Hardcore Ultimate Pet Warlock - The Raventouched

[JY_626]

Build Intro:

So I finally got around to making my own Pet build. Early disclaimer that I theorycrafted this blind (means I did not even look at a pre-existing guide; Because I like racking my own brain for ideas) so sorry if this was rough around the edges. This one took hours, since the biggest challenge was skill point shortage and I actually had difficulty choosing a second mastery to pair with my Occultist (For the record, I went with warlock because it was the class which offered a ton of Offensive ability for around 50 skills points).

Image Source: https://bugmeyer.artstation.com/projects/EVD4

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Pros & Cons

Pros:

+Extremely fast and efficient crowd clearing
+Good single target damage (Assuming that caster & pets focus fire)
+Durable pets and caster
+Relatively simple playstyle

Cons:

-50/50 damage split (Caster needs to contribute & not stand back idly)
-Durable, but not tanky pets (They die if the fight goes on too long)
-Below average damage output if the pets do not help out

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Leveling

For leveling to 94, I would recommend this guide right here (By Monceux)

Long story short- You will be leveling as a cold arcanist on Normal / Elite with mainly Trozan’s Sky Shard, Olexra’s Flash Freeze & Greater Ice Spike. You can upgrade to Seal of the Night at higher levels, but I personally did not find it necessary on Elite.

For devotions, you have two choices- Either follow the leveling guide above or scroll down and refer to my devotion path instead. If you follow the above guide, then you will need a complete respec at level 94 and must level up certain devotion powers from scratch. If you choose mine, you will lose out on some damage, but start out on Ultimate with nearly maxed devotion power levels and won’t have to respec devotion points. Personally, I have tried both methods and still had a smooth leveling experience on both accounts. If you haven’t tried it before, Trozan’s Sky Shard is one of the best area nukes in Grim Dawn even without the cold damage bonuses from constellations (provided that you have maxed the skill and its modifiers early on as instructed) so it is powerful as it is.

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Build

Final Build: Warlock, Level 100 (GD 1.1.9.8) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator
Attribute points- PHYSIQUE 97 / CUNNING 10 / SPIRIT 00

NOTE: Final attribute points allocation can be highly variable depending on the affixes you get for the Monster Infrequent gear. Ideally, the point allocation above should work if you have the correct Prefix and Suffix as shown in Grimcalc. Personally, my in-game attribute combination was different, since I used an inferior quality item as my MI. In any case, look at the values above as approximations but not absolutes & have a Respec potion on standby.

Play this class as you would for a caster- LMB is a spammable skill & your RMB is debuff. Activate Bysmiel’s Authority if you need the Resist Reduction or a quick heal. Constantly refresh Blood of Dreeg, while using Displacement and Mirror of Ereoctes as defensive / tactical skills.

One thing I must admit was that I originally wanted a support healer build, since I was going to focus heavily on the ravens. But I grossly underestimate how powerful they could be when fully built and paired with a hellhound which was leveled just as heavily- Crowds died in record time, Monster Shrines were razed, Kymon lasted a measly 18 seconds and Korvakk went down in only 1 minute, 40 seconds. Granted, these were Ultimate campaign benchmarks but they were pretty impressive. Survivability wasn’t really an issue when my character had more than 50% Physical Resistance by default at all times with pets that were just as resilient- Enemies either died to my pets because they were too distracted taking me down or I could get a lot of free shots in when they fixated on my pets.

As happy as I was with the results, I was kind of disappointed that it would have made a poor support healer build. I was counting on ‘Mend Flesh’ not for myself, but for my ravens to heal each other and the hound. It never worked as intended though, as much as I played around with pet stances. Either I healed them with Blood of Dreeg / Bysmiel’s Authority or they would surely overextend if I didn’t pull back . As such, I’d rather just put all pets on fully aggressive mode since they were literal killing machines.Following that, it’s best to refund all points from Mend Flesh (unless you can make it work) and put them somewhere else instead.

After finishing this guide, I noticed there was a similar one written by Maya in the past: The Fat Birb - Pet Warlock . There are quite a number of differences, but the gist is that Maya’s built has more powerful pets, while mine puts more emphasis on the caster. Personally, I am not a fan of ‘lazy’ pet builds and like to be more active otherwise I would zone out mid session, but I know that most people might prefer the more ‘traditional’ playstyle so I’m including Maya’s guide here as well. That way, it’ll offer more customization opportunities to fit the mold of varying playstyles

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Devotion

1. Green Crossroads
2. Raven
3. Purple
4. Empty Throne
5. Rhowan’s Crown (3 nodes to Elemental Storm, Bind to Summon Hellhound)
6. Red
7. Jackal
8. Bysmiel’s Bonds (Bind to Curse of Fragility)
9. Viper
10. Chariot of the Dead (Bind to Maiven’s Sphere of Protection)
11. Quill
12. Hawk
13. Yellow
14. Lion
15. Refund Red and yellow
16. Typhos, the Jailor of Souls
17. Blind Sage (Bind to Stormfire)

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[hammyhamster1]

@JY_626

Personally, I am not a fan of ‘lazy’ pet builds and like to be more active

Ditto.

Hybrid Pet builds where the player actually contributes significantly are an interesting challenge.

[Gnomish_Inquisition]

why that offhand ?

