This is an (obsessively) thematic hybrid pet build that uses ranged Amarasta’s Blade Burst with the following pets (all acid in appearance):
endgame version (SR30): 2x blightfiend, 1x eldritch hound, 1x eldritch talon + poison spiders
budget version (SR26): 1x blightfiend, 1x eldritch hound, 2x blightscourges
I have actually had this build in my save folder for a very long time and it took a lot of patches to finally meet all my requirements. Nightblade is an awkward class with pets so you must be ready for a bit of challenge, but on the bright side the build can be online very early and there are many meme items in the loot pool that match with the build such as the Arachnid’s Embrace, the Amarastan Bladethrower and the Harvest’s Double Barrel. The budget build uses only augments from Bysmiel and Coven factions.
GAMEPLAY
For this build I maintained the same criteria as for my other post-1.2 hybrid pet releases:
-Gameplay should be similar to a normal (panetti) build with ‘player-scaling pets’ because pets die very rarely.
-Button count is low, I try to keep it around the same button count as top20 builds with 8 or more ‘easiness’ score.
-Leveling is very straightforward, build is ‘online’ very early, no conversions or rare items needed.
-Useful items will be in the loot pool at all experience levels, can be played SSF or beginner without stash.
-Green items are only single rare.
PERFORMANCE
Performance for endgame build is SR30 in ~5-9 minutes, depending on player skill, lucky chunks etc. In my opinion it is very good for ‘hybrid pet standards’, especially if you also have to maintain all criteria I mentioned under gameplay. The main goal was to surpass the advertised minimum Ultimate Ascendant campaign difficulty (SR24) without compromising the gameplay.
VIDEO
Note: this is a gameplay demonstration video, not a speedrun
ENDGAME BUILD
The amulet on the endgame build is basically just one huge generic stat dump, since that worked best in this configuration. At the same time this leaves some room for improvisation.
BUDGET BUILD
NOTES
Be aware that the reaper class cannot heal pets ‘out of the box’, in late game it is done automated by tree of life devotion, but earlier there are 2 ways to mitigate this issue:
- Give the blightfiend ‘Attack damage converted to health’
- Obtain the Apothecary Touch gloves.
Adcth & Devotion Path
The blightfiend can get a small amount of healing by giving it Adcth, to do this first develop the Eye of the Guardian constellation and attach the proc to the blightfiend, so that the eyeballs circle around them. This works well since as melee tank the blightfiend will be surrounded all the time. After Eye of the guardian take Toad for more Adcth and then Jackal and Bysmiels Bonds (unlocks second pet). Now you can remove Toad and add Sailor’s guide to unlock Kraken and Murmur.
Put 2 points in Nighttalon (temporarily) for more elemental resistance. Developing Kraken and Murmurs allows removing Jackal and Eye of the Guardian and getting Staff of Rattosh and Stag instead. (hopefully an Apothecary handguard is obtained at this point, but if not you can also postpone removing eye of the guardian and Toad and build up the blue side at slower pace).
Apothecary Set
You want to look for any items of the Apothecary set to drop. It exist on all tiers (normal, empowered and mythical), so the total amount in the pool is 12 items. If the handguards don’t drop, but you get another item of the set, you can try to transmute it into the handguards with Eldritch essences. The mythical handguards will have the strongest heal so you want to upgrade later if you only have the weakest handguards. Ofc when you finally have enough devotion points for the tree of life, you may no longer need it.
Leveling Guide for Hybrid Pet Acid Necromancer
Early game
For hybrid pet builds I rarely use both Skeletons and Blightfiends, it costs too many skillpoints and their damage types are different. Also unlike occultist pets and brairthorns they don’t have aura skills that boost the player as well, so the points only improve the pets. So for acid builds I recommend to invest most skillpoints into your blightfiend very early in the game (~1-25), at this stage it is very easy for the player to keep up with relevant damage using component skills. If you first develop the player skills, you will likely get a good player build midgame, but make it hard to switch into the ‘hybrid pet mentality’ and gear requirements at that stage.
For a good start I like to have at least something like this: blightfiend 8/16, rotting fumes 4/12. You need 5 levelups before you can even put a single point in blightfiend, but this should not be an issue as you can use the attributes to buff whatever weapon component you use for attack. Sometimes you don’t get the component you want quickly but it will drop eventually, for this build I like Mutagenic ichor, but super early whatever drops first can be used.
Early I don’t develop other necro skills beside blightfiend, so after this I can build my attribute bar of the other class to switch from components to the skill I want to use for attack.
For additional pets I prefer to use only the Blight scourges, but of course then you need to drop the amulet first. It can drop on 3 tier levels (normal/empowered/mythical), so that raises your odds for at least one. I personally always play Solo Self-found, but sometimes I stash just one item to make sure my build is thematically what I wanted. However it is important to keep in mind, the build can work perfectly fine with only one blightfiend for most of the game, so the other pets are flavor additions.
Midgame
When you get to higher levels things can get difficult if your pets start dying too often. It is important when playing a hybrid pet build that your pets don’t become a burden otherwise you might as well lose them. For pets +%Health should be considered an uptime stat, it is not what makes them permanent or self-sufficient. For permanence you need resistance and health regen. For resistance it is good to be aware of the following innate resistances:
Blightfiend: 50% Poison, 50% vitality, 30% pierce
Blight scourges: 50% Poison, 25% vitality, 0% pierce
The 0% pierce on blight scourges is annoying but they won’t be aggroed as much and you will pick some up from devotions. Elemental should be the first priority and can be gained from any common green item dropping with ‘…of the Wild’. Bleeding can be gained from ‘…of Caged souls’ and Aether from ‘Taskmaster…’
Relics
You can also use the crab spirit or stormhound from a relic as second pet, you need to craft these relics anyway to complete the build. However unlike the blight scourges their innate resistances do not match well with the blightfiend:
Crab Spirit: 0% Poison, 0% vitality , 50% pierce, 25% elemental
Stormhound: 0% Poison, 0% vitality , 15% pierce, 500% lightning
You can esasily get some vitality resist from master of death but Poison resistance is very rare on gear, so to get it I recommend putting 2 points in the crane devotion and ditch these pets in late game when the requirements to use them become too complicated. Poison is only easy to get when necromancer is combined with Occultist.
The development path for the final relic is Hysteria → Savage → Bysmiel’s domination → Mogdrogen’s ardor. A decent alternative early game relic for this build is Corruption, and later in te game Meditation. I mention meditation mainly for shared stash users, I don’t recommend going out of your way to get this relic if you don’t already have it.