The true 2H melee Void Knight - Cleave and Slam your way into the game with style

Hello everyone,

I am sharing with you today my personal favorite build that I recently played on VisionGL’s Void Knight Arena Tournament, taking it to 285 waves and getting a nice finish on 3rd place (which was the highest ranked melee build that wasn’t based on channeling Warpath).

I imagine there are more people who don’t enjoy the channeling playstile that seems to be the most popular for melee Void Knights, so I decided to share this build here on a guide to help out those who like Melee Slams and Cleaves.

Main aspects of the Build
  • Super fun playstile with 2 Big Melee Skills (a Large Cleave and a Screen-wide Slam) that synergyze very well with each other
  • 100% Crit Chance on your slam on single target fights and close to 100% on your cleave while clearing, combined with BIG amounts of Crit Multi for no gear investment
  • High Movement speed and 3 Movement abilities on the Monolith farming setup
  • Get’s very tanky for a Sentinel. With a good amount of luck I managed to reach over 20k EHP vs Physical with the arena setup on a 4-day tournament
  • Insane HP recovery with high amounts of Leech for very little investment (as soon as you use Void Cleave or Erasing Strike on a pack you will quickly heal up to full life)
  • Can scale very well with Legendaries that are farmable and very easy to get such as Siphon of Anguish if you are willing to min-max the build

Main interactions

  • Void Cleave gets close to 100% crit on the first strike and applies 3 stacks of Crit Vulnerability, making sure you next cleaves and slams on the same target to always crit
  • Void Cleave gets a ton of Cooldown Recovery speed plus an extra charge with very little investment, allowing you to always have a damaging skill up to be used
  • Erasing Strike has HUGE AoE and can be use to clear entire screens of mobs
  • Volatile Reversal has great synergy with Erasing Strike in situations where you are not moving forward (Arenas, Bosses and at the end of Monoliths), bringing your mana back to full after using Erasing Strike (Void Cleave also recovers mana on crits so you can pretty much spam your abilities)
  • Your echoes will always crit after you Void Cleave as well
  • Devouring Orb is used to give a small movement speed boost and aplly lots of stacks of all your ailments on hit (Armor Shred, Frailty, Slow, Chill, Void Res Shred, etc)

Playstile

  • With the Monolith setup you always Lunge forward and use Void Cleave to clear packs ahead of you
  • Use Erasing Strike to clear huge packs if they accumulate behind you
  • In stationary encounters such as bosses, arena and at the end objective of some monoliths you keep a rotation of Void Cleave → Void Cleave → Erasing Strike → Volatile Reversal (back to full mana) → Rinse and Repeat
  • Use Devouring Orb for a movement speed boost and to apply ailments consistently on single target encounters (I personally keep it up 100% of the time, but that is optional)
  • For the 5th skill I use Lunge on Monoliths for rushing objectives or Sigils of Hope when pushing high waves of arena due to big boost to armor and damage.

Build Planners
Monolith Endgame Planner version
  • Full T20 gear in every sloth
  • BiS Uniques without LP.
  • Idols are super flexible on this setup given that there are many great options.
Arena Endgame Planner version
  • Replaces Lunge with Sigils of Hope
  • 15 points moved from Void Knight Tree to Paladin Tree in order to unlock Sigils of Hope.
  • Defensive affixes prioritized on prefixes and idols to maximize defensive potential.
  • Not using Ravenous Void on the planner, but it would be BiS with some adjustments on gear and idols to replace the Crit Chance lost from regular gloves.
My own VK from VisionGL's tournament

My own VK that pushed to 274 waves after 3 days during VisionGL’s Void Knight tournament (My final push was higher but I lucked out a Ravenous Void drop so I won’t include that planner here as it is very unrealistic)

  • This character is currently on the setup to farm low corruption monoliths so I prioritize damage over survivability, but you can get the idea of what is possible.
Budget Planner Version
  • Here is a display on how I would build if I could only get 2 T5 affixes per item.
  • Here I use Critical Strike Chance Idols in every free idol slot possible in order to make the build work, but it is just an example (you could get crit on gear as well)

Levelling Tips
Levels 1 to 20
Using Warpath/Rive until you get Void Cleave On the first 20 levels you only get generic % increased damage from your tree and you will have no weapon base restrictions, so you will be looking for any 2 Handed weapon with as much flat damage of any kind or a combination of flat physical or void damage with % increased damage of the same type. Flat damage of any type combined with attack speed is also a good enough combination. For skills I just use Warparth with 2 points in cost reduction and the remaining points in flat void damage (I personally don't aim to full clear so I don't invest on getting a 0 mana cost Warpath)

Defenses Levelling is extremely easy even when you don't focus too much on gearing defenses (more experienced players can likely get away with equipping only movement speed uniques that provide no defensive benefit and get all the way up to endgame with that). That said the most important defensive attributes on early levels are physical and void resistance (given that it is the most common damage type dealt by monsters). There are a couple of bosses/monsters with fire and lightning damage but those are hardly any threat and you can either tank it or avoid the damage entirely on the bosses by simply positioning properly on the fights. Flat Health and Armor are also more valuable a later stages given how little your base values are, but they fall off in value quite quickly just as you get more levels and better bases.

