After leveling with this Build very easy in Veteran and easy in Elite it is really hard in Ultimate.
I can either bring my Pets Stats up or my Fire-Stats.
For Example: i Played with 430% Pet-damage and 130% Life but had only 800 Fire Damage and 750% Bonus on Fire.
Using the Wyrmclaw instead of the Black Grimoire of Og’Napesh brings the Firedamage up, but takes one Pet away.
i don´t have the Necromancer Gloves.
Alternatively i test now with 1000% Fire and 1800 Firedamage with 300% Petdamage and 80% Life.
Additionaly i use again the Flintcore Bolts on tzhe Focus to do some Damage.
Now its a little bit easier, but still really tough to survive.
[1.0.0.9] Dracarris Incarnate - Pet/Fire Hybrid Pyromancer, 6s Mad Queen, Solo Gladiator Extra Spawn
Aggro management tends to be the key to survival when playing a pet or pet / hybrid build, as leech-based and regen-based sustain for health tend to end up being sacrificed, at least to some extent, when using pets.
On that notes, something happening in visual range is the key to triggering a mob’s aggro. So, for example, even if you’re patient about letting your pets make first contact with mobs, if you lob in a flashbang over your pets’ heads shortly after they begin a battle, then enemies that haven’t yet seen your pets will see the flashbang affecting their “friends”, and they’ll probably go straight after your summoner. In numbers.
Especially with large AOE effects like flashbang, you benefit from managing the center of gravity for their area of effect so that you avoid drawing in large numbers of mobs, potentially even from off-screen.
Hopefully this helps.
Edit & PS: Other possible contributing factors to survival difficulties could be low resists or a low defensive ability (DA) score. You can check these the next time you play and see if your character is robust enough to take some hits from time to time.
Thx for your Answer.
I definately am not really familiar how Aggro works in GD, but this helps.
My Pets don´t get Aggro from all Mobs when i send them in.
Often i got to work with the Pets to get them.
Resistances and Life are far to low but i have no Idea what to Change.
I can go on Def, on Pet-damage or on Fire-damage.
But there is no Way for Equip that fits to all 3 Components.
Maybe it helps to show you the Equip:
My English is really bad so i am not really sure if i understand how Damage on the Pet works.
Pets participate on my Basedamage (Flatdamage), right?
That means i do not only need a high Fire Percentage even a high Fire Value?
Cause it´s my second Char there is no Equip to swap between my Chars.
I guess my Problem is “Ultimate”, till then its easy going.
So was my Warder to, but with Ulti the Problems began.
I have to switch from Damage to Resistances.
Its quite frustrating that i can only play my Chars probably when my Tankmate pulls the Mobs.
I hope i can find out where the Mistake in my Thoughts is cause the Chars have Potential.
At present, your character really isn’t ready for Ultimate difficulty. Life totals, defensive ability, and some key resistances are low. Based on the average armor score, the armor total is probably low on some gear, as well, which would make your character even more prone to getting hit for spike damage.
At this point, you have three options. You can move on to other characters, hoping to fill in the blanks on gearing this character that way so ultimate becomes easier to handle. You can take your character back to elite and spend time farming for better gear. Or, you can remake your character into a more defensively solid character, giving up some damage in exchange for doing that.
Others with more experience can give you better advice about what kind of defensive numbers are workable for ultimate difficulty.
PS: In case you’re interested and might find it helpful, there is some discussion about how a Pyromancer pet build can work in a thread of my own, further down.
The build I’m following is different and more defensive in how it’s put together. The build itself may or may not interest you. But, some of the discussion about gearing up and aggro management might be helpful and interesting. The title of the thread begins with “Pets on Fire”.
HP is Gesundheit in German? Weird world.
How well a hybrid does offensively/defensively really depends on what type of hybrid you’re trying to make. The importance of DA also depends on the kind of hybrid and your gear, shield-users can easily stack more (and rarer) resists for example.
