[1.3.0.6] The Fire King - SR26 - Leveling Ice King as hybrid pets from level 1 - Beginner Guide [vid]

[gargabolo]

The Fire King is a leveling build for the Ice King set and uses the same hybrid playstyle from very early in the game. The transformation to werewolf will happen around level 40 but before that you can still play very similar style in human form. (see guide below)

The fire king will be a werewolf with 1x Stormraven and 1x Hellhound as pets.

This build will roughly max out at SR26, after that transition to Ice king will be needed for higher performance. The Ice King build itself is not the topic of this thread.

VIDEO

This is a gameplay video of SR26, the style of gameplay will be similar from level 40 at least (without my silly piloting). At the end of the video you can observe some of the benefits of being a hybrid pet build as I facetank (asstank?) the mad Queen from behind, never being in any danger.

- YouTube

THE BUILD

I only ascended the cleavers since they can have utility for other endgame builds, the other items will likely retire so not worth putting resources in.

Mystic, Level 100 (GD 1.3.0.6) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator

LEVELING GUIDE

This will be an easy step-by-step plan to level as a hybrid pets from the very start at level 1 (Tested in 1.3 vs prenerf FoA). This works very effectively in normal, veteran and even elite from level 1 (but for elite you better have some low level relics stashed and rep boosters).

Make a new character and do the following:

1. Pick the occultist class first!

2. Choose one out of 3 options:

-pickup hevils greatsword and put lightning nova on it
-pickup kyzogg skull and put fireblast on it
-vendor farm or randomly drop a cold themed offhand and put ice spikes on it

Until step 12, component skills will be your main damage. If you hate all these options and prefer to be an auto-attacker, then use slam, use hevils greatsword or find another elemental weapon that you like. After level 10 put a single point in onslaught for +45% dmg bonus on slam.

3. Put summon familiar at 7/16 to unlock the 2nd projectile

4. Get storm spirit at 12/12 ASAP!

5. The first 3 devotions are Raven > Wolverine > Rhowan’s crown, in that order.

Explainer: Storm spirit will strongly buff your component skill and basically works as your main damage early, while simultaneously building up your pets defense and offense. This combined with the huge %dmg bonus from raven devotion will crush the early game as pet-player duo. Wolverine will make gearing easier during the whole leveling process by locking in the most important pet defenses.

6. Get the hellhound as second pet and also get some blood of dreeg to heal it (aspect of guardian can be postponed a bit as hellhound has 75% innate poison resistance, so put points in hellhound first). The first points invested should be 8/16 summon hellhound + 4/12 ember claw. Also start putting some points in Lightning strike. Note that at this stage the hellhound is primarily a damage sponge, and keeping him alive with blood of dreeg is your main priority. (Around the time you reach the FoA areas you should have 12/12 ember claw to have fully reliable aggro).

7. Upgrade your main damage component to the higher level variant

Example build level 25

(note: in the example builds I’m behind on devotions, because I was testing if my method works in elite from level 1 as well. I do not recommend leveling in Elite, if you have no experience leveling like this)

8. Continue act 2 and act 3 and get the halion crest and zaria pendant. It is recommended to get all the devotion shrines in the side areas, you need them for the harder FoA areas.

9. The next 3 devotions are Stag > Viper > Staff of rattosh

10. I recommend choosing Order of death’s Vigil, because their vitality resistance on pets augment can make leveling easier (however be aware that some Ice King endgame builds may want to use the Zantarin mantle, those should choose Kymon)

11. When you arrive at Fort Ikon you will likely be around level 35-40 in normal difficulty, before you go to the FoA area, take a short detour to the Forgotton Gods DLC, join the bysmiel faction, you want to enable their reputation leveling, they will send you on a quest to the temple of Osyr. Go there and get Ramzuls Storm orb

NOTE: According to GT he can start dropping a level 40 orb from level 36, however the odds are perfect at level 38, so if you are not level 38 grind a bit more side content in act3-4. To complicate things he might drop the aether orb and you have to fight him again. But in the end you should be able to get at least one, hopefully 2 level 40 versions.

