Thank you for having shared this build, I took away some ideas for my conjurer
Heya:
Just popped in to say Thank You for this thread. I’ve been wanting to play a Warlock for a while now and your guide is so well written I decided to follow it. Your work is very much appreciated.
Edit: so @ level 20 I seem to be 2 skill points short of your posted grimcalc. I haven’t done the hidden path quest yet but that would only account for one of them. Don’t quite know what’s going on there?
Good guide, nice build, interesting gameplay. Thank you!
I didn’t account for the Hidden Path, as you should be doing Hidden Path after you have 4 permanent pets (Hellhound, Raven, Savage pet and Revenant). One skill is from Kasparov when you hand him the aether crystals.
Anyway, the grimcalc represents a global optimum, not a local one. Sometimes it is better to respec some points around in order to optimize the character acording to the area you are in. For example, as I only play self found and had trash gear, I had to invest some points in the raven early on for the aura. You may well skip that if you get lucky with some items…
You may also want to do some Aspirant crucible runs for early devotion points. Having Shepherd + Elemental Storm in mid-Veteran wll make your life easy.
Thanks for the post. You can get devo points from The Crucible? Searching for info on that as we speak…
Oh and I don’t bother doing veteran first time through. Can’t really see the advantage as it slows things down a lot. Plenty of time to appreciate the game playing more difficult when I progress to elite and ultimate 
This looks really fun and I’m definitely going to try something like it soon on my warlock (although I have an extra 8 arcanist mastery so there’s that). Do you think you could put the devotions in the grimcalc link, at least for the lv85 one? It’s kind of hard for me to parse when listed out as “put this in here, pull that out then put it there, etc” format.
Interesting build, but how do you get +1 to all skills ? None of the items u listed under the optimal list seems to provide this bonus. Is there any other way to get that bonus ?
Thanks for pointing this out. It is actually a mistake I made when I assembled the character sheet. The picture was taken around lvl 70 when I was using the Clarvoyant hat because I needed aether resist and had nothing better until I could craft the lvl 75 hoods. I accidently forgot to retake the screenshot with the final build.
As you can clearly see from the pictures in Section III (and the grimcalc with all +5 skills you get in the game) there is no +1 to all skills unfortunately. I applogize for this mistake. As soon as I will log into the game I will retake the screenshot and correct this error.
P.S.: Also, that huge 100k+ crit you see on the 3rd ch sheet is not what you will obtain with the final build. That was me playing around doom bolt in order to determine an optimal min-max cutting point for procing “on death” pets without overinvesting in the skill.
Done ! You have the whole picture now in that section below the description !
Interesting build, I’m trying it out. Should be much more entertaining than the typical conjurer, which I found boring.
One little thing though, why the second point in absolute zero? The benefits are tiny compared to just one point and I would think you could use that point more effectively somewhere else. Even putting it in cof would help, giving you physical debuff that always works compared to just works on trash.
CoF increases -3% per level and affects bosses, indeed.
Absolute zero increases -5% first two levels (afterwards it is -4%) and does not affect bosses.
I put another point into Absolute Zero because it gives -2% more debuff vs trash compared to CoF. 60% of the physical damage the pets do is already transformed into elemental. More precisely, they deal 40% lightning and the rest is fire + cold. Since the single target damage is already huge, I decided to make the build an ultimate “trash cleaner”…which it is.
In reality, the difference is marginal and pretty much irrelevant since RNG will dictate if that 40% physical converted to lightning will win the Voidmancer Cord lottery and get amplified (+1000%) or not. In the end one single point into CoF or Absolute Zero will make absolutely (pardon the pun) no difference, but I wanted to be a true min-max economist and amplify the damage you will do 90% of the time. The decision was taken as I believe a lot of new players need trash farming builds in order to get 3rd grade components - needed to create 2nd grade components and so on…
P.S: don’t take the grimcalc verbatim. As I previously said: it represents the global optimum, not the local one. Hell, if you want to be a true min-maxer you will actually have the entire Beastcaller’s Regalia set in your inventory for Alkamos and Shar’Zul. I have it, ofc, but it took me almost 5 days to do it legitimately with no shared stash.
