As an official member of the Lazy Summoner’s Guild (since Diablo 2, bless its little black necromancer heart), I was quite pleased when I saw this topic. I looked at the Dervish when FG came out, but dismissed it without looking too deeply when I saw that the Guardians and Spirits shared no common damage types. Ended up with a pure fire Paladin specced Guardian/Aura of Censure/EoR not too dissimilar to your fire build. Hence not following in your footsteps for this character.
As a vitality build, the only real option for a non-summon nuke is PB, if you aren’t confident in your conversions. And it is very skill point hungry if you want it to perform properly for DPS, in a very skill point starved build. I would max out Blade Trap and never look back if the blessed damned thing actually worked on bosses. Likewise, I’d take Blade Burst if Lethal Assault worked with summons, but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t. I’d like to figure out a way to better leverage the vitality build’s superior CDR, but most vitality devotions are more focused on sustain than DPS, and the build doesn’t really use any other skills. More points into Clarity of Purpose for more OA and a higher crit rate? I’d love to, but skill points again…
Not seeing many other options to improve DPS, I sacrificed a bit of acid damage and some less useful RR to the Hungering Void for more OA, more crit damage, and maxed PB.
Initial testing on of the new devotion spread is favorable, especially against larger crowds where the RR I gave up was useless, but it’s possible I’ve lost some potential single target damage. Even if I did, I’d consider it worth it.
Died a few times, but that has more to do with my playing one-handed in Intermediate Ashes of Malmouth with gear I haven’t updated since level 40 than the build itself. If anything, the fact that I’ve only died a few times is promising.
I’ve run a similar build to this in the past, it’s worth considering stacking all your damage to Poison & Acid (since it’s less resisted than Vitality, for example 33% less on many bosses) and relegating Blade Spirit to just a devotion proc’er.
Mythical Pack of Deadly Means has a 50% vitality to poison conversion and there are Magi rings that convert 25% - that way you can get more mileage out of your Guardians and not worry about the lack of Vitality RR on the Nightblade side. Also pure Poison & Acid damage have some of the best devotion paths all clustered together - relatively naturely.
I’d never even considered that, since you can’t double convert elements. Does the Guardian adjustment not actually count as a conversion? Anyway, not going to sacrifice my Blade Spirits, simply because if you give up on them then you’re better off not using Nightblade to begin with.
The Guardian transmuter from your Oathkeeper mastery happens first before your item conversions kick in, so in fact you can convert everything to Poison.
Well I’d say Nightblade is still useful even if you relegate Blade Spirits because they are one of the few classes that has Poison RR, Poison passives, and Poison damage on skills naturally and they have good defensive options.
Plus having Blade Spirits, even if you dont focus on them, in essence lets you be more lazy and attach a powerful devotion to it - so it’s still contributing ‘lazy’ damage that way.
It occurred to me after I hit 94 and was rummaging through my stash for the move to final tier equipment. If I’m less concerned about the Guardian/Spirit thing than I am about simply amassing a horde of invincible vitality minions, the Blood Knight set is right there. If I drop the acid secondary element and focus entirely on vitality, Blood Knight does pretty much everything that I want. And PB is really, really good at proccing on attack skills.
While this build will shrink my standing army, if you just embrace the fact that you’re a stationary turret for most fights, you’ll be swimming in a horde of skeletons, blood servants, and horrible eldritch abominations from beyond reality in just a few seconds. As such, there’s a small ramp-up time before you can start DPSing in earnest. Not all of them are invincible, but the cooldown is so short and the resummoning so fast that I don’t see it being a problem. And if they have HP, they can block bullets, which is nice for a stationary turret. Plus I’ve got better armor and lifesteal than my previous idea. Focusing on a single element rather than the split I was using before gave a wider variety of options for equipment, which translates to more element conversions, which in turn means I was also able to be a little more aggressive with the devotion choices. Too bad without an off-hand the energy regen sucks to high heaven. Sadly, I don’t have any of the new dungeon legendaries yet, so I’m going to have to go grind that approximately forever before I can fully test this new idea. I am digging the effect of the BK set, though.
Aren’t you mixing player scaled pets with regular pets? Afaik you need different gear for regular pets, without this gear they would be practically useless in ultimate, isn’t it so?
Well, I don’t actually have the ring and mace of Morgoneth yet, so I can’t be completely certain. In general with Grimtools though, unless it specifically says on whatever skill that it scales with pet bonuses, it scales with player instead. The fact that the ring, mace, and full armor set of Morgoneth all have summons attached to them, but have no pet bonuses, is pretty suspicious in its own right. Everything on there that I’ve actually tested is player scaled. If I end up being wrong, I’ll just revise and repost the build.
TL;DR. I don’t know. But it’s probably fine.
