[1.1.5.0] GhOLIATH : Tank Pet Ritualist (SR 115)

With the introduction of Death’s Waystones, diving deep into SR became much more interesting to me.
After some experimentation I realized that Ghol Ritualists had all of the ingredients to make it very far. Enough AoE to handle Zantarin/Reaper summons, rapidly replacable pets, and the capacity to have extremely good defenses.


Build

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>>>GrimTools<<<

Note: The MI pants are not necessary to play the build, but the pet resistances can make a difference at extreme depths.

This builds offensive capacity isn’t amazing but it is sufficient, and any improvements come at more significant costs to survivability which is the main focus here.


Performance

SR 115

SR 75-76 9:38, no agro abuse

Crucible times are 7:00-8:00. Not particularly fast, but pretty reliable.


SR Deep Dive Strategy

Agro
Pets holding agro is important at high shards. Things that generate extra threat are helpful. Taunt is even more so. Ishtak provides taunt for your pets, and Blight Fiends get extra threat from Rotting Fumes, Blight Burst, and Ghol’s Mark. Ground Slam also gains taunt at 17/12, and if you prefer you can use that instead of overcap Emboldening Presence as I did.

Agro abuse always becomes necessary at sufficiently high shards. When bosses have 30 million health and some of them can 1-shot you, you really need to fight them one-on-one. Some require bosses kiting (Aleks, Kaisan, Grava), so try to fight them last. Learning to manage agro takes some practice, and the finer details are beyond the scope of this thread.

Mutators
Some mutators are very helpful, some are very harmful, most are somewhere in between, and many have no effect whatsoever (ex: Aetherwarped). If you’re just farming 75-76, mutators aren’t a big deal on this build. If you’re looking to go as deep as possible, it’s worth resetting until you get a favorable set.

Best Mutators

  • Cruel - 5% reduced monster OA
  • Regenerating - 8% reduced monster poison resistance
  • Swift - 15% reduced monster Taunt resistance (nemeses have 45% base)

Worst Mutators

  • Poisonous - 15% extra monster poison resistance.
  • Brutal - 5% extra monster OA
  • Unstoppable - 25% extra monster Taunt resistance (nemeses have 45% base)
12 Likes

I try BF in SR before. the BF fear Boss Nemesis fire, ather, chaos AOE dmg a lot , always kill them by oneshoot. I really wish u can share some experience video for how to kill Kuba & Aleksander in after 100 level

SR 115 is pretty crazy!

Also interesting and nice to see pet Ritualist. Since I am not expert, how class defense usually fares compared to Conjurer?

This depends very much on scenario.

In crucible, keeping pets permanently alive to maintain buffs is the biggest concern. Wendigo Totem is pretty bad in crucible because you and your pets move around too much, which leaves pet Ritualists in a bit of a bind. Blood of Dreeg ends up being amazing in comparison, and keeping pets alive without that is hard.

In SR, particularly at high shards, you spend a lot of time in the same place face-tanking bosses, so Wendigo Totem becomes amazingly potent. When your pets are sufficiently good at holding agro and/or the boss you’re fighting doesn’t have a ton of AoE, you can often sit in the totem along with your pets, keeping your own health topped off.

Ghol builds in particular hit a bit of a sweet spot in terms of other defenses. Most other pet Ritualists are vitality based (Diviner’s, Lost Souls, Guardian of Death’s Gate) and lose some damage from not using Master of Death. Ghol doesn’t so it can use Primal Bond at no loss, and has a nice pair of rings to boost that further. It has built-in AoE through Rotting Fumes, Blight Burst, and Virulent Death, so it can focus on defensive devotions instead of trying to make up for missing AoE there. Between Primal Bond, Isthak, and Decay, you have tons stacked of damage reduction that helps keep you alive. Ghol builds can also quickly resummon pets using Circlet of the Great Serpent and Unstable Anomaly. In Crucible you get better clear times NOT using Unstable Anomaly because of buffs. In SR that isn’t the case.

2 Likes

Do you find that Ravenous Earth is more reliable than Ill Omen for reducing enemy damage, or is Ravenous Earth picked just for more reliable devotion procs? Or something else, like the spreading causing unintentional things to end up aggroed (like a boss returning to spawn and causing Ill Omen to spread to something else)

Interesting stuff here overall, makes a lot of sense. Pretty impressed with the 115 result! Also that sentinel’s speed at killing your pets is frightening…

I found RE to be more reliable, particularly when kiting. It’s unfortunate because you’d save 9 skill points that way.

So you stop being formula one racer and start becoming a deep shard miner?

