C35 Storm Hammer CB Builds

[ Class Build ] 🧰

Preamble: https://imgur.com/gallery/EZ5BumO

Hello, today I am attempting to share a few more builds to carry various forms of Clawbringer to chaos 35, while doing all side objectives and making every room an Elite Encounter.

This will be a big old wall o' text.

Tl;DR I melted Chaos 20-35 with only Chaotic and Normal gear.

Side Note: You will be expected to have 2 weapons hotkeyed in my build. If you are using Controller, I suggest the Left and Right D-Pad for weapon 1 and Weapons 3. You do not need to switch missions mid battle.

With the new gear tier and additions coming, I will not be using exact math on Gear, as that is in a state of flux between new Tiers and hot fixes. Regardless, any stat example is just for interaction details.

I will go into detail about some aspects, to make sure newer players understand the reasons for decisions. I will skim on others, just ask questions if you need any clarification.

Note: You can skip Side Objectives and Elite Encounters, you do you. But I focus on maximizing rewards versus time spent on the content.

This does mean the build needs to: Easily Hold the Circle Side objective, and Melee kills objective.

I have spent 120 hours meleeing as Claw bringer. You do not need to do this, but it works well and is fun if that sounds like something you want to try in Wonderlands.

I will provide:

2 Melee builds: Tank and Pure Damage.

2 Gun Builds: Support and Pure Damage.

I have used all builds for over 20 hours, all at 35 Chaos.

Some things I found on my own, some tips are from other redditors, some are info from youtubers.

This is your last warning before a long read about Claw bringer, melee path is hard later, still viable but hard. Go to the gun builds if you have no interest in Melee.

About Clawbringers

My thoughts on what makes a Claw bringer, as most builds will be 20% Claw bringer skills, and 80% other skill trees.

Simply put, regardless of the skills used, as long as you are using a Clawbringer Action.Skill, that is still a Clawbringer build. We just need to heavily borrow from all other trees. Weird place to be, but it still ends up good.

The other major focus is Elemental Damage, in that weird Siren sort of Fashion. Elemental, Status Effects, and Multiple at the same time from 1 damage source is a key gameplay mechanic.

All of these builds will feature Storm Hammer's Judgement, to trigger Enchantments as often as possible. These are all enchantment focused builds as getting your Enchantment Synergy going is the difference between these builds being OK or great.

All will focus on gaining damage on Storm Hammer to provide a good base hit for Echo and other damage engines. So Claw bringer class power +50% or more is required from Armor and Amulet.

With that said: Let's go over a few weapons/items before jumping into the builds as they will be brought up a lot.

Weapons:

Livewire SMG: It shoots bullets, every 2 bullets sends out chained lightning. Those hit everything in a large radius, the Lightning applies all gun effects to the target.

When you melee with this equipped, every 2 swings will spread Chain Lightning that uses the Melee hit to calculate DoT damage, which is insane because the larger the hit, the larger the DoT. It will spread this as GUN damage on the lightning chain, spread large DoTs to everyone in the area.

If you are using a Dark Melee Weapon, and a Livewire, you will be spreading Dark/Electric Dots to everyone.

If you have Oath of Fire, Dark/Electric/Fire.

Brr-zerker sub, Dark/Electric/Fire/Ice to everyone on the screen, in 1 melee swing.

This is a good Melee gun. And a good gun besides all of that.

It is a cornerstone piece. Onto the next tool to have. And one of the best set up pieces for Echo. More on that in Hilts.

Melee Weapons and Hilts:

A hilt will randomly roll on any melee weapon, they are very important to the rest of the build.

Hilts:

Echo: This is the best for most damage focused people.

Converts all Non-melee damage done in the last 10 seconds into your next Melee hit.

If your Storm Hammer hit for 10M, your next melee hit will do 1M. Guns, DoTs, Action Skill, Skills all add up to one big hit, letting you sprinkle in melee every few seconds for a combination attack. Combining all sources of damage lets you not have to focus on one thing.

It is both a jack-of-all trades enabler, and the top end focus for damage.

And Clawbringer is a jack of all trades class for better or worse.

Warrior: Melee hits increase your Melee Damage and Damage Reduction. Stacks 5 times, you can get 35-50% Melee and Damage Reduction, really simple, really strong. More as they increase ranks to Primordial and Ascended.

The next 3 are for if you need Spells faster, Health/Ward constantly, or Action Skill faster.

Vampire: Health/Ward on melee hits, for tanky builds.

Archmage: Reduces Spell Cool down, Great for resetting buffmeister. Better with fast weapons.

Ancient: Reduces Action Skill Cooldown.

