There are already many BD videos for Chaos Summoner Cabalist builds out there. Their damage output is all excellent, and the gear setups are quite similar. So before the next patch, I decided to jump on the bandwagon as well.
The current version’s summoner build approach is relatively simple: stack as many pets as possible through gear, unify the damage type, then max out Ascendant affixes for resistance reduction and crit. That’s pretty much enough to make the damage explode.
My current Ascendant affixes aren’t ideal — I didn’t roll many resistance reduction or crit ones and mostly just took what I got. Perfect Ascendant affixes are extremely hard to achieve without using GDS. Even without perfect affixes, it doesn’t really affect clearing all content. I also tried to minimize the use of dual-green items in the gear setup to make the build easier for most players to put together.
Unlike most players who chase maximum damage, I skipped the Dying God constellation and Reap Spirit summons. Putting points into those does increase damage noticeably, but since I’m playing on HC mode (and Cabalist is naturally quite squishy), I decided not to take Dying God. Reap Spirit summons are temporary pets that require constant attention to maintain, so I passed on them as well. The final damage is still solid enough to easily farm 5-Ashes dungeon runs.
If you are playing HC, would it not make sense to use Cairnguard instead of Fiendgaze Tome, especially if you are not using reap spirit?
I have started a similar build a while ago, using the old top 20 build as a starting point, and ended up with this: Cabalist, Level 100 (GD 1.3.0.8) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator. I found the survivability a lot better with the shield, as it provides a big chunk of HP, a well-scaling regen, and a good amount of physical resistance as well.
I also started using the mogdrogen helmet, and while I did not make a stopwatch testing how much slower I got with the ascendant cowl, it did not really feel slower, and the ascendant cowl can really help in the rare situations where your skeletons get killed (I had this happen to me mostly in SR against bosses with stacking aoe effects).
Your devotion path is very interesting, I will check if I can take the mogdrogen path instead of dying god to see if it works any better, considering the number of pets summoned, the added flat bleed should be very good and the increased healing efficiency is very welcome.
Other than that, this is my favorite build so far in FoA, the only build I completed SR 38 with. I play SC though…
This is a bit worrying/disappointing, considering I already had all my pets wiped when they had 80+ resistance and 30-120k HP (mostly from stacking boss AoE). It was already quite hard to make skeletons reasonably tanky, I wonder how much worse the situation will be if they take 3-5x as much damage. Constantly having to resummon and still never reaching the pet limit surely sucks bigtime, for me definitely a showstopper…
Also I liked the gearing “puzzle”, as it felt somewhat rewarding to actually make the skeletons lasting against endgame content.
Thinking of starting a pet build in a fresh SSF HC and then farm pillars or SR when i get there for gear, saw that you posted a Cold Cabalist, a Chaos Cabalist, and a Fire Conjurer, a Bysmiel Lightning, am i missing another?
If someone asks me which one I recommend, I’d definitely recommend the Fire Beastcaller Conjurer . If you tell me you’ve already played that one, then I’d consider recommending one of the others.
Questions regarding the Helm (eyes of m):
I havent experienced that particularly boss yet & looking forward to it. Before I walk blindly into it, I wanted to ask what you would recommend in terms of baseline power/defenses prior to trying to get the helm?
Edit: okay, I went blindly into the FoA Avatar of M, and swiftly got my ass handed back to me (HC lv. 100). Lesson thoroughly learned. Gotta dig a new grave for my poor toon’s corpse. GG
Btw, @Duskdeep86 , do you intend to make a vitality skeleton ritualist build? From what I see, vitality ritualist provide the most dps out of existing pet build pre 1.3.1, at least people could easily sub 20 sec ravager with it and it’s the reason crate begin to work with pet nerf. Not sure how it is now.
If there are any skeletons build that I think can handle superboss well post-nerf, then I believe that vitality skeleton ritualist, pure chaos mage and covenant cabalist can. The former two has insane dmg while the latter allows you to summon skeletons with almost 0 cooldown. Could try to slam two ascended affixes to allow summoning 5 skeletons at a time to not sacrifice the mog helm
