This thread is amazing. Uber is my fav PoE summoner theorycrafter and OP will make my dream come true one day (cold summoner/hybrid).
We gonna incorporate Deathstalker in this build (for the debuff)?
I wish we had more posts with changes to this build for hardcore. !seen sfhobbit
If you’re playing Hardcore, you’d definitely try and get Mark of Torment as high as possible, especially when you have Time Dilation to chain 2 close together. Definitely a good touch to swap around jewelry augments until you have a good sense of what you’ll be using for your pets.
I tried an Time Dilation Unstable Anomaly Blight Fiend build with the Deathstalker relic pet to tank damage while the Blight Fiends get constantly summoned to the field; it sadly didn’t accomplish anything but deplete my Energy as quickly as possible. Constantly having to cycle through Blight Fiends and Time Dilation is a chore. If there’s an offhand down the road that helps Poison builds, it may help with the cycling problem, but I don’t see anything that can compete with the Aegis shield.
11/10 Creativity
This looks like fun! I am leveling up a Cabalist for it now. Maxing Blight Burst early is fun. I wish we could get total damage conversion on one item and in a less vital slot. Not being able to use Blight Shard is thematically disappointing. I think I will do a few things differently. I tend to avoid uptime management when possible and prefer Mogdrogen to Dying God. I am going to try using Lightning Strike as I figure it might be pretty potent with the conversion. It is worth at least a point to me though as I like the minor cc it offers. I do look forward to having the double heal proc with this build. Should make for less resummoning.
Here is what I am planning for: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/dVbx5y8N
Thanks for posting!
A few things to consider:
[ul]
[li]You can shift the Purified Salt to the gun and replace the Lightning Ammo with the Gallstone for pure Poison bonuses.[/li]
[li]I know you like Mogdrogen more than Dying God, but Poison DoTs are much more reliant on high Crit values than other damage types because if you get a high Crit multiplier for the initial DoT application, the crit multiplier stays for the entire duration. Not having Dying God or Call of the Grave sounds like it will affect your DPS quite a bit.[/li]
[li]The amount of speed your pets have is nuts; however, using that speed with the Viperfang grips just ends up reapplying the Poison DoTs without adding additional damage. I suppose that’s why you put Raise Skeletons to 18/16 and stacked Hellfire?[/li]
[li]Since you have Mogdrogen, you have more than enough pet OA to get decent crits, so I find Rend to be very inefficient. There’s two options I like a lot better for those 5 devotion points: Solael’s Witchblade to jack up the Chaos damage you get from Hellfire + Flame Torrent, or Leviathan for the DA, Pierce Resistance, and Poison Whirlpool. Your call as to which one you like better.[/ul][/li]
EDIT: Just saw that you’re using the Fiendmaster Raiment. Venomancer Raiment provides the same resistance coverage (+3% Physical Resistance) while also providing your pets 18 flat Acid damage with the 25% of 250% Acid damage along with it. Fiendmaster probably still edges it out, especially if you’re using Solael’s Witchblade for the Chaos RR, but it’s nice to give recognition to a chestpiece that’s specifically designed for Poison pet builds. Too bad we can’t fit the Dreeg pet mace for that juicy Poison and Acid + Chaos RR.
[ul]
[li]That’s a good idea![/li]
[li]Call of the Grave just annoys me because I really dislike high cd low uptime skills. I mean, I realize it is probably more efficient build wise to just use it anyway, but I find it a hassle, and prefer an always up bonus like Hellfire. Dying God is good on paper sure, but I don’t prefer to build that way Devotion wise. I’m not even arguing it’s better my way, though I don’t think my way is terrible either since Mogrdrogen is still very strong.[/li]
[li]Yeah, I like the speed for engaging faster and devotion procs. I did go for max skeletons because with their numbers they get a good boost for every bit of power they get. Hellfire is still strong even though it doesn’t fit with the overall push of the build. There’s still 789% pet damage without having Shepherd’s Call up. When I get to high levels I will probably try a few different things. It might be better to drop those points in Blight Fiend.[/li]
[li]Hm, you’re probably right about Huntress. I do like the OA and the OA debuff on Rend, but I have used Whirlpool in the past on a Conjurer and it was strong even when not built for. I need to test if Whirlpool is attacker targeted or target targeted though as I will likely have it on Familiar. Both it and Eldritch Fire have a nice move speed debuff too[/ul][/li]
I see what you mean about the armor. That flat acid damage would likely be pretty potent. I am not sure which I would go for ultimately. It is a bummer we can’t use that mace. Mythical Blightstone Invoker would be a great weapon too. I hope at some point we can achieve damage conversion for this build through one item. It would be nice if it was boots or another slot with less awesome pet options.
Have you tried having Rumor on a pet? It seems a shame to proc it yourself without all of those pet damage bonuses, but I know from trying it before that Blight Fiend was pretty terrible at triggering it. So maybe it is more important to ensure that it is up. Skeletons could use it well, but they are so strong with Fiend.
I have passed 50, so far so good. I need to get to act 5 and farm a weapon.
