The Necromancer will be my very first pet build and I’m trying to figure out which of the two Constellations has more benefit to pets. Assuming pets have a decent amount of Offensive Ability, which is better? Crit Damage or Speed?
the good part about howl is that you can mix it with rattosh devoton for more rr. But crit damage is so essential to pets taht it’s a really tough call. I’d try both. I’m leaning slightly towards hungering void for cabalist.
Best try both
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Situation then pet has enought OA are impossible even in a principle, you must collect as much OA you can reach to pets as possible.
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30% to crit. damage by Hungering Void are nice, but you always have access to wrath of the beast tincture, which gives fantastic + 100% critical damage
Returning to the original question - it is better to take both constellations, as Superfluff says.
Grabbing as many essential nodes to reach the required affinities as possible, here’s how Mogdrogen’s and Dying God match up:
- It takes 36 nodes to complete Modgrogen, filling Raven, Scorpion Sting, Manticore, Quill, Shephard’s Crook, Wolverine, Crossroads Chaos, and Jackal.
- Alternatively, you can complete Modgrogen in 29 nodes if you go Crossroads Eldritch, Raven, Toad, Quill, Shephard’s Crook, and Empty Throne
- It takes 29 nodes to complete Dying God, filling Viper, Eel, Panther, Staff of Rattosh, Solemn Watcher, Crossroads Chaos, and Jackal.
Since you have 55 nodes in total, you can fill what the other devotion is missing (Raven, etc. for the Dying God route, Staff of Rattosh for the Mogdrogen route); Dying God gets Solemn Watcher’s delicious DA boosts and Giant’s Blood healing, while Mogdrogen gets Harvestman’s Scythe and Quill’s Health/Energy bonuses, as well as a great use for Huntress’ Rend proc. Dying God has the favor here, but not by much.
However, if you choose to work with other constellation affinities, the Primordial route is far, far superior to the Eldritch/Ascendant route. Not only do you have easy access to Time Dilation, which is great for keeping Call of the Grave uptime, among other things, but you can easily cross to the Order side of the Constellation map and obtain Tree of Life / Obelisk of Menhir (first three nodes) devotions as well. If your pets are capable of putting on the offense, having the defensive devotions can significantly increase your survivability. On the other hand, the T3 constellations that share Mogdrogen’s affinity requirements are Leviathan, Attak Seru, and Blind Mage, all of which synergize poorly with Pets.
Blind Fury and Abomination, however, can be toggled on pets for decent proc activation; sadly, there are few ways to increase poison duration on pets, something hopefully the expansion fixes, considering Necromancers make good use of the Blight Fiend pet.
Typhos and Rattosh (the one with the 20% Vitality RR) do have some synergy with Mogdrogen, but Hungering Void already contains 215% Vitality Damage at max level, with the addition of 50% Crit Damage (60% if you include the node right before it). What makes the prior group stand out is the health bonuses (650 + 5% health), Vitality Decay (250% Bonus), and Aether Damage (270% bonus), but this comes at the cost of the Panther and Staff of Rattosh bonuses, which are far more important for pet builds. That means as far as Vitality based pet builds go, Modgrogen is far outclassed by Dying God.
The only thing I can see where Mogdrogen fills a niche Dying God can’t have is some sort of Vitality / Bleeding build that takes full advantage of Blood Pact and Soul Harvest’s combined 78 flat Vitality Damage (both at 12/12) and Devouring Swarm’s combined Vitality / Bleeding RR, something like this: http://www.grimtools.com/calc/dVbLLONJ or http://www.grimtools.com/calc/d2jLLrZ9
To put it simply: if you are relying on your pets to set off heavy devotion procs that synergize well with each other (the above a good example), then consider going Mogdrogen. If you’re expecting to rack up flat damage bonuses and using regular pet attacks only, go with Dying God.
Here is the TLDR version.
TLDR: Mogdrogon cluster is extremely powerful, in general more powerful than Hungering Void one, however, because of prerequisite points being far worse choices it ends up being worse than it, all things considered.
