The presented setups are a somewhat sweet spot for this build in terms of tankyness, one being aether damage focused, the other being a hybrid. Three aspects are to be noted: damage is bad (no glass, no cannon), if its a glasscannon its still not a cannon and mixing RS with AAR is so awkward to play.
Suggestions: More damage for AAR (consider adding back %dmg on disintegration), radius blast for RS and/or make Reap Spirits player scaled pets instead of real pets and change their cold damage part to aether so they actually help out. Adtch added to them would be welcomed too. Note: spectral wrath points are nowhere to be found, %DA is nowhere to be found (actually checked in both items and devos; devos provide almost 3times more nodes with %OA than %DA; items barely have any and set only has 100 flat DA on pc bonus).
Not that I disagree with Reap Spirit needing some help to prevent it from being an inferior Doom Bolt, nor that I disagree with AAR needing to be a major cannon to make channeling it worth it (though we’d probably want certifiable numbers, like 400K sheet numbers, 500K sheet damage? Even if the tooltips don’t provide that much help), but assuming that Zantai is going to kill the pet based Reap Spirits just to comply with this request is silly bordering on hilarious.
I wouldn’t see it as hilarious considering necro already has blight fiends and skeletons, which both have 3 backup skills to support them and 2 dedicated sets for each. I forgot to mention that both of them are doing miles better than what i presented.
Reap Spirits are much more successful as Pets than both Skeletons and Blightfiends atm.
So, if you must take a Pet scaled pet, you may have Skeletons instead :3
(Also both Skeletons and Blight Fiends have 1 dedicated set each just like Reap Spirit Pet build having Diviner’s Vision as a dedicated set. Not sure where the “2 dedicated sets for each” comes from)
(The same skills that support Skeletons and Blight Fiends also support Reap Spirit in Pet builds as well)
And which both underperform against superbosses and deep SR.
Even if we only take DPS as metric, the top 20 builds thread show that even the most DPS centric pet build do not make the list, making DPS a poor metric when gauging pets.
To me it feels like Diviner is the proper Reap Spirit set and Clairvoyant merely has mods for the skill along with AAR and Doom Bolt, kind of like how Ghol’s malice Set has mods for Briarthorn even though Beastcaller is the Briarthorn Set.
Further reinforced by Diviner having both player and pet bonuses since the skill is also hybrid with a spell and pet component.
and not sure what my playstyle has to do with it. Reap Spirits outperform both Skeletons and Blightfiends when it comes to going deeper into SR since the SS is of SR 120.
I can try to go deeper if you want me to.
if you are saying pets perform better, then why remove the better performing playstyle instead of buffing the underperforming one in a way that doesn’t affect the other
If clairvoyant is poor for reap spirits, simply work the set into AAR and Doombolt. Buff those aspects while leaving Reap Spirit an optional mod. That is ofcourse, assuming that simply buffing the numbers on the spell component of Reap Spirit won’t solve the issue.
Also, I was comparing Pet Reap Spirits vs Skeletons and Blightfiend with the build examples and screenshots btw.
As a side note, I do see the appeal in a Dark One ritualist with 5x Reap Spirits running around (sadly not possible since diviners gives the +2 summon limit to get 5 max).
But I rather not lose a good Pet for the sake of Clairvoyant :3
Hey dont get me wrong. I just made some statements and suggestions. Didn’t said this needs to be done otherwise it wont work. In the end its Z’s decisions what he’ll do to balance things out. Regarding lost souls vs callagadra i think it all depends on what class do you pick up. I think tree of life + invested wendigo totem should both keep the skeletons alive while also giving them a good chunk of damage. But then again im no pets player so wouldn’t know.
Edit
Btw, aar + doom bolt is even worse than binder with RS. That’s why you dont see any clairvoyant warlocks around xD.
I know, I am just echoing @thepowerofmediocrity’s thoughts on this that removing Reap Spirit as Pets just to buff Clairvoyant is silly since it will take away one of the best pet scaled pets which imo neither Skeletons nor Blightfiends can even compare to.
Been there, tried that. Sadly doesn’t really work due to their inherent frailty and design.
Could always buff the set for those and then, no need to worry about Reap Spirits and no conflicts with pet/player stuff either.
Honestly I’d much rather prefer to see RS and aar buffed, rather than doom bolt, but yeah sure, db can use a bump too as warlocks are so terrible in their current form.
Spellbinder, Level 100 (GD 1.1.9.8) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator - you use Mark of Shadow Queen in this setup so i asked about Mythical Mark of Anathema instead. Veilkeeper Crest is inferior? if i don’t have Namadea eye. Also i don’t quite understand how flat vitality damage does any good for AAR here?
aaaa that one, i thought it was the other. In this case i used it for the relevant stats aether damage, flat oa, % oa, and + to spectral binding. AAR damage scales from OA too because it has crit damage component.
its not about the flat, but the % vit and also the crit dmg%
Clair is a very sad set. It’s absolutely overloaded with stats to compensate for awkward skill pairings but it’s still not nearly enough.
The main problem is vit/aether duality is not supported very well. You can’t go for either of main vit devos and not lose aether power on the way. The only good thing is Rattosh, but everything else just doesn’t match at all in devos. In items you have a few vit + aether legs, but most good aether and vit items don’t have the other type. And them there are no high end weapon/jewelry augs for both.
Binder Clair is very awkward gameplay with RS and AAR. You end up with dps loss and a headache just specing into RS, so you drop it, and then you find yourself with a stat-heavy build with mediocre aether AAR tooltip and very weak vitality part: Spellbinder, Level 100 (GD 1.1.9.6) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator (optimized by nofika, one double-rare, 29.860 aether part of AAR tooltip)
And then you break the set, slot in some easy items and get this: Spellbinder, Level 100 (GD 1.1.9.8) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator (32.360 aether part of AAR tooltip)
If you try to go more dual-dmg with Clair you end up losing both more dps and patience when fighting a million of vit-resistant mobs.
I suggest either of two options: 1) replacing RS cooldown mod with aoe to it and adding +300% vit/decay dmg to set bonus 2) making Clair’s AAR pure aether and its RS pure vitality while replacing cd reduction mod with a hefty extra decay bonus
Works fine as Aether/Vitality hybrid too, like this. I would not want such drastic changes, like making RS pure Vitality (some AoE to it would be okay).
Reap Spirit is a good-damaging single-target nuke that heals you like crazy and apply a ton of Vitality Decay (great for kiting). Also it is a nice Pet skill. So you can choose, and it is great.
As can be seen here the cabalist side of things is in a very rough state.
Even tho it provides good amounts of aether & vit dmg % with a high amount of spirit on top the damage just isn’t there.
This should show even more just how much help the DB & RS side of the set needs.
. other than that those screenshots are barely representative. we all know your playstyle.
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