[Witchblade] OJ, the Chaos Tank

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
1

[v1.0.0.4] OJ, the Chaos Tank

With the game being officially released, I have been playing heavily, trying out various different characters and builds, while at the same time quickly filling up multiple stashes with legendaries. So I decided to make a Witchblade build in between farming, since there are not many guides for that mastery combo and to add some salt to the flavour I decided to go down the melee chaos path which most people tend to avoid, especially since I had a couple of Obsidian Juggenauts in my stash and a few other legendaries that boosted chaos damage!

Pros for this build:

  • Very easy to play, no need to spam your keyboard to be effective![/ul]
    [ul]
    Fast and hard hitting AOE able of destroying screens of enemies in few seconds, the more mobs around you the better you perform!
    [/ul]
    [ul]
    Most of the endgame gear used is of the 50-60 range, meaning you can grow to almost full power very early in the game, utterly destroying elite difficutly!
    [/ul]
    [ul]Super tanky character, you can probably facetank 95% of the game with few exceptions of weird hero combinations. Even then there are enough defensive procs to make this build more than hardcore viable!
  • Low dependency on gear, with the exception of the Obsidian Juggernaut of course. The more legendaries you get the better you will perform, but you can make this build work with mostly epics!
  • There are no BiS items, no best skill/devotion allocation, you can finetune it yourself to make it as tanky/dpsy as you want!

Cons for this build:

  • Not as great dps with single target enemies that don’t have spawns, fortunately you won’t find many of those.
  • Character starts to shine after 58 when you can equip Obsidian Juggernaut, though it is not bad before that, but once you equip it, you will understand what I mean!
  • You will need Obsidian Juggernaut to make this build work.
  • Most of the time you health bar will be full, leading to a false sense of being untouchable.
  • Lower killing speed with mobs that have a high chaos resistance, fortunately that ain’t too many!

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1 Like
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Skill choices

Now the skills I picked are what I considered the best for this build the way I play it. Feel free to make other choices if you want. I am not the type of person to micromanage the last skill points to draw out as much dps as possible or other stuff like that. There is not definitive ‘best way’ to play this char, that is part of what makes it fun!

Occultist (50 points in mastery)

  • [li]Solael’s Witchfire (12/12)[/li]Flat chaos damage + attack speed, bread and butter for this build.
  • [li]Consecrated Blade (3/3)[/li]Physical converted to chaos damage, a definate must. Will help increase your damage through your massive +%chaos damage.
  • [li]Second Rite (12/12)[/li]More chaos damage + vit resistance and some flat vit damage. Points well spent.
  • [li]Possession (12/12)[/li]Chaos resistance, damage absorption and a huge buff to damage! Plus you look really cool when you turn it on!
  • [li]Blood of Dreeg (16/16)[/li]Health restore, health regen and OA, you should keep this up all the time. One of the best utility skills in game.
  • [li]Aspect of the Guardian (4/12)[/li]Some physical resist and poison resist. I use those 4 points just for the resists to cap my resistances. Feel free to get more or less depending on what you are missing.

Soldier (40 points in mastery)

  • [li]Blade Arc (16/16)[/li]Our main attack, LMB. Even though some of the gear I use give bonuses to Cadence and Fighting Form, after testing I still feel that Blade Arc is more consistant both in healing (through our gear and constellations) and damage output in most scenarios. Plus it needs less points to actually be good.
  • [li]War Cry (1/12)[/li]One point wonder. Will be using it to debuff everything around us.
  • [li]Fighting spirit (12/12)[/li]Awesome skill, will be up all the time, major boost to damage.
  • [li]Field Command (12/12)[/li]Some OA, some DA and some sweet Armour increase. It is part of our tanking skills.
  • [li]Scars of Battle (8/8)[/li]Awesome soldier skill, Bleed resistance, stun/freeze reduction and increased Armour absorption on top! One of the best Soldier skills!
  • [li]Military Conditioning (10/10)[/li]Awesome health booster. We will need that health since we are melee tanking.
  • [li]Menhir’s Will (8/16)[/li]Nice death prevention skill, a must for hc chars. You don’t really need more than that.
  • [li]Laceration (1/12) [/li]Widens our Arc and doubles the amount of targets hit. Awesome 1 point wonder!


    [li]Decorated Soldier (4/8)[/li]Physical damage + some resistances. You can use those points elsewhere if you want.

