FoA 1.3.1.1 Skeleton Hall of Bones

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
1

This round of testing was done in response to this thread:

With the emphasis on “how much damage is sufficient for Raise Skeletons to feel worth it over other pet builds?” The OP of that thread provided multiple videos that demonstrated a roughly 30 second Ravager kill. Regardless of what people think about whether those times are sufficient, know that Ravager uses its second Dreadgaze around the 25 second mark, and now that pets have no means to counter RR abilities, Skeletons are as good as dead if they get hit by RR abilities.

Since Skeletons could be converted to many different types, the aim of my testing was to filter out between Skeleton builds which would reach the upper echelon and those builds that aren’t worth experimenting further. NOTE: I do not have Ascended Affixes on any of these builds, which would increase their power level further.

Gold Standard Builds

  1. Chaos Skeletal Mage Cabalist:
    Patch v1.3.1.1 Crucible Gameplay
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSLGmFYPYuc

  2. Acid Skeletons Cabalist: Cabalist, Level 100 (GD 1.3.1.0) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCzfnS_7tus

New addition to the builds - low Health means that it’s fairly easy to die to superboss battles like Callagdra, but DPS is so high that this build has the fastest Calla kill out of all the Skeleton builds I’ve tested [roughly 2:30]

  1. Guardian’s of Death’s Gate Cabalist: Cabalist, Level 100 (GD 1.3.1.0) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4ZZTjK7_YY

There are probably better ways to place the Occultist points than on Raven, but +2 to Occultist skills needed to be used somehow.

  1. Witching Hour Cabalist: Cabalist, Level 100 (GD 1.3.0.0) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pouDSd18qO0

The above video was from before 1.3.1.1, but the build plays very much the same and gets better results in this patch.

Below Top Tier, but still good
5. Scorv’s Wendigo Vitality Cabalist: Cabalist, Level 100 (GD 1.3.1.0) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJj-0qqDaMU - Crucible run
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rP6QNb_sXQM - Callagdra (Ultimate, no Altar)

Honestly, for a build that injects the Hellhound with a 2X TDM, I was expecting performance to be at the top level, but it falls just short of the Gold Standard.

  1. Lost Souls Vitality / Chaos Skeletons: Cabalist, Level 100 (GD 1.3.1.0) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9PkPNq2dAM - Crucible Gameplay

It took a good amount of tries to get a good build with this set, but taking the new Shield and taking Aeon’s to help with cooldown did the trick.

  1. Lightning Bysmiel Set Cabalist: Cabalist, Level 100 (GD 1.3.1.0) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator

This is one of those which has the potential to be great, but also has the potential to just fall apart at Wave 200 or in the tougher SR / superboss battles. Presumably, Cold Ravens with the Archer off-hand works similar to this.

  1. Aether Ritualist from @minh_pham & nofika Ritualist, Level 100 (GD 1.3.1.0) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator

Sadly, Spiritmonger just doesn’t compare to going Cryptstalker and going gangbusters with Reap Spirits and Primal Spirits. I made a similar build that focused more on Briarthorn investment just in case the “standard” version of placing the White Wolf everywhere gets changed in any way.

  1. Vitality + Bleed Skeleton Ritualist: Ritualist, Level 100 (GD 1.3.1.0) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2svXA5aXNI

I’ve heard pure Vitality Ritualist has much more potential, but there’s just something about letting the enemies die to Bleed that makes this build feel very right.

Do Not Play
Fire Skeletons: The only way to convert pet Chaos damage to Fire damage is farming 2 Magi rings, and there’s no way I’m recommending anyone farming Magi rings for this nonsense. 1 ring and something like a medal that converts Chaos to Fire, sure, but even GDStashers have limits.

4 Likes
2

**RESERVED, but to give some closing thoughts, I’ll wait until there’s a response to the whole “pets get hard countered by RR now” thing, but Skeletons already do a ton of damage and I think the only reason they get overshadowed by Beastcaller’s is that it gets to have double Briar and double Hellhound and have double the pet potential that most pet builds simply don’t have access to.

3

Why is this video from August 16? Skeletons can’t take on superbosses nearly as comfortably in the current patch.

The strongest Skeleton builds right now are Skeletal Mages and Skeletons using the Desecrator Covenant set.

2 Likes
4

I think vitality skeleton ritualist is very strong too. At least pre 1.3.1.0 they used to be the fastest ravager killing skeleton build (even the defensive oriented build of Navlord could kill Rav in 16 sec), not sure how they are now. For me they are the hardest one to choose devo currently.

1 Like
5

Well before 1.3.1 and after 1.3.1 is pretty different for pet in term of survivability. It’s not just “minor resistance change”. It does matter a lots about their survivability. Right now they’re too fragile so you are almost forced to do infinity build with covenant set for 0.8s cd.

6

If that’s the case then it only holds that covenant is the strongest set. But since OP also include chaos mage so I wonder what about vitality skeleton ritualist.

7

That link appears empty

8

Not very good. It was never mainly about skeletons to begin with — skeletons just supplement some damage. Ritualist’s skeletons currently perform especially poorly against celestials.

