Personally I’d say 30% and up qualifies as a hybrid (maybe less if you as many debuffs as this build) and my own test involves using an old build as a baseline and running the new build through Ch’thonic Vanguard/Tyrants and Flesh Hulks without pets and see how well it does.
50% is just too hard to hit when you have end-game items like the Beastcaller’s Cowl or even the Primal Instinct relic. People love saying that you need to stack pet gear like crazy to be a summoner but the actual truth fact is that stacking too much is too easy.
Stacking “just enough” when you have other stuff to worry about, that’s the tricky part.
If this gets nerfed, hopefully the devs figure out a way to mostly just give this kind of build’s top end capabilities a haircut.
Otherwise, the potential for a less gear-rich variations on this kind of build to function well (or perhaps at all) for newer, returning, and self found players will also get hit with the nerfhammer.
How does it affect self found/returning? I am leveling a summoner build atm and it’s probably one of the easiest leveling experiences i’ve had out of so many builds. Fully self found.
I started a thread just a little while before this one was posted, a kind of mix between a build diary and a build plan, and it leverages many of the same core mechanics on which the build in this thread has been put together.
I’d call the above build “functional” for a new player’s pet build because it’s quite a bit tougher than most pet builds, but there are some compromises made on damage.
I have complicated feelings about another build with more than a few similarities to one of my own when it looks like nerfbait. This is partly based on past experiences in other ARPGs when the devs swung the nerfbat at a particular build that performed “too well” and also essentially hammered many non-meta versions of that build into a non-functional state.
I wouldn’t worry about it, for a number of reasons:
This build archetype is neither yours nor mine, but Crate’s: they intentionally designed it into the game and promoted it using the Dracarris item. Dracarris even received a hefty buff in patch 1.0.0.8 since it’s been so severely underused:
[quote=“Zantai”]
Legendary - Dracarris: added 12% Cast Speed. On the Skill proc: increased duration to 15s, reduced cooldown to 12s, increased % Chaos/Fire damage bonuses to 125% for the player
[/quote]
Post a 10s Mad Queen video with an SS build and the vets here will tell you “meh, seen it already”. It’s already well known that SS builds have very high single-target DPS but low survivability. What is not well-known by a lot of the vets here is what I had said earlier: every well-optimized endgame pet build can kill Mad Queen in under 10 seconds. I can bet you that none of the posters who joked about either the kill time or potential nerfs have ever: (a) completed an endgame pet build before, and (b) tried to solo Gladiator with it. If they had, they’d already appreciate both the single-target damage potential and the survivability issues of pet builds.
Crate can certainly tweak the performance of any build up or down, but it’s impossible for them to completely nerf this and similar builds into a “non-functional state” without destroying a wide swath of unrelated builds, because this build doesn’t rely upon any unique game mechanics (such as perma-freeze). For example, Primal Instinct is an extremely popular relic used by virtually every single pet build, and pet builds clearly aren’t using it to dominate the current endgame meta. (The item that best defines the current endgame meta? Siegebreaker.) More importantly, Crate neither wants nor needs to nerf any build into a “non-functional” state.
Lastly, I’ll repeat again that this build is simply well-optimized in a way that most pet builds aren’t, because very few people have a full understanding of pet damage mechanics. People will learn from this build to improve their own pet builds, until eventually this build, too, will become just another “meh, seen it already”.
tl;dr: People are just knee-jerking since there are so few decent pet builds being posted. Play and enjoy your build.
Personally ,if I said anything abuot the nerfing, it’s from personal experience with posting builds, and having done all of the above with 2 of those builds:) (not with pets ofc)
Not saying it should get nerfed. On the contrary, been leveling a summoner similar to yours and one can see the strength and weaknesses even early game. There are specific instances where a pet build shines like in your MQ video which the player must carefully create and maintain.
Well yeah kind of. Until you meet some of the nasty bosses in Ult. like Alkamos who destroyed my 80% cold resist pets in under 4 seconds or simply - even without me casting anything - ignores them and jumps on me.
I simply didnt have one or two key items for the build which MULTIPLIES the damage and there is no way to get aggro back to the pets. No way. 5 minutes running in circles. Oh, I think the whole pet thing lacks a lot the aggro management of D2. I wouldnt mind a massive dps drop for the gain of that.
