I am still exploring the Masteries and classes of Grim Dawn. I have a Fire Strike/Flashbomb Commando, a dual-wield Savagery/Wendigo Totem Trickster and a Sky Shard Spellbreaker. All of these are working really well so far. I have made a few attempts at the classes including Occultist, but these always fell flat. My initial impression is that the mastery is poorly designed, but it seems popular enough so I guess the problem is user error.
Conjurer strikes me as the no-brainer class for pet builds, though it also has the potential for a vitality damage build. Pyromancer seems to have a little synergy with Chaos/Fire damage, but I am not convinced the Occultist is the best partner for any Demolitionist build. Warlock strikes me as one of the least synergistic options for Occultist, though I cannot even begin to fathom how to create a Witchblade build. Witch Hunter has clear acid/poison synergy, though I am not sure if that would be an effective build or not.
Curse of Frailty and Blood of Dreeg have near universal application. Any build can benefit from these, though Blood of Dreeg is clearly inferior to Pneumatic Burst. Summon Hellhound, from what I understand, is a perfectly viable pet, but I do not enjoy pet builds; Bonds of Bysmiel would obviously be great for a pet-focused build too.
I have tried Dreeg’s Evil Eye. Personally, I found it really boring to use. It strikes me as having poor synergy with other classes, however. I am not sure if Curse of Frailty and Night’s Chill can stack, but if not the only synergies for it are in the Occultist tree. You would have to focus your build around that one spell then use your other mastery to boost survivability (eg Maivern’s, Mogdrogen’s, etc).
Summon Familiar looks like a good, general-purpose skill on paper, but I understand the AI is borked and it is essentially non-functional. If it worked, it could synergise with most classes.
Solael’s Witchfire, with Consecrated Blade, could make an interesting Chaos/Fire Firestrike Pyromancer. For other classes, however, the buff strikes me as quite weak (when compared with Iskandra’s Elemental Exchange or Flame Touched).
Bloody Pox is another skill I found boring to use. The damage strikes me as quite low, though that is presumably to balance its potentially enormous AoE. It will kill things, but I have an appointment next Friday and cannot wait that long. I do not even want to imagine fighting bosses when you have build around this!
Sigil of Consumption strikes me as a poor alternative to Wendigo Totem. It seems to have weaker synergies and a less-useful effect.
If you go deep enough, Doom Bolt strikes me as quite good, but Chaos/Vitality seems a really niche damage type that has poor synergy with the other classes.
Possession is clearly excellent, but again focuses on damage types rarely used by other Masteries, and barely used by the Occultist even. I can only see it being useful in very niche builds (as opposed to, say, Stormcaller Pact which is easy to find wide synergy for).
Presumably I am wrong/missing the point, but I just cannot seem to make it work. How do you craft a good build around the classes that use Occultist?