First of all, BIG THANKS to Crate for adding Necro class and making it better than other competitive games This topic is about Necro dual class for summoner builds.
But at their current state, I feel like summoner classes doesnât have enough love for creative builds other than some meta builds here on forums.
So, I wanted to inform the devs and players for pet builds at end-game content. Mostly about Ritualist although if other summoners would like to contribute to the topic, I belive we can help devs to improve summoners.
So, my experience with my 100 Ritualist: My LATEST BUILD LINK: This is low pet DPS high -rr/OA version. And currently can hold on until Glad 50s
Whatever I did, I couldnât get passed 300k pet DPS with current uniques and/or rares combos. I didnât check all the green items, but Iâd like to stay away from them as long as possible if they are not absolutely needed.
Is it me or Ritualist canât achieve high pet DPS in any possible way? Boy, I tried everything.
It would be great if they can hold their own at Mad Queen, Gladiator 150, or Nemesis mobs without being required for specific green/unique item combos or exploiting the game mechanics.
So we know that Cabalist is the best pet build at the current meta. And Conjurer has some better defenses. But what are their state at current patch? What is your experience with them?
I tried Conjure Primal Spirit, even with 100% uptime it didnât do me any good so I spent that points into other skills, especially Wind Devil which enables more -RR for me.
I think thereâs a mod that can break down player damage including pets but a common way to do it is to measure your kill times against certain high health enemies.
Whatâs already posted on the forum is more reflective of whatâs first and most obvious, rather than whatâs necessarily most powerful or most meta. Mechanics take time to figure out, patch changes take time to analyze and digest, builds take time to design and test, guide take time to write and edit, and there are very few expert pet players capable of setting and defining the endgame pet meta.
For example, if youâd have asked the community whatâs the best, most âmetaâ way to build a pet cabalist 5 weeks ago versus now, people wouldâve given you very different answers.
The RR and pet OA on that build are not high.
If you had actually tried everything and only kept the best results, your build wouldnât be such a mess. Iâm guessing you either didnât have very rigorous testing procedures or arenât familiar enough with game mechanics yet to properly interpret the results of your testing. For example:
This is completely absurd, because primal spirit is by far the best single summon in the game, from any source (skills, items, devotions, etc). Youâre also testing primal spirit completely wrong if youâre testing it against an RR like Wind Devil, rather than against other pets like briarthorn or blight fiend.
Likewise, testing Soul Harvest vs Blood Pact head to head should make it obvious that Soul Harvest is a far superior investment instead of your actual decision. In short, you have tons of inefficient and unnecessary points in:[ul]
[li]Summon Briarthorn[/li]
[li]Oak Skin[/li]
[li]Summon Blight Fiend[/li]
[li]Blight Burst[/li]
[li]Master of Death (overcap)[/li]
[li]Call of the Grave (overcap)[/li]
[li]And many others (such as Blood Pact) that may or may not be inefficient depending on how other points have been allocated.[/ul][/li]Further, simply copying the devotion plan from the Night King v1.0 wonât work, because the devotions donât fit the build: for example, the Night King v1.0 uses flat RR from weapon, but your build now has no flat RR. The Night King v1.0 uses Rend for the mass area coverage, but without CoF you lack the wide-coverage bleed RR to make Rendâs DPS effective. And so on - thereâs a LOT of things wrong with your build.
A better example of a pet ritualist build is this one from the Discord channel: http://www.grimtools.com/calc/YZe9BWkZ. Although I donât agree with all of its choices and Iâm 100% sure there are stronger pet ritualist builds possible, it still produces FAR better DPS than your pet ritualist.
âWeâ certainly donât know that - or at least, thatâs not what the person who made the strongest pet cabalist to date has said about the issue:
In short, there are many more pet builds still to come. Pet builds arenât like other builds - theyâre far more complicated to understand and design, and even the most experienced veterans have a hard time getting a handle on them. Unlike aether builds with Krieg or vitality builds with Dark One, there arenât obvious and ready-made OP sets to make easy builds around, and there isnât a large pipeline of veterans creating new pet builds, period. So it takes longer than for other build types.
I appreciate your enthusiasm and willingness to experiment and perhaps you may have the aptitude to eventually become successful at making pet builds, but itâs clear that right now you donât yet have the experience and understanding of how pet mechanics work. My advice is to spend more time asking questions in build threads, studying existing builds to learn why some work better than others, and refrain from making grand pronouncements about what is and isnât effective in the current pet meta until youâre capable of crafting your own top-tier pet builds.
I respect the detailed answer/rebuttal you provided to OP, DaShiv, so donât take the following criticism harshly.