Edit: After double checking everything:
Definitely player scaled-
Guardians of Empyrion (Oathkeeper)
Blade Spirits (Nightblade)
Raise the Dead (Devotion)
both Blood Knight minions (Armor set)
Nemesis (Relic)
Grimtools says player scaled-
Tentacle of Yugol (Ring)
Grimtools doesn’t say-
Nightbinger (Weapon)
Nightbringer (Armor of the Eternal Night, not used in build)
Even if the weapon ends up being pet scaled, it’s still worth it for the conversions, skill boost, and physical resistance over the other things I looked at.
I’m not usually super interested in pet builds, or build guides for that matter… however, due to the nature in which you’ve laid all this out, and the uniqueness of a Dervish pet build, I find myself looking forward to getting home from work and starting one.
If you’re interested in the Acid damage Dervish (which I think is the stronger variant compared to Fire), then you might be interested in a more-streamlined version of this build.
It has noticably more stats in pretty much every single area (both defensively and offensively) and has less greens/double rares requirements - and more Devotions procs for Poison & Acid damage.
Yeah, that’s how I lost my first hardcore character. I got so used to taking nearly no damage I started reading a book while fighting the logghorean, or however its spelled. That… might have been a bit arrogant of me…
I should have known better though there’s really no excuse for me, I’ve been playing HC classless for a while and know all about its dangers. This build is simply just that powerful that I didn’t have to even worry about any defenses until that battle. GoEs just tear everything up.
Yeah the skills can be moved around to your liking,
1 point in Rebuke for 8% reflect and life reduction resist - whether or not that is useful in your case, is up in the air (Nightfall is probably generally more useful as a single point). Since you’re effectively a pet-playstyle build, you can kite most things except reflect damage - which comes back to you since your ‘pets’ are all player-scaling pets
Reasoning for SS, it’s just for the movement - I’m planning to have a mostly afk/pet playstyle and will rarely use SS for any other reason than to move around faster - it’s attached to scorpion because I reason the only case I’ll ever use scorpion is for the 150 DA debuff on big bosses - 1 point in Nightfall is definitely worth it (remember, this is a build I just slapped together - if it’s just minor things like this, you should feel free to move some skill points here and there)
I’m not really planning on using SS offensively, Deathstalker facilitates a more AFK playstyle - plus Deathstalker itself has a Shadow Strike type move in it’s kit, it has an AoE, and relatively high attack speed for the procs
Yeap about the GoE and Abomination’s Tainted Eruption
Complications. Due to my incomplete gear, my total lack of stun resistance combined with my reliance on Ascension and Lifesteal makes it nearly impossible to farm Morgoneth for the MIs I’m missing. I could fix the problem, or use a farming character, but this seems like a good chance to try a different build for this one. Already done a fire GoE Paladin, so I guess I’ll try an acid build for now. Looks like I already have most of the non-MI gear for it.
I still intend on going back to at least complete my testing for a vitality build–even with incomplete conversions and lacking two item’s worth of temp summoned minions, I had no complaints about the damage. I also really like Hungering Void buff, which can be kept up full time if desired, and it’s outright hilarious to have so many summoned minions that larger enemies get stuck on geometry. But my incomplete build just isn’t cutting it at the moment.
Part of the problem is that my defenses are nowhere near enough to remain a stationary turret during tough fights that last long enough for Ascension to wear off, like Morgoneth. I’ll have to see if that problem persists in the final build.
Minor adjustments to Ziller’s build to remove the pants MI and reliance on prefix/suffix for the other two. Resistances barely make it now, but I never did develop much taste for grinding for double rare MIs. The roguelike dungeon-only legendaries are bad enough.
Damage seems to be about the same. Without the time required to summon all the temp minions, clearing speed is a bit faster. Better AoE with Tainted Eruption, but without lifesteal, you can’t afford to plunk down in the middle of a pack of enemies to get them really concentrated, so the final result is again about the same. HP is paper thin, so the DA, resistances, and dodge chance only help so much, and Veil of Shadow requires you to be in close proximity to the enemy. You’re basically never still, and Tainted Eruption’s confusion makes for a solid defense against packs of enemies, so it’s less of an issue than it would be with most characters, but it’s still a concern against enemies with powerful AoE attacks (ie Morgoneth).
I’ve tried sinking points into Blade Barrier, and it does help, but only so much.
Edit: Build is too fragile for my tastes. Tried a few things to fix it, including maxing Blade Barrier and using Guardian’s Gaze devotion to reclaim some lifesteal (which I ended up liking because the revolving eyes could repeatedly proc on attack skills, as well as lifesteal). But I keep dying during tough fights as soon as my attention wanders and I mess up the kiting. There isn’t a lot of tolerance for mistakes. I think I’ll go try out a Chillwhisper Infiltrator and continue farming for my vitality build, although at this point I’m not expecting it to be much tougher in situations I can’t rely on lifesteal. I’d still like to see what my theorycrafting can do for real.
