New to the game (about a month). Have quite a bit of experience with gaming in general. POE is the only other ARPG I have played.
This game has given me the most fits in evaluating gear, ever! I am not a number cruncher by nature and my goals in the game are modest, however I would like to at least be able to have some clue as to what I’m doing with gear.
Here is a example: I am running a cabalist focused on the bottom 3 skill tree lines for both necro and occultist (for the life of me I cannot figure out how to get uploaded to grimtools and I’ve read the FAQ’s). So which of these two gear choices is better and why?
First piece of gear is Glyphed Skull of Binding: +25 spirit, 51% increased energy regen, 12% skill cooldown reduction, +1 raise skeletons, All pet get +37% to all damage and +10% health.
Second piece of gear is Wraitbound Savage Effigy of Decay:+132% vitality damage, +48% aether damage, +97% vitality decay, +2% offensive ability, 54% increased energy regeneration, 17% skill cooldown reduction, All pets get 33% to all damage and +1% offensive ability.
I assume the second item is better because the skellies deal primarily physical/vitality damage. But is that enough to offset the +1 to the raise skeleton ability? Is the 4% difference in damage for pets significant overall? Is +1 to OA better than 10% health?
This is a example but I am looking for some guidelines from this example to help with gear evaluation.
@maya - Yep got that far, even have the character filed saved to the desktop. Cannot paste it to the upload link, etc. Oh well, no big deal and thank you for the suggestion.
Does the vitality damage on the second item apply to pets or just the character? If I found a chest piece with great armor rating but no pet stats would, say, a + to poison damage apply to a Blightfiend?
o_0, you don’t copy/paste the save file… you just upload it and copy/paste the GrimTools Link.
Clicking on it should open a window. Then you select the save file and it should upload it to GrimTools.
Also, only the stuff listed under pets affect pets. So no pet stats means nothing for pets. In the second item, 33% to all damage and +1% offensive ability are the only things pets get.
As a general rule, +skills is more important than damage bonuses on gear. There are certainly exceptions, but that’s a good starting point.
As Maya said, only the things under the section “bonus to all pets” applies to pets like Skeletons unless the item specifically modifies the pet skill (Mythical Vielpiercer for example gives specific bonuses to Hellhound).
@maya - Thank you, that worked for uploading to grim tools. I had done that several times but this was the first time the file for my character was actually available. <shrug>; thanks again. I’m not going to ask anyone to look at my build at this point - I just finished the main campaign on veteran and have not even tried elite as of yet.
Thank you for the info regarding item stats; that helps a lot!!
Why not?
Everyone here started as a noob you know My first toon would probably have been much better if i had asked for advice before going to higher difficulties. It might even have been able to survive Elite (well, it didn’t really “die” as it wasn’t hardcore but it was so bad i deleted it and started over).
There are two kind of pets, those that scales with player bonuses and those that scales with pet bonuses… so for instance skeletons will get bonuses under “To all pets” and the reap spirit will get the general bonuses (on the actual damage listed when you summon it) and the pet bonuses on the actual pet - the Wrait’s touch.
Huh. But the Wraith scales with Pet Bonuses (or Grim Tools is wrong).
To clarify the discussion for Ressin : here’s a pic with descriptions from both types of pets. First 2 are Skeletons and Reap Spirit necromancer skills. Last one is Revenant devotion. The first 2 are regular pets while the last one is the so-called “player scaled pet”.
As malawiglenn explained, pet bonuses apply on the first type of pets while the second one benefits from your regular damage bonuses.
That is interesting information regarding the different types/ways of summoning pets.
I assume the “raise the dead” chance on attack skill is randomly generated on gear throughout the game and would be difficult to build around. I think I saw some sites that have searchable gear.
This is the first game I have ever played a pet build. Mostly shaman in EQ (started one week after launch), Hunter in WoW, never messed around with the pet classes in Baldur’s Gate nor the pet skill gems in PoE.
Thank you all for the help.
Here is the link to my current build (God I hope this works, lol):
Actually not really because, as malawiglenn pointed out, player scaled pets use your damage bonuses. In case it wasn’t entirely clear they use your damage bonuses instead of pet bonuses, they don’t use both, so all your gear with pet bonuses will be useless for the skeletons from “raise the dead”. Sure you will have regular damage bonuses as well as pet bonuses but your skeletons will be a lot weaker than those of an aether Death knight or Battle Mage (the so called “Krieg” builds) for instance. It would be intersting to have the advice of some of the pet players around but i don’t think Revenant is a strong devotion for pet builds either as it doesn’t have that many pet bonuses.
