This is my first character and I’ve followed this build and have had a ton of fun but now that I am in Ultimate I die very often (usually multiple times) to Boss type NPCs, usually to a lack of an aggro system but also due to my pets being destroyed very easily/resummoning takes way to long. I am using all found gear so my resists are mostly in the 30s but my pet damage when fully buffed is like 1500.
Check out Sneaky Parrot’s “Bane of Uroboruuk” build. Skellies, with unoptimized faction gear and a non-mythical Witching Hour, go from ~8k health to ~24k health with great resists and still 1500%+ burst damage. You still use Time Dilation and Hungering Void but, since your skellies are close to 5x as tanky with the health and resists, you get much fewer deaths.
Witching Hour, Mythical or non, gives so much offense to a Skelemancer that we can now build defensively while still clearing Gladiator 170 (May want Mythical Witching Hour for Gladiator though!).
any good replacements for what to bind arcane bomb to?
I find this build very interesting and im ready to try this out! However, while im still on pretty low lvl, id like to know what things from the guide thats outdated that i shouldnt do now. Or any tips in general.
The Plaguebearer’s Master’s Spellblade is supposed to be crafted at lvl 12, do i obtain the recipe early or is it there to begin with?
Im playing this with a fresh character and i dont much stuff to begin with haha
Many people love this build because of the exemplary guide and impressive clear times in the videos.
HOWEVER
This is an end game build and it requires major 1) equipment (though relatively easy to get) 2) skill to be functional. Otherwise you’ll suffer massive frustration from bosses using area of effect abilities. For leveling I suggest vitality cabalist and then respec once you got the gear.
If you don’t have the spellblade blueprint I take it it’s your first character. I suggest you do your first playthrough with a soldier/anything.
Well i prefer doing a pet build, ive look up on soldier builds but they just looks so boring. They almost always put everything into soldier and pretty much nothing into the other class, i understand why but it just seem so pointless in a way:P but maybe i should try it before i judge it.
Good god OP, beautiful guide (and it’s almost eerie how similar our approach to using a petmancer is). Nice explanation of the basics (re-summoning versus pet toughness), why pet damage>pet survivability in a game where just about everything around you is trying to kill you (AKA dead characters have zero DPS), the importance of party-wide damage boosters, the role of flat damage/percentage damage buffs and how it’s a petmancer-theorycrafter’s job to try and find a balance between the two in order to make their build work.
I think the only thing missing is a more explicit acknowledgment about how any good pet build is unique in that it is both a HEAVILY gear-dependent build WHILE AT THE SAME TIME not particularly “BiS” dependent. It’s like you NEED to hit certain breakpoints (like number of summons, +damage sources from party-wide abilities or skill points, or a certain number of +%pet OA/damage/speed) in order to succeed, but once you hit those numbers you have a truly tremendous amount of freedom to do whatever the hell you want. And yes, it would indeed be nice if the devs could help us reach those breakpoints easier through the introduction of progression-obtainable content (like wouldn’t it be nice if Primal Instinct was actually a constellation effect instead of a relic? or maybe even component-granted summons). Hopefully the devs are listening.
Finally, I think it’s important to point out that pet nukes (whether innate or from devotions) are, for all intents and purposes, temporary pseudo-summons themselves. Think about it - these effects appear from out of nowhere to deal damage before vanishing and they benefit from mostly the same effects as your pets do. All that’s really needed is an animation change, like if the flames summoned by the Imp constellation were instead tiny spectral dragons that would continually dive-bomb your pet’s target then the overall effect would be the same except that you’d be more inclined to call them summoned creatures/pets instead of just random running fire animations. While not particularly relevant to your build, since you seem to be going for the comprehensive approach the fact does bear mentioning.
Anyway, for anyone interested in a more streamlined build to get you to 90+ (and one that’s not specific gear-reliant) then my suggestion is to simply go pure Occulist with maxed Raise Skeletons/Undead Legion. Why, you say? Because this build embodies everything this guide is trying to teach you while remaining ridiculously easy to manage because it comes with a TON of innate offensive AND defensive semi-passive from the auras of the Familiar, Hellhound and you (Blood of Dreeg), along with core skills like Curse of Frailty.
Basically just rush Blood of Dreeg and max it while leaving the Familiar/Hellhound at 1 and then slowly try to max Storm Spirit/Hellfire while using Fireblast/Greater Fireblast (easily obtainable components, you can even get Searing Ember from merchants) to destroy everything. As Fireblast finally starts to NOT kill everything in a few casts, start leveling Raise Skeletons/Undead Legion, and then your Raven/Hellhound and then rush Possession.
As you level, please do pay attention to the effect you and and your pet’s auras have on your killing speed. It is crucial that you learn to gauge the effect these have on your character. Also consider the effect of such skills as Curse of Frailty, and the fact that you seem to be doing remarkably well for yourself despite the lack of stat points from leveling your masteries… I mean your ARE stacking physique from gear, are you? Good. Ignore the +pet damage stat for now.
