Good questions @BB_Shockwave !!
The Occultist version would be stronger i think. I also have a Cabalist which is heaps stronger damage wise. The skellies are great (along with the reap spirits) but they are bound to the lost souls set, without this the skellies are a lot weaker. Levelling I used fire (Korvaak’s burning blade and the Zarthu book) pretty much up to level 94 which was great and worked well. There is not a great deal of “chaos only” damage boost on this version but it seems to work well. I am sure that if you wanted to go deep in SR or the Crucible then it will feel lacking, I will give it a try and let you know how I go (but I am not that interested in such things so I might not be very good at it. I will try).
The gameplay is like this … on contact with the bad guys the skellies tend to hold the bad guys in place, so like there’s usually just one logical place to mine (and BWC). If that happens to be right in your face that’s ok too, just drop the mines at your feet. The mines and BWC are just debuffs, they don’t do much damage. I tried walking around without the pets and it was pretty tedious. I did the tomb of the eldritch sun but damage was weak as. So the vast bulk of the damage is from the pets, so mainly converted from vitality and physical. Never took much damage though, and I got so bored I resummoned everything before fighting the bosses.
I will do a video to show gameplay