Raise Skeletons is that awkward skill where if you buff it up too much, it becomes an unstoppable AoE menace that can be one of the top Crucible clearers in the game, but if you don’t buff it enough, it falters in content other skills can clear easily.
As of now, the two most high-achieving Skeleton builds are the Lost Souls Set and the Witching Hour + Ghol Blight Fiends (although Nery’s Crucible video has an impossible green with +3 to Undead Legion in a Kaisan amulet, so a realistic build won’t do as well). I’m aware they can do SR 85 and Ravager, but do you think they can use a damage buff to be able to clear things more quickly and safely? You can always tone down Lost Souls + Witching Hour if the builds get too crazy, but Skeletons aren’t exactly swimming in build diversity.
There are multiple Skeleton builds out there that take much longer to clear Crucible like Guardian of Death’s Gate, Fire Conduit Skeletons, and so forth, and their frail nature means you have to gear significantly in pet resistances to make sure they survive enough to damage the enemy significantly.
I know that superboss times shouldn’t be that much of a metric, but I tried Callagdra with Skeletons, and guess how long it took to kill it?
Twenty-three and a half minutes
Maya’s best pet build kills it in less than 8. I’m not expecting Skeletons to survive such an encounter, but having them do more damage would help immensely in handling the content easier.
All “solutions” I can think of seem too late to implement at this stage of the game or make them too op.
The issue I see with Skeletons is that, where they are strong, they perform really well… but where they are weak, that weakness is also that much more apparent.
Like, they can easily mess up enemy AI pathing, absolutely wreck bosses that have little or no AoE and gain a ton of potential DPS from sources of flat damage. But, against bosses like Cally with dangerous AoE, they just melt.
I am aware that you can reduce their CD or make each cast summon more Skeletons and having a weakness is not a bad thing. But, yeah they do feel more “rigid” in terms of how you build them and… feel like you have to put in more work to get similar performance out of them compared to say Briarthorns for example.
I know my “bias” against Skeletons is no secret, but I am not lying when I say I have tried everything I can think of, to make a Skeleton pet build that I actually liked, only to fail. Maybe it has to do with my building style or piloting, maybe I simply expect them to fulfill a role they were never intended for. Perhaps other builders have had more success with them or even prefer them over other pets. They still seem great for Crucible and SR 75-76 after all.
I find myself being content with Revenant and Blood Knight pendant Skeletons these days, whenever I want to scratch that itch
which imo is the most invalid of all tests/metrics for skeletons, since she is the absolute hardcounter to skeletons
i think SR 75-76 would be way more relevant, and pardon me for daring to suggest it warrant inclusion; late game levelling
^many beginners either hate levelling with skeletons, or is straight up put off/told not to, because without “proper” care they can fall apart in their hands in late game levelling, and their dps murder machine is apparently not enough to carry them, and they don’t have the “experience” yet to proper take care of their setup to account for the skeleton “cannon fodder”(gimmick?)
You’ll never hear me argue against stronger skeletons. That being said, numerous variations of skeleton builds should be able to do anything in the game well, save for Callagdra.
Here’s the same build as the Callagdra build doing Crucible. It also does SR85 fairly smoothly (having done it twice and getting killed by Reaper and Fabius, but then succeeding) and Ravager with little issue.
For completeness, I’d try the same version that Nofika4u got a 4:12 Crucible time last year, but the Corruptor of Souls set was altered since he last ran it, so it would need to compromise on equipment to get the additional points in Undead Legion needed to get it back to 20/12. I am nowhere near as good in Crucible as Nofika, so who knows what would happen in his hands?
Skeletons are really strong, until they are not. Against high damage, they just crack and since they have CD isn’t convinent to redeploy them. In Crucible (if I remember correctly) pets lose buffs, if they die and it’s not easy to keep all of them alive, even with precise micro management. I mean, lots of debuffs, ground damage and occasional shotgun attacks.
SR, I am not confident in piloting my usual Skeleton builds in 85. You have to pay attention to lots of small details, personally don’t think I can do it reliably. SR 75-76 is more realistic expectations. It’s worth mentioning my Skeletons are tailored for high damage, one can use more defensive map, but not sure how helpful would be for Skeletons Cabalist. It’s not like the Conjurer, where you can go for more tankiness.
Agreed. And the unconverted vitality damage makes their leveling damage sub-par.
Its a mixture of inherent fragility, alongside the difficulty of getting key (elemental, acid, aether-chaos) resists on gear for them in a leveling environment that makes them fragile.
Combine all that with a slow startup animation where they can be damaged, and you get the absurdity of running screaming across the korvaak arena on normal while the pets die as quickly as they are summoned without dealing notable damage. Thankfully that doesnt happen all that much anymore.
