[1.0.7.1] Blighting Hour Skeleton Cabalist - 5:20 Gladiator

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
1

As you may well be away, pets received a pretty big buff in the latest patch.

What was that? They got nerfed? Huh. Could have fooled me.

The nerfs actually hurt kinda bad, particularly for skeleton builds which lost consistency more than anything else

I’ve been messing around with Blight Fiends a lot lately. They have great area damage but are not so good against single targets. Skeletons, on the other hand, are pretty damn good at single targets. Combine the two, and you get some pretty good clear times.

To make best use of Blight Fiend’s AoE, you need to use Unstable Anomaly. If you’re using a 2H weapon with little CDR, you really need to use Circlet of the Great Serpent. That means not using Beastcaller’s Cowl, but Bysmiel’s Domination provides enough speed to get by, and it can make up the missing damage with Sovereign Ruby of Domination since this build doesn’t use 2 x Familiars,

GrimTools

err… that’s not quite right. Let me try again.

GrimTools - With MIs
Gladiator 151-170 - 5:23

GrimTools - No MI
Gladiator 151-170 - 5:48

GrimTools - With Will of Bysmiel
Gladiator 151-170 - 5:15

With the non-MI version, pretty much every skeleton dies every time. The little bit of offense you lose without the MIs is enough to ensure that some of the nemeses will live long enough to kill them at some point.

I suspect 5:00 is possible with this build, but it’d require more patience than I have at this point. I’ve cleared wave 160 10 seconds faster than I did in my best overall run. It’d have done it easily in 1.0.6.1. In any case, it’s a build that relies on skeletons so it’s hugely inconsistent and you just have to hope to get lucky.

2

You love them skeles so much you gave them 4 over hardcap lol. BTW no hound not even for the tiny chaos flat?

3

Praised be. Please remain where you are right now, Crate’s Ministry of Truth Special Task Force will be there with you shortly. May the Lord open.

4

Santa, errhemm Satan is coming. God bless your skeletoy.:cry:

5

Oops, the GT link was wrong. It was half hybridized with something else I was going to try. Should be this.

6

The Ministry of Truth is coming? Crap. I better add Will of Bysmiel back in and drop the clear time to 5:15. Not sure where those 8 seconds went but I guess it doesn’t matter, I wasn’t using them anyway.

Blight Burst is the only useful thing the Blight Fiends are really doing.

7

Um, yeah, about that… You put that 300 da shred aura down like it was nothing… Non-pets would kill for it!

Quick question from a lazy player: when you got flat and global % cdr, flat come first, yeah? As such nothing really compares to the serpent helmet. For anomalied fiends it’s like 50% cdr. How else can you build fiends if not with the serpent helmet?

8

Yeah, but the build has 70% pet OA boost on top of Blood of Dreeg, and the skill change only gave up ~160 of it, so in context it’s really not noticeable.

Correct.

The alternate is to use an off-hand and Aeon’s Hourglass. 25% CDR drops the cooldown of Blight Fiend to 6 seconds, and the cooldown of Time Dilation to 12, so basically you can still have 3 out constantly although it’s not as well guaranteed.

19% off-hand + 4% from Beastcaller’s Cowl is good enough
19% off-hand + up to 7% from Sovereign Ruby of Domination is even better.

To make use of Unstable Anomaly with a 2-handed weapon though, you really need the Circlet.

9

Man I really hope they make it so that Blight Fiends are a little less clunky to use with unstable anomaly. Just some CDR changes or maybe even cast speed.
After playing your familiar blight fiend build I’ve really been wanting to play with them more, they really are pretty amazing for clearing packs, actually very enjoyable to play in campaign… but feels so bad whenever you aren’t on top of the resummoning because it takes like 8-9 seconds to get back to full dps.

Makes me look forward to that new poison pet set.

10

Hi! Is this build still viable for the current patch?

11

Sig…sig…sig.

What has GD come to ever since you showed up? :smiley:

P.S. another amazing build!

12

How do you proc Cleansing Waters?

13

It should mostly work but it’ll be a lot less powerful than it used to be due to some pretty big nerf to Chaos skeletons. When FG is out I’ll post some more effective alternatives.

:smiley:

I don’t. It’s too difficult to use effectively and on too high of a cooldown to be worth the effort, imo.

14

Since flame torrent nerf is it better to bind skeletons to eldritch fire? 0 CD flat chaos damage with -chaos resist on top, 9 skeletons to spread as much as possible.

15

Twin Fang is a good option, low cooldown and helps heal the Skeletons.