Asking for a pet conjurer leveling advice

Noksion · August 5, 2025, 5:38pm

Hello fellow “taken”
I’ve started a new character on hardcore and went for a pet conjurer (with an aspiration to eventually assemble one if Maya’s builds).
It’s my overall third character in GD (first two completed SC ultimate + reached lvl 100) and a first character in HC.
Here’s GT of a character state so far: Conjurer, Level 35 (GD 1.2.1.6) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator

Please note an unethical +6 briarthorn on a weapon. Turns out I got lucky with an MI that has an implicit +3 and it also rolled +3 as an affix. I guess I’m not taking this stick off until at least ultimate, lol.

Now, the questions for discussion I have so far are:

1: Weird spot of Hellhound.
Right now I have 2 points in Ember Claw which make this dog taunt enemies away from Briathorn, but the HH has less HP and I sometimes have to re-summon her during the fight.
Considering that I have a 26 / 16 Briarthorn I’m thinking of removing Ember Claw and focusing more points into Briarthorn support skills to double down on it.
Any thoughts?

2: I’m lost on where to spend points for survivability. Not that I’m lacking right now, but better safe than sorry when it’s HC. Given that I’m leaning towards spending more points into Briarthorn supports in the nearest future, my instinct tells me to go for Mogdrogen’s Pact and its supports down the lines. This way I’m getting stuff with only investing in one mastery bar.

On the other hand, I could max out Blood of Dreeg and it’s support, which combined is a good mix of offence and defense (but so is Mogdrogen’s Pact because of pet bonuses).

Surely I will max out both bars eventually because stats are good, but right now I feel so hungry for skill points as I never was with my previous two characters.
There are just so many juicy options, especially on Occultist side of the tree.
Any recommendations on skills priority for the nearest future?
What is, in your opinion, an absolute must as soon as possible (after maxing the three pets I have)?

3: Gearing (as a pet class).
Right now I’m following this priority: %res for me > +n to skill(s) > pet bonus rolls. Is this a correct order?
Initially and put a priority on pet rolls and tried to put that on no matter what, but ended up nearly ripping a couple times, so reverted to prioritizing my own survivability first.

When it comes to +skills, it’s hard to judge whether some specific skills are better than the others. I have a blue amulet in my stash with +2 Familiar (which is good) +2 Bonds of Bysmiel (which I don’t have now. Planning to take it sometime later) and a good pet bonus rolls, but I’d have to take off the current amulet with +3 to Briarthorn. Kinda indecisive.

Also, I’m curious about the weapons. Sometimes they have some defensive affixes, but mostly it’s offensive ones. Which are useless in my case, since I’m only casting Curse of Frailty.
This leads me to thinking that the weapon doesn’t matter except for +skills and pet rolls, in which case I’m pretty sure I’m not changing my current weapon until I have some crazy legendary in late ultimate.
Or am I overestimating the +6 to Briarthorn in one slot?

Any advice and shared wisdom is appreciated.

medea_fleecestealer · August 5, 2025, 5:46pm

Noksion · August 5, 2025, 6:02pm

Hey, appreciate the link.
Though it’s not exactly helpful in my case.

The “leveling” section seems the same in all Maya’s builds for conjurer, it’s a single mastery path (except notion of taking Briarthorn early on) which doesn’t seem to be a HC friendly to me (or am mistaken here?) and it seems to aim to just get you to 94 and respec, which I won’t be doing anytime soon because I don’t have a chest full of legendaries to switch to.

Meanwhile, I’m already having things to worry about at lvl 35 and want some insight from more experienced players and looking for an open discussion.

Gnomish_Inquisition · August 5, 2025, 6:08pm

you can keep it and dial points back elsewhere, ex Conjurer, Level 35 (GD 1.2.1.6) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator - you can also keep CoF as 1-1 instead of doing the cooldown DEE shenanigans, i just personally prefer that and don’t care about the RR as dmg boost for pets that early game/you can wait with getting vulnerability until later

Giant’s blood devo will pair nicely as conjurer with regen, can sprinkle in dryad if you feel extra nervous
But otherwise BoD should really be enough to carry you; just keep an eye on your own resists (you don’t need Spike comp in weapon, just use resist comp then)

pet MIs and faction items can cover enough of pet stats, rest you can focus on your own comfortably.
usually you should be able to do both a little ways on, where pet MIs also help cover your resists on affixes anyway.

