What are the best Wolcen builds? As any Diablo or Path of Exile fan can attest, one of the best parts of any isometric RPG game is creating beautifully broken character builds. Seeing as Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem is the latest Diablo-like kid on the block, it is decreed by the gaming gods that we create some Wolcen builds.
Part of Wolcen’s allure is also what makes it daunting. There are no classes, and all you’re given is a massive skill tree to make your own. Don’t worry, though, it’s not as massive as Path of Exile’s. This is grand, as you have the creativity to build something that isn’t restricted by a class such as a mage. If you’re new, however, it can feel overwhelming.
That’s where we come in. In this Wolcen builds guide we’ve assembled some of the best starter builds to help equip you with the game and how it works. These builds, however, do work quite well in the late game, too. It should also be said that these builds can be customised and built upon, these are just some starting foundations for you to toy around with.
Wolcen builds
The best Wolcen builds are:
Spin to win
The idea behind this one is wonderfully simple – become an unstoppable typhoon of death and destruction. This build is primarily built around the Bladestorm skill, so everything that follows is intended to help you inflict lots of damage and tank enemies so you can stay alive.
Skills
- Bladestorm – sends you spinning in circles, damaging all who dare come near
- Bleeding Edge – allows you to surround yourself with spinning axes for a set duration, depending on what modifiers you’re using
- Juggernaut – gives you a shield that blows up and damages nearby foes after you take a set amount of damage
- Sovereign Shout – buffs various stats depending on what modifiers you apply and increases your rage. Straight out of the box, though, it’ll empower your attack damage and spell casting speed
- Wings of Ishmar – presents the option of jumping into, or away from, a mob of enemies
Passives
- Static Transferral (Alastor) – gives you an overload point every time you attack that increases your damage. Using a skill removes all your overload points but the damage bonus from your overload points doubles
- Intravenous Neural Cord (Alastor) – boosts your attack speed should you land a critical hit on an enemy
- Merciless Lethality (Assassin) – boosts the damage of your critical hits at the expense of your non-critical hit damage
- Backline Raider (Sentinel) – increases your attack speed and spell casting time
- The Wild Card (Soldier) – boosts the critical hit chance of your attacks and spells
- Second Wind (Soldier) – gives you a boost of health regen’ when you fall under 30% of your maximum health
- Feast for the Crows (Warmonger) – adds life leech to all of your attacks
- Gods Amongst Men (Warmonger) – bumps up physical, poison, and rend damage at the expense of you not being able to inflict other types of damage
Stat distribution
Weapons and stats for this build is up to you, but we would recommend prioritising ferocity as it boosts your critical hit damage and anything with high physical or rend damage.
Ping to win
If getting up close and personal isn’t your kind of thing, then maybe you’d prefer this Wolcen archer build. Once in full flow, you’ll be able to send volleys of critical damage dealing arrows. There’s also some skills thrown in to help you out when foes get too close.
Skills
- Deathgazer Railgun – allows you to create a powerful sniper shot that does area of effect damage. Keep in mind, the longer you charge the shot, the more damage it’ll do but the AoE radius decreases
- Dusk Shroud – gives you the ability to drop a shadow cloud on the ground that makes you invisible
- Phantom Blades – toss a spinning dual-blade in front of you
- Stings of Krearion – basically lets you summon a huge bow that launches several arrows at once
- Wailing Arrows – fire multiple arrows in a cone formation that slowly whittles away a foe’s health over time
Passives
- Shoot to Kill (Ranger) – bumps up projectile damage
- Archion’s Teachings (Ranger) – launch additional projectiles at the expense of damage
- Bullseye (Ranger) – boosts projectile critical damage
- Backline Raider (Sentinel) – boosts your attack speed
- Refined Technique (Sentinel) – increases projectile damage
- Precise Strikes (Sentinel) – increases attack and critical damage
- Winter Hail (White Arrow) – makes your projectile ricochet off enemies when it hits them so it may damage another foe
- Hungry Stalactite (White Arrow) – increases damage based on how much pierce is remaining on a projectile after it has hit an enemy
Stat distribution
As you can guess, you’ll need a decent bow but which that may be is up to you. Apart from that, we would strongly urge you to work to ferocity the best you can, as it’ll help you bump up critical hit damage.
Ice, Ice, baby mage
This mage-focused build focuses on the Arctic Spear ability. Not only will you pick up passive abilities to boost its damage, but some of your skills synergise nicely with it, too. We’re quite fond of using Anomaly to round up some foes then tossing an icicle spear at ’em.
Skills
- Arctic Spear – is a giant ice shard you can lob in a straight line
- Anomaly – allows you to cast a vortex that deals damage over time and then pulls enemies together
- Bulwark of Dawn – gives you the ability to heal yourself and teammates by putting down an AoE ability
- Tear of Etheliel – grants you the ability to conjure a storm of ice above your foes
- Winter’s Grasp – forms a protective ice nova around you that freezes enemies
Passives
- Attrition Strategist (Scholar) – makes every hit more likely to inflict an ailment on its target
- Purifier’s Will (Scholar) – reduces the amount of damage you take when your force shield is full
- Thirst for Knowledge (Scholar) – allows you to heal yourself and recharge your force shield by picking up health globes
- Reining in the Darkness (Warlock) – increases the likelihood that your spells will do critical damage so long as they’re above a certain level of willpower
- Faith Leech (Warlock) – restores your force shield at the expense of health if you use life leech
- Duty to Exterminate (Warlock) – increases your range and willpower maximum
- Resilience to Corruption (Warlock) – means you’ll lose force shield before health if you’re hit with a damage over time attack
- Safe from afar (Ranger) – allows you to do more damage if they’re further away from you
Stat distribution
We tend to recommend ferocity quite a bit, and we’re about to do it again. Investing in this stat helps increase your damage, which is helpful for any build really. Toughness is also another good one to help you deal with incoming damage better.
AFK build
Look, we’re all busy. Some of us don’t have the time to commit to a game that can’t be paused as we may be whisked away at a moment’s notice. If that’s you, then maybe this health regen build from Victor Creed may be of some help. This may be a bug or could soon be nerfed, but either way, enjoy it while it’s here. The entirety of the build isn’t clear yet, and we’ve yet to try it out ourselves, so we’ll leave Victor Creed’s video above for now.
And there you have it, some Wolcen builds for you to tinker around with as you get to grips with Wolcen Studio’s isometric RPG. The Wolcen servers seems to be fixed now, too, so you should be able to hop in. You can customise these builds with more passives and skills beyond what we’ve offered, but we reckon these should get you started.