Basicly its destroy it fast or get destroyed (or run until eternity) and for that you need that items.
That’s intended. There are things in the game which will pretty much go after you no matter what, and that’s why summoner survivability is an issue for many builds.
Also Alkamos is what he is - an endboss in one of the rogue-like dungeons. He’s basically just one step below ultrabosses and Log.
D2 is hardly a good example because the game practically has zero aggro management. Pretty much only the Clay Golem has some kind of taunt mechanic AFAIK, and that was only added later.
D2 enemies just went after whichever was closest, which is one of the reasons why the Necromancer was so powerful. You can bet that if the AI was smarter, people would be remembering a very different Necromancer playstyle.
So I played with this Pyro Build now for a while. It’s really nice. Even though I don’t have any of the MI’s for pet builds.
But I run into a major problem fighting some Nemesis. My pets die very quickly vs Valdaran and Moosi. They die before beeing able to kill those two and resummon won’t help.
Yes, the whole package was wonderful.
Necromancer could hide behind a wall of pets or his golem - great.
Sorc could simply teleport to a better position - awesome. (anyone could teleport with the right runes, okay, and that was used for some very good reason: it was very good and fun and perfectly rounded up hack`n slay gameplay with speed movements)
There was no where something like “oh you have to intentionaly run 5 minutes”. Same problem with many casters in GD. Instead of fighting you often have to walk/run. Maybe this part means fun to some, not to me.
I’d say ultimate Alkamos is a much kinder equivalent to the D2 version of an Extra Fast/Extra Strong/Cold Enchanted hell-mode unique that just happens to be immune to one of your main damage types. You seem to have a pretty rosy recollection of Diablo 2.
Also, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FASOuVH5hvg&feature=youtu.be&t=42m19s.
That’s a summoner character I had go for a challenge run in ultimate SoT using no legendaries. He rarely even uses his Wrath of the Beast Tinctures. The Alkamos fight lasts just a little over 4 mins.
If we use this character as a baseline, then your character is basically in a spot where he is slightly less than the equivalent to an (intentionally) handicapped build.
That hardly seems comparable to someone with Enigma, or even some of the scenarios you put out, don’t you think?
As you can see from the vid, Alkamos also has a certain rhythm to his attacks. With proper timing you can just do a sort of kite-stop-kite-stop movement, and this applies to most stuff you’ll be fighting.
This vid was taken in B29 when OA scaling was harsher (enemy mobs used to crit more and players accuracy was lower, nevermind crits), ultimate had harsher resist penalties and HP/resists on gear was more difficult to find (which is why I’m much more careful around Alkamos, he can potentially take away like 90% of my HP without Storm Spirit up since I could only get my base cold resist to ~50%).
You basically have a lot more options these days, and if your character’s performance is any indication, you seem to be ignoring them.
Yes, this looks nearly the same as my last experience with Alkamos. I was so bored that i never touched that character again after that. (Its the mechanic of being forced to run all the time from the boss instead of doing something that is fun!) Well yeah, as I said. Some may find it exciting, and I also did a Diablo2 challenge to kill that named boss without any relevant resistances on my Barb. It took me 35 Minutes to kill him, no death. It was great somehow - but if the game was like this. always? Woah, not really, no!
Dont get me wrong: I think Crate did a great job with GD in general considering what they had. Really shiny, good stuff and a lot more fun than the endgame of D3. Im looking forward to GD2 and the expansion of GD ofc.
TBH, pure pet builds DON’T do anything, really. If you use a debuff, it drags aggro to you, so…Pure pet builds summon pets, use pet attack…And stay out of the way. It’s just kinda how they go.
Well, it was on my Chaosmancer or however you would call it, using chaos strike etc. I mean, I killed Alkomos, I dont know how often, also on this character before they changed something.
