Kingdom Death Builds: The Gloom Tank (Patreon)

Required Expansions: Slenderman, Spidicules (don't replace the Antelope), Dung Beetle Knight

Key elements: Green Ring, Silk Boots, Phoenix Plackart, Shield, Gloom Hammer

Optional parts of the build: Phoenix Faulds, Deathpact, Fetorsaurus, Screaming Horns

You have probably seen this build floating around the internet at one place or another, it's not one of mine, but this is a great example of how going away from the norm of building complete armor sets can sometimes result in something that is larger than the sum of its parts.

The core part of this build is based around activating the Green Ring and the Phoenix Plackart, building insanity to fuel the powerful ignore a hit ability that the Plackart has (and keep yourself insane for the Gloom Hammer) and then combine the Gloom Hammer with the Green Ring to gain armor every turn while permanently being the monster controller.

There are some difficult parts to this build, and as such it's a real quest to construct it.  You need to complete a level 3 Black Harvest for the Bone Harness (which is essential because it's the ONLY left green, blue down affinity item we have at the moment), you need level 2 Dark Water Research for the Gloom Hammer, you need to beat a couple of Phoenixes and for the end game Deathpact you have to beat the L4 Manhunter.

Once you have it built, it is a very simple character to operate.  Essentially you manage the insanity to make sure that you have some for the Plackart to work (easy with Deathpact, but that's really just an optional part that you don't need); ensure that you wound with the Gloom Hammer every turn and throw up your block as appropriate. 

When you are looking to build this in a campaign, I recommend that you prioritise getting the Heart Flute so you can keep pulling more Slendermen to fight and quickly level up the Dark Water research. Spidicules is not worth fighting early on unless you want the Scimitar/Amber Poleaxe so you generally fight it at L9 when you are ready for the L2 Legless Ball journey (you will absolutely need HL control and lots of crit builds for that one). Those are the two more delicate parts of the building operation.

The weaknesses with this build are that it is very dependant on being insane and it has to juggle using insanity for hit cancellation via the Plackart vs. being insane for the Gloom Hammer and Plackart to actually be active, brain damage attacks and the fact that this is a very low evasion build.  In addition you have to be very clever with how you handle the monster because of the way that the Gloom Hammer forces them to flee once you land a wound.  Everyone else in the hunt party needs to be very good at positioning and you probably even want a bruiser or two rather than pure DPS.  I'd also recommend a Spear Master if you can get one because they are very capable of dropping the priority target onto the Gloom tank every single turn and that will make the entire fight very safe for everyone involved.

This is pretty much the only 'taunt warrior' build we have available right now because the Gloom Hammer is the only item that really works at providing consistent AI control for pseudo taunt.  There are other Gloom Hammer builds you can put together, but none of them are as durable as this one.

Substitutions:

 • Phoenix Faulds can be any waist armor you like.  

 • Fetorsaurus can be a Leather or Beacon Shield

 • Screaming Horns can be replaced with any down facing green item you desire.  But I would recommend having a different helmet elsewhere in the build, just to be safe.

 • Deathpact is just a nice optional extra, you can fill with whatever you want in here.