I find them to be rather tedious to use but perhaps I do something wrong, I had them maxed out and I just felt underwhelmed compared to other pets. How do you use them properly? Should I just ignore them all together?
I don’t like them 
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If by tedious you mean they can get wiped easily by AoE damage then sure, it’s by design.
They are supposedly good for damage because each flat damage pet bonus or aura gets multiplied by the number of pets, but in practice I haven’t seen overperforming builds with skeletons.
Not only do you need a large amount of flat damage, you also need a large % damage boost as well as a good devotion to bind to the skill (I like either using Twin Fangs or a debuff that Skeletons can apply easily like Rumor or Rend). That’s in addition to making sure you have a good healing ability for them (either Blood of Dreeg or Tree of Life) and making sure you have pet resistances maxed at the minimum. Combine all of that together and you have a very hard time getting a Skeletons build to perform admirably.
Vitality Skeletons with Lost Souls can beat Crucible, but is awful against Celestials, and I don’t know how you can even attempt to fight them with something as squishy as Skeletons. If you’re just fine with Crucible / SR, I’d go with either Lost Souls set, Lightning Skeletons with Bysmiel’s set for double Raven. I like Fire Skeletons the best because you can summon 8 Skeletons at once to keep your army replenished at all times, but it requires 2 Magi rings, the Necro conduit, and two additional MI’s for the weapon and helmet. Not exactly a likely build to farm.
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I tried Lost Souls Cabalist and didn’t like it, if you WANT to play skeletons go for it, but it will be quite certainly weaker than other pet setups
Well at least since flame torrent was given an internal cooldown
Very patiently 
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I think Skeletons are the least lazy pets to play. You have to be physically involved to keep them alive and often even that will not help, cause they break down faster than you can summon them. And that leads to shouting"Nooo" more than Darth Vader.
Like everyone else said, they’re notably behind the other pets in strength and in some cases by large amount but still viable enough to make an average end game farmer for roguelikes or nemeses and perhaps Crucible, harsher stuff like Celestials or deep shards are a straight nope though.
If you enjoy the playstyle, then they’re workable with more effort invested in than other pet builds but not amazing, if you want a summoner that can do everything comfortably, look elsewhere.
Hi all, long time lurker, I haven’t posted anything since the beginning, well before the Alpha release.
My all time favorite build is the cabalist pet build. I’ve used it to farm my Lokarr set, Dark Ones set, Krieg set, SR 75-76 in normal, Celestial Totems, and most Nemesis (kubacabra gives me fits). I can stand up to pretty much everything with a Xbox controller while watching TV. I agree with you guys about the Celestials, it would take way to long to running around recasting everything, definitely not worth it. I don’t have a Grim tool link, but I admit I copied someone on here a while back, it’s the Lost souls set and some healing devotions. My skellies are pretty hard to kill in most content, I can run into issues in SR when Raveger spawns. I know there are better, stronger & more efficient pet builds, but this build is close to my heart and I feel still worth the time, to build, play and farm with it if you like a lot of pets.
I’d also like to thank all the people who post on here, I’ve learned alot from the Grim Dawn Experts on here and I’m amazed on how much time that is invested posting the amount of info that they do. I especially want to thanks Nery & Maya. I followed Nery’s guide to make a Hardcore Conjurer, it was fairly easy to do on veteran and I’m now at level 98, its working awesome. I’ve learned a lot from Maya on pet builds & that info helped me with my pet build.
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Wow, you’re one of the first guys in forum! Glad that you’re still around 
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I was out in the middle of the country when the Alpha came out , I had to use my phone’s hot spot to download it to my laptop, I didn’t want to wait another week till I got home to play. It took forever, but I got it going and played for an hour to satisfy myself. When the necromancer was released, the cabalist was my first level 100 character and I still farm with it still, I’d like to use my conjurer at some point but, I still can’t find a recipe for the Mythical Fang of Ch’thon that mad_lee recommended. I’ve been doing SR 75-76 and totems runs with my Cabalist, but it won’t drop, Sigh!!!
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I’ll try to find the post that I followed, it works fairly well.
I personally really like skelly
you have to have pretty good resist all around to make them less squishy.
the damage is really good, especially once you get that based RNG ranged skelly.
for ultimate, there’s little to no hope for them, tho 
Actually they can be one of the laziest 
This still works: Skulls & Bones - Pet Cabalist
But the issue is that, unlike say in a Briarthorn or Familiar build where you can achieve that sort of laziness without much sacrifice, here, it takes ages to kill anything.
Though do note that Crucible is a major pain to attempt it with Skeletons. Especially after the aggro change.
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Glad to hear that I could be of help.
That said, on the topic of skeletons and builds in general, it is always better to find one that you like and enjoy rather than go for whatever might be considered as the most “powerful”.
And even having said that, atleast when I myself complain about Skeletons being weak, what I am really complaining about is that they don’t let me play with 1 hand and half asleep like most of my builds do
So, if the old bags of bones are your favourite, keep using them and if I may say so, feel free to experiment with them. Chances are you might stumble upon something new, unique and interesting that others might have not thought of or ignored 
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