I saw that you placed single points in various skills so that you could bind devotion abilities to them, and that raised a few questions:
How good is the Acid Spray constellation? I had seen in the past that it had so much RR that many players were defaulting to using that constellation, but I’m not proficient enough in the damage calculations to know how much extra damage Acid Spray gives you.
How have you found the devotion abilities to be so useful that they’re worth putting only a single point in the skill required to proc the devotion? I’m assuming devotions in general are so useful they’re worth spreading out skill points over multiple skills as opposed to using the points on a single skill?
How well do the Hellhound and Raven survive with you only putting in minimum points into them? I know you’re fighting with mainly skeletons, undead, and locusts, so do I take it that they’re mainly there for the tasty buffs they provide and their survival is simply a bonus? Still, even in Gladiator crucible they seemed to hold up decently against the purple-named monsters.
I bet this build only gets stronger when the real Necromancer comes out, this is a very exciting build.
Acid Spray is required for most pet builds. Generally, all builds need a combination of flat (Category A) and stackable (Category B) RR. Pets do a wide variety of damage types and have very few conversion options. Therefore, RR that covers all damage types is extremely valuable for pet builds, and Acid Spray is the highest flat RR debuff to do so.
All pet builds rely on multiple skills to proc their pet devotions. Crate designed pet devotions to require active management, such as Shepherd’s Call (+190% pet damage and 25% pet crit), Bysmiel’s Command (+1 pet), or Hungering Void/Howl of Mogdrogen. A huge amount of pet devotion power is dependent on maintaining the uptime on celestial power procs, which is also why CDR is extremely helpful on pet builds.
Most pet builds invest single points into additional “spammy” skills such as Grasping Vines or Sigil of Consumption solely to proc/maintain pet celestial powers.
At endgame, investing points into base pet skills boosts their survivability a lot less than you might think. For example, this build has over +100% pet health bonus, and some pet builds have easily +200% or more. Therefore, maxing out Summon Hellhound for +75% health becomes an effective health increase of only 19-37% or even less. Boosting pet resists improves their survivability far better than investing in health.
Generally I don’t find pet survivability to be a problem because this build doesn’t use pets to hold aggro, so pets take mostly AOE damage. Also, the vast majority of pets used are temporary, so their health refreshes whenever they’re replaced by newer summons. Pet resists are fairly low for this build though, but the hellhound resummons very quickly due to high CDR.
Guys, when does the character get better? I am level 44 and have died 187 times. I am not a good player, clearly, but my level 78 saboteur has died only 53 times. Should I stick with it or just give up? I am starting to get frustrated.
Pet builds are tricky, but generally safe. HYBRID pet builds, however, have all the risk of a regular build, but without the same focus. It’ll get better as you get stronger, probably 70+. Until then, it’ll be a harder leveling experience than most pet and non-pet builds, just because of what it is.
This particular build is very item-dependent (more so than your average pet build). It’s not going to be easy to get this build working when you don’t have your Primal Instinct and various summoning items yet.
Until that time, then if you’re struggling you could simply play this build as a caster and ignore the pet damage part until later levels. It’s not like your pets are going to be much help before you get your gear (the whole point to having the mastery pets with this build is for their buffs).
That should give you lost of extra points to play around with.
Can you post a Grimtools link of your character? (Upload your character here: http://www.grimtools.com/calc/) With that many deaths, it’s very likely that your character’s setup has room for significant improvement.
I am currently using the AAR, because I started dying less with it than with the DEE. The hero characters and bosses just would not die. Anyways, I still have to open a rift and escape through it multiple times, otherwise I do not survive any big fight.
Thanks you again, and please bear in mind, I am (shamelessly) a baseline pretty bad player. I play because I like to look at the artwork in the games. By the way, I cracked the 200 death mark. GOG should have an achievement for that. (I have the GOG version of the game.) Yay!
Thanks for providing the character link - it’s SUPER helpful for the rest of us to see what you’re working with!
For your character, there are lots of “little things” to fix that will make a huge improvement in aggregate. First, here are a couple suggestions for ALL your characters going forward:
Never leave component slots empty. Put Mutated Scales, or at least Bristly Fur, into all armor slots you can. Frozen Heart or Corpse Dust are great in jewelry slots while leveling. If you have nothing else, at the very least put Polished Emeralds into empty sockets. Components exist to be used!
Until endgame, 100% of your attribute points needs to go into Physique. For this build, I had recommended your first 70 attribute points go into Physique in the guide, but this advice pretty much holds for any build you’ll find. You’ve already diverted 11 of your first 41 points away from Physique; your next 40 points should be all Physique, no exceptions. This is especially critical early on while you’re building your health pool.
Next up, here’s the equipment priority I had listed in the build guide, as reference:
With that in mind, here are some build-specific suggestions:
Wear CDR items and invest Star Pact to 11/12 (or 13/12 if possible). You’ll be able to cast Devastation a LOT more often when you do this; you’ll also be able to stay alive more easily since you can drop Devastation while running/kiting, whereas if you try to channel AAR you’re stuck in place and vulnerable. This is why CDR items were listed as the highest priority for the build.
Prioritize large health boosts ahead of pet damage. You can obtain pet damage from other sources like devotions, augments, flat damage, etc., whereas equipment is the best place to significantly boost your health. This is why large health boosts are listed at #4 equipment priority above, whereas most pet bonuses are further down at #6.
