Weapon Pool Skills Blademaster

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
1

Features

  • Dual wielding swordsman mostly wearing standard armor
  • Self-found build, which can be used as your first character for the first two difficulties
  • Damage types are all over the place, so that you are more flexible when it comes to gear changes
  • Only a few active skills
  • All constellations have a celestial skill

Damage types, attribute distribution, equipment and survivability thoughts

  • The primary damage types are piercing, bleeding, cold, frostburn, acid and poison; the secondary ones are physical, trauma, lightning and vitality.
  • Equip swords for their high piercing ratio. Look out for Dermapteran Claws / Slicers (s. above) - they have 50% piercing damage.
  • Due to your many damage types, the bonus damage and DoT duration, which you get from Cunning and Spirit, are more relevant. I suggest a Physique:Cunning:Spirit distribution rate of 1:1:1. It is not intended, that you can equip the latest tier of heavy torso and leg armor.
  • Your defenses come from in-combat healing (Blade Barrier is a great skill to bridge the recharging of your tonics and Blooddrinker), crowd control and resistances. And from moving - once you have some DoTs, you can often move to another target, as your current one is likely to fall dead soon.
  • For crowd control look out for items with passive stun and freeze skills. Equip Windborne Greaves, Herald’s Mask or Mask of Delirium, should they drop. If needed you can craft a Legion Belt.

Early leveling

  • Start as Nightblade and activate Dual Blades and Veil of Shadow.
  • Push the mastery bar to 15 and activate all modifiers in both skills lines.
  • Add Soldier, push the mastery bar to 5 and activate Markovian’s Advantage and Fighting Spirit.
  • Push the Nightblade bar to 25 and activate Blade Barrier, Whirling Death and Blade Trap.
  • Increase your weapon pool skills to level 5, so that each has a 20% chance to be executed - suggested build at level 20.

Further progression

  • Activating Devouring Blades (Blade Trap modifier) and Execution (your 5th WPS) should take priority, before you invest in Soldier again to get Field Command & Squad Tactics.

Devotion
Acquire constellations in the following order and assign the celestial attacks to the suggested skills and the celestial heals to your auras.

  • Normal / Veteran mode: Akeron’s Skorpion (Blade Trap) > Ghoul > Manticore (Whirling Death) > Falcon (Belgothian Sheers) > Huntress (Amarasta’s Quick Cut)
  • Elite mode: Tsunami (Markovian’s Advantage) > Behemoth > Dire Bear (your LMB skill)
  • Ultimate mode: Amatok the Spirit of Winter (Execution)

Relics

  • Start with Equilibrium.
  • Switch to Mistborn Talisman (you might need to farm the blueprint and the “ingredient” in Smuggler’s Pass). I strongly recommend the use of the Mistborn Talisman as its skill Troll Rage, a default attack replacer, works great with WPSs. If you - for whatever reason - decide differently, then I suggest to use Shadow Strike on LMB, if you need to boost your damage output.
  • Good interim relics would be Sanctuary or Glacier, if available to you.
  • Or if you feel confident in your defenses, you could use a Bladesworn Talisman (or better) instead and not go immediately after Execution.

Components

  • In the early levels you benefit of a Chipped Claw on one of your swords - assign Slam to your LMB. Once you have reached a weight of about 75 for your WPSs, you probably do not need this extra skill anymore.
  • Replace it with a component, which grants an aura - Purified Salt or Imbued Silver as needed, otherwise Vitriolic Gallstone, Coldstone or Serrated Spike / Vicious Spikes.
  • Put a Hollowed Fang respectively Haunted Steel in your other sword.
  • Other than that use Scaled Hide to increase your Armor Absorption and Mutated Scales for more Health.

I actually did it differently
This is a proof of concept char, to find out if celestial skills trigger frequently enough, if you are using WPSs. For this I continued an existing char, which I had played about a year ago, when the game ended in Darkvale Gate and Devotion was still in the making. It had been a Cunning-based build focussed on non-magic damage with all six WPSs. My first relic had been Ruination, and I had used Behead (from Blessed Whetstone) until level 44.

I had the idea of including Leviathan to the constallations, but did not find a nice way of doing it. Also I activated constallations as follows: Falcon > Tsunami > Rat > Behemoth > Manticore - and completed veteran mode with them, before I reviewed my choices again. If I started this char anew, I would level him as described above.

The Loghorrean was absolutely doable on veteran mode. Before the end boss I went into the Bastion of Chaos, which was mostly fine - I survived a few close calls. My six deaths were all from last year, either from imbalances or me neglecting my health then (only 100 health per level).