While Echo may be the best for Damage, these other hilts can enable playstyle and/or replace a Neckpiece for example.

If someone suggests Dragon's Harbinger for a neckpiece to get shields back, you can always Vampire Hilt and go with a different Neck.

Melee Weapons: You have choices here, and should go off script whenever you feel. I switch my build and weapons every day.

But the front runners for me are:

Spellblade
Fatebreaker
Wailing Banshee
Peg Leg
Diamondguard Sword
Whatever you want really.

Spellblade: Roughly put this will add Spell Damage and Spell Crit Damage to your Melee and Abilities that interact with Melee modifiers.

Lets say you have +80% Melee Damage, and +20% Spell Damage, that will be converted to +100% damage to your Melee, or Abilities that run on Melee.

This will be ok at first, but with Good Rings and gear combinations, it will send your Melee and Skills into overdrive.

This turns Storm Hammer into a beast. This turns Brr-zerkers Spin to win into crazy damage and their frost nova. This turns Stabbo's Capstone Phantom Blade into insane damage.

So with that said, if you want to use Spell Blade be on the look out for gear with:

Melee Damage

Spell Damage

Melee Crit Hit damage

Spell Crit Hit Damage

All Damage Dealt

Melee Crit hit Chance

That is 5 different modifiers that will all make both your melee and abilities do more damage.

Rings become important here, Example:

Ring: When Ward is Not Full +100% Spell Damage +17% Melee Damage+15% Spell Crit Damage+15% Melee Crit Damage+15%

Would turn into 124% Damage on to your melee hit, Action skill, and melee skills.

Another ring would be 248%. Then gear and spell stats etc. Spellblade has the chance to be insane if you get the gear to maximize it.

It also does well with OK rolls on gear, doesn't need to be the best gear to get started, and allows you to look at even Spell damage as a good source of damage on any Ring, Armor etc.

To further add to insane interactions, Paradigm Armor, converts 50% of your Melee bonuses to Spell and Ability damage. Which can get an additional 62% damage out of the ring example.

Buffmeister with Zap! Bonk! In the item card will provide another 80% Damage per. Zap is 80% Magic Damage, Bonk is 80% Melee damage. 160% Modifiers even without considering the bonus damage from Buffmeisters element.

If you want Great Damage Action Skills and Melee Skills, Paradigm Armor + Spellblade + Buffmiester Melee is insane.

You do not need Buffmeister for Spellblade to perform well, that is biggest numbers situations.

Fatebreaker: Not going to gonna go as in depth as this is already a long read.

Fatebreaker is a melee weapon, that does OK damage at a fast speed.

It also shoots out 3 AoE Electric Status Wyverns, these Wyverns restore shields equal to the amount of damage done. That is a lot of shield in a melee build.

Each Wyvern is 1/3rd of the Melee Hit. So Melee Hit is 100% Damage, and each Wyvern is 33.34% of the 100%. You get 200% of what the card says at point blank range.

That is also 4 attacks in one melee swing. Giving percent based skills like Brr-zerkers Frost Nova's 4 chances at procts. 2 Livewire Procts per Swing, etc.

Lots of modifiers go into this weapon, and while it will never give you the biggest numbers possible, Shield Dependant builds really benefit from this, as do builds that end up with AoE, Status, Melee, Electricity etc etc.

It will topple just about anything, while keeping you untouchable in the worst situations.

This is the best Flex piece in the melee tool kit. And can replace Dragon's Harbinger if you want another Neckpiece in the build.

Banshee's Melee

It hits hard, slow, and shoots out 3 orbs that seek out nearby enemies. They do decent damage. The weapon also screams when the orb is released. This could annoy you, but also feels and sounds "chunky" when it happens, you know the enemy felt it every time the weapon screams.

This weapon is perfect for big single hits, and don't quite have everything in place for a Spell Blade.

If you want the biggest single hit, and biggest elemental DoTs to spread to nearby enemies, the livewire swears this is it's favorite friend.

Peg Leg: It provides +30% Movespeed and Reload. It allows you to hit, and quickly reposition to so another "Gap Closing" melee hit, that also has a higher crit chance.

I typically use Ice Peg Legs, but mix and match to the element your class if focusing on for extra damage. Not fancy but it keeps up with other weapons, and if movement speed or Reload is needed, you cannot do better.

Enchantments:

I don't want to spend a ton of time here as each build idea will slightly change what you need.

But get: Melee, Status/Element(Element you are doing), Status Chance.

The only one I will focus on explain is:

On spell cast: Increase Melee Damage and Stagger by 40% for a moderate amount of time. I will call it Stun Enchant from here on.

