Ghol Witching Hour Cabalist

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
,
21

Looking at the non-MI variant:

% Damage:

  • [li]All Damage: ~2000%[/li]Includes the +165% on 26/16 Raise Skeleton and Summon Blight Fiend.


    [li]Chaos: 1080%[/li]350% (Witching Hour) + 370% (Dying God) + 150% (2x Voidwhisper Bands) + 210% (Hellfire)


    [li]Acid: 430% [/li]120% (Ghol’s Mark) + 200% (Ghol’s set bonus) + 50% (Aspect of the Guardian) + 60% (Master of Death)


    [li]Fire: 360%[/li]50% (Bysmiel’s Iris) + 100% (Storm Spirit) + 210% (Hellfire)


    [li]Cold: 150%[/li]50% (Bysmiel’s Iris) + 100% (Storm Spirit)

RR:

  • [li]Chaos: 55%[/li]20 (Witching Hour) + 35 (Eldritch Fire)


    [li]Acid: 80%[/li]20 (Witching Hour) + 30 (Vulnerability) + 30 (Rumor)


    [li]Fire: 73%[/li]20 (Witching Hour) + 30 (Vulnerability) + 23 (Eldritch Fire)


    [li]Cold: 73%[/li]20 (Witching Hour) + 30 (Vulnerability) + 23 (Rumor)

Blight Fiends deal mostly Acid/Poison/Chaos
Skeletons deal mostly Chaos
Skeleton Mages deal mostly Fire
Blizzard and Rumor add some cold.

This build plays pretty differently from other current pet builds (although similar to the WH Skeleton builds from AoM). Very much tailored for crucible, steamroll or be killed. If there are any other build concepts you’re interested in, feel free to bounce some ideas off me.

22

As sigatrev said, that’s generally the way skeleton builds work. Steamroll or die. They’re amazing for MC, require a little more for Crucible, and i can’t really see them being that amazing for SR.

Also, the reminder that the cold RR exists on rumour as a good reason to not use Fiendgaze Tome is interesting (although fiendgaze has chaos/fire rr). I might have to look at the reap fiend setup some more – i just really liked the idea of specializing in chaos/acid primarily, and that TD helps with refreshing reap spirit. (I also think it would reset the cooldown on the weapon?)

Here were the ideas I came up with, just out of pure reference purposes. I was trying 3 piece ghol here but i’m not opposed to the idea of 4 piece at all.

https://www.grimtools.com/calc/4NOkQwaN
https://www.grimtools.com/calc/xZy6vDkN

I had more variations (like with bysmiel amulet and 4 piece ghol), but I forgot it was wednesday and don’t have windows updates turned off on this new PC, oops. Funny enough other than the somewhat unreliable procs for RR, my biggest concern was actually pet DA. 1 Ramzul rain probably just instakills them without any outside interference. At least those that aren’t reap spirits.

I really like the idea of reap spirits for SR just because they don’t die. I also really want to make that belt work, but Shadowfiend Cord resistances for the pets that can die… But most of the idea was that TD should be able to get rid of the need for any -CD from gear for reap spirits thanks to the duration buff.

But yeah, on that mention, ghol ritualist with reap spirits does sound pretty decent since the natural synergy already exists for acid cold. Maybe it’s time to look into that. And fiendgaze definitely seems like something that would fit more with lost souls, yeah.

If it weren’t for the loss of bysmiel’s iris heal, I would actually think the poison/chaos reap spirit would fit pretty well with the -chaos res conduit on ritualist combined alongside the ghol’s set bonus. But there’s no way I’d touch that unless I found a way to deal with not having overcap regen for dying god, or just don’t take dying god while taking TD (which sounds… awful?)

Maybe a build like that can be tailor made for SR where you have to resummon pets all the time anyways, so healing wouldn’t be as much of an issue for the pets. More a concern of your own healing in the end.