It’s actually not that hard to make a hybrid that has lots of lifeleech. In fact, most of my builds which use Occultist as its base mastery stay as pretty much pure Occultist up until beating Log in elite, because for the cheap cheap price of temporarily investing in the Wendigo constellation+CoF/max Sigil of Consumption line/maxed Blood of Dreeg line/Possession, I get dozens of extra points for pets skills/whatever else and I can pretty much facetank my way through most of elite.
Aggro works in some kind of attacks-over-time versus damage done formula, favoring attacks-over-time. I don’t know the specifics, but skills with multiple attacks/ticks like Curse of Frailty will generate a lot of aggro (even though it doesn’t do any damage) because what’s actually happening here is that the debuff is being applied repeatedly over time (hence lots of “attacks”, hence CoF’s reputation for having crazy devotion proc rate).
This is also why giving your pets DoT skills can significantly increase their ability to draw aggro. AoE DoT skills are ideal. Sending your pets in first and letting enemies marinate in their DoTs for a while also helps.
As a general rule, I would recommend getting your HP to at least 7k in ultimate. That’s only for act 1 and Krieg can shotgun you down (very easily) if you try to fight him using ranged attacks with that number. Ideally you should have ~10k or so HP for ultimate.
As for resists, the elemental resists should be at max. Until you get better gear, you have a bit more freedom with the rest as long as they’re not negative and as long as you have resist potions.
You will have a bit more freedom with this build when you get Primal Instinct, which significantly increases your damage output. When that happens, you can start using more defensive armors.
So I guess that means that your main goal at this point is to get Primal Instinct ASAP.
Just to add to what’s been said by Tyr, Nssheepster, and thepowerofmediocrity, I’ll also echo what I had previously wrote in my Iskandra’s Necromancer build guide about equipment priority:
For this build there’s less of an emphasis on CDR since there’s no Star Pact to supplement, but the other item priorities are still relevant. Note that:
- Large health bonuses are a higher priority than most pet bonuses and player +% damage bonuses, since the core of your DPS comes from flat damage to pets, pet OA/crits, and RR debuffs.
- Both pet damage and player damage (+% fire damage) are much lower on the priority list than you’re assuming.
- For this build, the +skills priority listed as #2 is reaching 22/12 Flame Touched at end game.
Generally, you’ll receive better returns from large improvement to survivability than in small incremental improvements to offense. Pet damage % and player fire damage % are NOT the main DPS drivers in this build! Also, having a larger HP pool is crucial for proper functioning of Blast Shield.
Wow, what a Response.
Thank you Guys!
Yesterday i tested around wirh the Equip in the Stash and at least my Resis are now ok.
Lifs is still low but i tested about 1 hour how Aggro works and i think i understood.
So i started farming the Mountain Deeps to get Recipes.
Even if Ikriz shows i don´t die automatically.
It´s a little bit kiting but works.
Besides i take the one or both Caves in Burial Hill.
The Bosses are easy and maybe there is Loot i can use.
Unfortunately is most of the Loot that i find for my mate, Tankgear.
If ist not Tankstuff, its for Arkanists, his second Char.
I start thinking, this Game hates me.
Thanks a lot for your help, i check the Thread of EnjoytheJourney for more Tips.
I am curious, why is Fiend not a part of the devotion setup? Seems to fit perfect with the theme of the build.
It would seem like a natural fit for the build, but Fiend simply doesn’t add enough to a build that’s already extremely tight on devotion points.
Here’s a more detailed breakdown. Fiend’s primary synergies with this build are:
- +60% pet fire damage: We already have +1920% pet fire damage on this build, so the increase is very minor.
- +40% player fire damage: We already have +1411% player fire damage on this build, so the increase is very minor.
- Damage proc: We already have 4 AOE damage effects with far better AOE coverage and uptime, so the increase is very minor.