9

Oh wow. I did not know this. So the actual source of insane dmg is that each type of pet contribute a few dmg? Since in a ritualist skeleton build, it is a combination of the following pets:

  1. Skeletons
  2. Primal spirit (20% TDM)
  3. Blight fiend
  4. Briarthorn
  5. Great White Wolf
  6. Salazar Harbinger (some might not have this but use double primal spirit instead)

@Duskdeep86 May I ask, if skeletons do not deal insane dmg, what is the pet that provides the most dmg among those? Since pre 1.3.1 it was these builds who pushed the fastest ravager kill time, and people also maxed out skeletons in these builds. I would be appreciated if there could be some insight to it.

For performance, I have not tested other bosses, just tested against ravager and it manages to do from 18-20 sec using Navlord’s defensive version, which is acceptable given how fragile skeleton is currently. So if they are buffed in defense their kill time could be higher.

10

QQ20261013-210049
QQ20261013-2100491358×840 127 KB

1 Like
11

Oh interesting. Guess I need to wait for Navlord to update the tool again.

Btw @NavLord , would you mind also updating the pet dps tool? Thank you very much. Also, it seems that many people, including me got the problem of infinite horizon dots when using the old version.

12

Hmm, if this is the case, then is it actually better to switch to the dagger that provides 2x primal spirit? Since Idk how much dmg you would lose/increase in this case.

13

With all the discussion and hyping of Chaos Mage builds, I assumed that nofika or someone would have had a current patch video. That was not the case; I just uploaded a current patch Crucible run - it plays just as well as Witching Hour or Guardian of Death’s Gates.

My process is to first run Crucible to get a sense of clear speed, then go through multiple SR runs to see how they fare in higher SR (36+). Celestials have numerous mechanics unique to them, so I’m not going to focus on those yet until I get a solid sense of how each build plays.

Thank you for the heads-up! I fixed the link in the OP.

1 Like
14

Chaos Mage should be considered the highest-damage skeleton build right now. It and the set skeleton build have no problem doing SR 36. As for performance against celestials, that depends more on the person playing, because if you kite well, you’ll relatively kill faster.

1 Like
15

Wait for the tool to update. Testing with the tool will be faster and more accurate — more intuitive than judging by experience like we do.

16

Thanks I will.

Also, if you said so then it’s even more reason for skeletons to be buffed because … it makes ritualist in a bad spot with current state. Still from my testing, even if it’s not the strongest, it should best all the other skeleton builds except chaos.

17

Hi @Duskdeep86 , unless I am doing something wrong, the chaos skeleton mage build like this actually does not have sufficiently good ravager kill time. Skeletons die way too quick and since I don’t have ishtak, I have to run around like crazy, leading to have slower ravager kill time. The best I can manage is actually 30 sec, which is pretty weird.

I tried multiple time and could not get a better kill time tbh. It’s even worse than the other builds I tested so far. If the build is meant to micromanage the skeletons then it is a big no for me since in other builds I tested, I also do not have to micromanage the skeletons (skeletons still dies a lot, but I dont have to move them out)

Link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mXsALSuAMYhRC7o-WWgGBCoGHvCejJLw/view?usp=sharing

GT: Cabalist, Level 100 (GD 1.3.1.0) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator

I have checked other builds and this one seems to have the worst ravager kill time so far Please Buff Skeleton CDR in Undead Legion and Maybe Reduce the CDR on Awakened Covenant Set

18

Tried both the Chaos Skeletal Mages and the Witching Hour and they both average around 3:30 against Callagdra (Ultimate - 0 Altars). I guess that’s the point where Skeletons perform worse against what I’ve done with Ghol’s Cabalist and what Duskdeep has done with Beastcaller’s.

So from a strictly numerical standpoint, Skeletons struggle a bit compared to other pet builds that don’t use Skeletons. Yes, I’d like to see Skeletons have a little more survivability. Maybe have the Revenants provide a defensive buff identical to what the Awakened Black Grimoire Skeleton does and have the Skeleton have a different buff in its place.

But at the end of the day, we’re talking about fighting some of the toughest superbosses. They basically drive a freight train through everything else. If we’re comparing pet builds vs non-pet builds, if Beastcaller’s the best comparison, I think Beastcaller got a little too much in terms of buffs; having +1 Brairthorn and +1 Hellhound is literally doubling our damage output, of course it’s going to be the best. But if that’s only “okay” compared to non-pet builds, that says more about pet skills needing a damage buff in general.

At this point, I don’t even know what we’re arguing. I don’t think the days of <1 minute Callagdra builds are going to survive a stream of nerfs, but if extreme enemy AoE is going to be the norm FoA forward, I don’t see a solution outside of recreating pet AI from the ground up so that pets don’t simply stand there and get shotgunned to death by tornadoes + ground effects + Bobr waves.

2 Likes
19

Hello everyone,

I know this has so far been a high-flying discussion among very experienced pet players, so sorry if my questions kinda kill the vibe.
I’m mostly a non-pet player, but I just started a new SSF playthrough focused on skeletons (Because it’s the only pet I have never played) so this thread is very fortuitous.

I was wondering if any of that is relevant to my current experience, or if this is solely an end-game optimization discussion, and whatever I can come up with should work ?

Any of those builds much better then the others for a somewhat inexperienced pet player ?
Anything of note about playing skelletons ?

I also see most of the builds are Cabalists… is Cabalist that much better on average than ritualist ? or any other combination ?

Thanks :slight_smile:

20

Silly question maybe but, Cold skellies ? Where do they fit in that tier list ?