Vampire Melee Crit Build

A comprehensive, detailed guide to a fun melee-based build that is centered around making your opponent bleed and sucking them dry.

Introduction

This is a build I sort of tested and had fun with while playing with friends and it was a lot of fun so I decided to share it. Hope that maybe some people find it fun to try out!

Overview

The Vampire Melee Crit Build is a Bleeding Lifesteal Melee Crit Build that is centered around a melee-based playstyle, taking advantage of some awesome rings to deal a lot of damage while also healing yourself. Great for solo-play or as a functioning 'tank' build during co-op play. This build is mostly applicable to most content in the game, but is not recc'd for certain bosses such as Ixillis or Calliger.

This build is dependent on several items that is only obtainable in the Subject 2329 DLC. Swamp of Corsus DLC is not required, but may require several runs through the campaign to get certain items.

Accessories

• AMULET: Polished Whetstone
  
• RINGS: Bloodletter's Insignia, Razorstone/Devouring Loop

The crux of this build is based around the amulet, Polished Whetstone. This tasty amulet increases your Crit Chance by 15% and Crit Damage by 50%, but only on BLEEDING enemies. Bloodletter's Insignia takes advantage of the bleed by lifestealing the 10% the bleeding damage, even better if all that bleeding is stacked.

Razorstone is only required if you decide to use any melee weapon that is not Scar of the Jungle God (who is able to apply bleeding naturally).

ITEM LOCATIONS:

• Polished Whetstone: Reisum, Random Drop
  
• Bloodletter's Insignia: Reisum, Warning Totems Event (Found at the end of the dungeon)
  
• Razorstone: Corsus, Random Drop
  
• Devouring Loop: Rhom, Random Drop

Weapons

MELEE WEAPON: Riven/Any (if using Razorstone) OR Scar of the Jungle God (if using Devouring Loop)
The choice of Melee Weapon really depends on what you ring you have chosen, or vice versa. Riven gives you extra lifesteal with each melee attack, but needs Razorstone to proc Bleeding with charge attacks. Alternatively, Scar of the will apply bleeding with charge attacks too, and you get to use Devouring Loop which makes your Crit Damage damage do even more, leading to crazy amounts of damage. The big difference between the two is only ONE charge attack by Riven (or a Scythe) is needed to apply 3 stacks of bleeding while you will need to do 3 charge attacks to do the same with Scar, which means more setup. So really, the choice is Riven for Lifesteal over damage and Scar for damage over Lifesteal.

Honestly, you can use any melee weapon that makes you comfortable as long as you are equipping Razorstone. I find it fun also to use Smolder to apply fire damage alongside bleeding for extra damage.

WARNING: When using Hero's Sword / World Breaker with Razorstone, you can accidentally apply bleeding to your friends in co-op if they are hit with the sword's ranged attack. Be careful when you decide to use this sword when in a party with other people.

ITEM LOCATION:

• Riven: Rhom, Give the Undying King the Guardian Heart
  
• Scar of the Jungle God: Yaesha, The Ravanger's Haunt (Play the Lullaby instead of killing Ravager)

SHORT GUN: Any
I don't have any particular recs for Short Guns, as most of the time Shotguns will be doing the heavy work. I find it useful to have a pistol with good range just in case like a Repeater Pistol or Magnum Revolver. I personally run Defiler for a little extra DPS alongside the Shotgun.

LONG GUN: Shotgun
Due to the fact that this build centers around the fact that you are meleeing and are very close to the enemy, Shotgun is the most preferable weapon to take advantage of the crit buffs. Since you'll be close, a juicy headshot at close range does wondorous damage.

ITEM LOCATION:

• Shotgun: Purchasable from Riggs for 600 Scrap / Scrapper Starting Long Gun

Armor

Pick one of these Armor Sets:

• Radiant Set: Gives you more crit chance and damage. Though due to the fact that our amulet slot is taken up by Polished Whetstone, you will have heavier armor and slower rolls. If you are able to handle it, then this is the best armor set for this build.
  
• Void Set: Alternative choice to Radiant Armor. Increases damage output by 25%, but also giving you a 25% defense buff after getting hit. A good choice if you find yourself getting hit a lot need a little extra defense. Suffers from slow rolls just like the Radiant Set.
  
• Drifter's Set: Trades doing extra damage for more mobility. If you aren't able to handle the slower dodges, then consider this armor set instead. Sprinting, sliding, and dodging gives you Inertia stacks that give you 15% extra damage at full stacks and 10% stamina regen.
  
• Warlord's Set: Are you really confident with dodging and doing damage? Gives you 40% damage boost and lifesteal, but Dragon Hearts will no longer heal, but buff you instead for 30s at the cost of draining 200% of your health. Recc'd for Veteran players only.

ITEM LOCATION

• Radiant Set: Yaesha, Stuck Merchant (Chest/Leggings) / Guardian Shrine (Helmet)
  
• Void Set: Rhom, Purchasable for 2500 Scrap after solving Monolith Floor Puzzle
  
• Drifter's Set: Earth, Founder's Hideout (Chest/Leggings) / Random Drop (Helmet)
  
• Warlord Set: Reisum, The Frieran Sea, Bring Sebum the Master's Tusk after peeking at the armor through the ship's bow

Mods

Pick out of all these mods:

DEFENSIVE:

• Howler's Immunity: Gives a small defensive aura buff that's a good choice if you are playing co-op with friends and want to share the buff.
  
• Flicker Cloak: Alternative choice to Howler's Immunity, better if you are going solo. Absorbs 50% of incoming damage and gives you stagger immunity.
  
• Mantle of Thorns: An alternative choice to Mantle of Thorns, but does not absorb ranged attacks, but will reflect melee attacks back to enemies for a little extra damage; though if you're good at dodging, this won't get utilized that much.
  
