[AoM] [Version 1.0.2.0] Witchblade Pet Build Facerolls Vanilla Nemeses

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
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Full Disclosure: I edited my gear in using GDStash so I could quickly determine if this build was going to be anything more than a meme. Now that I have proven that this build is much better than meme status, I will be experimenting to see how well this build takes on expansion content. I have a limited amount of time and a bunch of responsibilities moving forward, so taking this through a full leveling experience is not a high priority right now.

This build, like many other pet builds, could not be shaped the way they were if not for the impeccable work of DaShiv and his pet guides. Thank you for your tireless efforts in making Summoners peerless killing machines and for your inspiration in creating this build. Never let your memes be dreams!

With the swearing in of the Necromancer as one of the new classes, pet players dove into the new content in exciting ways to raise the pets’ DPS as high as the imagination. Summoners wanted the game to buckle and break with the sound and fury of a legion of skeletons tearing the vanilla enemies to shreds. As exciting as seeing those numbers can get, it was beyond frustrating to have a tough enemy ignore the minions and dive straight to end the summoner’s life.

My frustrations had me seeking a way to better balance damage and survivability, and a few stray posts on the Discord gave me the idea of making a Soldier-based pet build that combines pet damage and pet retaliation. Thankfully, the gear and skill choices were easy to figure out, and facing the vanilla Nemeses surpassed even my wildest expectations about the build.

Grimtools link

Equipment
Weapon Set 1: Mythical Agony + Mythical Zolhan’s Revenge
Agony is a well-rounded weapon with retaliation bonuses, +Blood of Dreeg, and +All Skills in Soldier. In addition, it provides valuable RR in Physical and Poison damage, both types employed by our pets. Zolhan’s Revenge further adds to Retaliation while adding a great Retaliation modifier to our Menhir’s Will circuit-breaker.
Components: Seal of Might and Mark of the Myridion
Weapon Set 2: Mythical Blightstone Invoker + Mythical Siegebreaker
This set is useful when you need to bring out more damage from your pets while retaining the large Pierce Resistance increase and +all skills in Soldier.
Components: Seal of Might and Mark of the Myridion
Head: Mythical Beastcaller’s Cowl
The added physical damage, the damage increase, and total speed proc are second to none.
Component: Sanctified Bone
Shoulders: Mythical Beastcaller’s Shoulderpads
As the helm and medal are BiS items for this build, adding the shoulders gives us some nice pet bonuses. These shoulders also help us shore up our Vitality resistance.
Component: Sacred Plating
Hands: Mythical Overlord’s Iron Grip
Provides some much needed pet Crit Damage and %OA bonuses, while the DA modifier to Bonds of Bysmiel fits our build mold perfectly.
Component: Spellscorched Plating
Feet: Mythical Fiendflesh Greaves
Not only do these greaves provide more pet bonuses, but 10,000 damage absorption, where flat damage absorption comes after all the other reductions due to armor and resists, is a greatly appreciated boon.
Component: Mark of Mogdrogen
Belt: Mythical Shadowfiend Cord
Nice pet damage and OA bonuses with free skill points coming from the +Occultist skills.
Component: Antivenom Salve
Pants: Mythical Wildshorn Legguards
The equipment that sparked the idea for this build, these pants are simply irreplaceable.
Component: Enchanted Earth
Chest Armor: Mythical Vestments of the Great Guardian
There are multiple chestpieces that provide area-wide Retaliation bonuses, such as the Mythical Dread Armor of Azragor and the Mythical Frostdread Curaiss. This slot is definitely up for debate; I went with this choice specifically because our build provides more Poison and Acid RR.
Component: Sanctified Bone
Amulet: Avenger of Cairn
While the Mythical upgrade of this piece adds to our Circuit-breaker, the proc that the original Legendary came with is more suitable for this build. The massive Aether Resistance and +All skills in Soldier make this amulet BiS.
Component: Aether Soul
Rings: Mythical Briarthorn Band
Health Bonuses, Retaliation Bonuses, Elemental Resists, and Pet Retaliation damage make this a one of a kind ring.
Component: Corpse Dust
Alternate Rings: Mythical Rotmender’s Ring
Pet Poison and Acid bonuses, along with the healing proc, make this a nice alternative to share with the Briarthorn bands
Component: Corpse Dust
Medal: Mythical Beastcaller’s Talisman
Chaos Resistance and bonuses to our Pet’s Physical Damage make it an easy choice to add to the Beastcaller set bonuses.
Component: Black Tallow
Relic: Primal Instinct
Without the little swarmlings, this build would not be possible.

