Hello Wolcen community,

I've decided to share with you a rough guide to my current build. I will also include numerous tips and suggestions as well as my own rationale for pathing choices in the passive skill tree.

DISCLAIMER:

This post is not intended to hold your hand in creating/updating your current build. Instead, my aim is to help you improve your gear selection, passive skill points, and skill modifiers. My set-up is heavily gear and level-dependent. However, it seems that this will be the case for most BE builds that hope to obliterate the endgame. What I am providing is more of a framework--and less of a step-by-step guide--to aid you in being successful in your endeavors to create an effective two-handed Bleeding Edge Warrior. Lastly, I will not explain how to consistently inflict 5+ ailments on enemies. This post presumes that you have a firm understanding of ailment mechanics, or that you will conduct your own research to acquire adequate knowledge of ailment mechanics.

PROS

• Massive Damage (2mil to 4mil crits)
• Trial Belt (shit belt) and Mark of Impurity are not required to be effective in destroying 187-189 content
• Boss killer build can slay most bosses without shields or aether mods in less than 10 seconds
• Insanely fast pack clear speed
• Endless Rage --> 100% chance to deal double damage
• High Defenses allows you to face-tank almost anything (82% All Resist, 20% Life Leech, 120% Maximum Life Regenerated every few seconds)

CONS

• Highly gear-dependent and level-dependent (A specially-crafted 2H weapon with Mark of Impurity to more easily clear packs)
• Can get 1-shotted by Exoskeleton lightning stationary AOE
• Can get 1-shotted by Aurora Knight AOE if you are 0m away from him (right in his face)
• Bleeding Edge will not deal damage to enemies who are vortexed into you and are 0m away, requiring you to take 1 step of distance to deal damage (large hitbox monsters are unaffected by this issue).
• Requires constant spam of Sovereign Shout to maintain stamina points replenished, 100% block, and increased attack speed
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Skill Tree

https://share.wolcen.dev/s/wWWTgbQRcU

This build focuses on afflicting enemies with all 4 of the DoT ailments in order to to accomplish three essential objectives related to the Fatal Pact passive skill (https://wolcen.wiki.fextralife.com/Fatal+Pact):
1. Due to Fatal Pact's effects, every ailment that we inflict enemies with is also reflected to us. By focusing on using DoT ailments (bleed, poison, burn, and shock), we will receive +10 rage (or +25/+35 if you allocated The Heat of the Battle and Wyrmbreath together) per ailment tick.

• Each DoT ticks at different rates PER STACK.

  • Bleed: 0.5 seconds (2 ticks per second) > 20 rage/1 second
  • Poison: 0.9 seconds (1 tick per second) > 10 rage/1 second
  • Burn: 0.6 seconds (~2 ticks per second) > 20 rage/1 second
  • Shock: 1.0 second (1 tick per second) > 10 rage/1 second

• With all 4 DoTs reflected onto ourselves, we can generate 60 rage per second with only 1 ailment stack for each ailment (Wyrmbreath passive). If we allocate a point into The Heat of the Battle passive, we can generate 170 rage per second.

  • With 5 stacks of each DoT, we simply multiply 60 rage by 5: 300 rage per second (Wyrmbreath only)
    • 170 x 5: 850 rage per second (Heat of the Battle + Wyrmbreath)
  • With 9 stacks of each DoT, again we multiply 60 rage by 9: 540 rage per second (Wyrmbreath only)
    • 170 x 9: 1530 rage per second (Heat of the Battle + Wyrmbreath)

• The reason I do not use Heat of the Battle is because it requires a huge investment of skill points (3) for a very minimal gain in utility. Secondly, it seems superfluous to invest into more rage generation when Sovereign Shout (300 rage) and Wings of Ishmir (100-130 rage) are being constantly used, especially against bosses. In addition, when we get tickled by numerous enemies, we again generate rage per hit taken. After doing extensive testing, I do not see my rage decrease below 750 very often unless I neglect using shout and wings for some reason (which you shouldn't do).

• Every time the number of DoT stacks inflicted on us reaches 10, 30% of our maximum HP is instantly recovered.

• There is potential to recover 120% of our maximum HP every few seconds.

• In order to maximize the likelihood of Fatal Pact's effects occurring, it is best to deliver as many hits as possible.
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• Increase the damage of Bleeding Edge by 2% per ailment stack inflicted in enemies (Despotic Perseverance)

• Assuming the enemy is inflicted with the maximum amount of stacks (20 for this build) of each ailment (bleed, poison, burn, shock, weakness), we multiply 20 by 5: 100% increased damage on that enemy. With another 10 maximum ailment stacks, the number increases to 150% damage at maximum stacks.

