[1.1.8.1] Guardian's Gate Skelemancer Ritualist [8:45 Crucible, SR75-76]

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
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This build is a follow-up to Superfluff’s Guardian of Death’s Gate Ritualist posted last year. Sadly, CR 150-170 has become much more difficult since that build was posted, and no one had updated it. I wanted to see for myself if it was possible for a similar build to beat the new and improved waves. 9% ADCTH, new MI’s and much more +Skills equipment means I can ride on the strength of 22/12 Primal Spirit and 26/16 Reap Spirit in case things go sideways.

1.1.8.1 Grimtools - Guardians of Death’s Gate Skelemancer Ritualist





  • Weapon: Mythical Guardian of Death’s Gates - Provides 100% Phyiscal to Vitality damage, as well as flat CDR and Summon Limit to Skeletons. The +2 to Necromancer skills is great for maximizing the Skeleton line.
  • Helm: Mythical Necrolord’s Shroud - Provides +1 to both class skills, -flat CDR and extra duration to Conjure Spirit.
  • Shoulders: “Taskmaster’s” Zantarin’s Mantle “of the Wild” - Sadly, the exact affixes are required because pet resistance affixes are very rare. The Mantle was taken largely because Physical Resistance is a premium for this build. If you can’t get this exact combo, I would recommend “Ghol’s Mantle” alongside the “Mogdrogen’s Ardor” relic to supplement the pets’ Chaos resistance.
  • Gloves: Mythical Overlord’s Grips - Provides valuable Pierce resistance, points to Will of the Crypt, pet OA, and most importantly, 8% Physical Resistance modifier to Primal Bond.
  • Boots: Mythical Grim Harvest Boots - Provides 4% Defensive Ability and pet Vitality & Elemental resistances; there’s not many boots that have pet resistances, so this item is BiS here.
  • Belt: Mythical Spiritseeker Cord - A definite BiS item for Necromancer pet builds, as pet Poison Resistance is rare to obtain for Ritualist pets.
  • Pants: Mythical Rifthound Legwraps - Provides necessary points for Undead Legion, as well as valuable resistances for you and pet OA + Aether resistance.
  • Chest: Mythical Dread Armor of Azragor - The default Skeleton chest item is Mythical Necrolord’s Shroud, there really isn’t anything that remotely competes with it. I wanted to buck the trend by using this item. The flat damage is comparable, the Chaos resistance is great, but most importantly, the 4% ADCTH that applies to all pets.
  • Amulet: Bysmiel’s Iris - Another +1 to both Necromancer and Shaman skills, as well as a pet heal, extra pet attack speed, and flat RR.
  • Ring 1: Mythical Spiritbinder Glyph - Used to hard cap both Reap Spirit and Primal Spirit, as well as converting 50% of Reap Spirit’s cold damage to Vitality.
  • Ring 2: Wendigo Conjuring Seal - This was before Mythical Marrow Band became a reality, though even still, I’d prefer the pet OA and Crit damage over the other ring with pet Vitality Resistance.
  • Medal: “Harmonious” Halion’s Seal “of Caged Souls” - A new Medal that came with patch v1.1.7.0, it provides additional uptime to Primal Spirit. The suffix “Caged Souls” for jewelry gives points to Raise Skeletons, which is just what we need to cap the skill. The prefix can be anything that covers your resists.
  • Relic: Mogdrogen’s Ardor - After initially using Dirge of Arkovia, I decided instead to use Mogdrogen’s Ardor so I can free up an augment slot to put in Rifthound Salts. Having 80% pet Elemental Resistance is very important to have, especially as Korvaak the FG final boss uses Fire attacks.

Vitality pet builds demand the use of Hungering Void, and Time Dilation - essential to giving near 100% Uptime to Primal Spirit - requires similar affinities. My first iteration of this build used Shepherd’s Crook, but the pets’ fragility made the extra damage not worth it. Instead, I take Tree of Life, which has the nice side effect of making Energy Regeneration a non-problem. The real odd-ball choice is taking Revenant; not just for the meme factor of having 6 additional Skeletons, but for the 5% ADCTH for the pets. The combination of Twin Fangs Wendigo’s Mark bound to the Skeletons, Bysmiel’s Iris, and Tree of Life does a great job keeping the Skeletons alive as long as possible.

SR is a lot more friendly, as even without the Crucible buffs, the Skeletons can survive a SR-buffed Nemesis fight easier than multiple Crucible boss battles. I went through SR 70-76 to see the room layouts to see if any of them would be deadly for Skeletons. Narrow hallways with multiple ground traps are the worst. I lost the timer at SR 72 after Kaisan & multiple heroes spawn camped me out at one of the explorer rooms entrance and killed me multiple times before they scattered. Thankfully, SR75-76 had all the personal Skeleton Nemeses I thought I’d face: Korvaak + Kaisan at SR 75, and Korvaak again + Kuba at SR 76. Kaisan is much more dangerous than Kuba 1v1, but Kuba is a lot worse if you peel off somebody else by mistake. The other Nemeses don’t hurt too badly in SR, though don’t do what I did and teleport yourself into Grava’s Nullification of Doom.

Two Crucible clears in a total of 18 minutes, including opening the chests for the first run

SR 75 & SR 76 cleared


4 Likes
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Will do :yum:

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Skellyz! :heart_eyes::heart_eyes::heart_eyes:

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Can this build do all content? Is there a stronger skeleton build out there?

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I remember there is a mi helmet that gives +3 skeles summons. (Faster recovery)

There is a mi medal that gives +1 skele limits.

Reaper of spirits gives plus 3 minions count.(23 Skill points)

Blight fiends can be capped to the max(with unstable anomaly) and they help with mobs control.