My build at level 56 - with buffs including Royal Jelly Essence and Royal Jelly Balm. The elapsed time is that high, as I had to replay areas to get to the shrines and do new quests.

Conclusion
Yes, celestial skills work fine with weapon pool skills. It started to feel good, when I only had two. I got better with three and I could have had four. Onwards to elite mode.

Attachment: Bertram_withDermapteranClaws.jpg
Attachment: BertramLv56.jpg
Attachment: BertramLv76_EliteDifficulty_Unbuffed_Armor.jpg

2

Reserved for Elite

3

Reserved for Ultimate

4

Nicely written up!

We frankly need more build posts like this that aren’t level 85/fully geared up, and posting a summary after finishing Normal/Veteran seems to be a good metric for defining a build. Well done. :slight_smile:

5

Thanks a lot Eisprinzessin for this nice written guide !

Like Ceno said we (Noob players starting from scratch or almost) need this sort of build.
I’m playing since v1.0.0.0 but never get to the end of the game yet cause I was mainly looking for a class Char with a gameplay I will like and also I was trying to learn how things work in this great game.
I started a new char this week following your advices and guide and between lvl 30 to 40 I was a bit “stressed” cause in Veteran mode you can “eat” some really hard burst of damages (I think about those Aetherials or even heavy skellies) and not dying is really the way I want to play even if playing softcore.
So I got Pneumatic Burst, a skill you didn’t choose in your build. why ?
This skill is great, even more with the transmuter as we are following the dual blades line. At start with no CDR I feel really not comfy without it, relying only on blood drinker, Blade barrier and Hpot.
My other prob is the lack of “good” damage/burst for hard single target. In Veteran, now a days, we encounter a lot more Heroes ( group of 2 or 3 are pretty common) and sooner than in Normal mode some Reflected ones so we really need to kill them as fast as we can.
Therefore I get Shadow Strike for that and also to move around as you said mobility is a must have. Maybe I will take Blitz also later for the underground or inside dungeons when we cannot move really like we want without skills.

For the time the build is pretty fun to play and an active gameplay is the way I like it. I 'm using keys (² 1234) + (AZE) and buff/aura in the second bar(azerty keyboard here, ² is for Hpot, very handy there).

6

Huzzah, discussion. Thank you trying out my build. I like to challenge and constrain myself. I find this engaging, and this is the way how I learn to play the game. I guess it is a habit that grew on me as playtester during the past three years. I also aim to stay alive, but I feel you need go out of your comfort zone to improve your player skills and understanding of the game.

With that said I beat the Loghorrean on Elite the other day. But not without dying. My journey consisted of long stretches of fine battles, which got occasionally interrupted by a hero getting the better of me. In retrospect I blame my very dated graphics card, which I upgraded only recently, for several of my deaths. The game was not responsive enough.

Despite of better frame rates with the new card the game was pretty rough to me - I was still playing self-found. In the end I was not able to finish Hidden Path, and I did not attempt the Bastion of Chaos. And boy, in Ultimate the fight under the tree in Lower Crossing was a major pain.

  • However I never felt I needed another healing skill, as I often had a weapon with damage-to-health conversion. Using Pneumatic Burst might be a valid alternative. Would you even be able to permanently replace the Hollowed Fang by a Vitriolic Gallstone or Coldstone?
  • I instead heeded my own advice and used Blade Trap, which worked wonders. I even found it useful against bosses, as I was often able to cancel their special attacks. And if you hit a big enough group, Devouring Blades also provides a decent health regeneration.
  • If you use both skills, you will probably end up too spread out and not have enough points for each.
  • I considered to use Shadow Strike, but scrapped that due to my self-imposed rules. Having that said, I think it is an excellent idea to put a point in each node.
  • I agree with you that increasing the damage output is crucial. Therefore I recommend to use a Mistborn Talisman as relic. The blueprint drops from your friendly troll boss. :wink:
7

