Howdy!
My name is Stormquake, and this is my Warpath Void Knight build-guide, updated as of Level 94 and Beta Build 0.7.8f. On the discord, reddit, and forums, I have seen a lot of people that are looking for a viable and strong Warpath “spin to win” build, and so I decided to make one of my own. This build has pushed to 200 in arena, and I’m nowhere near finished with my gearing yet, so I am certain it can go further. I originally wanted to hold off on this build guide for a little while, but now that Warpath’s AoE has been upgraded significantly in the latest patch, it’s time to release it!
As a quick disclaimer, I am sure there are far more optimal ways to play my build, especially looking at it in terms of defenses, but this is the version of the build that I enjoy, and you are free to approach it differently as you’d like with this guide just serving as a foundation! Also, this build does hit a bit of a lull in damage midgame, but I assure you it spikes back up late game.
Anyway, here is the guide, broken into a quick gameplay preview video and then 4 detailed sections that go over basic information, skill trees, passive trees, and affix choices.
Gameplay Preview
Just to give you a basic idea of what this build is about, here is a video of me going through Arena waves 106-120 with this build.
Void Knight Warpath Showcase - Arena Waves 106-120 - YouTube
Part 1. Build Summary
I’m sure many people are familiar with this playstyle in ARPGs, and it is often called “spin to win.” Warpath follows a similar formula to many other ARPG spinning skills, wherein you spin around at high speeds and cut down everything in your path. An interesting quirk to Warpath is that it hits twice as fast as regular attacks, but deals half damage with each strike and has halved ailment application rates. The ailment rate is something we’ll have to deal with to some degree, as the Void themed ailment “Time Rot” will prove important to this build’s damage. When it comes to choosing skills and passives, the main objective will be to raise the flat damage Warpath deals, while also achieving a pretty hefty amount of survivability through raw health and leech. This will allow us to just spin through most monster packs like some kind of sadistic lawn mower, leech-tanking our way through any damage that gets thrown at us. The very nature of warpath allowing us to move while dealing damage is a defense in itself, especially for monsters with long-windup moves that will heavily punish you if you stay still. As a note, this build uses two-handed polearms as a methods of achieving some of the highest possible melee damage.
The secondary skills for this build were chosen for various reasons, ranging from mobility and tankiness to damage. There is certainly some leeway in the secondary skills you can use, but my personal choices have been Lunge, Volatile Reversal, Anomaly, and Ring of Shields. The next section will not only go over my exact reasonings for picking each of these skills, but will also look into the nodes that I pick in each of their skills trees and provide my logic for choosing those as well.
Part 2. Active Skill Trees
Warpath:
Let’s start off with the bread and butter of this build. There are quite a few ways to build it, but I will primarily go over the one I use here. Prior to 0.7.8f, I used a version that cost 0 mana per second to use, but after AoE fixes, I have opted to go for more AoE, which leads to me using 2 mana per second. Let me go over it now. First off, you’re going to want to put 3 points in the Reckless Combatant node. This will give us a substantial damage boost to start with as we will be using a 2h weapon. It’s also required to get to the good AoE nodes and the biggest mana cost lowering node, which also happens to be the node this build is named after. As long as you have a relevant 2h weapon, this damage boost alone should be enough to carry you for a while. This means that you can safely make your way over to the mana reducing node after this, and then go up to nodes that increase your damage against time rotted enemies, which significantly raises your damage, before finishing up with the rest of your points. If you don’t mind losing a bit of damage or AoE in exchange for Warpath costing 0 mana, you can take two points out of Unchained and put them into Dark Nexus, or just remove one point from the AoE node and put it in Dark Nexus [which is what I did prior to the AoE bug fix]. Whatever you choose to do, this setup and those similar to it will give you pretty respectable damage and AoE on top of a low or non-existent channel cost.
Lunge:
There’s not much to talk about with Lunge. It’s a very quick mobility skill with a low cooldown, and it’s essential to maintaining damage on this build. The path shown gives you a large amount of crit chance, makes you invincible while dashing, gives an armor boost, and also does a good amount of immediate damage due to polearms being our weapon of choice.
