[Witch Hunter] Incarnation of Dreeg (1.0.0.5)

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
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INCARNATION OF DREEG
Master of DoT & Kiting

I’ve tried quite a few builds and so far, I haven’t found a build that truly satisfy my desire to truly demolish the game in the utmost enjoyable and probably too-cheese fashion. That’s when I decided to try out some of the poison builds on the forum, but sadly most of them are outdated and just don’t work out as intended anymore. So here we are, me showing you my own poison build with a few pieces collected here and there to form the (in a most objective way) powerful build yet. You can cheese bosses, trashes are still trashes, nemesis are a joke, and the fadeaway kill just feels b.a.d.a.s.s. So far, I’ve seen as high as 135k per tick on Moosilauke, and my health doesn’t drop that much even with low DA thanks to the hp regen and 2 heals. Amazing! So, without further ado, here’s the build:

SKILLS (with bonuses) & DEVOTIONS: http://grimcalc.com/build/fQ6yom1

With +2 all Occultist skills from Dreeg set and some other skill bonuses for the Occultist branch, the Nightblade branch is left out, hence my skill distribution:

  1. Pneumatic Burst (10/12): 10 is enough to provide a good heal + regen, higher skill levels only provide marginal increase, so not worth it, stop at 10.
  2. Shadow Dance (7/12): some extra DA + avoid chance are always beneficial.
  3. Phantasmal Armor & Elemental Awakening (1/12): you can add or nay and spend on something else, your choice.
  4. Blade Barrier (1/12): survivability + mobs dying around you while you stand still in your metal rings, cool right?

As for the Occultist branch, the skill selection is self-explanatory, aiming for the highest poison damage and poison resistance reduction as humanly possible, but anyways, here’s some in-depth look:

  1. Max out Dreeg’s Evil Eye skill branch except for Terrifying Gaze.
  2. 1 point in Curse of Frailty and 10/10 in Vulnerability for that tasty poison resist reduction. Ultimate levels of Vulnerability don’t scale well, so 10 is fine.
  3. Max out Blood of Dreeg for extra damage + amazing OA boost + extra heal. 1 point in Aspect of the Guardian for some more juice, but not worth investing more.
  4. 12/12 for Possession, ultimate levels don’t scale well.

If you have leftover skill points, put them in Terrifying Gaze for more damage in DEE, or Aspect of the Guardian, but be warned, the extra poison resistance will be redundant since you already have more than enough from your gears.

DEVOTION SET-UP:

We focus on offensive devotions, since we already have 2 amazing defensive abilities (it’s the heals), but ofc we can’t leave out some defensive devotions to further alleviate survival issues.

  1. 1 point in Eldritch.
  2. Max Akeron’s Scorpion. Assign Scorpion Sting to Dreeg’s Evil Eye.
  3. Max Hawk.
  4. Max Rat.
  5. Max Oklaine’s Lantern.
  6. Max Crane. We need this devotion to be able to wear the Off-Hand (spoilers).
  7. 1 point in Chaos.
  8. 1 point in Jackal.
  9. Max Manticore. Assign Acid Spray to Shadow Strike.
  10. Max Empty Throne. More survivability and enable #11.
  11. Max Chariot of the Dead. Assign Wayward Soul to Possession.
  12. Refund Eldritch and max out Poison branch in Abomination. Assign Tainted Eruption to Dreeg’s Infinite Gaze.
  13. 1 extra DP here. I put in Order to get the extra health.

GEARS:

Helm: Hood of Dreeg/Prismatic Diamond/Solarstorm Powder

Chest Armour: Vestments of Dreeg/Chains of Oleron/Mankind’s Vigil

Pants: Nidalla’s Legwraps/Silk Swatch/Mankind’s Vigil
Alternatives: Empowered Legplates of Valor

Shoulders: Mantle of Dreeg/Silk Swatch/Mankind’s Vigil

Gloves: Viperfang Grips/Unholy Inscription/Mankind’s Vigil

Boots: Golemborn Greaves/Mark of Mogdrogen/Mankind’s Vigil

Belt: Thorn Girdle of the Misty Glade/Dense Fur/Bladeward Powder

Weapon: Runed Dagger of Dreeg/Mark of Dreeg/Outcast’s Bastion
Alternatives: Plaguebearer of Dreeg, Mad Queen’s Claw