And remember to upgrade items too, higher level greens carry more stats than lower level ones, don’t bee too afraid to lose “a” stat in replacement of another, just shuffle some components around to try fix stuff, or move a skill point here or there if it covers.
Briar MIs Grim Dawn Item Database
doggo Grim Dawn Item Database
birb Grim Dawn Item Database
general Search - Grim Dawn Item Database targeting some of those will generally carry pets a fair bit, buffs/passives and devos should take care of the rest, and then you can supplement with faction items "half"way through around 65

nofika4u · August 5, 2025, 6:29pm

Rhowari has some nice faction gear (shoulders, chest) for a lvl 35 summoner. I dont know how far you’ve gotten through the campaign so far but bloodsworn enemies should be showing up any second. They drop some good rings and possibly an off hand, and zaria’s amulet eventually.

Hellhound dying is likely due to low pet resistances so you’ll need to keep an eye out for gear pieces improving these as well. Aspect of the Guardian and oak skin skills can help pet res also.

As for survivability id recommended starting to work towards giant devotion and keeping your resistances as high as possible. Use components and augments (when they become available) to boost player & pet resistances.

Check out the links from gnomish if you are in need of a power boost, MIs make all the difference!

Best of luck

MagpieMcGraw · August 5, 2025, 7:50pm

You wanna max out Mogdy’s Pact and Blood of Dreeg ASAP. And 1 point in Heart of the Wild of course. The beauty of Conjurer is that your pets are almost immortal due to all the regen. I’d also grab Behemoth since it also has pet regen.

Your gear seems kind of conservative. A rare pet affix on every slot should be fine. If you spec into regen.

Here’s my Conjurer

ContragorX · August 6, 2025, 8:42am

^^ Exactly. I’d also focus on familiar for leveling. The rest goes into support, toughness. Max out lightning strike, add points into storm spirit, grab emboldening presence, oak skin, rush to get manipulation which, early on, can give up to 25% total speed, 240% dmg.

Paikis · August 6, 2025, 10:01am

I like this one for levelling.

ContragorX · August 6, 2025, 10:13am

Don’t you find it slow early on? I mean focusing on briar instead of raven without any support gear. I’ve leveled a bunch of these side by side comparing every check point with timed boss fights and couldn’t convince myself. Granted it was quite a few years ago, but am not seeing much change in terms of MI support and pet stats. Maybe I’m missing something here?

MagpieMcGraw · August 6, 2025, 10:43am

I died on that character this morning. I think a pure familiar conjurer is better. This one felt really unsafe even with 3 melee pets. Also didn’t have enough points to max Mogdy’s Pact.

ContragorX · August 6, 2025, 11:02am

Ouch! HC? Understandable. Yeah, familiar focused leveling should work. I’m leveling another HC conjurer right now to test.

maimu_chan · August 6, 2025, 11:53am

This is my HC fire pet conjurer.

For devotions, I recommend Ishtak, Tree of Life, and also Turtle for extra safety.
For gear, Fleshwarped Bulwark works great for pets in HC.

ContragorX · August 6, 2025, 12:54pm

Very early, something like this seems to work ok. Conjurer, Level 25 (GD 1.2.1.6) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator
But this is SSF, so no hysteria yet. Lucky blightshard drop at level 18. The raven nukes for 8k with lightning strike. Basically can oneshot packs and while it’s faster than any of my briar focused chars, still significantly slower than a skelly based cabalist/ritualist, or even a pseudo pet (guardians) build.

Maya · August 8, 2025, 1:37pm

This is how I actually leveled at the time… a loooooong time ago -

It works perfectly fine for HC, but… you are correct in that it is not exactly “HC friendly”, because I had originally planned it with Normal > Elite > Ultimate in mind with the idea being - get to 94 as soon as possible with zero farming… and that is not ideal for HC.

.

