Crucible Setup GrimTools Gladiator 151-170 - 5:54
Interestingly, Beastcaller’s Cowl performed a lot better than Circlet of the Great Serpent in Crucible. It’s a combination of the resistances helping keep the Skeletons alive, the extra damage with good uptime thanks to Time Dilation, and the Crucible buffs on the Blight Fiends.
SR Setup GrimTools
This spec is the same as the above with Circlet of the Great Serpent and Conduit of Undying Whispers with the Skeleton modifier to add in resummoning pets faster, as you’ll have to do with this build in SR. This is capable of SR 75, but very poorly. If you want to do SR with skeletons, Lost Souls is a much better experience. This setup does 6:30-7:30 in Crucible. The skeletons die a lot but it doesn’t matter too much since you can resummon them without too much trouble.
Crucible Setup (MI) GrimTools Gladiator 151-170 - 5:07
This setup uses a Theurgist’s Kaisan’s Eldritch Eye of Caged Souls for a +5 Skeletons on top of the +1 all skills which allows you to use 2 Yugol’s rings. This also uses Taskmaster’s Reaper’s Leggings of Kings. I tested out Bysmiel’s Domination but it didn’t perform any better than Mogdrogen’s Ardor.
Glass Crucible Setup (MI, consumables) GrimTools Gladiator 151-170 - 4:02 (banner + 3 beacon + 4 buffs)
This setup uses the same MIs as above, but also sacrifices Giant’s Blood for Flame Torrent and Cleansing Waters. It uses consumables to provide enough health regen to survive. This setup exists as proof of power but is not a good option for actually playing the game.
If it weren’t for Blight Fiends being so weak defensively I’d ask if you ever looked into using a Spectral Crown for even faster skele resummoning. I can’t imagine it’d be better than using circlet for SR though.
Unfortunate that there’s not much reason to get Guardian’s Gaze for an acid/chaos proc either, but that’s just an aesthetic thing because i really like that proc.
Is there a reason to not bind skeles to eldritch fire/rumor on that note? I would think the lack of a CD + the autospreading would make them better on skeles. Or would the implicit crit on the other pets make them better for dealing damage with said procs (assuming it applies)?
I’d probably take Mask of Lost Souls over Spectral Crown for that purpose, but I don’t think either would the best option in any case on this build.
Chances are I bound it to Hellhound when respecing into this setup because I did devotions before skills and hadn’t taken Raise Skeleton yet. Binding it to skeletons would definitely be better.
Depends on SR vs Crucible. In either, Karroz and Sentinel are the only two enemies you need to worry about Mind Control from. In Crucible all you really need is awareness. As long as you know to kill those two before they have the chance you’re good. In SR, I pretty much always swap to Nosfarattis the second I see either of them unless I happen to be wearing Circlet of the Great Serpent. In any case, thank god Kaisan doesn’t have Mind Control anymore.
I’ve never used Cleansing Waters celestial power before, do you not need to bind it to something for it to proc? The only skills you can bind to it are already in use?
It is for the things the devotion provides from its nodes, not for the proc.[/QUOTE]
Yeah, this. On rare occasions I’ve tried to actually bind it do something and use it strategically, but I’ve seen extremely limited benefit from doing so.
From what I’ve seen with this build, it doesn’t make much of a difference. With Lost Souls, the Mages seem to be the best by far though.
This build does very much rely on steamrolling everything before it can kill you, so you have to pilot pretty aggressively to ensure you kill the right things in the right order to avoid getting overwhelmed. It pilots pretty similarly to the 1.0.6.1 WH Skeleton builds, but pretty differently from any of the other 1.1.x.x builds that have been posted.
Without seeing a video of your run it’s hard to give specific advice, but any combo should be doable. What you generally want to do is already be in the bottom left when wave 170 starts and you should able to kill whoever spawns there before anything else shows up. You need to be careful on wave 169 to make sure your pets are in good condition going into wave 170.
My experience is that cleansing waters is only really good to use strategically on builds that have problems dealing with reflect. Something that pet builds don’t really worry about. Also has a use if cally enrage can be cleansed i suppose.
A physical cadence DK I made for fun a while back needed this to cleanse reflect off mobs before nuking them with 300k cadence crits.
You could do something like this but it doesn’t make sense in practice. Dying God is only worth taking for Chaos/Vitality builds. Chaos builds need Eldritch Fire which is possible but only with some extreme sacrifices (including the flat RR). Witching Hour builds need Time Dilation so it doesn’t pay off for them. I could see Mogdrogen + Dying God maaaybe work on Lost Souls or Diviner, but both of those tend to need Ishtak to stay alive.
So going through items again, have you ever looked into chaos/acid reap spirits with this + fiendgaze tome? Not all the vit would get converted, but cold -> chaos and some vit->acid. Also means you can get chaos/acid yeti.
I changed the devotions slightly to include Blizzard and updated the links in the OP accordingly. I also managed a 5:07 Gladiator on the MI setup using an additional devotion change to take Cleansing Water for use specifically on enemies with shields that cost you a couple of extra seconds.
I’ve messed with Fiendgaze Tome on Lost Souls and had really good results, but I don’t think it makes a ton of sense on Ghol. If you’re going for Chaos and Skeletons, Witching Hour is always going to win(although not as much so in SR). There is already Cold/Poison synergy, getting RR for both from both Vulnerability and Rumor on a Cabalist, and Chaos doesn’t make a lot of sense on a Ritualist without Hellfire. You also can’t reasonably get to 23/16 Reap Spirit while using Voidwhisper Bands.
I’ve also never been impressed by the RR on Plaguebearer. Even when it was 25% I never found it noticable, probably because of the high CD and lack of controlability.
I have been messing around with Reap Spirit + Ghol Ritualist and have seen some pretty good results, just with Acid/Cold/Physical.
Is there any setup when it can be useful? Maybe with Lost Souls set to get 2x hellhound with summon time under 2s. Unfortunately LS set block using Great Serpent helm to have 3x blightfiends. Also blocks Diviner set to get Wraiths.
*EDIT: or just Lost Soul amulet + that offhand + Great Serpent helm to have recastabe 1x Hellhound + 3x Blightfiends?