To make the affinities work, Fiend must replace one of the following in the build:
- Bat: One of the most important sources of sustain for this build, and replacing it with minor damage bonuses is a non-starter. Even if you sacrifice other items/devotions to add life steal bonuses, trying to use Flame Torrent to ADCtH as a pet build is a great way to commit suicide.
- Solael’s Witchblade: Eldritch Fire’s resistance shred far more effectively boosts damage than the minor bonuses from Fiend, and its AOE effect has far superior coverage.
- Bysmiel’s Bonds: +70% to all pet damage, +8% pet total speed, and an extra pet to soak up buffs all combine to add considerably more damage than Fiend.
- Jackal + Raven: +5% pet OA, +5% pet attack speed, +15% total pet damage, and +30% total player damage are also far superior bonuses.
As explained in Close-up: Understanding Pet Damage, +% damage bonuses are actually a fairly small part of overall pet DPS, and Fiend offers little aside from that. Fiend is primarily useful for builds with a very specific use for its proc.
Great build.
Take my respectful.
I love this build. The Pyromancer is my favorite class pairing, but I was worried that it was only good for gunslinger builds. I just wanted to stop by and say nicely done. Thank you for proving me wrong.
dw melee, bwc, grenado focus, and sigil/bwc/doombolt are all options all good options for pyros! None of which are as good as shiv’s super sexy build, but they all work quite well especially for campaign
I’m having some trouble approaching level 45. I seem to be dying quite often to any swarm of enemy that thinks I’m the threat.
As stated previously however, this is my first pet build, so pet aggro may be the issue.
When you say, “let the pets handle most of the trash”- you referring to anything with a yellow or white name, correct? And I shouldn’t really be using Greater Fireblast to help with killing them unless I’m sure I can take the damage if I provoke the mobs?
Can you provide a character link? (Upload to Grimtools)
I meant that you shouldn’t need to burn all your mana trying to (Greater) Fireblast everything. Against most trash, using your CC/debuffs should be enough.
As mentioned by others on this thread, you can certainly use pet aggro management. One popular method is to stand off-screen from enemies, and use “Pet Attack” with aggressive stance to move your pets to the edge.
My preferred playstyle is ignore pet aggro issues altogether and simply play the build as a regular ranged/caster build, using kiting, CC, and defenses. Unlike other pet builds, this build has just as much (or even more) survivability features compared to standard ranged/caster builds. If you’re familiar with how to play ranged/caster builds (especially CC/debuff usage) and are still having trouble with survivability, then we should review your character link to improve your setup.
I played the old Druid build for a long time as my primary character, I’m pretty familiar with how casters normally work.
http://www.grimtools.com/calc/d2je40N9
Note my resists are pretty bad, (40% and under on most of them), but not as bad as that link shows, lol. I’m still on veteran, not on ultimate obviously. That was my other idea as to what might be going wrong.
Thanks for the character link. Resists aren’t the problem, but your health can be much improved. In Veteran, it generally isn’t worth it to try to improve all 9 separate resistances when you can simply double your HP pool instead. However, it’s impossible to scale raw HP alone to match the increased monster damage and resistance penalty in Elite/Ultimate, so resists become a huge concern later on.
You have some significant pet damage bonuses and casting speed bonuses in your equipment, which would generally be sensible. However, I’ll echo what I wrote in post #78 of this thread that health is a higher priority than pet damage. With that in mind, I’ve updated your equipment accordingly, using faction item replacements for the most part and filling in your missing components and augments. Here are some notes:
- Building a large health pool is critical to survival early on. You’ll notice that I replaced many of your pet damage items with player health items instead, but this impacts your pet DPS less than you might think. Using the Max Pet Damage Calculator to illustrate, here’s where your current pet damage is coming from:
(Level 10 stats used for Shepherd’s Call)
Even with your hellhound overcapped, we’re still able to raise its base damage by over 50% using flat damage bonuses alone. Keep this in mind before you start getting worried that you don’t have “enough” +% pet damage bonuses!
