So I’ve ran two pet characters. A bird, hound, briar Conjurer that was safe but amazingly slow to clear due to lack of AOE. I gave up due to boredom.
Then I discovered bird empowered elemental Skelly cleared at a good speed but was supper dangerous vs bosses due to Skellys getting wiped by AOE.
So I want to give this one more shot. I’m thinking Cabalist. A maxed Hellhound with Skelly and Bird support might be the secret sauce to hitting 100 safely and in reasonable time.
Have a look at Maya’s pet builds - look for the Carnival of Pets thread. Not sure why you found Conjurer slow, the pets clear everything very fast if you set them on aggressive.
Conjure pets lack good AOE. Bird’s is slow and small area, Briars is weak and doesn’t synegize and Hounds is also slow to use and limited in area. Elemental Storm and Ice Storm stops doing significant damage in Elite. But maybe I’m doing something wrong here. Cheers.
In Elite, without very good item support, pet builds become a bit slow. In order to have a good clearing speed, you need to focus on the damage type of your choice via conversions and RR. Also, ADD MOAH PETS! There’s a ton of low level gear that procs more pets on attack as well as on hit. A great and easy way to add more temp pets is Primal Instinct. I found that any aura that deals damage procs the little critters reliably. They help a lot. The blue blightshard amulet adds another crawler (2 when using its mythical version!). Ghosts! They are strong with the right support and you can have a few active most of the time. Also, keep an eye on pets resistances, leech and regen. They benefit from tree of life and Behemoth. In HC you have to be careful, never get too confident. If your pets die, you can get overrun before you get a chance to resummon them.
At higher difficulties… as with any kind of build… GD is 90+% items influence.
Typical way to build an end-game build is to pick your style (pet, caster, whatever), pick damage type, and get an idea of what items to aim for to complement and magnify this concept.
Then it’s a matter of interm building and improving items as you go.
It’s pretty similar to PoE in planning and item scrounging, but slower pace. (Almost like PoE was at release).
Edit: Respec is very easy compared to PoE. You can not respec the very base of the masteries, though.
Thanks for the advice guys. I guess I’m looking for a Pet equivalent of a Primal Strike or EoR+Volcanic build where it will carry you from 10 to 90 with relative ease.
Dug some stuff out of GDStash for them, but didn’t aim for any particular gear, just what looked like it might be useful until I get to the endgame stuff. Both have done the new rogue in testing. Elite defeated the boss first time, died in there the second. One in Normal did it successfully.
I also agree with conjurer clearing things slowly at first. This is fixed as soon as you get a few extra pets and some aoe devotions.
When leveling I feel the speed increase dramatically when you get hysteria relic pet, black grimoire of ognapesh pet, high enough level to get/max primal spirit and aoe like elemental storm.
The gear I listed is not rare. You can find most of these items around level 60ish = start-mid Elite. Even if you are running from scratch and pure self-found.
Yep seems Hellhound + Birb powered Skellys is the secret sauce. I found Salazar Blade too which is pretty much mandatory for early game Skelly build since it summons a massive tank. Exactly what was missing for boss fights. https://www.grimtools.com/db/items/2741
There is nothing more satisfying than rifting behind a mob pack and having all the Skelly mages beam around you and open fire. It’s like some sort of fast assault squad.
Blight fiend spamming works quite well for leveling. With a briar on the side. Plus this leads to ghols nicely. Can pick up the scorpid pummeler in fg very early as well for the poison conversion. The wrath offhand in aom that gives primal spirit uptime is also great. That’s how I went about my hc summoner with 0 issues
