I’m almost done leveling up my battlemage (soldier/arcanist) and noticed I’m barely using any of the arcanist skills; I’m looking towards making a witchblade next to see if I like it more, but I’m afraid I might end up like this again.
So, what’s a decent end-game Witchblade build like ? I was thinking of a soldier skilled guy with a hellhound. What are your thoughts ?
Look in the build compendium for ideas: http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/showthread.php?t=79419
This is my Witchblade btw https://www.grimtools.com/calc/a2E8OvnN
If you are doing a physical battlemage, you should use Mirror or Erectoes, Maviens Sphere and Inner Focus. Flash Freeze can be decent for some crowd controll and nullification too. Elemental balacne for more crit dmg. That are pretty many skills 
As you can see with my witchblade, I am only using two of the Occultist skills. If you wanna make a char that uses many skills from the different masteries, you need to pick masteries that deal the same damage types primarly. The Battlemage for instance, Arcanist deals Aether, Fire, Cold and Lightning primarily. And the Soldier Physical, Pierce, Bleeding. Not much overlapping going on. Secondly, you look for if they have overlapping resistance reduction skills with mechanics that can work in synergy. From the physical department, we see that both soldier and arcanist have skills that can reduce physical resistance with the mechanic “x reduced targets physical resistance” (Break Morale and Inferno) and that is a mechanic that can not work in synergy, only the strongest of the two reduction mechanics will kick in. This is in contrast with the witchblade, that has “-x% physical resistance” on Curse of Frailty. This mechanic can work in synergy with other of the same type (that also reads “-x% physical resistnace”) and all other resistance reduction mechanic like the one from break morale.
Ahh, I see.
So, anything will do in ultimate mode as long as it’s used wisely, or do I really need focused synergy and skill mechanics ?
Depends on what you want to do. If you want to farm superbosses and celestials, then you really do need to focus on synergy and min/maxing your skills. If you just want to clear ultimate and diddle around in crucible without worrying about speed running or clearing gladiator 170, almost all builds are capable of it if created logically and geared appropriately.
First you should decide if you wanna play caster, ranged, melee, summoner. It is very hard to pull off hybrids, especially if you do not have gear.
For a witchblade, it makes most sense to play either as a melee dude with aid from the occultist (curse of frailty, blood of dreeg and perhaps some solael witchfire for more attack speed) or a caster (acid with dreegs eye or vitality/bleed from bloody pox, or vitality & fire/chaos from sigil ) and just use the soldier passives for tankyness.
This is an example of a budget acid caster Witchblade that I have been working on today https://www.grimtools.com/calc/b28QWo3V
I basically just use the soldier to get life, offensive and defensive ability, armor, and damage reduction
So, if I don’t have a clear goal, just max resistances, max a type of damage output and of course, get a goal. …?