Looking at Section 2 (for +% damage), you can see that +% pet damage on items is actually a small portion of all +% damage bonuses. Stacking lots of pet damage items actually has a relatively minor effect. Observe what happens after my replacement of 1/3 of your pet damage items for more player health:
Given the minor impact (only -9%), you receive far better returns by pumping your health way up instead.
- Prioritize large damage spikes, rather than small incremental bonuses. Instead of trying to stack lots of Subjugator’s items, at your level the most important determinant of pet DPS (by far) is having extra pets, namely from Savage relic and Og’Napesh. Be sure to farm for Og’Napesh at level 40-45 bosses if you don’t have it yet.
Other upcoming damage spikes to pay attention to acquiring: Thermite Mines, Necromancer’s Deathgrips, Hungering Void, Elemental Storm, and especially Primal Instinct.
- Pet OA bonuses are hugely important. My item changes/additions improved your pet OA from +5% to +14%, and increasing it further should be a top priority. Keep in mind that +% pet OA also improves flat OA bonuses from Flame Touched and BoD, and this makes your +% pet crit bonuses (such as from Shepherd’s Call) much more effective.
Lastly, I’ve also updated the leveling guide by moving BoD and Flashbang investments further forward. My personal preference is to beeline for Thermite Mines ASAP to replace Greater Fireblast, which results in:
- Significant increase in all pet DPS due to resistance shred.
- Much safer method of direct damage since it allows active kiting instead of rooted casting.
- Allows another Burning Weapons for even more flat damage and pet fire bonuses.
Although this would be more optimal for DPS, the target audience of the leveling guide would better benefit from heavier front-loading of survivability. Therefore, if you’re currently following the leveling guide, be sure to review the changes and adjust your current and upcoming skill allocations accordingly.
Hello DaShiv,
First I want to thank you again for all your detailed answers, I think it really helps everyone understand better how to build their character !
I am still leveling mine and having a lot of fun
I am level 60 right now. I have Og’Napesh, I don’t have the Necromancer Gloves, I don’t have the relic Savage but I have the blueprint and I don’t have the relic Primal Instinct neither the blueprint. 
Relic :
Should I craft the Relic Savage or save the mat for Primal Instinct ?
And what is the best way to farm for blueprints ? Treasure trove ?
Equipments :
Should I keep Og’Napesh at level 65 since I don’t have the Necromancer Gloves or Primal Instinct ? Or can I switch to the Empowered Wyrmclaw if I craft Savage Relic ?
If I understood correctly your lasts posts, the more pets the better so I would conclude that my priority should be to keep the Og’Napesh, craft the relic savage and farm (and pray) for the blueprint and the gloves. Or do you advise something else ?
Thank you in advance !
You are amazing, good sir.
I do not have Og’Napesh, but my offhand does have a 5% chance to spawn a pet on attack. Does this drop just from the 40-45 bosses? I thought it had a chance to drop from anything just about.
I don’t even have the recipe for Savage atm, been going for the troves and the oneshot chests to try to get one to drop.
first post.
just wanted to say ☆⌒(*＾-°)v Thanks！！
your guides got me back into the game after a long, long break <3
pets 4 life!!
Craft Savage immediately for sure: you’ll need lots of substitute pets until you’ve crafted Primal Instinct, at which point the build will skyrocket in power and it’ll become better to replace extra pets with extra pet bonuses.
The best way to farm blueprints are treasure troves, one-shot chests, devotion shrines, and multiplayer Crucible.
Yes to your last paragraph, and I’d add Heart of the Mountain to your item list as well. This build works by having enough pets to soak up all the flat damage, +% elemental damage, both flat and % OA bonuses, +% crits, and enemy debuffs. Until you have Primal Instinct, you’ll need to temporarily pad your pet count using Savage, Og’Napesh, and Heart of the Mountain.
The Black Grimoire of Og’Napesh is a level 40 item, so your best chance of having one drop is by farming areas at or slightly above the item level. Unfortunately, only the Empowered version can be crafted.
Thanks for all your feedback, everyone!