Did you miss me?
This build is fairly glassy, I mainly wanted to see how fast I could push it. I got enough pet resistances to keep them alive reliably and otherwise went all in on offense.
Skeletons seem really strong in crucible right now, on Diviner and Ghol too. Clear speed is fairly dependent on the mix of skeletons you have though. The more ranged ones (and mages in particular) the faster you clear.
Wtf sigatrev and here I thought we lost you forever. And what a wonderful comeback.
As @AlkamosHater once said: Pets are the new retal
Haven’t seen Time Dilation + Dying God combo in a while. Glad to see it still alive 
What is the average clear speed on Cruci?
Average is probably around ~4:10 for me.
Nice, nice. That is pretty consistent as well 
Yes and we need more builds from you! 
Wow, that’s crazy time!
I also really dig Time Dilation on Skellies build. It have similar reqs to DG and you can still take Solael and Fiend.
Other than skellies I am wondering how glass is the pet master, since both physical resistance and health pool are low, you don’t have absorb boots too. Do you die often in Crucible or your experience helps with avoiding deaths?
Nice build!
I’m curious why you didn’t take 4 skill points for consecrated blade for additional flat/chaos conversion for pets.
Can’t be having just one overperforming pet build, now can we?
I suppose skeletons will need their buff to special attacks from earlier this year reduced somewhat, and some Voidwhisper Band power shifted to Witching Hour.
Things die fast enough that it’s not too hard to stay alive most of the time, but also I’m piloting as aggressively as possible so that can get me into trouble. Maybe 25% of runs end in death. It’s usually when both Kaisan and Korvaak spawn on waves 169 and 170.
LOL! It’s because I’ve been AWOL for a year and didn’t even know that had pet bonuses on it now.
That seems reasonable to me. From my (very limited) recent experience, Skeletons seem to be outperforming other Cabalist pets, and Chaos outperforming other damage types.
I’ll take a look at some Witching Hour builds to make sure they aren’t in the same boat as this.
In my opinion this puts the blame for the overpowered set on the rings that can have many other interesting applications.
Why not nerf or remove the casting speed bonus from the set?
I’m assuming this tunes down the mages, while not affecting all other skeleton builds.
Just want to say that by the author and one of the best pet build pilot’s admission itself, the build has a 75% success rate in Crucible with buffs/banners.
And Cruci has become ridiculously easy over time that most endgame builds that aren’t designed as glass cannons simply for the purpose of fastest possible clears, should be having 100% “success” rate.
Skeletons were finally buffed enough to actually become fun that you aren’t forced to choose between fragile DPS or tanks that take half an hour to kill anything.
I know they are supposed to be “quantity over quality” and the fragileness is intended along with them being available in numbers being the counter balance to it. I am also aware that damage essentially being multiplied by the number of pets can make things tricky balance wise.
But, Briarthorns were for example, excelling in all areas while being safe to play as well.
Are Skeletons consistently killing superbosses, pushing high SR, doing naked cruci etc with just as ease interms of piloting?
Because Crucible results alone, no matter how impressive shouldn’t drive changes that impact all aspects of gameplay even if it is the most widely used metric.
I would at the very least like to see how builds like these fare against challenges outside Crucible or even unbuffed/unbannered Crucible.
It’s certainly not the rings alone, but I think the issue is more “Chaos” than it is “Lost Souls”. Vitality Lost Souls is substantially slower. Other configurations lack a lot of the synergies that make this so power. It’s a combination of the rings, the off-hand, the chart armor, hellfire, the devotions, and weapon components - all of the gear that doesn’t conflict with Lost Souls.
I could be wrong. I’ll spend some time looking at other variants this week.
Alkamoshater vitality build does 4:39, maybe not a monster score like yours but not as if it can’t survive a lost souls nerf. Also this is sort of a moot point since if you nerf the skeletons special attacks you will also be nerfing the vitality builds in the proces, as well as the aether skeleton builds and the fire defilers. If you lower the flats on the rings they lose value with pet builds that don’t have the luxury of so many pets.
In my opinion the issue is definitely the set, the set basically combines duplication of the strongest allround pet in the game with buffs to the highest damage pet skill in the game. A toxic combination if you ask me, but if the skeleton bonuses are shifted more towards defense then I think it can be balanced. Also to equalize with vitality, the %vitality bonuses can be raised.
A pyromancer that just uses the 2 dogs and forfeits all the other bonuses can already walk around in SR80, unlike a skeleton defiler for example. My strongest hybrid pet build that can almost do SR85 happens to be based on ghol and doesn’t use any skeletons at all, so I’m pretty sure the duplication of the Blightfiend has something to do with it. Such a bonus is already worth a set on its own in my opinion.
Quite the contrary. Flat damage affects Pet builds with more Pets than ones with fewer critters running about.
So the nerf will hit skeletons harder than other builds.
Neither Skeletons nor Hellhounds fit “strongest” or “highest damage”.
No more toxic than Ghol Blightfiends.
And a Pet Battlemage can do SR 75: Bottle Fwuffy - Pet Battlemage
That says nothing other than Pets being safe even on meme builds for SR pushing.
Regarding the first point I was talking about the stat in isolation while you about the builds as a whole.
Your other arguments about semantics are not bringing us any further.
In the end, you either nerf the set or skeletons in general, I choose nerfing the set as the lesser evil and have stated my reasons.
What is the use of looking at it in isolation instead of from a realistic perspective?
Why does it have to be one or the other?
exactly, why cant it be both
Nerf skellies?? Nooooooo
