This is a thematic hybrid pet build, the idea is to play as a powerful arcanist mage with a skeleton army.
Aether Panetti will be the main attack with the following pets added:
-10 skeletons
-1 skeletal servant
-3 reap spirits
I also added a beginner version that will be fine up to around SR26, but likely you will end up with more of a mix between both builds since some of the items on the endgame build are not very expensive anyway.
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 âplayer-scaling petsâ 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 âeasinessâ score.
-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.
The only fly in the ointment is that this build doesnât use the default damage type of the skills, but as I will explain below under notes this has very little impact on the leveling process.
PERFORMANCE
Performance for endgame build is SR32 in ~5-9 minutes, depending on player skill, lucky chunks etc. In my opinion it is very good for âhybrid pet standardsâ, 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
ENDGAME BUILD
BUDGET BUILD
NOTES
At level 1 this build involves a lot of damage types and none of them are aether yet, however donât let that confuse you, the path is actually very simple. You can use the endgame devotion path right away and start with Imp. The Widow, Toad and Staff constellations will work well no matter at what stage of the conversions you are. You can first get the aether conversion on skellies in Act 1, so it is recommended to develop your skellies quite a bit at the start, then move on to developing the PRM skill and add the reap spirits last as icing on the cake.
Since this is a hybrid pet build you will actually develop both the player side and the pet side of the reap spirit skill so the âaether tendrilâ does good damage.
The amulet on the endgame build is a faction item and therefore already quite low budget, but I put another one on the budget build just to show some more options.
There are quite a lot of support skills this build can add even as one pointers, but I left out mark of torment and call of the grave to keep button count lower and focus on the skills the items specialize in.
Leveling Guide for Hybrid Pet Skeleton Builds
Optimizing Gameplay
When it comes to hybrid pet builds I take a bit of a different approach with Skeletons than I do with any other pets.
Skeletons are by design more squishy and intended to be respawned regularly and therefore the button is used more often, this makes it harder to design a hybrid pet build in such a way that its playability is still on par with regular builds. For this reason I mostly use skeletons âstandaloneâ during the leveling process and only add the skeletal servant when it becomes available later in the game. The skeletal servant matches best in terms of damage types and innate resistances. Keep in mind that if you add a blight fiend with very little point investment then it isnât much more valuable than just adding one more skeleton and if you invest a lot of points in the blight fiend then it is hard to have enough left over for the other requirements of your build.
Skeletons specialize in inflicting damage and can do enough for an endgame build without additional pets, however they will never taunt enemies so when you do a skeleton build you should always make your character a bit tankier than with aggro pets. For this reason skeletons match well with melee builds since they want to be tanky anyway.
Starting at level 1
At the start of the game I like to aim for having exactly 6 skeletons, because this allows me to summon all of them in 2 casts. So first I recommend to put 6 points in undead legion and at least 8 in the raise skeletons build, after that I am ready to start investing in the skills of the hero. I use a component skill to attack as long as I donât have sufficient investment.
For hybrid builds it is very valuable to be able to summon more skeletons per cast, but there are very few items that can do this and most of them are only useful for a specific skeleton build like âmelee + fire dmgâ. Therefore the item I almost always want is the Ascendant Cowl which gives you enough for any build and also has increased odds for a pet related affix roll. The only downside of this item is that ist uses the head slot and can block important enabling items for many different builds. If the head slot must be used for something else it can still be a valid approach to make the skeletons tanky enough so that they never die in too high numbers and you can keep up with only 3 resummons per click.
Hidden Skeleton Stats
There is very little info shown on the stats of skeletons in game, by default they all inflict physical and vitality dmg, but the upgraded version also inflict other dmg types with their abilities:
Skeleton Archers - Deathbolt - Inflicts Pierce dmg
Skeleton Mages - Fire shard and Fire nova - Inflicts fire dmg
Revenants - Undead aura - 8% Health reduction and additional vitality dmg
Generally speaking you want to focus on vitality if your build doesnât convert anything. The pierce dmg is not interesting enough to focus on. Since skeletons come in large numbers they can focus on bleeding dmg since any item that adds flat bleeding dots to pets will add it to all of them.
These are the most important innate resistances:
Skeletons: 50% Cold, 50% Vitality, 15% Pierce, 24% Physical, 50% Freeze, 424 armor
Skeletal Servant: 33% vitality, 25% Pierce, 25% Physical, 500% Trap and Sleep, 1941 armor
It is also noteworthy that skeletons have only 424 armor, while the skeletal servant has 1941. This means the servant can benefit well from a skill like field command, but for regular skellies you need much higher %armor to get a meaningful amount which only the will of the crypt skill can provide. The cold resistance on skeletons is pretty useless, since it wonât change having to build up elemental resistance from zero. The Will of the Crypt skill also gives you 50% vitality which is useless since you will likely already max it out with whatever you pick up along the way. So basically all resistance buffs except vitality are useful and in the midgame I recommend getting one green armor piece of each prefix/suffix:
Taskmaster⌠- Aether and Chaos
âŚof the Wild - Elemental
âŚof Caged Souls - Bleeding
Poison Resistance can only be gained from specific items or augments or from devotion. The easiest way to get some poison if you need it urgently is to park 2 points in âCraneâ constellation.
Healing Skeletons
If necromancer is not combined with Occultist, Shaman or Inquisitor then your class has no build in mechanic to heal skeletons. This means in most cases the Tree of life devotion will be obligatory in the endgame to keep them tanky enough to survive in deep SR. If you want to heal skeletons earlier your only option is the Apothecaryâs Touch Gloves, I wouldnât say these are obligatory on lower difficulty levels, since by nature Skeletons are not tanking pets and intended as frequently respawning trash.
You can 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 gloves donât drop, but you get another item of the set, you can try to transmute it into the gloves with Eldritch essences. The mythical gloves will have the strongest heal so you want to upgrade later if you only have the weakest gloves. Ofc when you finally have enough devotion points for the tree of life, you should drop these gloves for something more offensive.