One can just hope that another type of pet build can be found for which the choices match Hunring void better, even if it seems not now you never know what will happen when enough people theorycraft.
Overly reductive and therefore incorrect. Master of Death can provide lots of pet OA, and Manipulation can provide lots of pet speed. However, there’s nothing that provides nearly as much pet crit as Dying God.
Also incorrect - Mogdrogen is quite easy to obtain with the addition of Quill and Toad.
What will happen when enough people theorycraft is that 6 months ago, people used the devotion you mistakenly claimed to be inferior and killed the Mad Queen in 6 seconds.
To the OP: the best pet T3 devo depends on your class and build. As Superfluff mentioned, Dying God is best for Cabalist (assuming you go that route).
Deductive*
And yes, it wasn’t stated in the wall of text but that’s what it is.
Even for a build like the one i am planning where i take good advantage of the dying god nodes i have to recognize that mogdrogen cluster is simply superior.
Almost every single node is a very powerful node for pets, and OA>Crit damage, and you want as much OA as you can get. Your arguments of “oh but you get some OA elsewhere so you’re fine”, are just loose talk. In addition the insane speed of mogdrogen is completely nuts. With necromancer and amount of pets rising you will also see the value of speed increasing beyond just the attack speed bonus which in itself is insane, but it will also scale devotion procs rates assigned to pets(in particular skeletons up to 10+ skeletons), not to mention movement speed.
Don’t act smart when you don’t know what you are talking about.
The fact of the matter is that the mogdrogen cluster is better if you just look at the cluster, but overall it becomes the worse choice because the points you need to pick to get it are worse for pet builds.
This is your opinion, it is not fact.
Almost every single node is a very powerful node for pets, and OA>Crit damage, and you want as much OA as you can get.
You’re underestimating the value of crit damage. In the video he posted, how do you think his pets get crit multipliers of up to 3.12? By stacking massive amounts of crit damage.
Crit damage next to resist reduction are powerful modifiers to damage as they are both multiplicative.
Your arguments of “oh but you get some OA elsewhere so you’re fine”, are just loose talk. In addition the insane speed of mogdrogen is completely nuts. With necromancer and amount of pets rising you will also see the value of speed increasing beyond just the attack speed bonus which in itself is insane, but it will also scale devotion procs rates assigned to pets(in particular skeletons up to 10+ skeletons), not to mention movement speed.
The difference here is that stacking offensive ability and crit damage has been tried and tested and it is very strong. We have no knowledge yet on how well stacking total speed on large amounts of pets will do.
Don’t act smart when you don’t know what you are talking about.
Except he DOES know what he’s talking about. He created 2 hybrid pet builds that both completed Gladiator Crucible with the 2nd being one of the most powerful and noteworthy builds as of now. He broke most people’s thoughts of “hybrid pet builds can’t be done”. He knows what he’s talking about when he makes comments on pet builds.
I agree with what Fluff has said as well. Mogdrogen and Dying God are for different builds. Though Cabalist likely has more to gain from going Dying God.
I cannot be bothered with your unscientific ways. But i will grace you with a little and forgive you for acting like smartasses and instead point out the obvious to you.
We assume here that we have some cooldown reduction and just do an extremely rough estimate on uptime(it’s not that important i just chose a number). Here i am assuming mogdrogen uptime 10/12, hungering void 20/24.
This yields the following stats(for pets)
Hungering Void:
- 215% damage
- 179% chaos/vitality damage
- 51% crit damage
- 11.7% attack speed
- 6.7% movement speed
- 6.7% cast speed
Mogdrogen:
- 17.5% Offensive Ability
- 110% damage
- 35% attack speed
- 35% movement speed
- 35% cast speed
Mogdrogen cluster comes with +max of a resist, has a good amount of resists, but gives in general useless damage scaling to the player when considering pet builds.
Vitality/Chaos damage to pets from hungering void is probably equal to less than 30% increased overall damage due to the main body of damage coming from +flat elemental damages, and the vitality comes from master of death conversion primarily given that it won’t be worth investing in skele’s second booster.
