I recently discovered that pets use the skill levels they had when you summoned them, and not the skill levels they have in real time. You can equip items with skill level boosts to summon skills, summon your pets, and then unequip those items to have stronger pets. I refer to this as supercharging. While this trick is not the most convenient, it does allow for some ridiculously powerful builds.
You can equip the Beastcaller’s Set and the Mythical Will of Bysmiel at the same time, but can’t come even close to maxing both Briarthorn and Familair at the same time. Supercharging allows you summon both at max level, including having 22/12 Lightning Strike, and the results are staggering.
Hypercharged All Pet Conjurer
This is the extreme upper bound of pet build power. Using unrealistically rare items, this variant pushes supercharging to its limit, maxing Familiar with Lightning Strike, Briarthorn, and Hellhound with Infernal Breath, all at the same time. Combat Gear Summon Hellhound Summon Familiars Summon Briarthorns Gladaitor 151-170 - 4:41 4 Buffs + Banner + Wrath of the Beast Tincture
I tried a using the same trick on the Skelefamiliar Cabalist, but the normal items come close enough to maxing both pets that the bonus is much smaller.
These builds are still pretty powerful without the supercharging.
I thought this exploit was fixed some time ago. I used to use this for leveling. Dumping all in a summon main and skills, summon it, buy back and wreck.
But now summon dies when you buy back. Maybe it only works with items and was omitted
I thought summons died when you equip items that increase their skill level as well, so I didn’t think of trying any of this. Still though, 5 minute Gladiator? After that Spellbinder did it in 5:30, I don’t think many people thought 5 minutes flat was possible, but here comes as close as you can get.
Actually watched 5:05 minute run. Despite few close calls at the end (which is expected since you have stated yourself you went glass cannon into it), clearing times unreal, your pets chew everything up like it’s Aspirant. Supercharging thing definitely gotta be fixed by Crate. That would not take away the best builds crown from pet masters anyway.
I suppose +5 badge of masteries would make this a lot easier? And I am confused I did think pets get unsummoned if you changed their skill points around.
Basically this. Using a non-supercharged variant of the Chaos build I still managed a 5:27 clear with banner. It was slightly faster than the Cabalist.
If you remove hard skill points they are unsummoned.
This has been on my mind, because you are absolutely right. With the right MIs and rares, you could save a ton of skill points, enough to max Hellhound and Infernal Breath. While I don’t normally make items with GDStash, I had to test this out to see what it could do. Along with a few changes in crucible strategy and a particularly lucky run in terms of modifiers and spawns, I managed to shave another 23 seconds off the already insane clear time.
Hypercharged All Pet Conjurer
This is the extreme upper bound of pet build power. Using unrealistically rare items, this variant pushes supercharging to its limit, maxing Familiar with Lightning Strike, Briarthorn, and Hellhound with Infernal Breath, all at the same time. Combat Gear Summon Hellhound Summon Familiars Summon Briarthorns Gladaitor 151-170 - 4:41 4 Buffs + Banner + Wrath of the Beast Tincture
Yep, this is what I did for my lightning conjurer to clear glad 170 on HC. Double Briar + double familiar is incredible, and still works alright without snapshotting. Unfortunately I’ve been struggling to find the briarthorn rings so getting those has been a struggle, but i’m going back to the lightning conjurer without a doubt.
For the people wondering about main campaign builds, lightning conjurer is fantastic for clearing maingame, and even moreso with the snapshotting. I would recommend mogdrogen’s ardor for the main game just for resistances though, as well as ishtak. Personally I ended up putting briarthorn on Raging Tempest devotion for more AoE, even experimented with Hand of Ultos + Ishtak for a while on that though. I’ve noticed that devotions with 100% chance on crit are insane for pets because of how easy OA stacking on them is. Now if only Blind Fury’s res reduction wasn’t awful… On that note, I’m really interested in seeing how a build with Blind Fury bound to primal spirit feels, only got to try it to briarthorns and it honestly wasn’t terrible.
Minion snapshotting used to be a thing in PoE, and was kinda silly. I wouldn’t be surprised to see it go here.
You have to give up so much to take Blind Fury that I’d be really surprised if it was worth the sacrifice. I’m a huge fan of Blizzard on elemental pet builds (including Lightning pets). Almost all pet builds will naturally fill the devotion requirements, it only takes 4 points to grab the skill, and it’s effective as both AoE and single target damage.
the Mythical Will of Bysmiel amulet lets you summon two familiars. The Mythical Beastcaller’s set lets you summon two briarthorns.
I managed to get a 5:00 clear in 1.0.7.1 with a bad wave 170, sub-5 minute runs are definitely still possible with supercharging, but its definitely a bit less common.