It allows your next melee to stagger the enemy without fail. Stagger = They take a knee, and become useless for 4-5 seconds. If it crits they rag doll. Very useful versus flying.

On a low cool down spell, this allows you to keep an enemy infinity stunned.

Useful for Loot Mobs, Evil Crabs, Huge Trolls, Flying anything etc etc. You get to pick something and tell it to take a knee for the rest of the encounter, and then pick another thing, and tell it to take a knee.

Armor:

There is an armor called Paradigm, it has a few forms:

Every time I bring it up, I am talking the version with Ability and Spell Damage as increased by 50% of your Melee Damage bonus.

This allows you to focus on melee, but also increase your Ability Damage, Along with Spell Damage.

And if we are using Spell blade, that also ends up being more Melee Damage. At is a double dip loop.

Ability Damage is a hard stat to come by, not impossible but kind of useless considering you could of picked any other stat.

But +150% Ability Damage because you have a total of +300% Melee and Spell Damage, that is kind of huge.

If you are looking for insanely high action skill damage. You are looking for Spell Blade + Paradigm. This will boost most actions skills into the low and high millions.

This will push passive skills into weirdly good places.

Onto builds advice, you can and will differ in your choices. Make changes where you need to and tailor to your own playstyle. But the few I am discussing melt Chaos 35.

Now onto the builds, we still have Neckpieces, Armor, and Wards/Shields to go over, but will focus on each as we explain why it may be needed in the build.

Builds:

Hammerzerker: Clawbringer + Brr-zerker

Thoradin: https://lothrik.github.io/wonderlands-skill-calc/#EwRgDOYKxgzDMxIs1So3mqJJpeIQUkA

Guns: Livewire, Gluttony + 2 of whatever.

Melee: Fatebreaker or Spellblade

Armor: Paradigm, Corrupted Platemail,

Amulet: Dragon's Harbinger, Skeep,

Ward: Hammer and Anvil, Cursed Wit, Bad Egg

Spell: Glacial Cascade, but anything with low cool down. With Stun Enchant.

Pros:

Free Ice Element giving you access to 4

Elements easily. More DoTs, More Echo returns.

Impossible to kill solo machine. Impossible to kill tank in group play.

Frost Novas eat enemies.

Can make large dents in Bosses, and outright kill Elites 2-3 times in a 10 second span.

Crowd Control.via Stuns, and Rag doll effects.

Cons:

Still the slowest way to kill without some luck.

Your standard Melee and "Paladin" build. Able to hold any zone, and with proper stuns at chokepoints, create bottlenecks that cluster enemies up.

Damage Engine: Pure Melee and Frost Nova's. Echo.

With a focus on Stun Enchant allowing you to disable the worst thing on the field and burn down mobs with Livewire Melee interaction. Fueling Echo via dots provided by Livewire.

Guns will supplement damage and set up your Melee hits, but this is most effective in Melee range, stopping to Storm Hammer and Spell for Enchantments.

If you do to down, Gluttony and Relentless Rage sill keep you in fight for your life mode a good 20-30 seconds longer, and nothing is standing up to a Gluttony for 30 seconds. And you can still use Echo to capitlize on Gluttony damage. This is why you play this build over other options, it is a huge QoL upgrade over most other self revive skills.

I cannot stress enough over any amount of damage resist or Life Steal, Relentless Rage adding time to Fight for Your life will avoid solo losses, and Carry Team wipes in groups.

It does good damage, and sticks out any situation. Even if you took way too many Dragon Portal Challenges.

With Hammer and Anvil you can have a small army of Hammers helping you in a fight. All count as melee hits.

You also receive massive damage boosts from Blast Chill, and you should aim for Armor that increases it by +1, this will cause a blast nova on Melee, Action Skill, and Hammer and Anvil hammers. The +1 will take it from 25% chance to 50% chance.

Shields:

Cursed wit is great if you are aiming for Ward Empty Rings and shield empty builds. +100% damage at close range when SMG's and Melee are the damage engine.

Bad Egg will provide Speed and survivability via Dark Magic on melee when shield is depleted, it is another shield empty choice, but it is way faster. It also has a +30% Melee damage multiplier.

But the star of the show for me is Hammer and Anvil shield. When ward is full, any damage will summon a hammer that seeks out enemies, hits them and finds another enemy to.hit. Roughly 50-200k damage a hit.

You can refill your shields via Dragon's Harbinger Amulet, allowing you to restore ward every hammer throw.

As will the constant shield restore of Fatebreaker.

This will get many hammers circling around you hunting targets. But is slightly weaker versus enemies with long pauses between animations. It is goofy, but strong enough to contend with the strongest shields.