Whereas Hungering void gives a very solid amount of vitality/chaos damage for the players and some other player damage stats, which are partly useful considering things like twin fangs, and when making the argument that attack speed scales devotion procs you would also insert the counterargument that it would also scale vitality/chaos devotion proc damage(which isn’t a major thing).
Still, at the end of the day the mogdrogen bonuses are just plain insane, also things like movement speed to the pet army should not be underestimated.
It’s more along the lines of the following:
Dying God:
60% to all Damage to all Pets
10% Crit Damage to all Pets
5% Attack Speed to all Pets
Hungering Void:
150% to all Damage to all Pets
215% Chaos Damage to all Pets
215% Vitality Damage to all Pets
50% Crit Damage to all Pets
8% Total Speed to all Pets
Mogdrogen the Wolf:
110% to all Damage to all Pets
6% Total Speed to all Pets
5% Offensive Ability to all Pets
Howl of Mogdrogen:
15% Offensive Ability to all Pets
35% Total Speed to all Pets
Hungering Void has a radius (and a fairly big one as well) whereas Mogdrogen does not. The bonuses you receive from Hungering Void also effect your pets in addition to the pet bonuses.
For Cabalists specialising in Skeletons, the massive increase to Vitality pet damage and crit damage is amazing. The crit damage on it’s own bumps up your pet’s crit modifier from a minimum and maximum of x1.1 - x1.5 to x1.7 - x2.1.
A fair point, i will adjust the numbers.
It’s more along the lines of the following:
The bonuses you receive from Hungering Void also effect your pets in addition to the pet bonuses.
Now this is something i overlooked which makes Hungering Void a must have for Cabalist. Thanks for pointing it out. 
Hungering Void:
- 215% damage
- 179% chaos/vitality damage
- 51% crit damage
- 11.7% attack speed
- 6.7% movement speed
- 6.7% cast speed
Mogdrogen:
- 17.5% Offensive Ability
- 110% damage
- 35% attack speed
- 35% movement speed
- 35% cast speed
Mogdrogen cluster comes with +max of a resist, has a good amount of resists, but gives in general useless damage scaling to the player when considering pet builds.
Vitality/Chaos damage to pets from hungering void is probably equal to less than 30% increased overall damage due to the main body of damage coming from +flat elemental damages, and the vitality comes from master of death conversion primarily given that it won’t be worth investing in skele’s second booster.
Whereas Hungering void gives a very solid amount of vitality/chaos damage for the players and some other player damage stats, which are partly useful considering things like twin fangs, and when making the argument that attack speed scales devotion procs you would also insert the counterargument that it would also scale vitality/chaos devotion proc damage(which isn’t a major thing).
…
If i make assumed adjustments:
Hungering Void:
- 245% damage
- 51% crit damage
- 11.7% attack speed
- 6.7% movement speed
- 6.7% cast speed
Mogdrogen:
- 17.5% Offensive Ability
- 110% damage
- 35% attack speed
- 35% movement speed
- 35% cast speed
And mogdrogen could probably pick up some more bonuses to offset the gained resistances not needing to be fixed.
Just a question regarding those devotion buffs. Will the Cool-down timer start after the buff proc’s or when it’s finished?
When it procs is what I’ve read. I’m also able to keep up Hungering Void almost constantly on one of my characters using it as well.
For a Cabalist focused on pets i came up with this devotion setup: http://www.grimtools.com/calc/0V0d5rVm Or just drop Rattosh for Revenant.
Long story short, hungering void cluster is better than i had estimated, it might even be better at bosses but worse at overall clear speed(lack of speed), but at the same time, there is only a marginal gain for a cabalist when considering mogdrogen vs hungering void(something like 30% or maybe less “increased damage” for a well constructed build). The primary deciding factor is that the nodes to pick mogdrogen are not as good making it the overall worse choice.