Anyway the combined might of Sigil of Consumption/Blood of Dreeg/Storm Spirit and Possession (and your pets’ ability to keep mobs temporarily off you) should give you more than enough survivability to breeze through campaign content as long as you keep stacking Physique through stat points and gear and keep your resistances up - note +%pet damage is even COMPLETELY optional in normal difficulty due to the sheer amount of party-wide buffs this starter build brings to the table. Yes, you will even be able to happily facetank bosses (minus the super- kind) using yellow gear as long as your ACTUAL physique/resists are appropriately decent (for more facetankiness, slot Twin Fangs into Curse of Frailty ASAP).
After that, you should start experimenting with what gear (especially progression gear, like from faction merchants - your options are very limited so it will be hard to miss them) works best for you to keep your survivability up while you slowly start moving points away from the starter build core skills and into DaShiv’s build. Note that the starter build plays very differently from DaShiv’s build, although the core synergies that make them work are the same.
Once you’ve experienced how deeply distressing it is to give up your auras even as you juggle keeping your pet numbers up with your survivability because RNG decided to (or not to) give you a ridiculously rare double affix green, then remember as your curse the RNGods for not giving you the components you need to get Primal Instinct (let along the blueprint) that this is what making a petmancer is about.
Sorry if I’m repeating someone else’s comment. It’s a long thread.
A few days ago I found Myth Veilpeircer which I believe might be the very very BiS for this build. Even though it offers half the RR of the spellblade, it gives it to hellhound which I think makes it spread better if put one point to hellhound’s extra attacks. Plus pet speed and damage and the much needed aether resist.
Plus the main selling point: an extra skel.
What do you think?
Does anyone know if DaShiv still plays? I believe at one point his Night King could have been considered one of the best pet builds around, correct? Would be interesting to see what his updates would be after all these new versions of the game, considering he had put so much thought into this build/guide.
If DaShiv no longer plays (his last post was Dec 2017), did anyone else adopt this build and have a current 1.0.6.1 version?
Thanks,
Helspondt
Just pick one of sigtrevs builds they are all better.
Consecutive updates bled this build to death long time ago. First Plaguebearer prefix nerf then inability to proc Arcane Bombs with pets (or the other way around). It’s still one of the all time classics though and one of the better written guides too. I don’t wanna speak out of place, but maybe PMing Sigatrev would be of use as he seems to have explored pet builds to the fullest.
It’s just off the top of my head: maybe combining the Malmouth book with the 1h Ultos weapon and double familiars would be viable?
I’m enjoying the build. I thought with all the button presses I wouldn’t like it, but it’s fun. Shame about all the nerfs.
pet cabalist with cataclysm eye? do you have a link to that?
I don’t think I’ve use Cataclysm’s Eye on a Cabalist build, but it’s my off-hand of choice for every other Occultist subclass. Cabalists get more useful skill bonuses out of Stormbringer of Malmouth than other classes, and are also more likely to use Witching Hour.
Thanks. Have you ever tried reviving/tweaking this build to the current state of updates, nerfs and buffs? I mean lighting pet cabalist with Stormbringer of Malmouth (maybe with double familiars as they would surely benefit from the lighting bonuses, or would’t they…?)
If I was going to build a lightning-skeleton Necro, it’d look something like this, except that I wouldn’t because I don’t use double-rare MIs, but you could swap one of the rings for a Wendigo Conjurer Seal and use any old medal of Caged Souls - it wouldn’t be as good but it’d be okay.
I just tested that and cleared Gladiator in 9:10, although I’m a little rusty so it could probably be a little faster. In the end, it plays like a Familiar build with mediocre RR that has Skeletons some of the time.
While it’s not fair to compare builds across very different patches, but I vehemently disagree with a lot of DaShiv’s general build theory.
This is super interesting. Mind to elaborate?
I’m asking because this build was super popular back in the day just like yours are now. (I admit to crafting them plaguebearers myself for a while). I would really like to hear out your discussing DaShiv’s theory if you don’t mind sharing a few thoughts.
I second this. I thought DaShiv’s spreadsheets were proof of max dps, even though all of his builds got obselete after 1.0.2.1. Maybe even before that time because DaShiv faced 3x Benn’jahr while being high on 4 crucible buildings and 4 blessings in his gladiator video (not even taking extra spawns), which can be done by any random build.
Also lightning pets cabalist sounds extremely ineffective to me because of WotC and MoD (the conversion hurts your skeleton lightning damage), so GJ on getting a 9:10 minutes cleartime.
This build I linked has 50% physical to lightning conversion and 100% vitality to lightning, so the 25% physical to vitality from MoD doesn’t interfere with the physical to lightning. The WotC conversion is applied first and reduces the amount of physical gets converted to lightning by about 20 while adding 36 vitality which is entirely converted to lightning, and adding a ton of % elemental damage. It will net more lightning damage that not using WotC. As I said though, it plays like a Familiar build so 9 minutes is a pretty normal clear time.