Levels 20-55
Void Cleave into Erasing Strike guaranteed Crits On level 20 you get access to Void Cleave and you will start getting a lot of flat void and % increased damage from Void Knight's tree. The ideal setup here is to get a 2H Axe or Sword (Void Cleave's requirements) with as much flat void and flat phys as possible, and use it in combination with Gamble's Fallacy (unique amulet that is a quest reward early on). You will be walking around timing your void cleaves with the 100% guaranteed crit from Gamble's Fallacy. You can also take the Void Cleave skill point that guarantees a crit from your next Erasing Strike, so you can use it in between the Void Cleaves for additional clear or burst. Any other damage source on gear is extremely unnecessary as you will be one shotting stuff regardless of that for a very long time, so you can focus all your other gear slots on resistances and health.

Defenses If you choose to go the regular campaign route you should focus on getting your other resistances up. I personally just ignore resistances, but I would say that the order at which dangerous abilities appear on the campaign is Physical (just in general since we are always at melee range) > Void (most monsters up to lvl 25) > Necrotic (Big bone monsters that spit necrotic breaths or projectiles) > Fire (big birds that spit fireballs) > Cold (mostly crystals that shoot projectiles and the Big Ice guys that slam the ground > Poison (Act 9 monsters). I hardly feel any danger from Lightning apart from abilities from bosses that can be dodged. Your first Best in Slot base is available from level 44, and it is the Bronze Belt.

Levels 55-77
Still Void Cleave into Erasing Strike guaranteed crits Here you will still be using Gamble's Fallacy combo with Void Cleave and Erasing Strike's guaranteed crits, so getting an Odachi with Melee Void Damage and Melee Physical damage will give you a big chunk of damage. Any other high level 2H Axe/Sword with a big Flat Physical damage on the implicits will likely also be good enough, but I prefer Odachis for the Critical Strike Multiplier boost

Defenses Here is where you should start be focusing on getting all your resists maxed as well as your crit avoidance capped. You don't necessarily have to worry too much about getting the right rolls on each slot as long as you get them all capped. Most best in slot bases are not available until your late 60 and early 70 levels, so you will be be replacing most of the items anyway at some point so don't overthink your gearing at this point

Levels 1 to 20
Endgame Setup When you reach Level 77 you will be able to equip Hollow Blades and start moving away from the Gamble's Fallacy levelling setup into your endgame setup. Your goal here is to get an Hollow Blade with a T5 - 9% Melee Critical Strike Chance (this is flat critical strike chance, not % increased Critical Strike Chance) and a T5 Melee Void Damage (again flat melee, not % increase Void damage). In order to switch to this weapon you will need a decent bunch of % increased Critical Strike chance on the rest of your gear (200% Increased Critical Strike Chance is a great sweet spot that will allow you to drop the Erasing Strike guaranteed crit node and still keep 100% crit chance on Erasing Strike when you use a full combo of 2 void cleaves followed by an Erasing Strike). You can keep using the Gambler's Fallacy Setup with an Odachi or Hollow Blade with T5 Melee Void Damage + T5 Melee Physical damage.

Defenses Here is where the endgame planners will come in clutch. You should be start focusing on get the right bases with the correct affixes in order to "build the puzzle" in the most effective way.

I am currently writing a VERY DETAILED spreadsheet explaining every single base and affix choice as well as discussing all the alternative options you can get to customize your own setup, so please feel free to send your questions and feedback if you have any

Thanks for putting this together, I have a void cleave / erasing strike void knight I like to compare to other people’s 2 hand builds. Quick note, your arena and monolith build planner links don’t have any skills allocated.

Good catch. It should be fixed now.
Thanks for letting me know

Do you have devouring orb on autocast, or do you just manually cast whenever the movespeed buff runs out?

I am personally not a big fan of leaving skills on autocast, especially in this case where we don’t have any cast speed and casting it kind of interrupts your normal walking.
I do keep Devouring Orb on right click though, so I can just hold it down and keep a normal gameplay casting it on cooldown (which sort of acts like putting it on auto cast while holding right click). I normally only hold right click on situations where I am waiting for more mobs to spawn and come to me (for example arenas or at the end of monolith objectives when you have fountains and pillars)
Most of the time during the monoliths I am not holding it down, I just got used to keep sort of flow of Lunge → Void Cleave → Cast Devouring Orb → Lunge to the next target or walk. Casting it right after Void Cleave makes me not feel the cast time as much as I would if I cast it while walking. (For some time I used Vengeance on the right click and I got used to that flow of Void Cleave then right clicking after it)

Super new guy here and thank you for sharing the build. I’m just curious about “plus an extra charge with very little investment” in the second tab of Main interaction. I did not see you invest points to get nether charge so can you tell me how the extra charge of void cleave comes from?

That would be the unique boots, Darkstride.

The Multistrike->Void Cleave-> Erasing Strike combo is one of the most fun things to play from my point of view.

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