[JY_626]

I can see the appeal of pure pet builds though.

I had so much issues with the damage output, but I made the best out of it by picking my devotions carefully.

I’ve used Elemental Seekers to good effect before and I know that Devotions are a good source of endgame Resist Reduction, so thankfully that made everything feel fine otherwise I would have just went full pet as well.

[JY_626]

I was just leaning into the Familiar / Hellhound theme of my build and wanted bonuses for those.

I read that the Hellhound modifiers aren’t that great, but fire doggo was really helping out with the wave clear. Maybe it got better through one of the patches?

[hammyhamster1]

Well, if you are motivated,…there’s this concept that needs completion (just a TC) that you might enjoy figuring out:

Meme Time! Show us your silly builds :D

I’ve had this on the files for a bit, and since I can’t play it currently (hence why so much TC and boredom), …maybe it can generate some interest in this fun meme which imho looks fairly solid on paper: Spirits and Shells : Reap Spirits double-dip … hybrid pet build Can have 2 MT, 5 decently powerful Wraiths, Damaging TM. Wraiths are Vit/Aether Sustain is Wendigo, Fangs, and Siphon. Circuit breakers: Blast Shield, Frez Devotion, Unlife, MoT RR is vit:90% + aether:121%, not counting RR from …

[Gnomish_Inquisition]

no i mean the offhand is blue/epic
which means 0 real pet bonuses (modifiers), like, you can buy a green offhand that’s better because it gives hellound 35%TDM or use an offhand that grants a pet, or buff modifiers or conversion etc etc, “anything” with actual stats or mods

the ever silly meme pet

[JY_626]

Oh, you meant the modifiers.

Is it worth it to go for that if I intend to do damage as a caster as well?

Still learning about this, since pets aren’t my specialty.

That would be something I’d pick if I wanted my pets to do most of the work though.

[Gnomish_Inquisition]

well, without being offending, your player dmg is pretty much just “flavour” in this build
you have 1300% fire dmg, and 120% cast speed, on a low dmg component filler skill
TDM is big, it’s a final layer dmg multiplier, so gonna boost doggo dmg massively, meanwhile you can just reset merchant until offhand spawns with “of scorching” suffix for 200% fire dmg bonus “if you really wanna maintain that same level of player fire boost”…

edit. checking my stash i actually have a pet prefix fire dmg/scorching suffix fleshbook, so looks like it’s possible to even get the best of both worlds in your hybrid scenario

[JY_626]

That does look interesting and I like the theme.

I’ll let you know if I ever get there since I actually have a backlog of builds to play around with.

[JY_626]

Ah I see, I’ll take those into consideration.

And I’m actually glad that you picked up on the flavor part, since that’s what I go for in most of my builds.

The best thing that anyone can do to my builds is make them better or get ideas from them. There are already more than a handful of theorycrafters who are more mechanically versed and can min-max effectively, so I’ve no doubt that they can do a lot better.

I’m really just doing this for build diversity and for fun XD

[hammyhamster1]

@JY_626

Below average damage output if the pets do not help out

I’m always interested in juggling the hybrid balance. I fooled around with the devotion path a bit to give more cast speed and overall player elemental damage + 1 extra proc (it didn’t seem like you needed the extra sustain from Chariot - but obviously you’d know)

Devotion path tweak

[JY_626]

@hammyhamster1

Devotion path tweak

Looks good, even if health took a little bump but then again I never really took that much damage during the campaign (Have yet to try it in SR, Crucible etc).

Tsunami used to be an old favorite of mine. I’m wondering if you ever managed to snag Whirpool (Leviathan)?

Funny thing is that I tend to go Amatok + Ultos for ice builds, so I’m not familiar with optimized paths towards Leviathan.

[hammyhamster1]

I looked at Leviathan, but concluded that it doesn’t give enough overall % damage for your concept, in terms of the overall investment required.

ie, your main player damage is fire/light component + elemental seeker. Other than whirlpool, the extra can be gained elsewhere.

Also, 1s cd of Tsunami syncs well with CoF.

[JY_626]

Yeah, I was looking at the cooldown as well.

Not to mention Tsunami has debuffs, which is useful for survivability.

[hammyhamster1]

@JY_626

even if health took a little bump

Well, I swapped the boots component to maintain slow res as a quick fix…so that’s some part of it. just fyi.

I didn’t look too closely, but energy and OA doesn’t seem to be an issue and maybe Spark could be changed for a dread skull for more CS. And/or a Seal of Annihilation on the ammy.

But this is all stuff that you have the practical knowledge about and I do not.

Edit: For example you could gain another 20% CS (and 20% pet speed) in this manner: more CS component and augment tweaks. But I don’t know if this is good enough for fundamental HC idea.

Edit2: or gain ~200% more elemental damage, 20%CS, 10% pet speed and a small reduction in pet damage: tweak 2

Don’t take this as negativity, but rather as enthusiastic ideas for your very interesting concept.

[JY_626]

Oh, I like the ideas in fact

Just gives more for others to consider since there’s a lot of ways to build.

That and I assume every build which I’ve spent hours on has some kind of imperfection, due to me swapping variables out and even refreshing the concept a couple times over. I’m bound to mess up in spite of how much I tried to clean up.