12. The best low-level relic to use after level 35 is Ancestor, it works fine until endgame. If you don’t have the formula already or it hasn’t dropped, then be aware the recipe can be bought from Hyram in steelcap district in Malmouth (and the recipe for Hysteria in Homestead). Malmouth is a long detour of course, so you can try to use the best available elemental one at this point and only go there if FoA content proves too hard without it.

TRANSFORMING TO WEREWOLF

13. At level 40 start using the werewolf skill with the storm orb and continue from Fort Ikon as far as you can into the FoA content.

Example build level 40

NOTE: When transforming you should be able to put at least 12 points in werewolf right away, you can remove a few points from pets if you must, but don’t allow them below the minimum values I mentioned earlier and refill them as you level up more.

14. Reach the boss Gruldir at the black citadel and get him to drop at least one Blazing cleaver. Ideally you kill him twice for 2 Blazing cleavers, however he has a tendency to drop more Tainted cleavers, so instead you can also opt for one Blazing cleaver in right hand (so that fire conversion is preferred) and a Tainted cleaver in the left hand.

15. Your next devotions are Solael’s blade + Behemoth and optionally Alladrah’s Phoenix, I like to use Phoenix fire and put the proc on the dog, this allows it to tank bosses longer and puts hellfire skill on steroids. Later this will be replaced with the Eye of korvaak.

16. You can now continue the campaigns in any direction you wish or beat Logh and continue to a higher difficulty. Keep in mind for reputation The witch cults and Coven are most important.

HIGH LEVELS 60-100

Here is an example of level 72 build that is doing very well:

Example Build level 72

As you can see this example build uses various random pet armors. At higher levels the pet resistances from devotion may no longer be enough, if pets die too often take note of the following innate resistances:

Hellhound 75% poison, 22% pierce, 15% aether, 30% chaos
Raven 0% poison, 0% pierce, 25% aether, 25% chaos

For practical purposes you can consider all other resistances at 0% because you can’t raise the hellhound’s 0% cold resistance without increasing its 500% fire resistance as well. So you only need to remember these. The raven will not be aggroed so stays mostly alive as long as the hellhound is alive.

During the leveling process make sure your loot filter does not filter out common green armor pieces with pet bonuses, you should collect in your personal stash the best armor pieces you find with the following affixes:

‘…of the wild’
‘…of the untamed’
‘…of the primal will’
‘taskmaster…’

these 2 only very late game (or against special bleed bosses), you may never need them because of augments or legendary medals:

‘…of the caged souls’
‘…of nature’s bidding’

Depending on the relic you use one of the above will not be needed (Ancestor already fixes vitality). The reason you collect them is so that you can easily swap around your pet defenses when you want to modify your build. I mostly hoard around one stash page of these items and throw away older ones as their armor values become too low.

ICE KING

Around level 100 you may already have picked up various legendary and epic items. So I recommend to use my level 100 build primarily as a template of suggestions to fill gaps instead of trying to build it exactly. Your ice king build plan has to pick it up from here…

[gargabolo]

reserved 10char

[Nola]

Why going Werewolf as late as level 40?

You can literally pick Werewolf up at level 10, pump 16 points into it and leave Berserker alone for the time being to up the Hellhound and Familiar skill levels. Then sooner or later stretching out to catch Voracity and you should be fine. Damage types do not matter much at low levels and pets scale mostly with skill levels, aura buffs and some all dmg% anyway.

[gargabolo]

Because of storm spirit you will be steamrolling the early game with your component skills, after you get the empowered version you can easily use them up to level 45.

At this stage of the game the pets really need all those skillpoints to perform, you also need BoD, ember claw for aggro, lightning strike for more damage. All this is higher priority than your player skill.

If you have the crab relic you can go a bit earlier and postpone hellhound investment. But for efficiency component skill up to 40 is always best (with crab spirit investing in amatoks pact instead of werewolf is actually better)

[Nola]

@gargabolo

Because of storm spirit you will be steamrolling the early game with your component skills, after you get the empowered version you can easily use them up to level 45.

At this stage of the game the pets really need all those skillpoints to perform, you also need BoD, ember claw for aggro, lightning strike for more damage. All this is higher priority than your player skill.

Do you consider using a component skill at lower levels going “Hybrid” by your defintion?