Hello Eisprinzessin and thanks for the answer. :stuck_out_tongue:
I feel already out of my comfort zone and more often on the edge doing a lot more kitting now than just moving around mobs or positionning myself.
It’s a part of the game where I have not enough armor or good gear for my level and even trying to get my main resists high enough is hard atm.
I’m using Balde trap too, very usefull I found to force the mobs behind the first row to move around.
I’m still using Hollowed fang and Vicious spikes on my weapons (2 Duelist’s sabres) and feel I really need Blooddrinker even with me getting Pneumatic Burst. But BD is only 8s duration for a 30s cd so I can’t atm rely only on this one.
I tried to use the bloodreaper’s glory set but only 4 pieces atm so I switch often between the Duelist’s sabres and the bloodreaper weapons. (Sabres get 2 pts Amarasta’ QC and 1 pt Markovian’ A. and a lot of Attack speed : 18 & 19% respectively)
Hmm and I pick up also Ring of steel which is pretty decent for 1pt and switched my belt for an Alchemist one. the skill (Homebrewed potion) saved me a few time when I encountered two or three Heroes with “bad skills”. :wink:
For the time I’m more in the Physical damages than the Magical ones. but I deal with the stuff I can find and try to keep your main line guide.
Tip : for the low armor rating atm I use a Scaled hide on pants and raise the armor absorption to 84%. And I keep a few pieces of gear in my bag (mostly ring and helm) to switch when I need specific resists like Aether.

But like some say : It’s only the beginning ! ^^

8

Yes, I have been using Scaled Hide, too. Combined with some points in Scars of Battle I compensate for the low armor rating.

I missed that you can assign a celestial skill to Troll Rage. I have been considering to get rid of one of the WPSs. Now that I can move one celestial skill to Troll Rage (that will be Maul due to its low trigger chance, short recharge time, mainly instantaneous damage and it giving me more frequent stuns), I think I will unlearn Zolhan’s Technique, as it is the only single weapon WPS. And the 9th celestial skill will go to Blade Trap.

I previously also unlearned Veterancy, as I felt the points in there could be better used to boost other skills.

9

So this is a stupid question, but how are you doing stat point distribution?

10

I am at level 78 with this char now and have a distribution rate of 1:2:1 for Physique, Cunning and Spirit. It has been a bit rough in elite, so I think 1:1:1 would probably have been the better choice.

11

Awesome, thank you very much for the clarification!

12

So far level 47, following this build pretty closely and it has been pretty fun.

I have a question though, would a stat distribution of 2:2:1 be better since I’ve been doing 1:1:1 and seem to always have plenty of mana and never have to use spirit potions.

13

This is why I suggest a to distribute attribute points equally. Energy consumption has not been a concern. But a 2:2:1 distribution rate is also fine and provides you with more OA and DA.

14

Thanks for the guide! Two questions though:
1.) Can more than one WPS proc off a single default attack?
2.) What happens when the total chance to proc, between all your WPS, is greater than 100%?

15

1 - No.
2 - As far as I know the percentage is adjusted to scale it down to 100%. Lets say you have all four nightblade wps and both soldier ones. That would be a 130% chance to proc a wps attack. All 6 attack percentages would be scaled down relative to the chance to proc until you are at 100%. The soldier wps would scale down to 19.2% and the nightblade ones 15.4%. Feel free to correct me if I am wrong.

16

You are correct - this is how Crate explains it:

Or see Passively Activated Weapon Skills in the Game Guide.

17

This build looks pretty interesting since it focuses on the weapon pool skills. Since the build doesn’t seem to focus on any actual damage type, is there any optimal gear to eventually work towards?

18

I enjoy that I occasionally need to adapt to whatever loot I find. Having a wider variety of damage types makes this easier. So, I cannot recommend any specific gear. My current setup at level 81 in Ultimate has a high focus on bleeding damage, but if you are more lucky with e.g. acid, then go for it.

Apart from the previously mentioned Dermapteran Slicer you also benefit from equipping an (Empowered) Duelist’s Sabre and or Malkadar’s Dreadblade. (Empowered) Blackwatch Seal and Fabius’ Pauldron look appealing, too. The MIs also drop at lower levels. Last but not least, you get the Manticore Sword(?), when you complete the Black Legion quests in Pine Barrens.

Other than that you want to focus on health and resistances. And take advantage of the Faction vendors, when you need to upgrade an equipment slot.

19
  1. How does cadence work with wps? Can wps proc off the third attack or only off the first and second attacks?
  2. Do debuffs from Markovian’s advantage and Scorpion sting stack?
20

Needed some help with the second question myself:

  1. A WPS cannot proc from the third strike. But a celestial skill can proc with each strike.
  2. The Reduced Target’s DA for x seconds of Markovian’s Advantage and Skorpion Sting do not stack. So, you better not assign them to each other. As I did not fully respec my constallations, Skorpion Sting will be my last celestial skill, and I intend to assign it to Blade Trap, which has -% DA. These two effects do stack. In addition -DA (e.g. in MP from Vulnerability) will also stack.

Why would you prefer to use Cadence over Troll Rage?