Why are you spending this much time rebutting an uninformed rant (sorry OP but true) when you could be crafting/delivering an amazing Spellbinder pet/hybrid build to the starving masses?
Traveling to Asia for a business trip and wonât have access to GD for another week and a half. Thereâs only so much I can do on Grimtools without testing the results in-game.
Also, The Night King 2.0 needs to be delivered before Iâm allowed to publish any new builds. So much to do, so little time!
Just how much pet OA should a pet build have on average? I only have 50% pet OA with permanent auras unless I basically redo all the gear, components, augments and devotions.
Are you using Mogdrogen the Wolf constellation? Having an extra 15% pet OA on relatively low downtime will really help the pets reach a comfortable crit chance. It depends on your build purpose - whether your build is defensive or concentrates on getting the highest DPS possible. After flat and percentage bonuses, Iâd say the minimum OA for your pets should be roughly 3200-3300, which means a 65% pet OA for a base 2000 OA pet if you donât have Blood of Dreeg / Emboldening Presence / Flame Touched (after the expansion, I donât think thereâs a pet that has lower than 2000 OA).
Flat bonuses add before percentage bonuses, so if you have a flat 150 bonus from one of those skills, you would need roughly 55%, and having two of those skills (Conjurer or Pyromancer) brings the requirement down to under 50%. Necromancer doesnât have any flat OA bonuses, so if youâre using that class, it would be nice for you to show your Grimtools so we could see where you can add additional pet OA.
http://www.grimtools.com/calc/YZe9lK6Z is mostly my final build. I dislike the other summoner builds already listed cause they just use skills that I just donât want to use. Hellhound isnât worth it unless you go for fire and chaos damage. The Summon Familiar would require focusing mostly on lightning damage.
With taking my time so that I donât get swarmed sometimes, the build listed in the Grimtools has gotten my Cabalist to lvl97 and into Ultimate difficulty (did do AoM content before starting the next difficulty).
Switching your belt to the Mythical Shadowfiend Cord gives you an easy +5% pet OA for barely any cost (your Vitality resist will still be overcapped and you get +Necro skills as well as +Occultist skills), and between that, Mogdrogen the Wolf proc, and your Blight Fiend giving a whopping 290 DA shred, you should have nothing to worry regarding if your pets have the proper OA or not.
Iâm not well-versed on proper Cabalist point distribution, but I do know that getting your Reap Spirit to 17/16 (one more point than you currently have) gives you a second Wraith, and there should be little downside to giving your Blight Fiend a 22/12 Rotting Fumes. Thatâs just the things that caught me initially, Iâm sure other people will raise their thoughts.
In my opinion the main limiters for pure pet builds are variety in pet oriented equipment/effects, and the item granted pets.
There is a somewhat low variety of pet oriented items to begin with, and there are some that are either meant for hybrids, or have seemingly bizarre attribute choices that render them unusable or instantly outclassed in every way by a different item rather than serving as a viable alternate choice.
Just about every slot besides chest and weapon is limited in variety and choice for a pet oriented character, although I suppose as a side effect it makes figuring out what gear to aim for very simple.
Another issue is you have items like Salazarâs blade, or the blightshard amulet with unique pets that are attached only to those items and end up rarely used because the items are not particularly powerful to begin with and are beaten by better choices for the same slot that also have better pets or effects.
Unrelated to the above two points, my opinion is that there is missing some variety in both pet appearance and function, most currently behave and function similarly. I would love to see a pet that behaved like a classical rogue, dealing heavy and rapid damage but is remarkably frail. Or a pet that specializes in healing and debilitating enemies, or another spellcaster other than the familiar with a lean towards ranged massive area damage. Maybe even one whose only focus is diverting all allied damage to itself while disrupting/annoying enemies.
Appearance wise, it feels like too many pets are some variety of undead. Various Câthonians (who wouldnât want a mini-GravaâThul pet?) a Wendigo, etc would all be very cool.
Survivability of skeletons depends entirely upon the whims of the AI. At times the mage and archer skeletons like to run within melee range of bosses and heroes. Sometimes skeletons die to the acid/poison pools some mobs leave behind when they die. Most of the time skeletons do pretty well since my army just steamrolls through trash surprisingly well. Lvl97 and almost to Krieg in Act 1 Ultimate. Itâs just bosses and heroes that may do AoE and splash damage that are a pita at times.
There is one thing though that grinds my gears, Shepherd of Lost Souls set lets you have 2 Hellhounds, Mythical Natureâs Call Regalia lets you have 2 Briarthorns, Mythical Will of Bysmiel lets you have 2 Summon Familiars, there are multiple items that will let you summon more then 3 skeletons at a time or let you have more then the maximum of 10.
This topic is about Necro dual class for summoner builds.