Alright, that makes sense.
Don’t have any beastcaller part besides the hat recipe and I just checked my stash and I don’t eve have a voidmancer belt. Oh well. I did find those fiendflesh shoulders in there and I didn’t even know I had those.
Edit: I have the belt recipe and should really check that first next time
My warlock is now just past level 40 and I was wondering, looking at devotion, has anyone tried to squeeze in the revenant constellation? This build makes necromancers deathgrips work so the skeletons from this one should work as well. It’s possible, you’d probably need to give up on solaels witchblade and the point in order crossroads, but it could just fit. You’d need to temporarily add jackal but can remove it before starting dying god.
It can work but I’m not sure even more minions actually help. I’ve not arrived at the endless minion spam point so I don’t know if it’s actually a good thing. And you’d need to link the devotion skill to doom bolt, to best make it work. Not sure how well shepherds call works on solaels flame.
But I really want to use this constellation because if not now, then when. Giving up on a powerful debuff however, not so sure.
I use it with my AAR warlock that I’m thinking of turning into this build, and while revenant is really fun the stuff building up to it is kind of lackluster; you end up paying 6 points for spoopy army and little else. It’s crazy good against bosses with a lot of adds, but against a single target it is obviously useless. I haven’t tested it but it feels like the kind of thing that would only increase your trash speed, which isn’t really a thing you need at all.
That said, if you wanna try it out you could go Lizard, Eel, Gallows, Jackal, Bat, Shepherd’s Crook, Behemoth, Solael’s Witchblade, 3/5 Rhowan’s Crown, Dying God and have a pretty rockin’ strike force.
Now for my questions:
[ol]
[li]Why so many points in Drinky Crow? He lets his buff fall off and only attacks on seconds that are perfect squares.[/li]
[li]Why so many points in Elemental Balance? As far as I can tell the only source of DoT damage is Crown, which I assumed we’re taking for resist reduction rather than DoTs.[/li]
[li]No Possession? Is the chaos resistance/+damage% not worth it?[/li]
[li]No Inner Focus? Seems like +OA and +spirit% would be an obvious max out every time, but maybe I suck at this game.[/li]
[li]Why Primal Instinct over Bysmiel’s Domination? BD gives you relevant stats for yourself and your pets; are the half dozen swarmlings just that good?[/li]
[li]Wildshorn Legguards seem pretty good here, especially since getting a MI with the prefix+suffix you want is less likely than god sending an angel to give you a blowjob. Likewise, is there a good substitute ring?[/li]
[/ol] Right now I’m thinking I’m gonna try this spec (complete with devotions) since I find Doom Bolt is really just too good to not max out. Might move the Possession point somewhere else like OFF or Aspect when I swap out my stuff that gives a bunch of +Possession. Any thoughts, anyone?
- The aura gives elemental resistance that you cannot cover otherwise without sacrificing pet OA. You have 2 options: a) you either put Mogdrogen’s Sanctity on one of your rings and your pet OA will decrease. OR b) get an offensive augument on one of your rings and let the aura buff your resistances. Since i am not taking the Mogdrogen constellation I need the pet OA.
- Elemental Balance is taken in order to amplify the critical damage your pets do, not for the elemental buff directly. This is the only form of multiplicative damage besides resistance reduction. EB is applied through IEE, so every entity under the aura will get +20% crit.
- You need 10 points in Possession in order to get the same % damage reduction the Sphere provides for 3. The character is a summoner, not a damage dealer.
- Again, the character buffs pets and does enough damage to proc “on death” items and nothing more. Therefore…I want the pets to crit, not the PC. Inner focus, ofc, should be taken if you do not get enough spirit through items in order to equip the Og’Napesh Tome.
- Every swarmling can crit for up to 28k. There is no scenario where the Hellhound + Revenant buffed by the BD relic will outperform 6 swarmlings buffed by IEE and Voidmancer cord. Simple math here: everytime the swarmlings hit they have 10% chance for 40% of their physical damage to be amplified 10 times. Furtheremore OFF + Crown + Eldritch Fire debuff the fire resistance of trash mobs to almost -150%. Guess what kind of damage the swarmlings do ? Yep…it is fire damage mostly.