Also no real way of healing them. Regen was removed from call of the grave, deathwatcher pendant modifier only affects the player.
highly disagree
skeleton dmg output is fine during levelling; you can level as aether pets and it’s “fine”, aether just sucks at endgame by comparison
unconverted dmg during levelling doesn’t really matter much because MC has basically 0 defences to deal with partial dmg types from pets, be it acid, vit, fire, aether whatever silly mix we can throw in with or without MIs
it’s this, and only this, heck your resistance point i don’t even really fully agree with because it is technically doable to cover (except pierce res)
Pets have 70% armour absorb and can’t get more, so phys dmg always goes through no matter what. Ontop of that skeletons armour rating is naturally low, “makes sense”, combined with low(est?) phys res and phys dmg is quickly the main reason why skeletons crumble like paper - and pet armour bonus increases is meaningless because of their low base armour rating
doesn’t really matter, stacking pet regen amounts to a less trickle than pet lifesteal does, because there is so very little of it even outside Call of the Grave could combine.
personally i’m fine with skeletons being considered “disposable” glass cannon (fodder) pets, but they still need some slight staying power
be it higher native base resist to make resist coverage easier/higher totalled, inherent leech (unlikely with v1.2 changes? ), tweaks to armour rating or phys res?
or easier resummon QoL that doesnt’ lock you into 2 specific items, while still not really being enough for some high dmg or burst encounters, this option would potentially end up being “tolerable” tho also the least favourable imo
also thought of giant’s blood being AoE and/or Dryad being aoe, tho i could see issues arising from both, by just ending up making the regular pets way stronger from that.
The Fire Skeletons I posted about before performed a 6:20 Crucible, and a 14:45 SR 75-76
Pets Pyromancer, which has Primal Instinct instead of Skeletons, performed 6:05 in Crucible and a blistering (for me, shut up) 10:22 SR 75-76
Fire Beastcaller’s Conjurer, where I was trying to match nofika4u’s build near exactly, performs a 5:21 Crucible in my hands and a 10:37 SR75-76. That’s regarding the fact that this build can somehow survive Fevered Rage in Crucible and is not for the feint of heart.
There’s a lot about Skeletons I can test next, likely will be Chaos Skeletons to see how it fares compared to standard Chaos Conjurers, since Witching Hour is perfectly designed for Skeleton builds, it should have the advantage, but that’s why I’m testing this stuff out, to see how it fares in the same hands compared to glassifying the build for extreme outliers in Crucible times.
Lost Souls cabalist is a pretty good all round build but still behind the best non-pet builds imo. It’s speedy in CR and fast for a pet build in SR 75-76. Can push SR 90 with very careful piloting. Ghol and Bysmiel with skeletons works fine as well but both the summoner and skeletons are missing some tankiness for safe SR 75.
I personally prefer skeletons to Conjurer builds since they solve aoe issues most pet builds struggle a bit with, but beastcaller for example can be built much safer for high SR and better vs super bosses.
I think the biggest issue with skeleton tankiness is still pet resists even though it got some buffs lately. Its a struggle to cap aether/chaos/ele/bleed/pierce without Taskmaster of the Wild MIs and you usually wont have much res overcaps, making pulling multiple bosses in SR an issue since they can’t handle debuffs. Skeletons could really use some base bleed res. I also think Bysmiel’s Command devo duration could be increased so we get full flat RR uptime. Maybe some pet ADctH could be added/increased to help sustain.
Mind you, these are just my Crucible times and they can go faster with better hands, but at what cost to survivability and intense piloting to squeeze out every last bit of DPS? The Conjurer definitely feels safer even without using Wendigo Totem because of the double Briarthorn + sheer number of item granted pets the Skeleton players don’t have access to, but comparatively speaking, it looks like Skeletons are in a good spot.
I must be too used to meme concepts like Skeleton Death Knight + Defiler and haven’t had the opportunity to see what an optimized Skeleton build would look like until I did the testing. The above post is correct about Skeletons needing Base Bleeding resist, but other than that, there’s not much I see recommending without going into the mind of an elite Crucible player and seeing how to make things faster.
But also, to the deepest bowels of Chthon with Calla for making me go through that with Skeletons.
You did mention that you had tested an elemental Spellbinder pets. Yet looking at this build above, the build I had doodled had a lot of similar investments. Obviously the elephant is that an extra 80 RR is huge. But swap in Reap for the dog and birds …and the dev path looks pretty similar
I guess what I’m waffling on about is: Can I convince you to take a crack at this concept?: test and make it better…
I was thinking that even if the skellies were somewhat fragile, the DoT could be leveraged while the other pets are still at work. - Although the resist are overall not bad, even if I was intentionally building them somewhat fragile.
With enough life, resist, and healing skeletons can manage to stay up (I mean, constant resummoning, but never at zero skeletons) vs. Calla, but… it’s not the most efficient, this took 20 minutes.
I think what could really help skeletons while maintaining their “squishy, disposable theme” would be increasing their summoning animation speed in some way. Not sure if that’d be possible via endgame items only.
That being said, numerous variations of skeleton builds should be able to do anything in the game well, save for Callagdra.
. If you have a particular setup in mind, I can test it 