How many pets do you see? 
Why on earth would you even wanna try this?
I could just stop at this one reason - Because it’s fun!
But I will give you the entire list of perks here:
- 8 Invincible Pets at level 94. (7 at level 60, 6 at level 43)
- It’s great for beginners, incredibly easy to play!
- Hardcore viable and very forgiving
- It is very fast to level
- Can be done completely self found
- Can be made super tanky, lots of gear flexibility.
- The Pets kill fast, but nobody is stopping you from swinging too!
- Plenty of fireworks. Not boring at all.
- No gimmick pets that get unsummoned after 20 sec!
- No gimmick pets that get insta-killed by bosses (#skelliesSuck)
Enough reasons? In which case let’s roll already!
I would like to change the format here to make it easier to follow. This will be an ongoing levelling guide instead of a endgame performance showcase. Will get there together!
Wait, did I say Pet Dervish? You betcha!
I’ve tested two versions of this build with good results 1-100.
Acid Version: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/p257vqEZ
Fire Version : https://www.grimtools.com/calc/YZe6xvrN
Both are great for levelling and endgame. Both can be used without any rare items or double rare greens. Both are suitable for beginners and fans of self found play style. Both are HC viable, just watch my videos if you don’t believe. I’m constantly adding new content which is mostly aimed to help beginners.
Oathkeeper gives us the Guardians (2)
Nightblade offers the Blade Spirits (2)
This helmet - https://www.grimtools.com/db/items/13829 - adds another Guardian as early as level 40
This 2H Mace (note, this mace can only be acquired if you side with the Order of Death Vigil!)- https://www.grimtools.com/db/items/12679 - adds one more Guardian as early at 20
This amulet - https://www.grimtools.com/db/items/11247 - adds another Blade Spirit at 94
This relic - https://www.grimtools.com/db/items/1497 - adds a cute kitten at level 60
This relic - https://www.grimtools.com/db/items/11374 - replaces the previous kitten with a scarier, meaner one at level 90!
The above items comprise the core of the build. The endgame setup is mostly acid/poison. We will have 140-150 RR eventually!
Levelling
The usual approach to level an Oathkeeper based build.
- Get one level up in the campaign, grab Aegis.
- Go to crucible, do 10 waves - profit. Put points into the first two nodes of Aegis
- Do another 10 waves, refund the points and unlock the Guardians.
- From this moment aim to max out the guardians and put a couple points into EoR as it’s a good proccer and support damage skill. Put one point into Vire’s Might for mobility.
- Grab the Nightblade mastery and aim to reach the blade spirits asap, ignoring all other skills!
- As soon as you are done with crucible , rush through the campaign all the way to Fort Ikon and get the mace from the boss in the tomb of the Archon.
- At around level 40 go farm the helmet in the new dungeon.
- At level 60 craft a nemesis relic to get your 7th pet!
- At level 90 craft a Deathstalker relic to replace Nemesis. We will need that acid damage and RR!
- At level 94 craft a Conduit of Night Whispers with the +1 to Blade Spirit affix.
- At this point on all you have to worry about is damage conversions and gear optimization. On that later…
Devotions
Very forgiving at the beginning. I suggest to go with something like this at the beginning
https://www.grimtools.com/calc/dVbPva8N
until you can start converting everything into acid/poison.
But as long as you have some RR for different damage types, your levelling speed will be great! Early to mid game, the build has Physical, Fire, Cold, Piercing, Bleeding and Acid damage. So it makes total sense to grab Manticore or Revenant and mix and match with Celestial Presence and Night’s Chill. For endgame you probably wanna grab Revenant for 6 extra pets (though I hate the fact that they are not permanent!), as all vitality damage will be converted to acid in the end! More on this later…
Here’s an interesting performance comparison while levelling Pet Dervish side by side with a Pet Conjurer:
Level 19-20 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wkp2UityHz4&t=2s
Nothing too convincing (I’m still a total newbie here at piloting both builds). Both builds are strong and the 15 sec Dervish’s lead could be attributed to my piloting and no aggressive pet stance.
Level 42-43 - Alkamos - the dervish is 2.7 times faster - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGrzmKqP3Dk&feature=youtu.be
Level 42 - Mad Queen - 2 times faster - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqJamd6HdpY
I’m still a newbie here, still not piloting the pets correctly and not using the aggressive stance. But even with those fixed, the performance doesn’t change much as you will see in the next videos.
Grimtools Level 42:
Pet Conjurer - https://www.grimtools.com/calc/wV187eM2
Pet Dervish - https://www.grimtools.com/calc/4ZDv3mz2
Char files: level42.zip (502.7 KB)
Level 50 - Fleshworks and Final Boss -
Pet Conjurer - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mev6sFvpJE&feature=youtu.be
Pet Dervish - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=husczID49QE&feature=youtu.be
Level 53 - Dummy test - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcqS7QIw9GM&feature=youtu.be
Grimtools:
Pet Conjurer - https://www.grimtools.com/calc/8NKdApj2
Pet Dervish - https://www.grimtools.com/calc/bVALrQw2
Char files:
Level 53.zip (684.4 KB)
And finally, Level 60 (my main claim that pet builds slow down significantly at this level compared to decent speed specs including this dervish) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsoDuV-SFDY&feature=youtu.be
And the first three bosses in Elite HC - https://youtu.be/MbuA_3rtGpI
Grimtools:
Pet Conjurer - https://www.grimtools.com/calc/r2BWyrDV
Pet Dervish - https://www.grimtools.com/calc/pZrWGB6N
Char files:
Level 60.zip (971.4 KB)
Videos
Performance at level 40-50 (HC Normal)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTPgshmuaIE&feature=youtu.be
Performance at level 60 (HC Elite)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUopSz7lVYw&lc=z224zlpadm3fzpozb04t1aokgi1sgr4rw0xtslw5h34krk0h00410
I’ll be adding more info here as more testing is done, but so far it looks like a capable MC farmer and a very fast levelling spec that doesn’t slow down and doesn’t require rare legendaries or set items in order to reach 94.
I refuse to GDstash it for perfect endgame setup and instead am going to leave this one open for now. Feel free to experiment and post your feedback here.
To be continued…
Will have to dig it out and have another got.
pet Dervish… I will try this! 