Pants slot is a place for you to cap some pet aether chaos bleed resist.(MI)

Plz cap undead legion to reduce skeles’ cooldown.

To succeed in crucible 150-170.(Plz have some forms of damage absorption,boots,amulet slot component, more pets=more distractions, macros, and of course, some practice on the final waves)

It’s definitely doable, becuz i did it multiple times with a skele ritualist.

+3 skeles helmet > the cat has nine lives one, as a matter of fact, it’s the meta helmet for skelemancer.

BTW, there are some new pet build insights too from the cannon mechanics like skill points cap and pet attributes min_max, but I guess I’ll post it as a separate topic somewhere someday.

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I’m not sure if this post was directed at my build or not, as you mention Reap Spirit and I already have 26/16 Reap Spirits for the 3 Wraiths. In fact, I use 26/16 Reap Spirit and 22/12 Primal Spirit as the main single-target damage sources, with the Skeletons doing their jobs for AoE and protecting the player. This build aimed to keep with the spirit of the old Guardian of Death’s Gate build by using Time Dilation to keep Primal Spirit at virtually 100% uptime, while doing everything in my power to increase sustain for both myself and the Skeletons.

The Summons MI you’re referring to is the Ascendant Cowl - I admit it’s a neat item, but with it, you’d lose the essential Primal Spirit modifiers, which would make it a different build entirely. A build without Primal Spirit helping in the single-target realm would place more pressure on the Skeletons, in which case the itemization would change quite a bit to accommodate them.

Do your examples of clearing 150-170 come after patch 1.1.7.1 with the aggro changes? I didn’t have this build around to test beforehand, but my pet builds definitely struggle more having to clear 4 Nemeses at once than before the patch, when you can more comfortably take on 2 or so on one corner, then move to the other corner to clear that. Anasteria’s RR debuff and Korvaak’s elemental circle of doom makes easy mincement of the sturdier pets, much less Skeletons. Then there’s the issue of multiple Nemeses combined with a possible Korvaak second phase. It’s a tough road to navigate, for sure.

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I’m pretty sure you only need 23 points for reaper of spirits for the head counts. (Save 3 points for others)

Blight fiend is a great threat distraction and critical multiplier. (Rotting fumes) And…head counts.

Getting time dilation is too expensive an option for a ritualist for a almost 15 seconds cooldown.
(The upside is only for the cat, while you have to give up the whole morgdrogen the wolf TREE!!)

You need both spirits rings for the crit and vitality trigger.

If I remember correctly, the necro shroud nowadays offers vitality damage aura too.

It’s really hard to use vitality totem well, especially when you are constantly kiting in a place like crucible.

Unfortunately, grimdawn’s monster aggro system means that running in the final waves is the norm, so faster pet summon recovery, blight fiends as punchbags for nemesis, better burst with mog and spirits rings can help you a lot when shit hit the fan.

And… you should choose the biggest crucible, so you have room to work with.

Yes, I’m talking about the crucible from the 1.1.7.1 patch, you just need to get confortable with guerrilla tactics if you are coming from the retaliation conjurer.

Oh, I forget to say that the power of skeleton ritualist really comes from the pet counts and faster recovery, the necro gaze helmet is great, but looks so out of place for skeletons cuz skeles are much fragiler nowadays and an aoe from any nemesis(especially alex) simply means doom for you run(you can’t recover). Six skeles resummoning is just that good!!(You can test it for yourself!!)

You mentioned that you want the primal spirit to take the brunt of the hit so your skeles can survive, I would say that looks like a promising solution but doesn’t work very well in practice(Again the aggro system), your skeles will get hit by multiple aoes when things get hairy, blight fiends with rotting fumes are much better options, but you still need to be mobile.

You generally have to rush kill one nemesis, then go on a kiting route, if you play enough runs, you’ll master the trick of 170, it’s Mario cart all over again if your build is properly set.

Remember the old adage(…Fear the old blood…).
Oh sorry… it’s actually resummoning is the new heal.

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Great news! I DID IT! And it looks to be roughly 8-9 minutes, which is faster than other pet builds I’ve done in the past. Granted, I had a much more forgiving Waves 169-170 (Theodin instead of Korvaak and 2 Moosilake’s at Wave 170 instead of someone constantly on my hide), but my experience in SR75 has definitely helped me understand when to burst an enemy down and when it’s better to retreat and regroup.

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I was curious about your “Summon lots of Skeletons at once with the MI helmit” bit, so I went ahead and tried the concept out (no, not as a Ritualist. Not as a Cabalist either). No Reap Spirits, No Primal Spirits. While it’s a lot slower than the above Ritualist, I was one “teleport straight into Zantarin’s Death Shotgun” away from beating Wave 170. After all the pain and suffering I went through with this Ritualist, and I nearly duplicate it on the first try by the Mario Kart + resummoning method. I don’t know whether to be happy about this or sad…

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Congrats!
With the sheer number of players storming the coliseum those days,
Lokarr had to declare bankruptcy and blamed it on the Conv19 gamer lockdown.

The resummoning ritualist is more than capable to go ‘Naked’ in crucible,
gotta try it out sometimes TPOM, it reminds me that I’m alive.:grin:

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CAn this build do high level sr and crucible?

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I’ve updated this build mainly though a relic change (Dirge of Arkovia -> Mogdrogen’s Ardor) and a devotion change to replace Twin Fangs with Wendigo’s Mark. Wendigo is excellent for Skeletons and I highly recommend it for additional Skeleton sturdiness.

Check out the Crucible picture in the OP - I was able to get 2 full Crucible runs in with only 1 Skeleton dying. Pretty good record, if you ask me.