Off-Hand: Empowered Edrick’s Backscratcher/Vitriolic Gallstone/Outcast’s Bastion
Alternatives: Fiend’s Resolve

Amulet: Black Gem of Dreeg/Black Tallow or Arcane Spark or Wardstone/Mogdrogen’s Sanctity
Alternatives: Pestilence of Dreeg

Rings: Open Hand of Mercy & Closed Fist of Vengeance/Corpse Dust/Viloth’s Bite

Medal: Mark of Divinity/Wardstone

Relic: Malediction or Dreeg’s Affliction

Use any augments and materias to max up your resistance. I recommend you wear a full set of Dreeg to get the incredible proc. For the other armour gears, replace them with anything you want, doesn’t matter, you’d still deal tonnes of damage either way. Golemborn Greaves for proc, ofc. Belt, replaceable. Mark of Divinity is only for resistance + extra health, so feel free if you have better alternatives. Malediction feels better for me because of the extra poison damage, but Dreeg’s Affliction is still a viable option.

ATTRIBUTE DISTRIBUTION: I put 10 points in Spirit to be able to wear my current Off-Hand, the rest in Physique.

PLAYSTYLE: Spam your skills, run around, heal when needed, apply CoF from time to time. When in danger, use Blade Barrier to wait for cooldown. Let DoT do the work. Just for reference purpose, my LMB is DEE, RMB is Shadow Strike. SUPER EASY TO PLAY, SUPER CHEESE.

I’d record gameplay if my computer isn’t garbage. This is my first build so I wish to hear suggestions and feedbacks from you guys! If you have questions regarding my choice of itemization or whatever, leave a comment. Last but hopefully not least, have fun with this build, as have I.

2

Your build is almost identical to mine, except for two items (belt and offhand) ad a few details in devotion. How do you feel about survivability, because that’s my biggest problem: I haven’t gotten beyond Wave 110 Challenger in the Crucible (Fabius + iron Maiden=dry anal rape). It does faceroll Ultimate though as you said.
I’m using Sash of the Immortal Sage to make it easier to cap resistances, and Plaguebearer of Dreeg for the very useful resist reduction proc. This makes me lose some CDR due to not using a Caster offhand, but that’s pretty irrelevant because my DoTs all last at least twice as long as my CDs. It also means I get the transmuted Pneumatic Burst, so a 50% HP heal every ~8 seconds.

3

If I got hit by bosses and nemesis, it’d hurt a lot, but I usually make sure to stay as far as possible while maintaining distance to spam DEE and Dreeg’s Infinite Gaze. With 128% run speed + slow from CoF + good mobility from Shadow Strike, I just do one combo and get away with it while mobs fall to the ground.

Imo, this build does bring up some survivability issues due to low DA and health, but if you manage the cooldowns of your heals efficiently, and know when/where to Shadow Strike amidst a fight, you shouldn’t have a problem.

I think I know the problem wth Iron Maiden: it’s the stupid stun lock. As I said before, this build is squishy, hence stuns and freezes would be the end to you if you didn’t prepare beforehand. Temporary solutions would be to stock up on consumables. Also there are gears that provide stun time reduction, so you can switch them out for said occasions.

To wrap up, my build is offense-oriented, so defense ofc is going to suffer as a repercussion. Ideally, keep wearing full Dreeg set, slap on Legplates of Valor, replace rings with rare ones if you manage to find those with good affixes and suffixes, and you’re good to go.

4

I’m fairly sure I’m pushing the limits this build has for survivability. 2k DA, 10k HP and all resists capped; I doubt Legplates of Valor would do much. You are completely right about the stunlock, though I think this is a general problem for Casters.

5

What I usually do to deal with Iron Maiden (work 70% of the time, give or take) is to pile on DoT on her as fast as possible, run around a bit, if she charges as you, use Blade Barrier, pile on more DoT, SS away, heal, and repeat. Most of the time she wouldn’t be able to touch me to stun, but again it’s all down to circumstance, luck and cooldown management, and do not panic. But again, Challenger Crucible is not easy for everyone so yeah.

6

Look here…this is taken from my HC WH that is as old as 1.0.0.2 I think:

WH as a class is very squishy, so survivability can’t come from HP or monstrous DA. Remember the rule of the overcap: 90% resistance to something esentially halves the damage you take compared to the natural, soft cap of 80%. Couple that with 1500 HP/sec and you can basically survive every encounter with Fabius or the Iron Maiden.