Build without items

Build with items

3

Devotion Guide

Here is a guide of the Constellations I choose, in the order I chose them and the reasoning behind my choices. You are not forced to make the same choices, though most of them are pretty solid options for this build.

[LIST=10]
[li] Fiend[/li]
First point goes to the Chaos Star in the crossroads to get access to Fiend. We get everything from the Fiend and we assign the proc (Flame Torrent) to our LMB, Blade Arc. Because we are using a 2h the proc does some quite nice AoE damage plus you get some more chaos damage from the constellation.

[li] Lizard[/li]
We use a point in the Primordial Star in the crossroads to get acces to Lizard. Lizard will help improve our health regeneration even more and gives us enough points to unlock the Behemoth.

[li] Behemoth[/li]
To unlock the Behemoth we remove the point from the Primordial Star from crossroads and place it on the Eldritch Star. We proceed to grab every star from Behemoth which will buff our health regeneration by ALOT, especially when fully geared, we can easily go above 1K health regeneration with the proc. You can assign the proc to Solael’s Witchfire or Possession.

[li] Kraken[/li]
Kraken is a HUGE buff to damage with two handers. To get to it, remove the point from the Eldritch Star in the crossroads and place it again on the Primordial Star. You can also remove the Chaos Star if you want to get there faster. Grab everything from the Kraken!

[li] Sailor’s Guide[/li]
Here we grab everything from a pure defensive constelllation, because the defensive stuff provided is quite nice and we need the blue points to unlock the Dying God.

[li] Solemn Watcher[/li]
Even more defensive stuff, really solid boost to our defences and now we have enough blue points for the Dying God.

[li] Solael’s Witchblade[/li]
We use this constellation for the chaos damage but also for the awesome Chaos resistance debuff. Assign the debuff to Warcry to debuff everything around you.

[li] Dying God[/li]
Place a point in the Chaos Star in the crossroad and you have just unlocked the biggest chaos damage buff from all the devotions. I grabbed everything from here except the last proc. I already do enough +%Chaos damage by gear and constellations that I don’t find the cost (in health) of this proc to be worth it.

From here on, there are 9 more points to spend any way you really want. What I went for is:

[li] Ghoul [/li]
I grabbed everything from here except for the last star. Since we are doing massive weapon damage I wanted to try out a heavy ADCTH build. Plus the rest of the stars are not bad and the proc is a massive buff to ADCTH.

[li] Revenant[/li]
Grabbed the first 4 right stars for health, more ADCTH and energy absorb, for a total of 13% ADCTH from constellations.

Spent the last two points to grab the Order Star from crossroads for more health and the first star in the Lion for even more health.[/LIST]

4

Gear Selection

As I mentioned before there are no BiS items (for the most part), these are some of the items I have used to make this build work. It does not mean they are your best option, feel free to experiment with alternate gear yourselves. Since I don’t cheat or trade, these are purely self found items. I have included as an option, a couple of items I do not have yet but would obviously be a good fit for the build. So here is a list of gear and components that helped me destroy everything I faced and provided tons of fun at the same time!

  • [li]Weapon: Obsidian Juggernaut[/li]Component: Riftstone

    The weapon choice is obvious as it is what the build is based upon! For a component I went with the Riftstone because it provides us with the Chaos Strike skill. Not only does it provide excellent mobility, it also does a ton of damage, perfect for oneshotting healers or ninja killing energy draining heroes and bosses. You can also use it in between Blade Arc if you wish to increase your single target dps too!

    [li]Head: Praetorian Faceguard[/li]Component: Feel free to use any resistance compenent you are missing.

    This is what I used from 50 and still using it by the way! Solid defensive stats + health and a nice 2p bonus with the shoulders equipped. There are probably other pieces of gear that would work well, but I haven’t found one I would swap it with yet. Updating for 1.0.0.4 I will include another 2 viable options, Empowered Eldritch Keeper’s Casque and Eldritch Gaze.

    [li]Shoulders: Praetorian Shoulderguard[/li]Component: Feel free to use any resistance compenent you are missing.

    Again solid defensive stats and I am still using this item ever since I wore it on level 50. With the helmet and Blood of Dreeg I reach a solid 21% physical resist.

