How Do You Think about Skeletons Currently

Grim Dawn Public Test Discussion
1

Hi guys, just interested. With the resistance bug being fixed, skeletons suffer the most. They require a lot more micro management compared to conjurer pets and blight fiends, leading to worse qol. While there are good vitality pet ritualist builds that allow them to deal good dmg, they are very minmaxed builds and is skewed forward the combo that has insane vitality rr. There are many other variations (like bysmiel skeletons, acid skeletons, cryptstalker ritualist, spiritmonger gravel cabalist, frost wight channeler) that can never reach the same potential and being potentially more glassy, especially now that elemental resist bonus for pets from cabalist is gone.

Currently, for pet players, how do you think about them? Should we keep them as the current state, or should we increase their cdr if we want to make them glassy and easy to die? Or should we buff their defense a bit?

2

Gonna go on a bit of a tangent, despite being pets/summoners build enthusiast, necromancer was never able to break into my main builds catalogue. I think the crux of the issues here is that necromancer (for pet builds) has no form of health sustain for self and pet. On top of that, Necromancer’s RR requires you getting hit. I can tank if needed but there’s some attack I really do not want to get hit, like nullification and shotguns. Skeletons being harder to manage and keep alive also stem from this issue from my perspective.

If skeletons’ survivability were to be increased, I think I’d want it done in a particularly interesting way, like something that allow you to summon skeletal priests (the one that’s capable of healing)

Reducing cooldown and/or increasing skeletons defense can work, but it wouldn’t really fix the “the player need to get hit” for me

3

Personally, I like to make thematic builds in rpgs. Results are secondary. That being said, Necromancer pets shouldn’t have any sustain or healing. They are undead after all. They should be pets that you can throwaway and constantly re-summon. They are bags of bones, glued together with necrotic magic - making them more durable kinda feels wrong…

Maybe this is crazy idea but Skeletons could be a “channeled skill of pet builds”. Low “tick” rate (once a second or so) but each tick spawns a skeleton. They are weak and die in one hit. They get a buff if there are fresh corpses in range and can withstand 2 hits if they spawned from hero monster corpse.
Maybe an idea for some meme build modifier on MI (1s cooldown, -99% HP modifier) or for GD2.

4

It works if you are cursed or debuffed in some way as well, so it’s not limited to being literally hit.

5

I would prefer if they had a modifier like:

• -50% Summon Limit
• Total Damage Modified by 100%

I think they would become much simpler to manage.

6

Hmm, but their tankiness is still the same and you need to move them often. Also, if you lose, you lose more in this case. I still prefer cdr. I’m creating this question because I really want skeleton players to share their opinions so that Crate might do something to them after their current state in bug resistance fix.

7

But when you resummon, you gain twice the firepower. And if you have equipped the Ascendant Cowl, you regain all firepower instantly.

8

But it would probably work better for ranged skeletons.

9

Or you can just reduce their cdr. For me 4-5 sec cooldown is the best, and there will be equipments that reduce their cd by 3 sec.

1 Like
11

Spectral Crown + Sovereign Ruby reduce the cooldown to five seconds. Adding a Burning Blade and an off-hand, the cooldown drops below four seconds. Adding Death Gates instead, it drops to two seconds. Ascendant Cowl makes the cooldown relative. Maybe you want specific gear to have a cooldown reduction to Raise Skeletons?

12

Hmm burning blade only works with fire skeletons, while there are a lot of other variations (chaos, vitality, cold, aether). In fact, the most played varity is chaos and vitality cannot use the blade. I am not aware of any offhand that reduce cooldown of skeleton. Also, what is Death Gates? I have not heard about such an item or skill in this game. Only the sovereign ruby and spectral crown is suitable for most cases here. Spectral crown is a tough case because it has another competitior: Eye of Mogdrogen’s chosen.

Ps: Oh you meant Death’s gates. Must add “'s”. That one is a big no for chaos, cold, lightning skeletons because they are blocked by weapon or off-hand.

13

Ok, it is Death’s Gates

14

Yeah but it is blocked by many variation of skeleton builds. Biggest example is chaos (also the most played variant).

15

You edited after my reply.

16

I was typing it when you replied, but my point is, that it is not useable with many variant of skeletons.

17

So, you would like that Eye of Mogdrogen’s Chosen had a cooldown reduction to Raise Skeletons?

18

No. What I mean is the feature it brings. It will be hard to choose between spectral crown and a free pet that provides rr.

19

What if other pet related headgear provided RR? Or what if Eyes of Mogdrogen’s Chosen provided a cooldown reduction to Raise Skeletons?

20

Okay. First, the goal of every build is to have the fastest kill possible. That’s the majority. Everyone want to kill things as quickly as possible. It’s very natural. Skeleton is no exception here. The goal of resummoning them quickly is to let them quickly revive and kill things faster. Dead skeletons deal no dmg. For the head slot, if you use Mogdrogen’s chosen, you also have a pet which provides a lot of dmg (and can mostly converted to your desired), and also rr. So the helm can contribute to killing enemies faster, and potentially do so before the skeletons begin to crumble. As a result, between

  • Choosing spectral crown to reduce skeleton cooldown, or
  • Choosing a pet with rr and contribute a quite good percent of dmg

It would be hard to consider which one is better overall, depend on the specific content (like which superboss, level of SR). So those two are competitior to each other. Now, is there anything I said unclear?