• However, because my particular build uses the Blistering Embrace passive, all of my burn stacks are consumed whenever the passive effect procs on the enemy, thereby reducing the total increased damage of Despotic Perseverance from 100% to 80%. The trade-off, however, is that my BE's main ailments are Burn and Bleed, so I can easily restack burn on my enemy. And because Blistering Embrace increases the damage of my hit by 10% PER STACK, if all 20 stacks are consumed, the damage of my hit is increased by 200%.

• With enough ailment chance, accessories that give you +1 or +2 ailment stacks inflicted (the maximum bonus derived from your gear is +8 ailment stacks if all of your accessories have +2 Ailment Stacks Inflicted), and the passive nodes that multiply the number of ailment stacks inflicted by 2 (Power of the First Men --> Enneract Expert + Artefact Expert), you will be able to inflict 18 stacks of an ailment (8 stacks from gear + 1 stack from default: 9 stacks multiplied by 2) every time your hits trigger each particular ailment.

• You can opt for Insidious Decay to obtain +2 ailment stacks inflicted as well as +10 maximum ailment stacks, but, in my opinion, your skill points should be spent more wisely in other areas.

  • Considering that the damage of BE would be increased by 50% at maximum stacks on an enemy and your hits would increase by 300% if Blistering Embrace proc'd at maximum stacks, and the maximum number of ailments inflicted per hit would increase from 18 to 22, I can understand why you would consider Insidious Decay + Master of Curses x2 to be optimal passive skills. Yet, it would be at the cost of 5 passive skill points, which I believe should be invested into other equally or more powerful AND useful passives.
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    The following passives are indispensable:
• The Wild Card
• Merciless Lethality
• Salvatory Anchor
• Sacred Oath
• Disallowing Vessel --> Secure Parry
• Wyrmbreath (or The Heat of the Battle)
• Furious Appetite --> Frenzied Blows
• Grievous Afflictions
• Power of the First Men --> Enneract Expert + Artefact Expert
• Immortal Offering
• Dire Juncture --> Impossible Soul x2
• Virtuose Stance
• Proud Reprisal
• Persistence Hunting
• Fatal Pact
• Duty to Exterminate (or Emotional Intelligence)

The following passives are highly recommended for this build:
1. Toxic Emanations
2. Dawn's Pious Striker --> Sudden Death
3. Flurrying Flames --> Nursing Grudges
4. Blistering Embrace

Attributes

• Below, I offer my suggestions for attribute distributions. Personally, I acquired most of my ferocity and toughness from my gear and passive tree, so this allowed me to invest most of my attribute points into agility and wisdom.

• Ferocity (enough for 55%+ crit chance)

• Toughness (enough for 85k+ HP)
• Agility (enough for 25%+ attack speed)
• Wisdom (enough for 25%-33% ailment chance)

Critical Chance, Attack Speed, and Ailment Chance

1. Critical Strike Chance and Critical Damage: These are the most important stats we have, as they can increase our base attack damage by 300-500% based on how much "critical damage" we possess.

2. From my experience, an optimal range for critical strike chance is 55% to 60%.

3. You should strive to acquire 400% to 440% critical damage.

4. I'm not 100% sure how the math works, but I have some speculations.

   • Assuming your hit does critical damage: Base hit x 2 x critical damage modifier.
   • Example: 50,000 BE average damage x2 = 100,000 x 4.6 (460% critical damage) = 460,000 damage

5. Now, we factor in the Double Damage modifier from our Frenzied Blows passive skill

   • 460,000 x 2 = 920,000 damage

6. Lastly, if the double damage from Virtuose Stance is triggered:

   • 920,000 x 2 = 1,840,000

7. This is a very basic calculation without consideration for any buffs.

8. Attack Speed is absolutely essential to this build because Bleeding Edge SCALES with attack speed. Without enough attack speed, our DPS will be terrible.

9. You should aim to get 45% to 60% attack speed while fully buffed (the Flurrying Flames passive is the best way to achieve 60%+)

10. Faster attack speed increases your number of attack hits, which directly increases the likelihood of inflicting ailments and critical damage. Hitting a boss 10 times per 10 seconds vs. 20-30 times per 10 seconds is an enormous difference, assuming that the same base damage is dealt but critical chance and ailment chance are maybe 10% higher in the first case vs. the latter case. This difference is not sufficient enough to determine that it is optimal to have a build with slower attack speed (0% - 5%) but higher critical (65% - 70%) and ailment chance (35 - 40%).

11. Self-Adjusting Principle (increases projectile speed of BE) is a worthless skill modifier; this is what I have concluded after doing extensive tests. Because we spam BE, especially against bosses, we constantly create new instances of BE, thereby erasing the oldest spinning blade whenever a new one is created (maximum of 3 blades). At 45% attack speed, we will always see blades in front of us if we spam BE, meaning there will be constant attack damage inflicted on our target as we create blades at a rate faster than the oldest instance of BE can complete a full rotation to damage the enemy again. That's why this skill modifier is pointless.
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Due to the new patch being released moments ago, I am pausing the completion of this post until I have had a chance to test it with the new changes.