An extremely important point is that maximum damage per hit on a pet does not necessarily translate into peak DPS. There is somewhat of a correlation for burst damage, but things change very quickly once you cross the 5-10 seconds threshold. The sustained damage is critical in the crucible, but also for a lot of the AoM bosses/nemesis.
Okay, I’ll go into some of the points that I think are flat out wrong. I want to reiterate that DaShiv wrote all of this back in 1.0.2.1 when things were very different so his assessments may not have been wrong at the time, but either way, very little of it translates into the 1.0.6.1 landscape.
This is not incorrect, but I’m going to talk about it anyway because a lot of people misinterpret this to think they should prioritize items and skills that give flat damage bonuses over points in pet base skills or items that give +pet/all skills or % damage bonuses, and there are very few cases I can think of where that is true. In almost all cases the damage bonuses you’re going to get from + base pet skills completely dwarfs everything else, and the other available flat bonuses are almost never worth itemizing for, including both flat damage bonuses from items and + to specific flat damage aura skills.
There are some items that give flat damage bonuses that are worth using, but it’s always for the other bonuses. Voidwhisper Band and Glyph of Kelphat’Zoth are useful for the damage conversion + other bonuses FAR more than the flat bonuses. The Witching Hour bonuses to skills, speed, RR, and % damage are far more important than it’s flat damage.
This is almost correct, if you completely ignore AoM and the Crucible. AoM areas, bosses, and particularly AoM nemeses have tons of AoE damage, and can easily wipe out all of your skeletons at once. If your skeletons are only going to die one at a time it is fine to neglect their defenses, you’ll always be able to summon them as fast as they die. Once they start dying in bulk, you cannot keep your army alive unless you invest heavily in Raise Skeleton CDR items which comes at a greater offensive sacrifice than defensive items do. Aspect of the Guardian is on par with Manipulation in terms of importance.
One of the biggest problems with skeletons, the main reason I hate skeleton builds, is that they have incredibly steep roll-overs at the point where you can no longer kill things within a couple of a seconds. If something lives long enough to kill your skeletons, your DPS drops dramatically and things suddently go from very fast to very slow. With any other pet build, the time it takes to kill something scales much more linearly with it’s defenses.
Skeleton builds are the one place where Primal Instinct is usually the wrong choice of relic. On almost every other pet build I recommend that relic, especially on any Shaman based build, but not for skeletons. Because the swarmlings are temporary and have defenses similar to Skeletons, they’re going to provide extra DPS when you don’t need it, and provided very little when you do need it.
His relic analysis also ignores the fact that the +1 all skills from Mogdrogen’s Ardor allows you to save a ton of skill points on skills that don’t scale well into ultimate ranks (CoF + Vuln, Manipulation, AotG, etc) which is in itself very valuable.
The pet from Dirge of Akrovia looks good on paper, but in practice is worthless to skeleton builds. He is not enough to carry you when the skeletons are dead, and he’s damage contribution is negligible when they are alive.
The stats on Bysmiel’s Domination look great on paper, but I’ve never played a build where it performed anywhere near as well as Primal Instict or Mogdrogen’s Ardor, it’s not even close. (although Bysmiel’s Domination is probably better when fighting Ravager)
It should also be noted that he’s chosen to use a Primal Instinct/Bysmiel’s Domination + Mythical Clairvoyant’s Hat over Mogdrogen’s Ardor + Mythical Beastcaller’s Cowl, the latter of which is a better combination on any pet build. The only time a pet build should ever use a Helmet for +1 skills is when you REALLY have no other options for the +1. Relic, Amulet and Weapon all come first.
This is insanely wrong, possibly the worst pet advice I have ever heard.
It’s fine to draw aggro against trash mobs that your pets are going to vaporise anyway, and doing so will often speed things up, but no one needs advice for fighting trash mobs. For any single enemy that you cannot 100% face tank, you do not want to be the target, EVER. It’s okay to take a few hits, but that should never be your goal. If you have to kite, the enemy will chase you, and your pets will be attacking a moving target. The highest sheet DPS in the world drops to near-nothing because your pets barely ever land an attack.
If there is one thing you take away from my post it should be this: When the thing you want to kill is attacking your pets, your pets are going to land every hit because they are attacking a stationary target. That has a much bigger impact on DPS than almost anything else you can do as a pilot.
A good case in point is Sneaky Parrot’s video of Gladiator 161-170 where the final wave takes 5:30 by itself. It shows that he is an amazing pilot as he does it without crucible buffs, but he is using Witching Hour and Wrath of the Beast tinctures, he somehow manages to keep his pets alive most of the time, and he does much less to draw agro to himself than DaShiv suggests, and yet it still takes a very very long time because of the kiting. My 2 x Hellhound Lost Souls Witch Hunter took less time than that (admittedly with crucible buffs, but it’s one of the least powerful pet builds I’ve ever played).