Clawstalker: Clawbringer + Stabbomancer

Her Music Was Electric: https://lothrik.github.io/wonderlands-skill-calc/#EwNgDAjGYKxgLHK0WrTAzJsGPIhtFMkZGcWWEA

Guns: Queen's Cry x2(With Tazer Attachment), Livewire, Gluttony.

Melee: Spell blade, Banshee, Peg Leg

Armor: Paradigm, Corrupted Platemail

Amulet: Universal Solider

Wards: Last Gasp, Cursed Wit, Bad Egg

Spells: Glacial Cascade with Stun Enchant

Pros:

The most consistent source of high damage.

Multiple Elements that spread like a Virus.

Melee from any range.

Speed, and the option of more Speed.

Melts all content without even needing to land a shot, which helps with the speed aspect.

Doesn't go down a ton if moving.

Cons:

Squishy if pinned down.

So much Lightning that it can be hard to see. Frame rate drops, Teammates with aging systems may hate you.

Does not have Relentless Rage, for real, that is a con for any class that does not have access to it. It is that much of a QoL improvement.

Your boss melter, your crowds melter. Using Queen's Cry Tasers with infinite Tasers to set traps everywhere, including on enemies for mobile traps.

Damage Engine:

I suggest having at least 30% or more Stabbomancer Class Power. And at least +10%-30% Gun Crit chance.

You will need a weapon with a Taser, it doesn't need to be Queen's Cry, but that is the best I have found.

You get 9 Tasers Base, the trick is to get an infinite supply of Taser's.

The Amulet Universal Soldier will provide a reload on Melee hits, throw your hammer to get ammo back and activate Enchantments.

The Ward Last Gasp will Regenerate Ammo when Shield is depleted. Typically you only need Universal Soldier, but if you need more Ammo Regen or want to use another Amulet.

Stabbo's Capstone, Executioner's Blade will spawn a Blade above targets that have been crit hit. 20% Chance to Spawn a blade per crit.

The taser will do constant electrify damage, 1-2 per second. If the Dart hits a target, it will Electrify the target and the closest enemy, hitting 2 targets. +Electric Skills and Enchantments really help.

If you shoot the ground, wall, or anything, it will seek out the nearest target to electrify. If anything steps on the dart location, it will hit them twice.

If there is not another target around, it will hit the same person twice.

Allowing you up to 4 Blade Procts per second. This will melt enemies. You don't even need to land them, just shoot near your enemies.

A x2 Queen's Cry with taser is 8 instances of damage per second

You can run in circles shooting the ground, everything will die.

This is a gun play heavy, Gunzerker style playstyle. Constantly juggling your Spell and Hammer in your left hand, and shooting with your right.

You should still melee once every 10 seconds to get Echo Returns, or Peg Legs Speed increase, or whatever your Hilt/Melee does, and dump your free stun on a target.

Wards:

Last Gasp: If you need another ammo source, not needed, but also not bad. Another Ward Empty Build

Cursed Wit: More Damage Resist, More damage at close range, and you typically run right into the middle of large crowds so you will get the +100% damage. Ward Empty Build

Bad Egg: +30% Bonus Dark damage in Melee when Ward Depleted, +Movement Speed. Another Ward Empty choice.

Armor:

Paradigm if running Spell blade, this will increase your Hammer Throw, Executioner's Blade, and Spells.

Corrupted Platemail if you go any other weapon and want constant healing to be part of the build. This is insane and make this build easy and lazy, but you are giving up 30% of your main damage source, which will reduce your elemental DoT's by 30% or more, as the bigger the base Melee hits, the bigger the DoT. Worth using, but if you survive without it, them to with either Paradigm or Smart Armor.

Elemental Overload: https://lothrik.github.io/wonderlands-skill-calc/#EwNgDAjGYKy3drSk10DMN1nelFtI0ipSTog

(Note about this skill tree, you should have a thousand cuts if have points to spare, if you are comfortable with Run and Gun without much healing, take the points of Rebuke, leave 1 point into it but throw the rest into A Thousand Cuts)

Weapons: Livewire + 3 other weapons.

Melee: Banshee, Spell blade but anything works.

Armor: Paradigm, Corrupted Platemail, Bunch of Choices

Amulet: Skeep, or anything else if healing is handled.

Wards: Cursed Wit, Bad Egg, Last Gasp, Hammer and Anvil, many more.

Spells: Any with Stun Enchant.

Pros:

The biggest damage numbers.

Many elements from a single damage source

Melee still triggers Follow Up and A Thousand Cuts via Live wire, you will always have max stacks even without shooting.