    [li]Chest: Devil’s Cage Hauberk[/li]Component: Scaled Hide

    BiS Chest. Chaos Damage. DA and increased health regen, not to mention a MASSIVE fire resistance. To top it all off, an AOE proc with chaos resist debuff. Until you get this you can probably use Praetorian Chestguard

    [li]Hands: Voidsteel Gauntlets[/li]Component: Feel free to use any resistance compenent you are missing.

    Adds chaos damage, some resistances, some AS and a killer AOE proc. A pretty solid choice for gloves.

    [li]Legs: Demonbone Legplates[/li]Component: Feel free to use any resistance compenent you are missing.

    Increased armour, solid boost to damage and a solid AOE proc.
    As an alternative you can use Legplates of Valor or Empowered Legplates of Valor

    [li]Feet: Boneshatter Treads[/li]Component: Feel free to use any resistance compenent you are missing.

    Using this mainly for the OA and the solid Slow and Life Leech resistances. The proc and debuff are not bad either.

    [li]Amulet: Thread of Mortality[/li]Component: Focusing Prism or Arcane Spark

    Went for this amulet halfway through Ultimate, mainly for the increase in health regen plus the solid ADCTH. Well you also get some godly resistances in there and I enjoy being overcapped in some to compensate for the nasty enemy debuffs. Until then I had been using Death Ward. You can use Empowered Death Ward as another option.

    [li]Medal : Badge of Mastery or Mark of Divinity[/li]Component: Feel free to use any resistance compenent you are missing.

    Up until somewhere in act 1 or act 2 in ultimate I realised I was still wearing a low level yellow medal with some crap resistances on it, I kid you not! I am now using a Badge of Mastery leftover from trying to craft a decent one for another of my toons. It is a solid overall option, sadly mine has irrelevant to the build +skills. If I could preorder the skills it would roll with I would have asked for Blade Arc since it is the only solid option for this build. Another solid option would probably be a Mark of Divinity but I don’t have one of those yet.

    [li]Waist: Tinker’s Ingenuity[/li]Component: Feel free to use any resistance compenent you are missing.

    BiS belt! Awesome Bleed and Poison Resistances, +% to max resistances for Bleeding and Poison, HUGE bonus to health regeneration, Chance to Avoid Melee and a solid bonus to Constitution. It also lowers the physique requirements for wearing armour. But the proc is just INSANE, it makes sure you are safe in HC mode and the most amazing part of it it has just a 30 sec cooldown! Before that I had been using a Chtonian Thread Sash
  • Relic: Solael’s Decimation or Aegis
    Up till now I have been using Sanctuary because I have been too lazy to farm stuff to craft one of the higher grades. One is a solid offensive option and the other is a solid defensive one. The choice is yours!

    [li]Rings: You can go with a double Lifegiver Signet or Open Hand of Mercy and Closed Fist of Vengeance, or any combination of the above.[/li]Components: I went for Ectoplasm to complement my Energy Regeneration.

    Up till early ultimate I had been playing with a Rhowari Void Seal and a Slith Primal Ring from the quest! Honestly! In the ring department you can use anything you really want. I chose the above legendary rings for tankiness. I am currently using a Lifegiver Signet which combined with my amulet and the devotions chosen, give me a total of 27% ADCTH, which keeps my health bar at max health most of the time. On the other finger I am wearing a Close Fist of Vengeance but sadly I do not have an Open Hand of Mercy yet to test those two as a set, though I am guessing they would be a pretty solid choice. That said, you can use any rings you like and get and test the waters for yourself!
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Playstyle

Playstyle is pretty easy. Buff yourself up with Possession, Solael’s Witchfire, Field Command and Blood of Dreeg. Remember to re-apply Blood of Dreeg before it expires.You have Blade Arc as LMB which you will press down and hold to kill stuff. On RMB you can have Chaos Strike as mobility skill and extra single target dps or simple to ninja oneshot healers. Use warcry to debuff mobs. That’s it!

Leveling this build

There are two parts to leveling this build. The harder part is reaching level 58. Not that you will have a hard time, but after hitting 58 and equipping your designated weapon you will just obliterate everything so it will stop feeling like leveling up, not to mention you will be able to wear most of you endgame gear if you have them available.

As far as attributes go, you will need 330 the most for rings and amulets, you can get away with less depending on what you want to have as an option, the rest you can pour into physique.