Augments: Mogdrogen’s Blessing for the jewelry, Ravager’s Eye for the weapon slots, 4 Mankind’s Vigil and 3 Mogdrogen’s Touch for the armor.

Since this build appears to be an unholy hybrid of things that should never work, I’ll let the screenshots speak for me while I write up the explanations:

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Using Soldier in a Summoner Build

While the Soldier class does not have any flat damage bonuses, it does provide multiple passive options that synergize well with the Occultist’s pet-based skills. The above Grimtools link gives you an explanation of how many points to place into the skill, so this post will explain the benefits of each Soldier skill choice:

War Cry & Break Morale: Capped Break Morale provides the largest Physical RR out of all of the classes, and furthermore, it stacks with Curse of Frailty’s Physical RR.

Blitz & Blindside: Blindside’s Defensive Ability reduction makes it much easier for the swarmlings to obtain critical hits. Blitz itself is a great mobility tool that allows you to easily obtain better field position and knocks down most trash mobs so you always have freedom in selecting your escape route.

War Cry & Break Morale: Capped Break Morale provides the largest Physical RR out of all of the classes, and furthermore, it stacks with Curse of Frailty’s Physical RR.

Military Conditioning: You have the freedom to put as many points into this as necessary to reach any Health / DA breakpoint you desire.

Shield Training & Decorated Soldier: Both of these skills are valuable passives that make it easier for your character to survive pack battles and enemy rushes.

Scars of Battle: This skill gives us three bonuses: allows us to reach 100% Armor Absorption, allows us to cap our Stun Resistance - which make battles against foes like Iron Maiden far, far easier - and helps us with Freeze Reduction to help us take on Moosilauke.

Menhir’s Bulwark: Taken for the Damage Absorption, Retaliation bonus, and Health Regeneration

Overguard: An easy upkeep skill that further improves Health Regeneration and increases the damage that is blocked with our shield. Since our pets are doing the damage and we aren’t doing anything, it’s perfectly fine to take the transmuter for faster upkeep.

Field Command & Squad Tactics: It is not listed on the pet bonuses in the character sheet, but Field Command works just fine with pets - you will see the buff below your pets’ portraits. Not only does it provide more % to all damage than Manipulation, but it also provides 100 Flat OA, which is just as good as finding an item with 5-6% Pet OA bonus.

Pet Bonuses
The OA vs DA factor is found in the main website under this website: http://grimdawn.com/guide/gameplay/combat.php#q19

Using the Swarmlings 1833 OA- to provide an example- their OA has multiple additive multipliers that function just as well as the pet %OA bonus in the character sheet. Blood of Dreeg adds 162 OA, while Field Command adds another 100. Add this with either Ishtak’s or Harp’s OA bonus (130 and 110 respectively) and that comes to a flat OA of 2205 if we just take Harp’s bonuses. Multiply this total by the character sheet %OA bonus (43 in the above Grimtools) and you have a Swarmling OA of 3150. With the DA reduction from Vulnerability and Blindside stacking, the Swarmlings have a PTH in the high 110’s for tough enemies with ~2500 DA and reaches the 120 benchmark (and thus the third stage of crits) for any enemy with lower than 2300 DA.

This build also stacks pet retaliation, taken from the following sources:
Flat Retaliation:

  • Devout of Dreeg - 2500 Poison Retaliation over 5 seconds
  • Wildshorn Legguards - 4000 Poison Retaliation over 5 seconds
  • Wildshorn Legguards - 4000 Piercing Retaliation
  • Briarthorn Band - 2000 Piercing Retaliation
  • Primal Instinct - 995 Piercing Retaliation
  • Avenger of Cairn - 640 Piercing Retaliation

Retaliation Bonuses:

  • Wildshorn Legguards - 600%
  • 2 Briarthorn Bands - 300%
  • Shephard’s Crook - 300%
  • Stone Form - 220%
  • Wolverine and Hound - 80%
  • Avenger of Cairn - 60%

