Hello.
Recently I was trying out different Bysmiel Conjurers and while they are very solid builds I couldn’t get the crucible clear times I wanted. I decided to try adding Skeletons and after some variants I tested Corruptor of Souls set in a last desperate attempt to make it work, which opened my eyes to how powerful this blue set is. The set provides valuable skillpoints for Skeletons and Soul Harvest as well as tons of vitality flat damage which can be converted to other damage types.
1.1.9.7 update
Decided to add a bunch of other pet builds since I’ve been trying lots of different options lately.
Corruptor of Souls Cabalist(s)
Lightning Skeletons with Birds
Cheap to make glasscannon. The fastest crucible pet build I tried but doesn’t do well in other content.
Fire Skeletons GRIMTOOLS
I think Dracarris might be even for speed but I went with Veilpiercer for better general use and pet phys res. I also tested Ishtak devo path and it worked fine but I couldn’t say no to the damage from Mogdrogen.
Chaos Skeletons
Originally I wanted to use double Salazar Blades with belgo relic but results with off hand was much better.
The best allround pet build in my opinion. Capable of fast CR and SR while surviving well. Only celestial I tried was ravager since I imagine skeletons will get destroyed against the other celestials.
Ritualist
Went for heavy bleed focus. Blind fury is a cool proc to have and seems to provide the best aoe. Pets and summoner are a bit squishy and for SR i’d recommend Fleshwarped Bulwark over the off hand.
Cabalist
Mixture of different damage types. The conduit provides a good amount of flat to the skeletons. Skellies will need to be resummoned constantly in SR.
I had to after you reminded me of the conduit and I realized what a good fit it would be on this set
Occultist add so much flat and survivability for skeletons, the only way I see skeletons working on Ritualist is with Lost Souls and even then that set could use some shaman support which could also enable some spicy hellhound Conjurers.
So… I’m kinda new to this game. How do you do the constellation for this build? I’m at a certain point and stuck. I take it you have to fill out certain nodes and then take them back to fill out others? I have 26 points and have filled out a few that you have in the constellation but all the others are greyed out. What is the exact flow of how to fill them out I guess is what I’m asking…
You have the right idea in that devotions can sustain themselves. For example, with your first six devotion points Shepard’s Crook is a good choice for pet builds. First point in purple crossroads to get the affinity needed and then when you have Shepard’s Crook completed you can now remove the one point in crossroads.
It gets a bit tricky in this build when you need to pick temporary devotions to get the affinity needed for Typhos and Staff of Rattosh. For Typhos you need 6 purple, 3 yellow and 3 red affinity. The purple ones shouldn’t be an issue, and the 3 red you can get with Bat and one point in crossroads but Typhos is the only devotion used that nets yellow affinity. Here you need to pick something temporarily to get the 3 yellow, Lion for example. When you have Typhos completed and one point in yellow crossroads you can now remove Lion.
If you’re leveling with Skeletons I should add that a devotion like Elemental Storm is a bit useless since you can’t convert the Skeletons damage to elemental without the proper gear.
With your first 26 devotion points I recommend doing something like; Shepard’s Call, Bat, Nighttalon, Raven and Bysmiel’s Bonds. Then start working towards Dryad for some extra sustain for your summoner and later on something like this Level 100 (GD 1.1.9.4) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator
Skeletons can be pretty squishy without good resistances so try to look for some gear with pet resistances. Good luck!
Yes. I think its even slightly faster after general buffs to pets and elemental damage that are up on the test patch right now. Still very glassy though
