With a more free-form skill tree than a normal ARPG, Wolcen gives you the ability to swap between wizard, fighter, and ranger abilities on the fly. That means the number of builds you have access to can be staggering. But to make things easier, we’ve found the best build in the game: the Boss Killer build.
In essence, it will let you melt anything in your path.
At this stage of development, it’s worth noting that a large number of abilities and passive bonuses on the Gate Of Fates node tree either don’t work at all, or they don’t work as intended. This Wolcen build data, then, is current as of the 1.0.3.0_ER release.
The +% Spell Damage (Scholar) passives, for instance, don’t seem to be doing much at the moment, while Faith Leech (Warlock) resets your force shield instead of recovering it.
We’ll avoid those problematic abilities, and instead, go straight for the goods with a Bleeding Edge and Despotic Perseverance build that can do roughly 300,000 damage per hit.
Wolcen Best Build: Bleeding Edge Boss Killer
UPDATE: Sadly, patch 1.0.5.0 nerfed Despotic Perseverance to drop its damage from 20% per ailment to 2% per ailment. That has effectively killed the “best build” status here. While this is still absolutely a viable build that can be fun to play, it won’t take down bosses in two or three hits any longer.
Right now, the Bleeding Edge skill is so badly broken that all builds should revolve around it. You can take its already crazy damage to an absurd new level by using a single modifier.
To get the best possible Wolcen build right now, add the Despotic Perseverance modifier to Bleeding Edge.
Since you can potentially have dozens of ailments on any enemy at a time, your damage will jump nearly 1,000%. In some cases, it will go even higher.
Though the base number ailments per time is set to 10, you can increase that number by taking nodes on the Gate of Fates tree.
The Master Of Curses node on the Cabalist tree, for instance, grants +5 max ailments, while the Enneract Expert node on the same tree offers a chance to automatically multiply the number of ailment stacks inflicted on an enemy. Insidious Decay also automatically inflicts more stacks of any ailment.
The base Scholar tree includes various passive nodes for percentage bonuses when landing various kinds of ailments.
So long as you are using weapons and skills that lands ailments — and Bleeding Edge already does so with the poison and bleed ailments — your damage can reach insane levels that absolutely melt a boss’ health.
However, you don’t even have to focus on ailment-causing attacks to make this work. There are already plenty of ways to passively increase the number of ailments inflicted on enemies to increase Bleeding Edge damage even further, especially if you like a blocking-focused build.
Sacred Oath (Praetorian) is a great way to go, as it adds weakness ailments every time you block an enemy attack.
There are a wide range of options to take on the Gate Of Fates node path to get the desired effect, so you can really take this build any direction you want.
Have you found a better build than the Bleeding Edge boss killer so far? Let us know in the comments section!
Check out the rest of our Wolcen: Lords Of Mayhem tips and tricks guides on overcoming launch bugs, coming up with killer builds, and tackling specific bosses.