Volatile Reversal:
I know this skill fluctuates in popularity due to how weird it can feel to use, but it definitely has a place in this build. There are a few core functions reversal serves with how I’ve built it. First off, it retains its ability to restore our mana to its value 4 seconds ago, which helps with maintaining our higher cost buffs. In terms of extra effects, I’ve chosen to remove the part that reverts health changes, as it not only gives a huge cooldown recovery buff, but I also find reverting my health is a quick way to get killed as it’s harder to keep track of than mana. Further, I take the nodes that create void rifts, which are used to apply time rot and a separate debuff that makes enemies take 30% increased damage. Lastly, I chose to extend the duration of the warp, mostly for the purpose of maintaining the large attack speed boost the skill can give following use. All of these effects are incredibly beneficial to the build, and proper use of this skill will have you dealing increased damage and never running out of mana. It’s great as a manual evasion tool as well for sticky situations!
Anomaly:
Oh boy, Anomaly. This skill is the entire reason why Void Knight is able to do so well with this build. Not only does the skill come with a guaranteed time rot proc on everything it htis, it also has a very strong secondary effect called Time Bubble, which is where most of our points will go to. The way in which we augment Time Bubble gives its buff 100% uptime, as well as making the bubble stick to us, provide attack speed, and provide crit chance. However, the truly strong part about Time Bubble is that it triples our health leech. Void Knight has a lot of natural leech to begin with, so Anomaly and the Time Bubble it provides push it to outrageous amounts.
Ring of Shields:
While this skill isn’t quite as durable on a Void Knight, it is still great at mitigating ranged damage, allowing us to close the gap without being ripped apart by tens of bolts beforehand. Also, the shields will take 30% less damage while warpath is active, so they can still take quite a beating. The majority of points we use here make the shields tankier, while also providing us with handy self-healing every now and again.
Part 3. Passive Trees
Sentinel:
Diving into passives, the very first one you want to take is Overwhelm for its flat damage, which will provide useful early game. Then, get Relentless and Juggernaut. After spending 20 points, you should save your passive points for until you finish your mastery quest. This will save you some respec money, and give you a burst of passives once you unlock Void Knight!
Void Knight:
The vast majority of the points we spend on this build will be in the Void Knight tree. This is not only because it is our mastery of choice, but because the passive Void Corruption gives 1% crit multi for every point spent in it. Once you unlock Void Knight, your first 10 points should go into Temporal Corruption and World Eater. After this, grab Void Corruption, max out Void Blades, put one more point in World Eater, and then proceed to grab Finality, as the 15% cull is incredibly helpful for tanky enemies. Now that we are at the top half of the Void Knight tree, put 3 points in Rot Grip and then the final 2 in World Eater to max out leech. Now you have unlocked Anomaly. At this point you can briefly hop over to Forge Guard (I’m not actually going to put in a separate Forge Guard section because it’s just 5 points) and put 5 points into either Prime Fighter or Battle Hardened in order to unlock Ring of Shields. I personally prefer Prime Fighter for the Ring of Shields health boost from attributes. Now, return to Void Knight and grab 3 points in Echoing Strikes, which doesn’t actually help us since Warpath can’t echo, but gives access to the very powerful node just above. Next off, put 5 points in Woe and then max out Time Legion, which gives a great attack speed boost and Time Rot chance. At this point, you can put points wherever you want while following along with the screenshot I’ve provided. I’m not level 100 yet, but plan to use my final points to max out Eternal Form.
Part 4: Crafting and Affixes
Now it’s time to discuss the gear that you should be looking for in this build. I personally opted to go for a health stacking build, as it’s made possible by the insane amount of leech this build has. You can go protections if you want, but this gear guide will be catered toward health stacking. The actual in-game names of all item mods will be listed in [brackets] next to their effects, so keep an eye out for those words for the sake of finding good crafting bases or items to shatter for affix shards. To note, if I do not specify which prefixes to grab and say that it’s “up to you,” some good options are either set glancing blows [Enduring] or strength [Mighty] if your glancing blow chance is 100% or more.
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Weapon: Sovnya; This is the best melee crit weapon in the game, boasting high base damage and implicit base crit chance. The two most important affixes are flat void [Dark] and flat crit [Slayer’s], which are both prefixes. If both of these are at T5, you can then throw on some suffixes. Some suffixes I like are melee stun chance [Stone], chill on hit [Sleet], and attributes [Polymath].
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Off-Hand: None, we’re a 2h build.