Not only the boss level is now - I think 2 level higher than it used to be - it really was like that:
“Oh, boy…come on, i didnt even hit you. DOGGY TAKE AGGRO…Oh noes…(he killed my 80% cold resist dog in 4 hits somehow, that didnt happen few patches ago, I wondered, me few hps left after he hit back when i chaos striked him), bite him, you useless…dang…awe…!..(you could here some curses I wont write here)…<keep running, chaosstrike when he pauses, runnnnnnnnnnnn Forest, runnnnnn!..” 2 minutes later “Oh, dog, do something you useless furry on 4 feet (and I still like the old dog skin and animations a lot more!), raven, dont hide behind the pillow, COME ON…!” etc etc.
When he finaly died I hopped on my non perfect equipped BM and killed ALKA nearly instantly. Which of both would YOU take to farm your legs? For me its no question
One of the big drawbacks to relying on swarmlings is pretty much this - complete lack of pet durability. As I previously mentioned, this is an issue with nemeses and most other bosses because they all have AOE/shotgun attacks. For fighting nemeses, I divide them up into 3 tiers based on difficulty and tactics:
(A) Easy - Benn’Jhar
Simply kite and wait. The main danger is when encountering multiple Bennies in 150, where they can chain-root you. Other than entrapment resistance and Ulo blessing, the only other defense is to be a bit more conservative with distance when fighting multiples.
(B) Easy, more drawn out but still not dangerous - Moosilauke and Zantarin
These 2 are both slow and spawn adds (treat ice crystals like a regular add), so it’s simple to just sit back and spam pets and Thermite. Re-target the main boss with pet attack every 5-10 seconds so that newly spawned pets aren’t distracted by the adds. Meanwhile, your fire AOEs will turn adds into free bound spirits to speed up the fight.
Moosi is easier than Zantarin since Zantarin’s shotgun can catch you off-guard if you’re not careful.
There’s no fast or elegant solution here other than continuously dragging them through Thermite while respawning pets. You can resummon your hellhound every 10 seconds and you receive a free swarmling every 2 seconds, so it’s a matter of attrition and staying alive. These fights invariably test the defenses of the build. These nemeses generally aren’t too dangerous individually, but the danger ramps up significantly in combination.
Valdaran is the easiest alone, but potentially the most dangerous in combination due to teleport interfering with kiting.
IM and Fabius both have very bursty crit potential - keep an eye on MoD cooldown.
If you plan on fighting a lot of nemeses in campaign mode, then I highly recommend overcapping Thermite Mines to counter their increased health outside of Crucible, or potentially even for Gladiator as insurance against a bad combination. It’s a matter of how you prioritize nemesis fights vs all other fights.
Ballsy fighting Valdaran with so many other shiny things on screen.
The thing I hate most about that boss is that he likes to appear with aetherials but he doesn’t particularly stand out compared to them, so it’s easy to miss him after he’s teleported you and then get hit by multiple lightning blasts to the face.
I think your pets (esp. the swarmlings) actually took several of those hits for you though.
Hi, sorry just started this game yesterday. I am looking for some help with some of the skill points and devotions. I have followed along with the instructions and I just finished the bat but I can’t bind it to CoF. It doesn’t show up as an option. Is there a reason for this?
You could, but you’d lose the bonuses from MoD (huge health/regen, +3 to Flame Touched, and circuitbreaker) as well as the considerable pet bonuses and huge CDR on the Empowered Wyrmclaw. The Dracarris proc is good, but not nearly that good.
Welcome to the game! A couple of quick questions:
Do you have all 5 nodes completed in Bat (with connecting lines), and are selecting on the Twin Fangs skill?
How many points do you have in Occultist mastery bar and the Curse of Frailty skill?
Is CoF missing from the list entirely, or highlighted in red?
The selection screen should look something like this:
Also, if you’re looking for live help with starting out questions, you’ll receive quickest responses on the Grim Dawn Discord channel:
First, great Guide and for a Newbie like me its Fun to play it.
But there`s a little Problem that i don´t understand.
As in the Guide i put my Points to Devotion in Shepherds Crrok, Bat an Jackal.
Now i want to skill Bysmiel’s Bonds, but I,m two “green” Points short.
I can´t find my mistake here.
Point in Scholars Light is in,the Points in Crossroad Ascendant and Crossroad Eldritch were deleted after completing the Devotion.
Any Ideas?
Even though I don’t have any of the MI’s for pet builds.