As far as skills go, you can either level up as a caster with more gear options and an overpowered Sigil of Consumption that can carry you through to 58 and respec once you hit it or you can try and level up from scratch looking something like this:

Tips

A final tip for leveling up. This build & gear selection is weak on Aether Resistances. On Veteran and Elite levels you will probably be able to get away with it, simply because you of the cool gear that is available early on. I would STRONLY recommend to hit Revered with the Outcast during Elite playtime and use Potent Outcast’s Bastion on your weapon. I am also using Outcast’s Warding Powder on all my armor gear. You will need to hit level 70 for that so I suggest you farm Elite until you are both Revered with the Outcast and Level 70.

A note on ADCTH. For the most part it works really well and has great synergy with the way this build is set up. In game though there are a few mobs that are immune to it. That means that while killing those you will have to rely on your health regeneration alone, which is not bad by itself, but it is not enough on its own to facetank those mobs. I am still pondering whether I want to keep the ADCTH or go for a build heavier on heath regeneration.

Last but not least, I hope you enjoy this build as much as I did. Feel free to ask or comment on anything!

6

After request, here is a screenshot of the character sheet for this build.

Here I will link some of the builds I have played and enjoyed so far!

[Warder] Pure RETALIATION, REFLECT, INVINCIBLE, 100k+ DAMAGE, Hardcore Ultimate 100% Done (SF Gear)
http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/showthread.php?t=36239

[Summoner] The Lazy Pokémon Master Build

[v1]Ultos, the Storm Striker
http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/showthread.php?t=35117

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Hey,
the Badge of Mastery cant roll +Possesion fyi.

Your choices are well explained and have a good structure.
I’ll try it out since I am aiming for a good Witchhunter build for ages now.

8

Thanks for the info, will correct! Hope you enjoy and thank you for your kind words too:D

9

Why you dont get this constellation build?
http://grimcalc.com/build/tvLDTA
You say Dying God is the best chaos constellation, but that’s far from true, Abomination is the best, its proc grants tons of flat chaos damage AND converts 50% of your physical damage into chaos, making a complete 100% conversion for its duration!
Also, i added Solael’s Witchblade (great chaos boost & reducing resists). Also, you’ll probably need Manticore to reduce enemy resistances.

10

Looks fun! Any possibility of some gameplay video?

11

I posted a thread about a very similar build I am theorycrafting on Reddit, using the same weapon general build. I haven’t tested it yet but from your guide I gather it’s more than viable for Ultimate. Great news!

There is also an item in the upcoming patch that is literally made for this build, in case you haven’t seen it yet:

Concerning your build, have you considered pulling out a few points from various places to get Curse of Frailty? The physcial resist debuff should give you quite some additional damage.

In my theoretical build, I also only went up to Field Command in Soldier and invested points into Sigil of Consumption instead fro some nice AoE damage with Destruction and survivability thanks to the lifesteal part.

12

First of all, thank you for checking out the guid and commenting on it!

Heya! I did not say Dying God is the best chaos constellation, but that it gives the most chaos damage (which it does outside of procs). The reason I went with Dying God instead of abomination is because I wanted a tanky character that does damage and not a dps character that feels tanky. So I wanted to get some of the blue nodes. If I went with green ones for Abomination I would probably do more dps but lose some of my tankiness. As I said, I do not feel there is a ‘best choice’ for this build, you are free to make it more tanky or get more dps. Feel free to try out a different set up and tell me how that works for you! I can assure you that this setup is doing more than decent damage.

I will try to add some gameplay videos in the near future! :smiley:

It is nice to see there are more people that like to tamper with odd builds! I can assure you it is more than viable in Ultimate. That is a great helm my friend and yeah it does look like it was made for this build, thanks for pointing out! :smiley:

Now to the hard part of point distribution. When I made this build, I wished I had some extra points, nothing was really going to waste. The problem with CoF is that it does not buff your chaos damage, which is probably something like 80-90% of your damage if you consider that all your damage procs from items are chaos damage too. I felt that the return on the investment was not worth it. You are free to try it and prove me wrong. :smiley:

Now for Sigil, yes that is a viable option in paper, probably would work just as good in actual play. I went for 40 in soldier to get Scars of Battle which is a godly skill for tankiness, I have already tried it in a reflect warder and a 2h lightning one, you really want it for a tank. As far as trash goes, I oneshot or twoshot just about any not tanky non hero mob and the big health regen along with the tons of ADCTH keeps my health maxed out most of the time. In fact in most cases I do not have to cast war cry for the debuff, the damage is good enough. So Sigil would only be good for me for killing heroes or bosses which I can already facetank with this setup.Also getting less points in soldier means less hps too, which would make the char a bit more squishy, which is the opposite to the concept I was going for. Last but not least it add a huge energy cost to a char with low energy regen, meaning you would have to chain drink pots. You can try it out though, that is all my personal view on the point, it does not mean it is your best option, it is how I wanted to play this char and the reason behind my choices! :smiley:

I hope when I get to adding a video in the near future, you will see how it would be hard to fit CoF or Sigil in my build without losing the tankiness.