This is how I got to kill all nemeses ad nauseam for hundreds of times without dying: overcapping resistances + 2 independent fail-safe mechanisms and a panic button.

7

Individual Nemeses are zero trouble for me, neither is the Mad Queen. The problem is when two or more of the ‘charge you down’ types appear at once, like Fabius and Iron Maiden. I havent died once on Ult since I could equip the BiS gear.

8

…I don’t think you can do Challenger Crucible without at least an Avatar of Mercy / Tinker or Mark of Divinity. At least that’s how I pulled it off and wouldn’t want to try other strategies since I am talking about a HC char.

I would actually donate an entire Markovian set to the person who manages to finish Gladiator waves 100-150 with a poison WH with 0 circuit-breakers.

9

I can approve. Sometimes, I let my guard down in Gladiator and got demolished quite quickly with this build. The point is, when it comes to Crucible, defense might be the best offense.

10

Fabius + iron Maiden=dry anal rape

I have to agree. Like, completely agree. Damn it

11

I made similar build but it is full-melee. The only spell is from Mark of Dreeg component. And I use ABB. I still don’t have all the gear - my helmet and shoulders are not quite good. Yesterday I finished Challenger in one run - no deaths and not even close to death moments. The day before I finished Gladiator in party w/o any deaths and I did a great amount of work. Yes Witch Hunter is squishy and you still might die but the damage output is superb and personally I don’t mind dying sometimes. The clear and farm speed is good.

12

Drop merciless repertoire and take the extra points out of vile eruption overmaxing this is better with spammable dee. Take these points and get veil of shadow+night’s chill, this will be a massive dps boost and offer some defensive utility as well. Also worth considering getting more points into aspect of the guardian for the phys resist, I think taking points out of blood of dreeg is worth getting more into this even. Phys resist > extra regen especially since you’re not focusing too hard on regen here.

I’ve don a lot of poison WH setups and I don’t think you should take crane unless you want to go super tanky and take tip the scales or something, tiny stat boost and the poison/vit resists are fairly irreverent for this build. Stack health, take behemoth for regen, sailors for freeze/slow resist 20 phys and 3% phys resist, could even go guardian gaze even though it doesn’t add a ton of damage

13

I’m taking Crane only for the -10% Spirit requirement so that I can wear my off-hand.

Since my build aims at stacking DoT from a distance while constantly kiting, so Veil of Shadow wouldn’t be ideal since I won’t be near the mobs 90% of the time. As for Blood of Dreeg, I want more OA so that DoT crits more often, but ofc you can split even between that and Aspect of the Guardian if you want more tankiness. It’s all personal preference.

Guardian’s Gaze feels sub-par for me: low proc chance, out-of-context chaos damage.

14

Ah yes forgot about the -10% spirit. A few points out of dreeg won’t hurt OA much, but as you said personall pref. And yeah guardian’ gaze kinda sucks imo was just listing options, it kind’ve works ok bound to dreegs affliction when you’re against big mobs but you don’t really need the extra kill power

I have a somewhat similarly build WH and honestly you have plenty of survivability to be around mobs and in terms of 1v1s with big bags you can definitely stay close enough to keep the buff active, but without them wailing on you hard. It’s a pretty huge damage increase so I would suggest trying it out and seeing how you it feels for you

15

I have Curse of Fraility leveled to 9 or 10 for radius, then attach Guardian’s Gaze to it and voila. It procs great and when those eyes fly around you they proc on attack skills on your gear. Very helpful to me

16

Same here, with up to 6 of these eyes circling around me at once and each of them stacking their DoT individually, my ticks go up from 140k (without it) to 180k damage.

17

Oh, their DoTs stack? Interesting.

18

You sure about this? They really shouldn’t stack…other procs like Tainted Eruption don’t stack.

19

You don’t actually need them inside Veil of Shadow most of the time - as long as they are affected by Veil of Shadow when you apply the dot it will receive the boosted damage for the entire duration. This holds true of all resistance debuffs.

Note that it doesn’t hold true for skills like Bloody Pox where the damage is applied every second. But your build doesn’t seem to use any of that type of damage.

20

I am sure. Tested it myself. In this case it makes sense since they are individual summons. Tainted Eruption is a single proc that refreshes itself, while every Eye applies its own DoT. Otherwise I wouldnt gain 40k dps, since a single eye’s dot is about 5-8k dps with crits.