2 fun Acid Pyro hybrid builds

I thought I’d post these for later search references as the concept is so flexible and fun. The first is a player-scaling “pet” hybrid and the second is a pet-scaling hybrid.

The player-scaling hybrid is very decent and kills pretty fast - I’ve played around with this quite a bit. The pet-scaling hybrid is a concept that I have yet to play and will evolve, but for me it is an attempt to see the comparison between hybrid styles, while maintaining a bit of independent firepower for more variety in game play.

Firstly, both these revolve around dual-wielding Ugdenbog Venom Launchers for 90% elemental–>acid conversion to Occultist skill Blood of Dreeg. BoD has a huge radius and impacts pets and the player within this radius.

An alternative piece of equipment could be the MI Putrid Neclace. This only drops from the Cavern boss in Foggy Banks, though. (This would get around the necessity to to dual-wield.)

The first bit of Act 5 (Grimwald) includes quite a few mobs and heroes that drop the Venom Launcher MI, and the Cellar boss can drop this MI. The fact that you are converting %ele->acid means that most any elemental prefix is good to use - and this means that you are mostly trying for a useful suffix, of which alacrity (magic suffix, %attack speed) is fairly frequent.

  1. DW Acid Pyro with Player-scaling Pets

200% AS player-scaling with Deathstalker Relic Pet and 3 pets from the Cindertouch gloves proc: Cinderwind.
Because the DW pistol build has high AS/#attacks and a lot of procs, it’s pretty easy to get the maximum 3 cindertouch pets out there on short notice.
A few notes:
-Deathguard helm adds 10% cold->acid convert. It’s not critical, though.
-Sigil of Consumption only provides a few hundred HP leech with so few points and so it’s not really important for leech. I use it to mostly to trigger Hungering void. %adcth is far more useful ( 6% from Revenant, in this case).
-Cinderwind competes with a bit of fire->acid converson. So a most desired cinderwind would have the lowest bracket roll of %fire->elec. However cinderwind adds some flat elec which 90% converts to acid for some offset. The non-crit dps drop is ~5K from some conversion loss, but each cinderwind pet is good for ~7k of dps of small-AoE acid (conversion from both fire and elec --> acid).
-Cinderwind’s pets are slooooww…so getting these on target can be tricky. Tanking or stutter-step works well, but faster kite play is pretty finicky.
-the key devotions are Rumor, Manticore, and Dead God. There rest are preference. Note that mine are just experimental; one thing nice about the %ele-> acid is that many devotions will fit. I will note that Blizzard works pretty well on the Dealthstalker - you can almost use it like an airstrike with the pet attack command.
-I needed to use some MI pants and boots to compensate for resist shortcomings. It’s stuff I found through farming. But I think one of the rings could also be swapped out for a decent green ring from a vendor, without too much loss. Or any ring that covers the shortcomings. None of the illustrated gear -except the Ugdenbog Venom Launchers- are essential…but something must allow DW guns.

Edit: It would seem that pet-scaled pets don’t get the benefits of the BoD aura global ele->acid conversion. Regardless, the build does pretty well :
2. Pet-scaling DW Acid Pyro

A similar idea. but with pet scaling. Pets will be Primal Instinct Relic: Swarm Mind Proc with high # of player attacks to get those pets out and keep them at max number… and a helper combo of 2 familiars and 1 hellhound . Also Eldritch hound.
A few notes:

-Primary goal is to increase damage of Swarm Mind. ( Note that the Primal Relic takes a lot of other relics to build. )
-** I ended up removing Familiar lightning strike and putting it all into base for 13/16. The 3 orbs have a nice shotgun angle and proc Blizzard almost non-stop. Ravens never seem to attract too much agro and thus never die.
-There is no chaos RR (except 28 reduced from Manticore).
-The current equipment proposed is picked from that which I have in stock (farmed). Not necessarily optimal. But it does indeed provide a number of benefits:

[INDENT]-Hellhound/eldritch hound/swarmlings receive flat acid from both BoD and Venomancer Armor aura and %chance for poison from Viperfang gloves. Hellhound/smarmlings benefit from phys->chaos Voidwhisper% band proc.
-13/16 familiar has 3 orbs (4 orbs is 20/26). The 3 orbs have a very good and small shotgun arc.
-the build doesn’t have a a large amount of armor, so fiends flesh(shoulder proc) can be handy for a taking 1 -2 of large physical hits. Because the build still has significant player firepower, there will be much aggro on the player.

[/INDENT]

(P.S. I fool around with Pyro because I really don’t want to spend many hours re-running 3 difficulties and I’ll wait for FG to come out before I start modding). This idea should work with any Occult+other combo.


Update on pet-scaling option:

This is surprisingly effective, which is likely because pets and pet bonuses are in a pretty strong place right now. It easily rivals the player-scaling build.