Also, you’ll have to bind the devotion proc to one of your own attack skills as your pet’s can’t have pets. All pets and pseudo-pets devotions have to be attached to one of your own attacks unlike direct damage devotions such as Rend or Flame Wave which are popular choices to attach to Summon Skeletons. This means you’ll have to actively attack to proc Raise the Dead and draw aggro on you which can be useful to help your skeletons survive but can be bad for your own survival if you count on a Blight Fiend to tank for you.
It’s certainly possible to add Revenant in a regular pet build but i think it’s not the easiest option. If you choose to, as a Cabalist, i would attach it to Bloody Pox (even as a one pointer skill) because bloody pox, once cast, spreads itself among opponents and have a chance to proc it’s attached devotion each time it deals damage so you can quickly get the maximum amount of skellies this way (i use a similar trick using Aether Corruption, which comes from a weapon augment, on my Death Knight).
Yes, it worked, don’t worry.
I had a look at your build. Looks like a solid start. At least you’re decently focused unlike my own first build that had skills all over the board, tried to do a bit of everything and finally did nothing right (apart from dying :rolleyes:).
You’ll have to fill your masteries thought, and after level 50 you’ll only get 2 skill points/level so be careful not spending too much points in every pet skill, you won’t be able to max them all. Don’t spend too much points on spirit as Occultist gives you a lot and Necromancer also has a good amount. Filling Masteries gives you stats which is why most players try to fill them sooner rather than later (since items have stat requirement). I like to have at least my first mastery maxed before lvl 50. You won’t be able to do it (unless you respec a lot of points) but don’t wait too long. Use Grim Tools to plan your build so you’ll have an idea of how much points you can spend if you didn’t already. Good job taking Blood of Dreeg but you really want Aspect of the Guardian too (poison resist means you nearly don’t need to worry about it on gear and physical resist is precious). For your information after maxing both masteries and maxing the high level pet boosts (Master of Death and Bond of Bysmiel) as well as Aspect of the Guardian you have 11 spare points to spend! Skill points aren’t plentiful without a lot of +skill items (and even then going above the first cap, called soft-cap, can be beneficial in some cases). You can drop Bonds of Bysmiel to one point if you mostly use skeletons (they won’t survive and you’ll have to re-summon them anyway) but if you want to use more beefy pets, more health will help them. As you can see you’ll have to make choices. Hope your head won’t hurt too much trying to decide what to choose If you need help try posting a thread that mentions pets so that the pet players see it and can help you better, i only touched a real pet build (also Cabalist) slightly and it’s not lvl 48 yet.
Regarding your items : you have a lot of random green stuff. Don’t neglect Faction items (the stuff you can buy from the special vendor with enough reputation). Those have been created to give players useful items while levelling without being at the mercy of the RNG producing good items. I havn’t really checked which items would improve your build but often new players think that anything that drops will be better than stuff they can buy or that shop items aren’t worth the price while those items have been designed for them. A number of factions sell pet items at various levels (Rovers and Coven of Ugdenbog come to my mind) and many faction items have Resists, Health, Offensive or Defensive Ability which are required by any build (a pure pet could live with low OA, but not too low DA as you’ll get hit eventually and you don’t want to die to a single huge crit, or as i say in this case “be critted to orbit”).
You only have 7 devotion points. Did you just stockpile the rest because you didn’t know where to spend them? That’s what i did with my first toon but devotions are an integral part of your build, not some useful side stuff so keeping them for later means you’re playing with half of your build.
Do you have an idea of your late game build? At some point you’ll have to consolidate your pets damage and find ways to reduce the enemies resistance to that damage type. An easy option because it’s guaranteed is the Stormbringer of Malmouth. It goes well with the Raven’s lightning damage (drop Mend Flesh if you want to use the Raven offensively). Alternatively you can concentrate on Vitality since both masteries have vitality Resistance Reduction (RR in short) in which case you can increase your pets vitality damage with Soul Harvest but the Raven won’t benefit from it with it’s spell attacks (in this case you can use it defensively with Mend Flesh).
Peace. Y’all have been super nice and helpful!! Much appreciated from a old guy like me!
We don’t stop playing because we get old, we get old because we stop playing.
See, you’re not that old
Yanaek - Thank you for the in depth reply! Your info helps a ton not only with this go round but any future builds I might end up trying. It clarified things that I have read but did not quite “get”.
Going to mess around with grim tools after work…I am especially intrigued with the bloody pox “trick” and the revenant proc. I never thought to use just one point in a skill.
Again, thank you for taking the time to comment and help!!
My first toon would probably have been much better if i had asked for advice before going to higher difficulties. It might even have been able to survive Elite 
(well, it didn’t really “die” as it wasn’t hardcore but it was so bad i deleted it and started over).