EDIT: Just realized I have 4 actives in that GT, oops. Well that makes things more interesting being able to drop one.

https://www.grimtools.com/calc/O2Gzpl5N this has room for shadowfiend cord + also the yugol ring can be replaced with voidwhisper (since I don’t have it), augments can be changed around pretty easily based off mogdrogen’s ardor roll and what you feel like you can get away with on overcaps.

Other big reason I looked into it is the consistent phys->chaos conversion. In that regard I suppose the cold to chaos can be looked at as a downside.

editing again, I see what you mean about ghol reap ritualist: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/JVlP33XV
Only thing I don’t like is the lack of TD but even then, spirits have way more leeway than fiends do when it comes to cdr vs duration. I have a suspicion this same setup can work with mogdrogen devotion, and a bleed/phys/poison/cold setup could happen. – it is, but 15 phys res is not ok.

23

That is true of builds of this particular style, but not necessarily all skeleton builds. With Lost Souls the Skeletons are actually quite tanky and you summon 4 at a time with reduced cooldown so it really does quite well in SR.

This is more what I had in mind for the Ritualist. It’s a little bit awkward but it consistently does 6:30-7:00 Gladiator, so that’s not too bad.

24

I forgot to mention that for Lost Souls it seems like it’s a little different.

I’m actually trying a ghol’s winter king setup next, simply because on paper it looks… kinda short of what it would need, but that’s not good enough for feedback. The winter king items seem cool but I’d like to get a better idea of how they could be improved, because I’ve always wanted to use them. Or maybe the build is good, I dunno. But that gets rid of setting up for physical damage at least.

Gonna be really rough using reap spirit with 0 CDR, that much is clear.

Thanks for the build for reference though, I forgot about the 3rd point of typhos giving poison resistance. Only ever used it for the bleed. Solves an issue with some of my theoried out builds.

25

I actually was just messing around with that tonight, haha. I was not really impressed, maybe you’ll have better luck than I did.

26

I’m not impressed on paper either at least. We’ll see when I get around to leveling it, I at least wanted a ritualist around in my arsenal, and being able to give feedback on weaknesses based off of experience instead of just paper math is nice.

Also man, looking at that phys/acid/cold setup more, it’s basically 1 point away from taking that 12% crit damage on typhos since the crossroads would be dropped for the same hp… it’s practically taunting me. But I came up with an alternative which has 4 flex points: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/qNY4DdWZ

Also that said, I looked into it a bit and I feel like the acid res component is POSSIBLY droppable…

  1. reap spirits immortal (100 all)
  2. blight fiends have 50 acid
  3. briarthorns have 500 acid
  4. set pet has 40 acid
  5. spiders from gloves immortal (100 all)
  6. primal spirit 0 acid

So only the primal spirit is heavily at a loss here – but it also has the highest HP of all the pets. maybe something to consider, probably not ultimately – especially since kaisan is a thing and overcaps are generally good. And generally speaking I’d say the primal spirit is the most important pet there anyways because it is the hardest hitting individual pet. Obviously this wouldn’t apply in deep SR, just like crucible and MC.

Maybe Wildpact Emerald would fit too, I suppose – little higher DA in the end. The biggest downside is it’s actually kind of hard to get because it’s a level 75 blue, which annoys the hell out of me, but thankfully I have one: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/JVlPYWxV

27

RIP witchhour, again.

Eventually lost soul is going to have 20 skeletons and still wont beat some random chaos build that slipped the ban hammer.

28

It’s not quite that simple. Without the MIs, this build doesn’t get much under 6:00 crucible clears and regardless it is pretty bad in SR.

Lost Souls builds done right can do 6:30-7:15 crucible, with rare runs under 6:00 (I saw 5:59 once), but they are much stronger defensively and are much better at SR.

The thing is though, there isn’t a lot you can really do with Lost Souls to make it stronger offensively. I’ve tried a ton of devotion setups, going as offensive as possible down numerous routes, and saw no improvement over Dying God + Ishtak. MIs don’t really do much either.