There is a gameplay style realized for the more dangerous mobs where maximum damage is needed… vs the player-scaling style. Vs the weaker stuff it doesn’t matter and the player dps can quickly kill most mobs solo, if desired.
-It’s very much akin to herding a pack of piranhas and waiting for them to fully engage. It’s easy to spawn 5 swarmlings quickly, but they last for 25s so many will be lagging behind as you quickly move to a destination. The other pets always keep up, though.
-Circling behind the pack to allow them to surround the target and take the brunt of the beating.
-Then it’s a matter of refreshing the spawnlings killed, applying Manticore/Rumor, triggering the extra procs and adding damage. DW pistols does a nice job of this.

-The swarmlings typically do around 7k each ( including typical mob resistance ). Add in 120-140% attack speed bonus, possible poison, possible ~ +800% more damage ( Hungering, Sheperds, BeastHelm proc, Rover’s Wrath consumable ) and possible +~150% crit ( base + Hungering void + Sheperds Call + Rover’s Wrath of Beast consumable)
= some big damage.

-I experimented with boosting base pet tiers through item swapping (use one combo for summoning, then swap to gameplay gear). It is possible to get 26/16 raven and 18/16 hellhound this way with the current skill allocations. Although the ravens do ~2x more damage, the 4 orbs spread seems to have a much greater spread than the 3 orbs, such that only 1 or 2 orbs seem to shotgun a single target; and with 3, it seems 2-3 often shotgun a single target…which may mitigate the difference some. The higher-tier hellhound does remove some player aggro due to its higher damage and dies less frequently, but still dies vs dangerous stuff.
This process ultimately kills faster mainly due to higher raven AoE orb damage, but I find the unboosted pets do a fine job and this is not worth the effort (for general farming and this build’s equipment selection).

-I can’t yet comment on the usefulness of the Eldritch Hound (Bysmiel’s Command proc) as it is currenty at 10/20 and it hasn’t been spectacular so far. I’m hoping its Reduced Target’s Offensive on attack might be handy. But much like a low-investment Hellhound, it doesn’t have a lot of staying power…

Sorry to rain on your parade, but the Elemental to Acid conversion doesn’t work for pets. I had thought the conversion worked as well, so I made a Cabalist using the gun + amulet, but multiple people tested it and found that the conversion is strictly player-only.

Shame, hopefully if we raise the issue, we can get conversions like this (and the acid-to-chaos conversion with Darkblaze) to work for pets in addition to the player.

Hmmm. Well…that is a shame. I had also thought about a darkbalze variant.

I’d better edit the OP. Thanks for the info.

I saw a thread on a Japanese forum where some guy made a conjurer that also utilized the conversion on those weapons, except he didn’t actually use the weapons in combat. You can equip 2 guns, cast BoD, and weapon swap to your normal weapons. The conversion will still apply to you so you can use better items instead.

I gave the proposed pet-scaling idea a short test in few tougher areas (ultimate), as I already had the gear set out for it -and I wasn’t about to let 100+ *&^% ugdenblooms go to waste without some game play.

It indeed was not as potent as I had hoped due to the lack of conversion. BoD does not convert pet-scaling pets.

But… even with the player’s base firepower nerfed by 60+%, those pets…still do some fair damage purely with the default ~800% pet damage boost (and maybe the occasional void-whisper ring proc of 100% phys->choas). The clears were faster than I had expected, though.

The pet devotions add some big boosts: +500% devotions procs ( Shepard’s, Hungering Void) + 250% Beastcaller helm proc. The Rover consumable has crazy +100%dmg/+100%crit for short bursts. Standard pets stuff.

For the test, I maxed and invested in only the familiar base skill. The attached Blizzard proc was going off every 3 secs. Once I got the defensive player pattern down, the Primal instinct swarm and the 2 familiars were doing a decent job, even with a realized selection of poor item support.

Hmmm… The conversion would have allowed 90% elemental to profit off ~+500-700% more overall damage and -25% more dedicated RR. That likely would be too much. Cabalist or Conjurer= ouch!

Either Crate predicted that it could be really OP to have all pets under one damage type or it wasn’t coded to be that way. Conversion on pet-scaling pets would be fun but pets are currently pretty strong. Some middle ground items would be nice as conversion does add much fun and variety to game play.


I saw a thread on a Japanese forum where some guy made a conjurer that also utilized the conversion on those weapons, except he didn’t actually use the weapons in combat. You can equip 2 guns, cast BoD, and weapon swap to your normal weapons. The conversion will still apply to you so you can use better items instead.

I can see that. GD duration skill “procs” seem to store the values at application time. Pet spawning follows that too. BoD and pet spawns are two procs that have long enough durations that it might not be too much micormanaging. Especially with some of the + duration BoD gear.

I’ve been playing this for a bit now and it shows pets and pet procs are pretty good…even in a hybrid. The equipment doesn’t really optimize the pets, but nonetheless the pets do some fair damage. In spite of the lack of BoD ele->acid conversion for pets.

TLDR:

  • The pet-scaling version works well - probably due to pets working well in general with all the bonuses (Except maybe the Eldritch Hound proc…tbd).
  • The Primal Instinct relic pet-scaling swarmling x 5 is very strong.

I updated the OP with the results.