Best Summoner for Ultimate Difficulty ?

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
1

Should i go Necromancer + Occultist for pets raven + elemental buff on mage skeletons + hellhound + fire damage buff for mage skeletons + curse.

or

Necromancer + Shaman with Briarthorn and try a vitality build totem or use grasping vines for control of monsters ?

What do you think it is more viable and fun and interesting ?
Any other ideas ?

Thank you :slight_smile:

2

Anyone ? :slight_smile:

3

The most intuitive build would be Cabalist because 1) both classes give meaningful buffs to pets (AS, RR, OA, resistance, flat damage) and 2) you have specific item support.

There are, however, other, less intuitive builds, such as (listed according to strength):

  1. Elemental pets Warlock;
  2. Lightning pets Deceiver;
  3. Chaos pets Deceiver;
  4. Fire pets Pyromancer;
  5. Retaliation pets Conjurer;
  6. Vitality pets Ritualist;
  7. Aether/Lightning pets Apostate;
  8. Physical/pierce pets Deceiver.

And a few others, which are more “hybrid” in approach:
9) Acid/poison Cabalist;
10) Chaos/fire Witchblade

And, that’s about it ! OFC, the more you go down the list, the less item support you will find and the harder it will be for you to somehow improvise if you don’t have the gear. Acid/poison Cabalist for example, requires specific lvl. 94 items in order to work and the same thing does for the Lightning pets Deceiver.

4

Thank you :slight_smile:

5

I’m surprised you find this to be stronger than Dracarris Incarnate. I know the 5-piece Occultist Chaos Pet set is really strong and provides a ton of OA and Chaos Pet damage, but I don’t know if there’s 5 individual pet items that would combine to be better than the 5-piece set. Manticore + Witchblade Devotion + Symbol of Solael for RR, I’m assuming (if not using another weapon like the Plaguebearer of Dreeg to add to that). Probably also using regular Will of Bysmiel for the extra pets. This is something to mull over.

6

Actually I made a small mistake - it’s fire/chaos pets Deceiver :D. Anyway, it is only marginally better and I’m going to tell you why:

  1. You have more flat damage on Inquisitor and you can reliably convert it to chaos. In fact, you can use a wider variety of items to make it work.
  2. Death Sentence is easier to use than Hellfire mines.
  3. You can actually make Voidfiends work and their damage output is not bad if you can debuff chaos.
7

No pet elementalist?

8

The shaman exclusive (Primal Bond) is very bad with pets and without them. Really, it is very, very bad. Pet elementalist can clear all campaign content, of course, but using mines or Wind Devil to debuff charging enemies will prove to be very tiresome and you also lack some vital ingredients to amplify the damage. Besides the RR, Occultist also has a massive +25% total speed boost which does more for your damage output than linear bonuses, for example.

Pet Pyro >>> Pet Elementalist. Not that it is a bad combo…it’s just worst than Pyro, Warlock and Deceiver, let alone Cabalist.

9

I have tried cabalist up to lvl 100. I am not even close to bis equipment, but still dissapointed by its performance. All pets are still fragile. Link to build below with constelations and core items sloted.

http://www.grimtools.com/calc/YNng7Ad2

Now I came back to my 85lvl pet conjurer and now I am 94 with full mythical beast caller. On this level it perform better than Cabalist( faster clear speed, superb survivability of pets).

Link to build with core items sloted and with constelations.

http://www.grimtools.com/calc/d2jeP6mN

I dont know How will conjurer perform at lvl 100 with all items, but now it seems that my old conjurer will outperform my new Cabalist at the end.

10

Hey, I know it doesn’t sound the most exciting, but Pure necromancer is currently what I’m running, and I’m clearing Ultimate with (minimal) issues. With mostly found-gear and a few hand-me-downs from other players and Primal Instinct, I’ve never had an easier time with a pet build.

Easiest leveling experience too— Bone Harvest is a solid nuke for small enemies to clean up trash so your pets can focus bigger things, big meaty golem does a great job soaking damage, tanking, and reducing enemy resistances (flat amount), and skeletons just… swarm everything. Ill Omen is an incredible way to CC massive groups of enemies with a light fear while skeletons move in for the kill, and save you from enemies swarming you, and it only costs 1 point.

Devotions in order while leveling were Tsunami (constant proccing on skeletons), Shephard’s crook (raw pet damage), bunch of move speed from lizards, whatever you want to get Spirit of Winter (put this on skeletons since 9+ skeletons proc it frequently), Bonds of Bysmiel, then whatever. Honestly my devotions could be way more efficient, but I’m running this build raw.

+Raise Skeletons and Undead Legion equipment is good to boost damage, survivability, and number of summons, and slightly reduce cooldown incase skeletons break.

Spectral Binding gives HUGE CHUNKY health, and having + skills into this is more chunky for tanking heavier hits.

+All Necromancer skills also boosts you up a great chunk in both surviving and damage

I’m level 84 in Ultimate and having a blast!

11

Sometimes pure class is better.