry
giants blood can be bound to any aura

Charge into the middle of everything drop wendigo/warcry and go to town, being in the middle makes the most out of your aoe upheaval+blindfury.

healing totem has a range so make sure to stay in it, also it does not heal if theres no enemies near it, like your standing on ground shit.

Shar’zul Tips: pretty much just zerg. if he gets u low with heals down run for a bit, due to extreme tankiness, even if he doens’t die fast, generally do not need to kite, but he can still hit hard occassionally, so if proc menhirs wills and still get low, then kite a bit until its back.

Mad queen tips: same as sharzul basically

These are the hardest farming bosses right now so other farming bosses should be a joke, they occasionally drop me in my vendored gear version. in my fully geared version they have yet to proc my menhir i dont think.

Gearing:
Note that i do not list many resist augments/components, since my vendored gear will be different than yours, use them to get the resists you need.

Head:Faceguard of Justice sancified bone, crafted
Shoulders: Elite Chosen Pauldrons kymon’s chosen reputation vendor
Chest: Elite Devil’s Chestguard chains of oleron or kilrithian’s shattered soul - Devil’s crossing reputation vendor
hand: Elite Harvest Grips unholy inscription, Homestead reputation vendor
Leg: crafted or vendored legs
Relic: Oleron’s Wrath, or Juggernaught oleron’s wrath has alot of mat requirements if you don’t have it juggernaught is still a very good cheap relic

Weapon #1Levianthan crafted, imbued silver +blacklegion elemental dmg augment (this augment is for the OA, hp, mana regen)
Weapon #2optional gun can use to kite enemies if for some reason you can’t tank it.

Ring #1: vendored ring corpse dust or ectoplasm
Ring #2: vendored ring corpse dust or ectoplasm
Neck: Empowered Essence of Beronath Dread skull, crafted [/b]
Belt: Reforge Chains Of oleron crafted
Boots: Elite Rhowari Greaves Mark of mogdrogen - from Rovers faction vendor
Medal: Badge of Mastery Dread skull

Note the faction green gear - you can keep remaking game to roll the best stats on them before you buy.

The legendaries are all craftable, get the mats and ask someone in the trade forum to craft for you, with a tip of course:) usually people will be glad to do it.

Devotions:
As we have mainly one damage type, its very efficient to stack % damage.

Leveling guide:
Lvl with physical focused primal strike. get primal bond. After finishing primal bond primal strike+torrent+heart of the wild. Then go into soldier’s passives.

Initially find high dmg 2hander, both range+melee. go melee when u can tank, if cant, go range. silverbolts is a great weapon at lvl 50 to use all the way til 75. Oh and rush kraken on the devotion, u can get it really early, shit is beyond broken and makes leveling a joke.

-> planned: much detailed leveling guide for newbies in the works.

Recommended or ideal gear:

Bascially replace some of the above stuff with the following:
Handguards of Justice
Shoulderguards of Justice
Peerless Eye of Beronath
Golemborne Greaves
Divinesteel haubark
Chausses of Barbaros
Ring of the Black Matriach
ring #2 - any
components , resists augments depending on rolls and ring#2

In closing:
So ultos’, deathmarked builds are op and such, thus difficult for other non-Dot, nongimmicky builds to match their dps; however, physical warder easily beats nearly everything in terms of survivability (due to physical dps gear having large amounts of physical resist and +soldier skills to get enough passives) while still offering a reasonable amount of dps, with minimal gear requirements , even in the “ideal” version.

It was intended as a guide for a first/2nd character to start your farming with. It is also a very strong HC build due to extreme survivability and menhirs will, as well as the option to use mark of divinity for even more saftety.

Attachment: warder-cadence.jpg
Attachment: warder-cadence1.jpg

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Good job! There need to be more guides for beginners like this.

It shows how OP warder is though. Most characters can’t facetank Mad Queen even with fully optimized gear.

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my answer to this is:

nerf static strike :rolleyes:

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Actually the way that zohlan’s technique/feral hunger interact with upheaval is different than you describe. Upheaval has a 100% chance to proc if you roll a crit on the target of you autoattack, if you have ZT/FH, the chances add together and get divided by the total percentage. Upheaval’s chance to proc with either skill is 80% of crits, with both skills it is 66.666% of crits.