I’m surprised you think Blight Fiend is awful at proccing devotions; with its aura up 24/7, it should be the best pet at proccing devotions out of all. Regardless, if you’re doing Mogdrogen, I think an Acid / Chaos mix would be more appropriate; here’s what I did with your equipment / devotions:
https://www.grimtools.com/calc/r2BGoJBV
Grim Harvest Boots are probably better for general survivability, but Serpentine Boots are the only boots that grant bonuses to BoD, and a +2 to BoD is worth 10 flat Acid; getting 26/16 BoD nets you an extra 15 flat Acid on top of that, but that would require you getting Zantarin shoulders to make that up, and I like your Mogdrogen shoulder idea too much to interfere with that.
Guardian’s Gaze should proc like crazy on your Blight Fiend, and with both Skeletons and Blight Fiend using Chaos devotions, Eldritch Fire becomes a necessity for your build. That leaves 1 Extra Devotion point that you can put anywhere you’d like.
That’s my thoughts on the matter, best of luck with your build- I’m intrigued at how it turns out.
You would think right! In practice though, I had Rumor on my basic Cabalist build (I am a sucker for a good OA debuff) and it was not triggered often by the Blight Fiend. I wonder if the Blight Fiend’s aura can trigger devotions, I should probably test that. I don’t believe Deathstalker’s aura triggers devotions from my limited testing of that.
I do like those shoulders. 21 flat damage from one item that will largely be converted is handy! Those extra points in BoD are pretty powerful though, that’s a good idea.
Guardian’s Gaze is a good idea since it plays well with the rest of the build. I used it on my pre-AoM Conjurer and enjoyed it then. I will have to try that.
Thanks! Now I just need to finish the slog to 100!
This build is now up-to-date for the 1.0.6.0 update - Unstable Anomaly is now great, so go ahead and use the multiple Blight Fiends. Equipment is the same, but devotions were overhauled to accommodate the multiple Blight Fiends.
Time Dilation is now mandatory to keep up the Blight Fiends (plus everything else), and Tsunami is bound to Blight Fiends as both the Cold and Lightning damage from the proc is converted into Acid.
Thanks to the 1.0.6.0 changes, this build received a very nice buff.
EDIT: I switched my relic from Primal Instinct to Mogdrogen’s Ardor and swapped around the optimal MI’s to reflect this. It’s a lot easier using this to get 26/16 Blood of Dreeg than hoping to get an Occultist amulet or something more crazy. Besides, Primal Instinct Swarmlings require a lot of attacks to summon frequently, and you’ll have your hands full in keeping your Blight Fiends up and at 'em.
There’s been quite the discussion over at the Bugs forum as to whether Venom Launcher + Putrid Necklace conversion actually works. I’ll admit, I hadn’t vigorously looked into this as I assumed BoD’s conversion worked for all pets. If it ends up being the case that the conversion was meant for player only and the tooltip didn’t display that, I’ve been going through alternate ways to keep the flavor of this build (Skeletons taking advantage of 26/16 BoD while having Blight Fiends do the AoE work), and I’ll slowly replace the old guide with the current one.
For now, here’s the Grimtools (also in the OP):
https://www.grimtools.com/calc/p255z4m2
Featuring:
Am I reading this right that each individual pet will add a stack of posion? So 15 pets could stack 15 instances of poison granted by the mythical viperfang gloves?
Your build looks interesting. Did someone test it in Crucible ? Is it viable ?
Yes, Viperfang gloves with Blood of Dreeg provides an aura where each pet can inflict flat Poison damage, not unlike Primal Bond and its ability to give pets flat Bleeding damage. That is why I go through the effort to put points in Raise Skeletons + Undead Legion, as the damage really stacks up.
Updated the equipment section in the OP. The other sections will come as I get the time to update them.
I’ve updated the OP tonight to edit my guide to further support the current Grimtools and added a FAQ related to the Crucible. I thought I’d have an easy time in the Crucible, but the build is prone to taking burst damage, so a few strong hits from a Nemesis can wipe me out early. I thought the 20,000 damage absorption from the Fiendflesh items would have sufficed while BoD and the on-attack heals are on cooldown. I know other Blight Fiend pet builds were able to get through Crucible easily, so I’ll have to improve my piloting skills to provide a good Crucible screenshot.
While I haven’t put a whole lot of effort into Blight Fiends yet, my experience so far is that they have wonderful area damage but their single target damage is not that great so nemesis tend to survive for a while, and because they only live 12 seconds with Unstable Anomaly they don’t hold agro all that well. So they are great paired with something like 2 x Familiars which are invincible and deal great single-target damage, but on their own they struggle a bit.
So does the gun and necklace conversion work via Blood of Dreeg on pets?
The short answer is no.
The long answer is it’s not necessary since there are some new goodies that provide conversion to poison / acid.
Write-up will some likely tomorrow morning, but this build is now better than it’s ever performed in the past.
Is this build still viable?
I can not speak for this build, but I am following something that may be similar and was updated this year: [1.1.9.1] The Freak Show - Acid/Bleed Pet Ritualist [SR 65-66] [Vid] - #25 by SLima
Currently approaching 70 and enjoying the trip so far!
It’s time we dust off this old build and give it the 1.2 update.
A complete overhaul of the build is in the first post and the second post contains video performances. It can do Crucible, SR, Ravager and Callagdra just like the other pet builds I’ve posted.
I’ll emphasize that Calla is very hard for this build and I’ve died multiple times trying to get a suitable SR speedrun; Crucible is much safer in terms of getting loot per run.
Anyways, enjoy the new Poison pets!