Advantages and Disadvantages of playing a Soldier-themed Pet Build
Disadvantages:

  • Real Pet builds have up to 10X your DPS. This is a build strictly made for survivability while the enemy dies from a thousand stings.
  • Does not have the DPS to burn down Overlord von Sandwich at Valbury. Other bosses / Nemeses that don’t use melee to attack the player / pets will share the same fate
  • There’s not much variety in equipment, and even if there was, there is not a lot of flexibility in equipment / devotion choices that wouldn’t significantly alter this build
  • Can do precisely zero to any game content without the Primal Instinct Relic. I highly recommend going the Soldier-only leveling route or a full defensive S&B Witchblade until you are able to craft the Primal Instinct Relic.

Advantages:

  • Iron Grip Gloves modifier + Beastcaller’s Set Bonus + Military Conditioning’s Physique Bonuses + Wolverine / Solemn Watcher / Obeslisk Constellations = Absolutely Absurd DA. It doesn’t even matter that your enemies will have a hard time proccing your Retaliation as your pets are the real damage dealers here.
  • Ishtak’s 45% Damage Absorption, in combination with Menhir’s Bulwark’s Absorption and Fiendflesh Greaves’ 10,000 damage absorption (done after the above absorption has already taken place) means this build can tank powerful hits with nary a scratch. We haven’t even gone through Blood of Dreeg’s and Tree of Rain’s Instant Heals or the 1,200/s Health Regen that those two have when combined with Overguard.
  • This build not only defeated the Iron Maiden- a feat I had never done with a pet build- it humiliates her. Heck, this build can tank a Fevered Raged Iron Maiden while the Swarmlings do their business.
  • All of the pictures above were done with the equipment shown. No double-rare MI’s are required to bring down all of these creatures (They will likely be necessary to beat the final boss of Valbury, but that was the only feat this build has failed on me)
  • I have it on good word that this build does at least 10X the DPS of a Cabalist Summoner who is dead. :stuck_out_tongue:
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Devotion Order:
One Point in Order Crossroads
Complete Lion (4 Devotion Points Total)
Complete Panther (8 Devotion Points Total)
Complete Eel (11 Devotion Points Total)
Complete Ulo, grabbing the skill as soon as you can (16 Devotion Points Total)
Complete Solemn Watcher (21 Devotion Points Total)
Complete Hound (24 Devotion Points Total)
Obtain Obeslisk of Menhir up to the Stone Form skill, while also grabbing the 150 Armor node to the right of the first node (30 Devotion Points Total)
One Point in Ascendant Crossroads
Complete Wolverine (36 Devotion Points Total)
Remove Ascendant Crossroads
Complete Harp (42 Devotion Points Total with 1 Point Respec)
Obtain Tree of Life Healing Rain Proc (46 Devotion Points Total with 1 Point Respec)
Complete Ishtak, the Spring Maiden (52 Devotion Points Total with 1 Point Respec)

At this point, with 52/55 Devotion Shrines unlocked (51 used node and the one free node from respeccing out of Ascendant Crossroads), you can use the Respecc’d devotion point and your remaining devotions and use them for defense and life node bonuses like Tree of Life’s 8% Health or Empty Throne’s resistances. Only once you obtain Primal Instinct and other Pet Gear and have all 55 devotion points will you respec out of those bonuses- in addition to removing the Order Crossroads node you placed in the beginning- to place the remaining devotion points into Shephard’s Crook.

As for leveling up a character like this, take the Soldier Mastery up to its maximum level, I’ve been told Forcewave is a wonderful leveling tool. Take the Occultist class to max Blood of Dreeg as soon as possible for healing and survivability, and take on as much Retaliation gear as you can find. I will direct you to the other prominent Retaliation builds to recommend some items to use as you level.

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[This post is reserved for requests on others’ behalf]

You may now post.

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Update for this build: I saw that Crucible was not updated for the expansion content so I took this out to Gladiator to see how it’d fare. Unfortunately, I was only able to get up to Wave 142 before the sheer number of Heroes that regenerated / healed other Heroes became too much. Still, this is by far my best performance in the Crucible, and since the expansion doesn’t have 15 Heroes all attacking at once, I expect this guy to take care of the expansion content.

More forthcoming as I look for the new Nemeses.