• Veil of the Black Tear: Provides a ranged shield that is helpful, but is very situational. It can be used to create a safe melee areas where you can't get poked from afar by ranged attacks. Very useful on certain bosses.

OFFENSIVE

• Hunter's Mark: Want to buff your Crit chance even more? Then equip this mod for even more crit chance.
  
• Song of Swords: Increases your overall damage output, which means more damage and more lifesteal.
  
• Fan of Knives: A ranged attack that applies Bleeding. Useful if you don't want to spend time setting up with charge attacks and go in guns blazing.
  
• Blink Token: Does running up to enemies to melee them annoy you? Blink Token enables you to just teleport to them, deal a bit of damage, and put you in melee range.

The nature of this builds puts you on the front lines, I personally find it better to take at least one of the Defensive mods to help you soak damage. Though if you're confident in your ability to dodge, then taking two offensive mods is a great choice also.

ITEM LOCATIONS:

• Howler's Immunity: Rhom, Kill Maul
  
• Flicker Cloak: Earth, Kill Riphide
  
• Mantle of Thorns: Earth, Kill Gorefist
  
• Veil of the Black Tear: Rhom, Kill Shade and Shatter
  
• Hunter's Mark: Purchasable from McCabe / Hunter Starting Mod
  
• Song of Swords: Yaesha, Kill The Warden
  
• Fan of Knives: Reisum, Kill Tian, the Assassin
  
• Blink Token: Yaesha, Kill Onslaught

Traits

CORE

• Kingslayer: +25% Crit Damage (Rhom, Kill Undying King)
  
• Executioner: +25% Crit Chance (Coruss, Kill Ixillis)
  
• Wisdom: +25% Elemental Damage (Finish Ward Prime Questline, Subject 2923 DLC)
  
• Tormentor: +25% Status Duration (Apply 100 Status effects to Enemies)

Triage: +100% Healing Effectiveness (Yaesha, Shrine of the Immortals)
NOTE: Lifesteal is no longer affected by Triage. It just means that you won't heal as effectively so there's no point to leveling this up.
DAMAGE

• Exploiter: +25% Weakspot Damage (Kill 100 Enemies with Weakspot damage)
  
• Warrior: +20% Melee Damage (Earth, Tale of Two Liz's / Scrapper Starting Trait)
  
• Hard Charger: +20% Melee Charge Damage (Reisum, Kill Brudvaak, the Rider and Vargr, the Warg)
  
• Armor Piercer: +20% Damage to Armor (Deal 5000 Damage to armor on enemies)

DEFENSIVE / UTILITY

• Vigor/Endurance: +50 Health/Stamina (Starting Traits)
  
• Arcane Strike: +25% Melee Mod Power Generation (Yaesha, Kill Ravager / Totem Father)
  
• Spirit: +25% Mod Power Regneration (Earth, Supply Run)
  
• Catalyst: +25% Status Mod Power Generation (Corsus, Kill The Thrall / Cranker)
  
• Bark Skin: 15% Armor Effectiveness (Earth, Wailing Tree Event, wearing Twisted Mask)

Other than core traits and the essential Vigor/Endurance traits, you can honestly put your points anywhere else to suit your playstyle. The others things listed here is what I would personally recommend putting on first.

Playstyle & Example Build

The main playstyle of this build is rushing in and doing a charge attack to apply stacks of BLEEDING on enemies. If you are using a Riven/Scythe then you will only need to do one charge attack for 3 stacks while other weapons need 3 charge attacks. After BLEEDING has been applied, you are free to continuing melee attacking while enjoying your juicy crits and boosted damage. Alternatively, you can take out your Shotgun and start blasting affected enemies in the face with a face full of bullets OR walk away and let them die to bleeding stacks. If done properly, you can virtually live forever by sucking the blood out of your enemies and keeping yourself healthy.

Co-op buddies who are also running Polished Whetstone can capitalize on the extra Crit Chance and Damage from the bleed you are applying to enemies. You could potentially build an entire team on this Vampire build.

By the way, the amount of healing you get from bleeding enemies stacks depending on how many enemies are affected by bleed. If there are two enemies with 3 stacks of bleed, you are getting 10% of healing proportionate to the damage of those two enemies, which makes this build great agaisnt encounters where there are more than one boss.

EXAMPLE BUILD:
At the time of writing this build, on this character, my armor and weapons have not been maxed out yet and I don't have Riven so I am using a normal Scythe for now. I also have not maxed out some of the traits yet.

But hopefully you can still get how this build should look like!

End Note

And with that last bit, this brings us to the end of the guide! I hope that some people find it helpful. In all honesty, I'm not that great at Remnant and there's probably some ways you can improve this build to make it work better. If anyone has any suggestions or questions, I'd be happy to answer!

Thanks for reading! Hoped this helps!

[Private Paula]

Nice build, im using Devastator tho that gun is op as hell

[azurajae]

@stuweh Fan of Knives is a good mod to include from the choice pool, thanks for pointing it out, I had missed it while building this build. I'll add it in as an option!

As for Hero's Sword, I don't have the DLC so I don't have it, but I have tried out World Breaker, who works very similarly (charged attack releases a ranged attack). It worked pretty well with great CC potential, but there was one teensy little drawback. I found that you could accidentally apply bleeding to your friends if they get hit by the ranged charged attack . I'm not sure if it is intentional, but you have to be really careful using Hero's Sword / World Breaker with this build when in co-op, though if you are going solo, it's fine!

Thanks for the suggestions!

[JacksDaw]

So a good alt melee weapon would actually be the heroes sword. It can do a charged melee attacks from ranged and open up options for different primaries. Another good option is the fan of knives mod for ranged application of bleed