13

Hey, man ! First of all, let me say I am happy to see a WB build on this forum since most veteran players completely abandoned the idea of making a viable one since physical to chaos conversion was taken away from the soldier mastery. This seems like a nice build and it actually incites me to try a WitchBlade again after all these months…

However, I have a simple question to ask and I sincerely hope you will forgive me for it. I saw you put the (hc) tag in the build compendium and that means the build is capable of doing HARDCORE. Now, you haven’t provided any proof in that direction. I mean, even if you play in softcore and delete the character if the death count is >0, at least put a picture showing how you defeated Ultimate Log and haven’t died once.

I am saying this because 80% of the builds presented on this forum are actually NOT capable of doing HC so I am happy to see one that can :wink:

14

why no laceration?

15

There is nothing to forgive, it is more than a fair question, so I will be totaly honest with you! The char I am using this build on, is an old softcore occultist I had who was using a pet build, was around level 40 and already had some deaths as a pet pre-release build.

That said, you should be able to equip almost every part of the gear somewhere around early elite and half of it probably before finishing veterran too. It is already a tanky character as it is and between Tinker’s Ingenuity and Menhir’s Will, you have two circuit breakers that should keep you alive in any HC situation. With the belt having such a short cooldown along with the buff, it gives you plenty of time to safely step back if needed.

To sum it up, I have not tested this build in HC enviroment, but I am more than confident that it would work well in it and capable of finishing off Utimate difficulty. If anyone has a problem because I did it in a softcore enviroment, I don’t mind removing the (hc) tag, I just felt it is solid enough for hc.

Because there is only a limited amount of points to spend. Since we are doing chaos damage and don’t have a huge OA, we don’t crit THAT often with Blade Arc to make the %crit damage worth it. That and to get points for it you would probalby have to deduct points from defensive nodes, making the build less tanky. It is an option if you want to go for it, I just prefer playing a more tanky char. As I said in this guide, nothing is written in stone, you are free to tamper around with skills to bring it more to what you prefer playing!

16

have you considered or tested to use the granted skill from weapon? pair with falcon “shot-gun”

Blade Arc damage is not very great against single target :confused:

also, do you find it hard to kill any end-game boss or nemesis?

Thanks:p

17

I have actually tested the granted skill from the weapon and it is far inferior in my eyes, not to mention that the cost of it compared to the damage it does just seems subpar. I ll add an attachment so you can see what I mean! The main reason for that is that Blade Arc goes with 135% weapon damage and Obsidian Tremor only does 45% weapon damage.

Nemesis I haven’t done yet cause they need some rep grinding. As far as end-game bosses go, there is just one pattern. If they are immune to ADCTH you have to kite and dodge and ninja hit them with chaos strike, if they are not immune you can probably facetank them. When they are immune but have adds you can usually still facetank them. I am guessing the same would probably be true for nemesis. I still have not decided if I want to stick to ADCTH or go for more massive health regeneration.

18

Well written and organized guide. I am going to try your build when I get to my Witchblade character.

19

The main problem with this build is that it uses Blade Arc with Obsidian Juggernaut. Blade Arc and Obsidian Tremor are both good AoE skills, but both lack good single-target damage and are quite costly.
So, if you focus on useing Blade Arc, then your build is actually just another 2-h Blade Arc build, nothing special about it. You can do it even better with a normal physical 2-hander.
And if you focus on Obsidian Tremor, then you’ll face a total lack of energy to spam it, and lack of good cheap single-target skill to spam instead VS bosses.

I’d got Shaman mastery instead of Soldier, and used Savagery instead of Blade Arc. Savagery is very cheap and deals much higher single-target damage, than Blade Arc. Also, Shaman has access to better regen skills.

20

Would Cadence support single target attacks?