I understand upgrading the Occultist side of the set as the pet resistances were sorely needed. The other class support that was added to the set? We already have a Skeletons + Hellhound full set in the game; a set which has fewer gearing requirements and also gives better bonuses all-around.
Extra Hellhound >>> 25% TDM bonus (The Lost Souls Set also doesn’t block the off-hand, so you can get the 25% TDM bonus from the MI off-hand on top of the extra Hellhound.
Lost Souls gives a substantial buff to Skeletons’ speed and survivability. Desecrator Covenant does not.
There are not nearly enough skill points to give us anything in the Necro tree that pet builds need (Soul Harvest, Call of the Grave, Master of Death).
Even if we were to scrap the set and start over, what would really benefit from the Desecrator set? If we were to do Briarthorn, it’d just be an inferior Beastcaller’s. Blight Fiends are a fun option, as we have no Acid to Chaos conversion available.
Chaos Primal Spirit would be very interesting as well, as it’s fully Physical anyway.
This set is totally not worth the hype it brought upon reveal.
(don’t have FoA on steam. curious what the set looks like atm)
Also - maybe it could have its own chaos pet as a full set bonus or even multiple chaos pets but no support for any mastery pets. That would be a cool idea imo and this is totally not an attempt to get a playable pet with this one’s model - Thall'Nosh, the Unraveler - Grim Dawn Monster Database.
Another unexplored idea - maybe as a single pet set with a Beefy item granted pet that weakens other pets to push builds using only a single pet instead of multiple ones. Something like -99% HP for pets but the item granted one will be invincible like Reap Spirits, for eg. Chaos also seems to be a good archetype to explore that.
Definitely can see what Zantai was going for. Part of me wishes the chaos RR was on Spectral Wrath instead of Ill Omen since with necromancer in the mix and skeleton focus at that, I rather minimize the amount of buttons to press even if Ill Omen is better for applying RR since you don’t need to get hit.
Does the set have any conversions for pets besides just Physical > Chaos?
Elemental > Chaos would be nice.
The book got ele>chaos to conversion but worse than Fiendgaze in every way.
My entire problem with this whole set is not only is it an inferior Lost Soul but it also block off actually GOOD chaos pet items including the Harbringer’s Dominator Blade which is all the rage right now.
There’s nothing on that entire mod’s list that can actually rival having more skeletal chaos mages, it’s just plain awful.
Vitality, Elemental, and Physical damage are all converted to Chaos.
Also, I don’t agree with putting the RR on Spectral Wrath. Having RR trigger passively isn’t really that useful, and the uptime is very low. Ill Omen provides damage reduction in addition to RR, so it’s much more useful overall.
And Spectral Wrath is only a problem when fighting things where you want to avoid getting hit, like superbosses or deep SR.
For farming content it is fine since you are not going to avoid getting hit altogether in somewhere like Crucible and can just facetank normal mobs in SR and Dungeons.
Better than having to push additional button as well, imo.
Hellhound’s DR doesn’t have particularly good uptime on its own.
Even when farming 5-Ashes dungeons, you can’t really rely on it being triggered passively. Cabalist is already pretty squishy to begin with.
On 5-Ashes difficulty, having better DR uptime is effectively a direct boost to survivability. Cabalist doesn’t have a lot of health, and you’re not really going to take Possession just for the survivability.
On top of that, Ill Omen also slows enemy movement speed and lets you bind a devotion proc to it.
I second the disappointment in the OP. The awakened Desecrator set is not giving us anything new. Hellhound+skeletons exist already as Lost Souls, chaos cabalist exists already and is one of the strongest pet builds. In a patch where pets were nerfed, we don’t need to make a powerful build even more powerful (if Desecrator is stronger than other chaos cabalist options). A pairing with a permanent chaos primal spirit or with blight fiends or even Reap Spirit would be far more interesting.
Sure, but I mean I haven’t found 5-Ashes to be threatening, just takes longer to go through due to larger enemy HP (Ghol and Lost Souls cabalists). Outside of Crucible 200 extra spawns without blessings and banners, none of the farming content have been an issue for me to require DR.
For me, idk, the set blocks the helmet position for wolf pet and the one hand position for pure chaos mage skeletons (and even if I don’t use skeletons, I could use salazar’s harbinger for 12 free rr and an additional pet). I’m not sure how its dmg compares with pure chaos mage+wolf pet.
Yeah, I am curious if Zantai would be willing to consider making pure Chaos mages a part of this set as well, so that you can get those without needing the weapon.
.
.