Cabalist indeed. I will probably go with something along this http://www.grimtools.com/calc/YZeLGdV8 unless I change my mind and go for some more vit/hybrid kind of build. Rat and Scholars Light make me sad but unfortunately lacking one devotion point to go either Bat or Raven instead.
Thanks for the chuckle about what I supposedly know and don’t know. You’ve demonstrated a fundamental misunderstanding of the effect that OA has on a pet build, so I’ll help you out. For starters, “OA>Crit damage” is reductive to the point of being wrong. A more accurate statement would be:
“OA>crit when your OA sucks. Crit>OA when you have great OA.”
To illustrate with some hypothetical numbers: if your PTH is low enough that you only have a 10% crit rate, then it’s generally more efficient to invest in more OA. If your PTH is already high enough that you have a 50% crit rate, then it’s generally more efficient to invest in more crit damage.
The question then becomes: how much PTH and OA do pet builds have? Rather than “loose talk” about sources of pet OA, I’ll provide you actual numbers. As explained in the damage calculator from my article Understanding Pet Damage, my Dracarris Incarnate build has an effective OA of 3754. Since you’re fan of science, I invite you conduct the following experiment: start a new thread asking people that when given an OA of 3754, whether it’s better to invest in a few hundred more OA or to increase crit damage by +60%. Measure how long it takes before someone mocks you for even asking that question.
That was just the setup. I began by saying that you fundamentally misunderstand the role of OA to pet builds. Pet builds play with very inflated pet OA and crit numbers because pets have very low base damage and lack combat abilities like Cadence or Shadowstrike, so landing tons of crits with high crit multipliers is one of the few ways for pets to produce competitive DPS at endgame. Therefore, pet builds are going to have massive OA values compared to direct damage builds, and they should.
Now most people will advise direct damage builds to prioritize OA very highly, because OA suffers less diminishing returns when compared to other stats like +% damage. This is generally sound advice. However, OA does have diminishing returns. As an example, one of our Discord regulars recently posted a build in the channel with over 7K OA:
It was a joke build, of course, terrible except for the OA stat. But it demonstrates how high OA could be stacked, and the fact that the top pre-xpac builds generally settle at around 2600-3400 OA rather than reaching for 7K+ OA shows you that OA isn’t the end-all to everything.
OA’s diminishing returns are simply reached later and more gradually than for other offensive bonuses. It only takes a couple hundred extra OA to increase your crit chance from highest 0% threshold to 10%. However, it takes far more OA than that to increase your crit chance from 50->60%, and no amount of OA will increase your crit chance from 90%->100%. Most direct damage builds are at the lower end of the OA scale, so of course increasing OA as much as possible will be a high priority.
However, because pet builds play with inflated pet OA stats compared to direct damage builds, they can and will reach diminishing returns levels for OA. I had previously mentioned Master of Death as a new source of OA for a reason: I’ve already spoken with Praetorians who have reached pet OA bonuses of over 100% in the xpac. If pre-xpac pet builds (like Dracarris) can currently reach OA levels where crit bonus starts to outweigh adding more OA, then after xpac the scales are going to be tipped even more heavily in favor of crit bonus – and therefore, Dying God.
Mogdrogen and Dying God are both great pet devotions. Some pet builds benefit more from bonuses to OA and speed, and some benefit more from bonuses to crit and +% damage. I use Mogdrogen and Dying God about 50-50 in my pre-xpac pet builds – it really depends on what each build has already brought to the table before devotion bonuses. After xpac, however, as OA values for pet builds continue to scale upward, I fully expect to be using Dying God a lot more than Mogdrogen. And if you understand how pet builds use OA and how OA scaling works, then so will you.
You can get both Rattosh, the Veilwarden and Dying God easily enough.
Another one I am curious about for a pet build is Ishtak, the Spring Maiden. It doesn’t really buff your pets offensively but the I wonder just how well it will keep the player alive.
Edit - In fact if you want to you can get both Hungering Void and Howl of Mogdrogan. Probably quite a few useless nodes picked though.