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Nice, looks almost exactly like my current setup.
Question, can you facetank the Queen 100% all the time? I died a few times trying to do that even with Menhir’s Will, she has an insane attack that burns 14k HP in the blink of an eye so I just gtfo when she’s on her period.

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This will be perfect to reform my boring reflect warder. But why full class points in shaman when you only go as far as far as storm touched? Is it just to speed up leveling with primal bond?

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I think going full helps with stats mainly for jewellery

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Absolutely priceless description, Panda!

Syn

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I’ve been staying away from upheaval as I’ve read it was broken and will gimp your character. I know if 1.0.0.4 it was “fixed” but I thought I still read it can gimp you. Is that based off of only certain builds now, such as one that use more WPS. Kind of like using cadence with WPS? When using just feral hunger, you won’t be as gimped. I’m not fully sure what mlinke was trying to say, but I think it was the same as what you were saying. It procs off of autoattack skills, not WPS, so if you have a 25% chance to trigger feral hunger, then you will only get to use upheaval 75% of the time as when feral hunger triggers it will not trigger upheaval even if feral hunger crits. Also a reason to drop the ZT as that would reduce upheaval’s use by another 25%? I’m I following that correctly?

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It doesn’t work like that, I tested it. Basically it works like this, first the game checks to see if you rolled a crit on the target of you auto attack. If you do roll a crit, it adds the percentages together (100%+25%+25%) if you have both ZT/FH and then it divides the chances by the total percentage (150% or 1.5 to simplify in this case). 100%/1.5= 66.666666% chance for upheaval, and 25%/1.5= 16.666666% for either ZT or FH. WPS skills always add the separate chances of different procs together and divides if the total chance is over 100%. 25% ZT + 25% FH + 50% no proc if you don’t roll a crit.

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Newbie at this game, I am a bit confused. This guide uses savagery as main attack but under leveling it says to level up primal strike, torrent, and primal bond. The grim calc doesn’t show these skills being used at all. Is it assuming you use those to level and then respec to savagery later?

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I already had a warder at level 67 when i reformed him for this build so i didn’t need to go the primal strike way. But i’m sure jajaja knows this guide is still far from newbie friendly :wink:

The good part is, at level 71 it is definitely kicking some ass.

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Primal strike is one of the best leveling skills in the game. It provides insane aoe power for a melee ability while still killing bosses fairly fast. Primal strike+falcon swoop+kraken with literally any garbage tier 2 hander you can find will destroy everything in veteran/elite. Savagery you want some aoe item procs/devotions behind it before you start using it

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…I use a troll-bonecrusher on my Physical Savagery Warder…innate +3 Savagery may not be as useful overall as +2 Soldier, however they come as low as lvl 21 and you can buy them from Benewald as soon as u can get access to the secret merchant in Blood Grove :smiley:

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So in the leveling part it says use primal strike. Do i just put 1 point there then rush to primal bond and max that first then max primal strike?

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max primal and torrent first

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no aether resist needed? what are your thoughts on stonefists rebuke as a replacement for leviathan or guthook belt for reforged chains??

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If you try to level with Savagery it will take you about 3 years to get through the game. You need some AoE to clear out mobs. You will eventually get enough AoE from Devotions to be able to respec into Savagery later. (When you get Blind Fury you can start thinking about it.)

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Reforged Chains has a +1 Soldier skill on it. Can’t give that up.

Stonefist Rebuke would be fine too. I don’t know which is better for this build. If you read the guide, Leviathan was picked because it’s craftable.

You mostly don’t need Aether resists right now. Presumably that will change with the expansion. Unless you want to farm the Aether nemesis. Then you can swap out some augments.

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Most people give 0 shits about aether res once they reach late game as farming warden lab/cronley areas aren’t exactly great. Only issue if you run to a aether corrupted hero, but one hero shouldn’t blow you up. With significant hp/healing and other resists at acceptable levels you can still run these areas too and the aetherial nemesis is super heavy on lightning damage for whatever reason

Going off the top of my head here, but stonefist/leviathan do about the same weapon damage but Leviathan gives us 7% (?) HP, huge reduced freeze duration, as well as a nice aoe ability for mobs. Either is fine really, all you lose from stonefist is the 500% WD skill which has a pretty long cooldown and is only useful vs bosses

For belts reforged chains give us flat physical damage which is very good and +1 solider is better than +1 shaman here. Again going off he top of my head, but pretty sure the bonuses on reforged for phys/trauma are higher than guthooks since it also gives % bleed