Bind Twin Fangs to CoF, and Shepherd’s Call to SoC. CoF is your best devotion-proc ability, and Twin Fangs is your most important source of sustain (combat healing). Thus, binding Twin Fangs to CoF will hugely improve your survivability, especially given how fast Twin Fangs can fire with high CDR.
Use Focused Gaze to reduce damage taken. You’re not using DEE for the damage - you’re using it to reduce 18% of the physical damage enemies inflict, which is a huge help against melee attackers. Toss DEE at enemies every time it comes off cooldown, and you’ll survive a lot longer.
The good thing is that you already have the Og’Napesh tome and the Savage relic, which are the two largest hurdles for this build (and most pet builds) at your level. With a few tweaks, you should be able to improve your performance by quite a lot. Good luck!
Thanks sooooo much for your tips. I added components and augments. Moved all of the points of AAR back to DEE and Star Pact. Rearranged the Twin Fangs and Sheperd’s Call bindings. I added all the attribute points to health. And things are looking up. I leveled from 49 to 51 without dying. I am holding steady at 207 deaths.
The best part is that I survived the Steps of Torment maze that you enter using the skeleton key to do one of Anasteria’s quests! Very grateful.
I am now getting very distracted by looking at my wonderfully diverse menagerie.
I’ve tried the Dracarris build (not quite to the BiS gear level) and it’s super fun. This one I haven’t tried yet, though. Considering it! Never made a Warlock before.
But correct me if I’m wrong, I thought the skeletons from Revenant’s “Raise the Dead” devotion don’t actually benefit from the IEE aura (or Blood of Dreeg or Flame-touched from Demo, or Enchanted flint component, or aura from Raven/Hellhound, etc, etc, etc). Because they do no weapon damage, they don’t benefit from damage boosting auras like those.
If that’s right, then this build might not be optimized since it includes the possible “dead weight” of Raise the Dead skellies that aren’t contributing much beyond whatever self-focused Aether bonuses you have. (Those skellies are player-based, not pet-based for bonuses.) And also effort/skill points are pledged to Devastation for proccing those skellies which is also not optimal, if skellies aren’t really being used to full efficiency.
Been thinking about this a little more, and I’m curious if it might not be better to lean into the IEE aura aspect, similar to how Dracarris Incarnate rides heavy on Flame Touched from Demolitionist.
The advantage here is the Raven storm spirit is now a persistent aura with recent update (granting Elemental damage to all) which pairs nicely with the IEE aura which also grants Elemental damage.
Just thinking out loud, maybe then one could drop the Revenant devotion and get Solael’s or Widow for further RR? Even drop Devastation if it’s no longer needed to proc skellies.
Guess that completely changes the flavor of the build and it’s not really Iskandra’s Necromancer anymore. Sorta makes it more of a Prismatic Summoner?
You have the right idea, but times were different. Here’s a brief history of skeletons from Raise the Dead:
1.0.0.7: Pet-scaled pet with %WD (% weapon damage), thus affected by flat damage auras (consistent with other pet-scaled pets). This build was developed during this patch. 1.0.0.8: Changed to player-scaled pet, but %WD was erroneously retained so they were still affected by flat damage auras. Despite the severely weakened skeletons, I released the build anyway since it was the only active Gladiator-capable pet build at the time. Of course, later on Dracarris Incarnate significantly raised the bar for all pet builds. 1.0.1.1: %WD removed to be consistent with other player-scaled pets, thus no longer affected by flat damage auras.
You can see how much more powerful the skeletons originally were at full power (pet-scaled with full %WD) in this test video from build development during 1.0.0.7, when the skeletons were capable of landing crits like these:
Unfortunately, that’s no longer the case. With Raise the Dead skeletons in its current state as player-scaled pets without any %WD bonuses, the celestial power is now worse than useless since it supplants a far more useful celestial proc on the character’s primary attack ability. Hence, no competitive endgame build makes use of Raise the Dead in its current state.
IEE is already at max overcap for a massive 94 flat damage to all pets, and Storm Spirit also has max point investment. It’s possible to improve the RR of this build, but without having extra Raise the Dead skeletons to wield all that elemental flat damage, there won’t be much damage to support with RR.
Ultimately this build is entirely centered around the Raise the Dead celestial power. I’d definitely like to rework the build as a Spellbinder (Arcanist/Necromancer) once xpac hits, especially if Crate makes Raise the Dead actually usable again by reverting skeletons back to being pet-scaled. Until then, this build is somewhere in purgatory.
I started out a WArder as i found a build to spam aoe and be tanky but i never quite liked the facetankign and the amount it took to kill stuff so i rolled a gunslinger with demo, and the fire dmg was very fun to dish out but i realzied i wanted mroe aoe and pets and stuff since i always love minions
Then i found this build and what can i say im enjoying myself a tonn!
But the NOOB qustions need answere so here goes:
What kind of weaponds should i be using?
melee with looking at dmg
Any with looking at passive buffs to stats?
Whatever wep buffs pet the most in terms of (hp > dmg) ?
what stat prio is the most important on gear?
i am currently using some pants thats lvl 4 becasue they have spirit, %spirit and a lot of physicals on. should i swap to some better ones with defences?
sorry for beeign a noob here, thanks for awesome content and build!
Lovely build. I’ll try this one with a clean slate toon. But Raise Dead? What item grants that? Raise Dead is a Necromancer skill which was newly added to the newest DLC.
By the way, I cracked the 200 death mark. GOG should have an achievement for that. (I have the GOG version of the game.) Yay!