29

Do you have a GT or guide link for a decent Lost Souls skele build? I’ve been playing around with some things in GT, but I’m not fantastic at making builds. Most of the stuff I’ve fiddled with seems to be more 50/50 vitality and chaos, but Cabalist has very little chaos synergy or RR, and I can’t seem to find any reasonably updated guides.

30

I’m still messing around with the particulars, but these are the two main variations I’ve been iterating around:
Vitality: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/vNQWnplV
Chaos/Vitality: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/a2Epl6mN

I’ll probably make a thread for them this weekend, onced I’ve finished trying out a few more things.

31

Hi. Thank you for doing cabalist / skeleton builds again!

Can someone summarize how the devotion setup works? I am really bad at those. Also, some reasoning why you take what you take (e.g. no shepards call on a pet build) would be much appreciated.

Edit:
nvm, I got it figured out with the help from friendly people in the discord :slight_smile:

For others curious, here is the correct route:

  • Chaos Crossroads
  • Wretch
  • Lizard
  • Eldritch
  • Raven
  • Behemoth
  • Rumor
  • Solael’s Witchblade
  • Raven
  • Eldritch
  • Eel
  • Solemn Watcher
  • Lion
  • Ulo
  • Lion
  • Dying God
  • Aeon’s Hourglass
  • 4pt into Blizz
32

Shepherd’s Call is good but by no means necessary. For this build, it’s a combination of the fact that the build already has a ton of active skills so adding one more to trigger Shepherd’s Call make more awkward to play, and the fact that there are other high-value places to spend the devotion.

33

Any thoughts on using mythical undying oath for AOE flat vitality damage? I thought this would be extremely powerful since the amulet boosts blood of dreeg and 30 flat vit damage that applies to your 18 base pets (13 skeletons, 2 hellhounds, 1 dirge, 1 bird, 1 blight fiend) x vit damage multiplier.

34

I wonder: is there any reason not to bind Ulo’s “Cleansing Waters”? I get the offer to bind it to my “Korvan Swiftness” movement skill, but I’m not sure if I lose anything from that… To add an AOE slow & cleanse to the jump does sound kinda nice.

35

No reason not to bind it or use it if you have the option to :slight_smile:

36

I think it can even purge madqueen’s buff if you time it right? Had a few times she just straight up dead without the aura showing.

37

There is no reason not to bind it if you have a spare skill you can bind it to, but it also won’t do you a lot of good. Cleansing Waters can be useful if you are able to use it strategically, but doing so requires having a skill you would never otherwise cast to bind it to and adds piloting complexity that is usually not worthwhile.

38

I wanted to say thank you again sigatrev.

My first char to even reach 100, and now, after some trading for Ghol’s in #trade from discord, I am nearly there with this build - and already I am shredding ultimate and dabbled in crucible and SR a bit.

I am in farm mode currently and look forward to get the final component blueprints.

I’d love to check out the Lost Souls build, once you finalize that, so please do continue doing skeleton builds 8)

39

Hey Sig,

I recently rebuilt my cabalist from a birb build, which had solid damage and good survivability, to a vit/chaos Lost Souls skelebuild. I’m still working out kinks, but in testing so far, it seems capable of similar damage with vastly less survivability (though the testing was a couple components short and the latest iteration has some devo changes since I tested). Want to find the right mix of pushing offense but keeping pets (and me) alive long enough to let that offense happen. Wondered if you’d take a look and see what you’d recommend:
https://www.grimtools.com/calc/r2Bzbwj2

40

Check out this thread.

tl;dr: Lost Souls Skeletons need Dying God for damage and Ishtak for survivability. Use both and you should be fine. Using Voidwhisper Bands underperforms offensively compared to using 23/16 Reap Spirit with Spiritbinder Glyphs.