Cons:

Squishy, so at least 1 gear piece usually goes to healing.

Does not have Relentless Rage.

The most melee focused without the survivability found elsewhere.

The most likely to fail a run, or waste all the team lives

Damage Engine: Melee, DoTs, Echo that is it.

This is the stick and move sort of melee mindset. Best used with Melee "Gap Closers", a gap closer happens when you are further back, and pressing forward, making your animation lunge forward with increased Crit chance and Damage.

Lunge forward to Stun Enchant an enemy, then either lay into them until your spell is ready for the next stun, back up and cast spell and hammer, then lunge in again.

This build is all about positioning, building stacks, and juggling the situations. When you melee or Action.Skill, you will do crazy range, sometimes weaker, sometimes the damage spikes high, like 10-20M high. You can delete multiple enemies in a row, you can also mildly tickle enemies if Status effect chances aren't going your way.

Status Effect chance becomes as important as Melee Damage modifiers.

You can use Livewire Chain Lightning or Queen's Cry Taser's to keep stacks of Follow Up and A Thousand Cuts at max with no issues, even if you are JUST Meleeing.

I find myself in situations like I just made the Blue Raid boss(Gloop) enter his Stun animation, he desummons all of the adds, and then I go down with nothing to kill and revive myself. Out of all my build I commonly play, this is the one I find myself saying "If I was on my other builds this wouldn't of happened."

This is a tight rope walk, but so satisfying when it goes your way.

Equipment:

All of the usual suspects from the previous examples will work here, just go with the ones that make sense to your main damage element.

Wildfire: Claw bringer + Spore Warden

Team Player: https://lothrik.github.io/wonderlands-skill-calc/#EwVgDAjGbjfdKDkJCCIDMFMN1JRSYg4sIA

Guns: Live Wire, 3 other Meta/Weapons you like.

Melee: Banshee or Spell blade. With Echo or Ancient Hilt.

Armor: Paradigm, Corrupted Breastplate. Anything with 3 stacks of Wrath of Nature.

Amulet: Universal Soldier

Wards: Most Work, Last Gasp could be a front runner.

Spells: Any, you don't even need stun enchant here.

Pros:

Sets you and the team up to do double damage.

Companion Revive helps in bad situations.

Better Gun Damage than the other builds. No gimmicks.

Rebuke does Ability Electric Damage when you or a teammate are damaged. This sets up Wraith of Nature for the entire team, the double damage mechanic for the entire team. While they are taking the damage, you are still doing the ability damage.

Storm Hammer's low cool down allows you to also pick targets to specifically focus damage on every 5-6 seconds.

Cons:

Still a jack of all trades, and still need to Echo melee to bring all that DoT damage together.

Self Revives are better, but not as consistent as Relentless Rage.

Another Gun build, that a habit of 1 melee when it makes sense to still helps a ton, focused on spreading ability damage effects, and status DoT's to increase the damage taken by enemies by 106% via Wrath of Nature.

Just shoot, and Melee them at 25% health left when you have Melee Side Objectives, Echo will handle it

This stands up against Chaos Chambers just fine solo, a pretty standard flow of Action Skill and Spells every 5-6 seconds for Enchantments, and then laying into everything once Enchantments are ready and enemies are taking double damage.

And allows easy, easy access to ability damage to everything when a pet, teammate, or you take damage.

It really shines on a team tho.

Armor with +3 to wrath of Nature will be your priority when gearing up, your should equip any Armor that you find with it to get started. Then aim for the Armor piece you want with +3 to Wrath of Nature.

Community trading is the key here, ask players to check for Claw Bringer/Spore Warden armor in their bank, with Wrath of Nature and you may get lucky, Discord and Reddit if not.

Damage Engine: Wrath of Nature, Guns of your choice, Storm Hammer.

Not much to say, this is the most standard Borderlands experience, Shoot, Jump/Dodge, Action Skill, and Melee to proct Echo to get returns on the various forms of damage.

It being standard is a good thing, it works well.

Gear Suggestions:

Also gonna skip on this as it is the most free form way to play, but will provide additional tips if you need some direction, just comment

Parting Words:

My friends play Graveborn and Spellshot, so I don't use them. I won't speak for them. Great options there also.tho.

I wrote this over a week, mainly during smoke breaks and dinner breaks at work. There will be spelling mistakes, grammar, broken trains of thought, maybe some repeated points.

My main goal is to get the information out of my own head, and help people needing some direction with Claw bringer.

Reddit made it very hard to post this, I will edit and make it easier on the eyes later.

Posted Apr 26, 2022, 5:15 AM UTC · edited

5550