I miss your crazy fast pet build sigatrev. Though I guess with the current cruci and state of pet build now, pet can’t clear fast in cruci now…

RE more reliable when kiting is kinda surprising. Is the Ill Omen cast able to miss that easily? I was thinking more along the lines of maxing it or at least getting it to a point where the next point won’t raise the damage reduction anymore, so that you get full duration and it lasts longer than the cooldown.

EDIT: those skill points being saved would be nice though. I’d assume that’d go into 17/12 ground slam.

Long time no see, master Sig.

Super interesting setup. Both weapon slots are for +all skills only. Also, top notch analysis, as always.

QUESTION1:

Isn’t that bad because of the humongous +crit dmg? Imo it’s one of the most feared mutators for glass cannons - and in those shards all builds are glass- especially when paired with Brutal.

QUESTION 2:

Isn’t it better to go right on Menhir instead of left? You gain ~200 armor for ~100 da. Since you do aggro abuse in SR, you don’t really experience massive debuffs and da shreds from many sources like in Crucible.

I second that and urge you to update the Ghol cabalist super fast skele build :wink:

Impressive build for SR displayed here !

Pet meta has been pretty stagnant since FG’s release. Every ‘new concecpt’ I’ve tried in crucible in a while has been underwhelming. SR at least is sufficiently different to be interesting.

The cast range on both is fairly short. There are plenty of cases where you don’t really want to go anywhere near the boss in question, which is where RE has a big advantage. Casting on the ground with no hittable targets, Ill Omen will not cast. RE will. If you click on a target you can’t reach with Ill Omen while not holding shift, you move to cast range. With RE you just cast as far away as you can instead. When Kiting you can cast RE in front of you and lead the boss over it, with Ill Omen you can’t.

Of course, all of that is just an attempt to explain what I found emperically. I didn’t try using Ill Omen until I was already at SR 110 at which point you die so quickly that it is hard to pull out signal from the noise.

When everything deals 30k damage per hit, 200 armor isn’t worth much.

You basically answered that yourself, but to elaborate:

3000 DA + OA shred from Rumor and Eldritch Hound (pet from Bysmiel’s Bond constellation), you basically never get crit. If mobs have -5% OA, most nems have less than 80% change to hit even past SR 110. If you DO get crit at those depths, you’re going to be 1-shot regardless of whether they have the extra crit damage or not.

Hmm… profound.

I made 2 pet builds lately around Bysmiel (ok conjurer and very bad cabalist) and pets are indestructible below SR90 but the problem for me was taunting. I took Mogdrogen for dmg, didn’t mess with Ishtak. I took 1p in all pet skills for taunting available and tried to hold back on casting too much when I don’t need it. But I was aggroing a lot. And once they aggro they wouldn’t let go (especially Fabius), at times making me alt+f4 (the conjurer was on hardcore). Is Ishtak that crucial?

This depends entirely on what you want your build to do.

In curcible, Ishtak is rarely needed. If you’re looking to go as deep as possible in SR, Ishtak is almost always preferable. The one real exception is Beastcaller’s Conjurers which can use Ground Slam for taunt, and they can go beyond SR 100 without Ishtak. You really need reliable taunt with pet builds at very high shards.

If you need advice on either of your builds, feel free to ping me. I’ve gone pretty deep with both.

Ive experimented abit on this and concluded that the taunt is a difference in you take a potion and live or gets obliterated by multiple mobs. This becomes especially evident on a class lacking pet taunt like cabalist or non beastcaller builds.

This taunt is also useful in soloing Ravager, otherwise he’d keep trying to kill you after you made 2 debuffs.

It’s a shame :frowning:
I was looking for a powerful and fast build from you for a long time, so I got hyped for a second until I saw the “Tank” word :stuck_out_tongue:

Anyway, good job on this one, hope you’ll reconsider and get us a HYPER ULTRA MEGA POWERFUL & FAST PET BUILD

I don’t know anything about pet builds, but my fellow builder @John_Smith has been dabbling with some pet builds and he has similiar results in Crucible. Is that the result of global nerfs to pet meta in FG? Or are there still super fast Crucible pet specs?

This build is not fast because it’s so heavily defensively oriented. A few relatively small tweaks drop it to 6:30-7:15, which is decent for an pet build these days but still not amazing. There are still a couple of pet builds that can hit 6:00, but not many.

where are all those 5 minute pet builds that used to destroy Crucible?

Shshhh, don’t taunt big Z and his nerf :bat:

Ghol + Skeletons can still do that, but that’s about it. I’ve never successfully mixed Bysmiel’s with skeletons. Pet vitality is generally too weak hit those speeds on its own (Lost Souls, Diviner) and is generally hard to mix with good AoE since there are no AoE vitality Devotions.