- A good MI roll on Bysmiel Legguards is far better than the Wildshorn Legguards. Reason for that is simple: you need resistances just as much as you need HP. The Wildshorn legs do not provide pet OA and as number of pets increases, pet OA becomes the most important stat. The +400% pet retaliation is useless since only one pet tanks 90% of the time.
6.2. Substitute rings: yes, there are a lot of substitute rings - worst affixes on a Bloodsworn ring :)). Really now, Subjugator of the Wild or …of the Untamed is optimal here.
I actually found a subjugators of the untamed ring, but not on a bloodsworn but an ordinary obsidian. Since I figured I have won the ring lottery with that one already I won’t spend time looking for a bloodsworn signet with those affixes. Would be hilariously pointless.
And since I have a stack of tonics of clarity I think I will try out revenant. Having skeletons running around fits the them of this build too well.
For roleplaying reasons / fun of course you can try them out as long as you can easily respec. However, be warned that the skeletons will dissapoint you. Pls also note that you are going to lose a very potent debuff that:
a) amps both single target damage and AoE
b) provides CC and - most importantly -
c) Deals damage from behalf of the PC with high frequency.
The build was designed to achieve maximum global efficiency, m8. This is why Eldritch Fire + Crown + OFF + Solael’s Flame + CoF will trigger Primal Spirit swarmlings as fast as their cooldown. You are going to lose a lot of ättack ticks by renouncing Solael’s Witchblade and the damage output will actually decrese because the skeletons a) live only 10 seconds; b) deal physical + vitality damage; c) will spawn indefinately at your feet.
Then again, you can try them out and realize how bad the Revenant proc really is…
have been looking for a viable pet build for some time and this one looks like it’s just what the doctor ordered. just hit 28, having a blast, and found what looked like a fantastic mid-level weapon
Salazar’s Sovereign Blade of Fury
- 2 to hellhound
+2 to familiar
call forth the Harbinger - up 30 seconds every minutes.
I would use this over anything else I have just for the +2 to the hound and familiar but was hoping the harbinger would help in boss fights.
so far, all I have seen him do is stand around, usually back by me and almost never attacks.
am I using him wrong? or is he basically just worthless and save the energy expended to cast him. guess I could cast him when I need to run away and see if he can at least block a doorway or something 
First of all, thank you for the build guide. I really appreciate the level of detail you included. It is very comprehensive and answered just about every question I had while leveling my summoner into ultimate.
I’m level 71 and about half way into act 1 ultimate. I’m geared with about 11 of the 14 recommended pieces. I’m missing the Bysmiel pants, Bloodsworn ring and Fiendflesh shoulders. I just equipped my primal instinct and have a taste of how effective those swarmlings truly are.
Two questions. First, how do you efficiently trigger the chance on enemy death proc from the Black Scourge and Necromancer Deathgrips. I was surprised to find that my pets don’t trigger the proc, so I started to actively target trash mobs to trigger the chance on death. However after equipping the Primal Instinct relic, the 6 swarmlings just wreak trash mobs quicker than I can kill them and I don’t see my “Ghostbusters Extras” (funny by the way) as often as I used to.
Second, what’s the verdict of this build in the Crucible? I see from the videos that it’s very effective with Nemesis and SoT/BoC, but have you found it effective with multiple heroes/bosses swarming from every direction? Is this build viable to take solo into Gladiator level Crucible runs? I guess I’ll find out soon enough, but just curious on the opinion of others who have completed this build.
Thanks!
So I was in the same boat as you. I really didn’t have anything better so I equipped the Salazar’s Blade from around level 25 to 50 just for the +2 in the hound and familiar… and also found the extra summon to be absolutely worthless. After 3 or 4 summons I realized that it was a waste of a spot on my skill bar. I don’t think you’re using it wrong. I just think it’s a crappy summon.