Regarding items, you may want to look for the following -

Ascendant Cowl (Helmet) [Briarthorn]

Zaria’s Pendant (Amulet) [Briarthorn / Hellhound / General Use]

Halion’s Crest (Medal) [General Use / Hellhound / Primal Spirit]

Bloodsworn Codex (Off-Hand) [Briarthorn]

Bound Wraith (Off-Hand) [General Use / Primal Spirit]

Bloodsworn Signet (Jewelry - Ring) [General Use]

Wendigo Gaze (Jewelry – Medal) [General Use / Briarthorn]

Bysmiel-Sect Legguards (Pants) [General Use]

Chosen Visage (Helmet) [Occultist]

Korvaak’s Burning-Blade (Weapon) [Elemental Pet builds]

Salazar’s Sovereign Blade (Weapon) [General Use]

Also, you are pretty much correct regarding what to prioritize in items regarding stats.

.

Regarding Skills…

This is where things get tricky because there is no “correct answer”, atleast in my opinion.

Familiar brings a ton of AoE if you spec into it, but cant actually tank for you which might be more of a priority. You want 26/16 on the Birb and max out Lightning Strike though, since Birb gains more “orbs” at certain breakpoints and the last one is at 26 points. Lightning Strike is still going to be its main “delete mobs” skill.

Hellhound can be tanky but is point hungry and also not as tanky as Briarthorn. Personally, would recommend against going all in on the doggo. It is best used as a distraction for your enemies rather than the focus of the build.

Briarthorn can act as your bread and butter, but is not the easiest pet to build around, early on. Its main strength - the tankiness, wont show through unless you have enough pet resistance to facilitate that and damage wise, you may want some conversion for it (fire would be ideal imo, using Korvaak’s Burning-Blade.

Briar also has most item support early on, so something to take into consideration as well.

My favourite way is to focus on the familiar for damage and briar for tankiness - focus on briar items but prioritize familiar stats. As others have said, the Birb is OP when it comes to dealing damage.

Now regarding defensive skills, I am personally not too fond of Mog’s Pact early on. Why? regen is good to keep you topped up, but you want Burst Heal to survive the things more likely to kill you. And Blood of Dreeg provides regen as well. Eventually you do want the Mog’s pact line, especially Oak Skin, but not required early on imo.

Another choice is Wendigo totem, but… the idea of standing within the radius, especially on HC, while leveling… doesnt appeal to me. It can certainly help your pets even at 1 point, however…

If going with Familiar, do note that its “attack” is actually a spell and uses cast speed instead of attack speed (unless something recently changed on that front and I missed the patch notes).

You also want Hysteria relic at the very least ASAP for extra pet which can freeze mobs.

Also consider this devotion setup for even more defensive options - Conjurer, Level 100 (GD 1.2.1.6) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator (ignore the rest as it is from my fluffy squishy)

Paikis · August 8, 2025, 2:06pm

I would have sworn that one started with 13/16 Raven… which is what I would do.

Personally, I’d be getting 13/16 Raven ASAP then going for Hellhound to tank early while you get Lightning Strike online. Once you’ve got the items to get the bird to 26/16 do that.

Conjurer really needs the bird to kill things early. Once you’ve got skill points and devotion procs for the other pets it’s all good, but you really need the AoE of the bird early on. Especially if you’re playing on Veteran. Get yourself a Korvaak’s Burning-blade to convert the Briarthorn to fire and then use Elemental Storm on one pet, Eldritch Fire on another and some other elemental proc on the third… maybe Flame Torrent.

I’ve levelled Conjurers with fire conversion, aether conversion, bleed focus, vitality conversion… fire is the way to go. It is considerably better than the other options for levelling.

MagpieMcGraw · August 8, 2025, 2:38pm

My leveling advice is simple: max out your pet and then max out it’s AOE. I don’t care what pet it is, it’s gonna be good. Hellhound with Ember Claw cleans up in Veteran at least.

Noksion · August 18, 2025, 1:04am

Thanks everyone for all the detailed replies and pieces of advice.

Still alive at lvl 68, currently in the midst of FG on Elite.
For skills, I just went with what felt right at the moment.
Invested some points in Mog pact and Blood of Dreeg. Also ended up getting the Mog Pact MI.
Things were definitely on the slower side, but I wasn’t in rush anyways.
Better safe than sorry

Here’s the snapshot of the character so far:

Currently investing points towards Emboldening Presence.
Not sure if it’s optimal, but having +7 on the gear and some more in the stash is pushing my FOMO to the limit, want to get it asap.

Then will probably invest in Lightning Strike for clear speed, considering what you shared here.
Appreciate the replies very much!