Thank you sir!
Hi Sigatrev
Do you think that the new patch will finally introduce a legit cabalist build useing the Lost Souls set (maybe focusing on vitality damage)? Especially when the Witching Hour got nerfed. What do you think?
Regards
Witching Hour lost 6-10 chaos damage. With that change, the skeletons still deal 267-316 chaos damage, so they lost ~3%. Not that big a deal.
Not likely. The buffs to Lost Souls are almost entirely superficial. Hellhounds barely deal more damage than a single skeleton, so giving them a little bit of extra damage and vitality conversion doesn’t even come close to making up for the preventing you from using Will of Bysmiel, Witching hour, and Beastcaller’s Cowl. That is a lot to give up for almost no gain.
If you want to go vitality, you’re probably going to want to invest in Bone Harvest + Will of the Crypt. It’s far easier to max those if you’re not using the Lost Souls set, and those provide a much bigger bonus together than the Lost Souls set does. It’s also pretty much impossible to invest in those and meaningfully invest in Hellhound at the same time, there just aren’t enough points.
There are also no good rings to go with a Lost Souls vitality build. The obvious skeleton + hellhound rings are the Voidwhisper Bands which cause chaos conversion - not what you’d want on that build.
Also, for hellhound to be even remotely useful you need to use his skills, all 3 of which are entirely fire/chaos.
In 1.0.6.1 I had pretty good results with a this Diviner’s Vitality skeleton + familiar build (6:30 clear time).
I honestly think you could put together a more effective build with the Corrupter of Souls blue set - it doesn’t block weapon or amulet slots while giving pretty good bonuses to Soul Harvest and Raise Skeleton.
I don’t see Lost Souls being even remotely competitive as a skeleton set given unless there is something very significant I don’t understand about how pet builds work. I’ll probably try to make something work, but I just don’t see it being successful. The changes really don’t look like they’ll make any difference.
/rant
How do feel the nerfs to pet crucible buffs impact the faster builds (read: chaos builds) with less health and the slower builds with less damage?
I haven’t tried it yet, but I don’t think it will have a large impact on peak clear speeds, which were already dominated by how quickly you could get to the enemies.
I think the changes will make skeleton builds even less reliable than they already we’re though. Skeletons rely heavily on killing things before they can be killed. Killing slower raises the chances of them getting picked off, and once they start dieing, clear times can be litterally doubled because of a combination of the loss of damage from crucible buffs and the drastic change in survivability of skeletons that don’t have crucible buffs. You end up being lucky to have 3 or 4 skeletons alive at a time on nemesis waves.
I actually like the idea of there being less of a difference for pets between having and not having the extra buff from staying alive, but I was hoping it would converge from both sides instead of just from nerfing the bonuses side (which I don’t have a problem with)
But how about converting vit damage to lightening? have you tried?
I finally got around to actually trying this build in the new patch, and saw no noticeable change at all. I played a bit more cautiously because of the posts I saw about people getting wrecked, and on my first try got 5:20, losing only 2 skeletons on wave 170. That’s within the range of various the build had before, and considering I was piloting less aggressively, I think this build survived just fine.
Hi Sigatrev
is it possible to go with more defensive devotion setup in this build? I am thinking about Ishtak in particular. I don’t mind sacrificing a bit of clear time in favor of more consistency and safe play. Also, we can now have 3 Spirits instead of 1 so I think putting 1 point into Reap Spirit won’t hurt. What do you think?
Regards
You might be able to get away with it in the campaign, but definitely not in the crucible. For skeleton builds, especially with the new patch, consistency drops precipitously with every second of clear time you lose. It’s harder to keep skeletons alive, and once they die, every single wave turns into a 1+ minute long kite-fest. If you want a more defensive build, play a Conjurer.
It would hurt in the sense that it makes the build more complicated to pilot, and the benefit would be effectively non-existent. You’d still never have more than 2 out at a time because of their long cooldown and low duration. Even on dedicated wraith builds they are pretty much useless if you’re not using Diviner’s set in my experience.
This build look cool, i know what i’m gonna up for forgoten god
I am struggling to kill Lokarr with this build, any suggestions?
Was hoping to farm the set up before the xpan to get some alts up.
Love the build, been able to farm constantly and insanely fast!
Only one question tho, why not Myt Bonescavenger Grips over Myt Overlord’s Iron Grip? Is the 4% DA in Bonds of Bysmiel or something else i’m missing?
Thanks in advance 
Overlord’s Iron Grip provides much needed pierce resistance, up to 30% on a good roll. The extra DA is a nice bonus. If you somehow did manage to make up for that resistance, the other bonuses on the Bonescavanger Grips are better, but the cost of making up that much resistance is pretty large (although using Titan Plating instead of Eldritch Mirror would do most of it, so on that might actually be a better way to go).
Ah, i see now, didn’t notice the absurdly low Pierce Resistance (To be honest, never had any problems since i hardly do crucibles haha)
Thanks for the fast answer!
Ah, i see now, didn’t notice the absurdly low Pierce Resistance (To be honest, never had any problems since i hardly do crucibles haha)
Thanks for the fast answer!
First time poster here. Thank you for the great guide and information! I’m having a bit of difficulty trying to replicate how you’ve allocated your devotion points in your setup. I’ve no doubt it’s operator error on my part, but I’d appreciate any tips from you or the other helpful folks in this thread on how to correctly allocate the points so that I can unlock the applicable devotions that are required for this build. Thank you in advance!
Advice, try to figure it out, it’s not that hard once you understand the fact that some devotions are self sustainable, which means the devotion completion bonus is enough to enable such devotion.
Crossroads Order
Panther
- Buyback Crossroads Order
Eel
Crossroads Chaos
Fiend
Hawk
Amatok the Spirit of Winter (up to Blizzard)
Murmur, Mistress of Rumors
Solael’s Witchblade - Buyback Hawk
Lion
Ulo The Keeper of the Waters - Buyback Lion
Staff of Rattosh
Lizard
Dying God
Aeon’s Hourglass
Thank you! Much appreciated.
Not sure what I’m doing wrong but my skellies get oneshot in Aspirant difficulty on wave 160. Can’t imagine even trying Gladiator.