Is my “Dracarris Fire Pet Beastcaller Conjurer” a “Hybrid” if I use Stormfire from “Seal of Destruction” instead of a “Seal of Might” component?

Is going that early Werewolf suboptimal?

Do i need to hold the hand of a beginner so he is able to play as a hybrid build from level 1?

Are these hybrid builds more item dependent, do they need a more experienced player to function properly across all stages of the game?

Aren’t more streamlined leveling builds easier to follow and better suited for new players?

Did we come full circle again? Am i wrong?

[gargabolo]

Do you consider using a component skill at lower levels going “Hybrid” by your defintion?

yes because at low levels both player and pets inflict major dmg when using the skills/devotion paths as described in this guide.

Is my “Dracarris Fire Pet Beastcaller Conjurer” a “Hybrid” if I use Stormfire from “Seal of Destruction” instead of a “Seal of Might” component?

If your entire build is setup as a non-hybrid pet build and you just add stormfire (without changing anything else) then I would say no, because likely the dmg of stormfire is so underwhelming, you probably just waste the component slot to draw more aggro on yourself.

However it is possible to make a hybrid pet builds based on stormfire, It could be a similar setup as the level 100 fire king build for devotions, except for the other class I would choose arcanist or demolitionist since they have much better support skills for such a setup. I could use korvaaks burning blade with ‘of celerity’ roll in combination with a player scaling caster offhand to buff stormfire. Certainly a meme build, but maybe with the best gear, rolls and ascended affixes it can do SR30 or 32.

Is going that early Werewolf suboptimal?

I believe going for the main skill too early or worse not picking the pet class first is causing the
biggest issues for people who want to level as hybrid pet build for the first time (and are used to leveling builds without pets)

Do I need to hold the hand of a beginner so he is able to play as a hybrid build from level 1?

Not sure what you mean by handholding, the first 9 steps of my guide are the most important and they are actually universally applicable to any combination of elemental main dmg skill + occultist pets. So any person capable of understanding those steps should not have much difficulty. For example want play canister bomb or rune of kalastor with pets? follow the first 9 steps and pickup the fleshwarped incinerator rifle.

For any physical/pierce/bleed main dmg skill you can do a similar thing with shaman (mogdrogen’s pact works like storm spirit early for those builds), ofc devotions will be different.

Are these hybrid builds more item dependent,

you just need a green MI weapon that matches your build concept and the green MI damage type should match with the default dmg of the pets, so for occultist elemental. In the endgame you can always use the bysmiel trinkets to get 2 ravens and that can get most concepts up to SR30 even if they are very meme, but ult/ascendant celestials are almost never possible with hybrids.

Do they need a more experienced player to function properly across all stages of the game?

Hard to say for someone who is experienced. With the above method my build was doing so well at level 70 in Elite, I started to fill the whole ascension altar before every session.

Aren’t more streamlined leveling builds easier to follow and better suited for new players?

I think the most important reason to follow one of my guides is if you really want to play a hybrid pet build. I don’t like the idea of leveling as chaos werewolf only to switch to hybrid pets at the last moment (when likely I already have finished all campaigns at least once). If my concept involves pets then I want them from the start. for me: leveling = the game.

Did we come full circle again? Am i wrong?

I think you have to decide that based on anything written above, or maybe you could try my method once in veteran with an elemental build. I think you will be surprised how easy it goes.

[Nola]

@gargabolo

I think you have to decide that based on anything written above, or maybe you could try my method once in veteran with an elemental build. I think you will be surprised how easy it goes.

Nevermind… Lets bury this topic, i see you are on your tracks not moving an inch.

I powerlevel my builds at elite/ultimate. Just got a pure Pet Conjurer up to 94 in 6 hours something,
have no interest visiting Veteran at all.

[gargabolo]

I wrote that comment just assuming veteran as default, I leveled like this myself in elite from level 1. I have used it also in ultimate from level 1 in version 1.9.8, but since that is a lot of versions back I’m not going to recommend that until I have retested it. After all I am commenting below my beginner guide, so I’m also assuming that the audience here is about experiencing the game in different ways not about the absolute fastest way to level.