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Chestpiece: Solarum Plate; This powerful chestpiece provides implicit critical strike avoidance. I would recommend getting one in the 32-35% range to craft on. As this is a health stacking build, the most important affixes are flat health [Life] and increased health [Ox].Once you get these mods, you should put some increased dodge rating [Scout’s] on as a prefix. The other prefix is up to you, although I would personally go for strength [Mighty].
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Helmet: Bronze Helm or Solarum Helm; The first choice provides a good chunk of crit multiplier, while the second gives crit avoidance. Personally I think crit avoidance is easy enough to max just with the help of Solarum Plate, so I personally recommend the Bronze Helm. Once again, you will want flat health [Life] and increased health [Ox] as suffixes. For prefixes, go for set glancing blow [Enduring], and at least one tier of cooldown reduction [Lucid] to give you a bit more grace time while keeping your buffs up.
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Gloves: Solarum Bracers; These gloves are the new go-to for almost any crit build, and so we will be taking them here. As a note, if you manage to get a perfect crit sovnya (7% base and 11% crafted) and get an implicit crit roll on your bracers of 35% of above, then your Lunge and Anomaly buffs alone will boost you to 100% crit chance, saving you from crafting it elsewhere. For affixes, the most important ones are the attack speed prefix [Deft] and the new hybrid life suffix [Giant]. After this, get flat health [Life]. The last prefix is up to you.
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Boots: Solarum Greaves; This pair of boots provides decent movement speed and high armor. For suffixes, I recommend movement speed [Celerity] and hybrid health [Giant]. Your prefixes are up to you.
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Belt: Bronze Belt or Plated Belt; Life… again? Wow! Yes, go for hybrid health [Giant] and increased health [Ox]. There is also a very important prefix you want on belts, which is dodge rating granted on potion use [Shrouding]. This mod alone with the Scout’s prefix on your chestpiece can grant 50% or more chance to dodge after potion use. Given we won’t use potions for much else besides this with our leech healing us back to full after a few attacks, it is a handy prefix. Your other prefix can be whatever you want.
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Rings: Ruby Ring or Silver Ring; Ruby is nice for more health, while Silver lets us move faster. While it can be hard to pick affixes for rings, I have a quartet of them that I enjoy. These four mods, in order of importance, are set health [Leviathan’s], critical strike avoidance [Sanctuary], set glancing blows [Enduring], and flat health [Life].
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Amulet: Jade Amulet or Oracle Amulet; Jade Amulets are one of the few ways to get attack speed and are valuable for that. Meanwhile, Oracle Amulets help to mitigate some of the spooky damage-over-time abilities that get thrown at us late game. The most important mod on this is set health [Leviathan’s]. After this, get flat health [Life]. Your second prefix should change depending on your crit chance. If you need crit, feel free to through on increased crit chance [Assassin’s]. If your crit is 100% (while buffed), then go for increased channel damage [Channeller’s]. I’m unsure what a good final suffix is, so that choice is up to you after you’ve maxed out the other affixes.
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Relic: Radiant Crest; Crit multiplier. Enough said. The most important affixes are set health [Leviathan’s] and channel damage [Channeller’s]. After that, you can get flat health [Life]. I am honestly unsure what to do for a final suffix here since flat dodge can’t be rolled on relics, so that is completely up to you, provided you already have the other mods at T5.
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Idols: We actually have a kind of interesting idol setup for this build, using 4 Grand Solar and 2 Stout Lagonian idols. We do this because of mod exclusivity. The Warpath AoE prefix [Warlord’s] can only spawn on Grand Solar Idols, and AoE is great for both killing speed and safety. For the suffix on the solar idols, you want melee void damage [Despair]. Despite only around half of our melee damage being void damage, there’s not many ways to scale the build’s damage outside of those suffixes. Of course, if you want to apply time rot faster (which I don’t think is that necessary due to our passive tree), you can get the suffix that does that [Rot]. For your Lagonian idols, you just want more health, so go for increased health [Vigorous] and flat health [Life].
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Stat Goals: To end this section, I wanted to provide some stat goals to aim for while crafting. Your late game life should be between 2500 and 3000, and you should get 100% glancing and 100% crit avoidance. In addition, after drinking a potion, you should have at least 50% dodge. You won’t need to worry about your other forms of defense as those will come from your passives and skills.
That’s it for this build! I will provide updates as I continue to get better gear and finish leveling up!
Feel free to ask any questions you may have, or point out some ways you could think of to change the build for the better! Hopefully you’ll all enjoy this guide and, afterwards, Warpath itself!
