Hybrid pyromancer - need some help

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
1

Hi!

Long, long time ago i read DaShiv Dracaris Incarnate pet build http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/showthread.php?t=52972 and i wanted to do something similar, but also while also beeing in melee together with my minions.

So my main idea was to use fire strike buffed with all the goodies of pyromancer, but with dual wielding Draccaris (the procs stack for whooping bonuses) and use the hellhound aura as another source of damage buff (its easy to 22/12 and bonus it provides is significant). I wanted to be in thick of the battle and get personal, while maintaning that “commander” feeling. The seal of the void provides nice WPS skill and i will use 2 of them instead of rift strike when mobility skill runes come with FG expansion pack.

So i had fun using grimtools a little bit and it looked good on paper.

My OA and crit damage is decent, my resistance reduction is around ~85 chaos and fire.
In game, it has some flaws - damage is not that insane, I think in melee its due to pretty low AS, smaller pets tend to die more often than i reapply all the buffs, and well to be honest I die on AoM last boss :o I think its due to my low DA.

I managed to kill Mad Queen and Sentinel tho with my current setup :stuck_out_tongue: Also i reached gladiator 100 with current setup (with 3 blessings) - didn’t tried further as i was out of tributes :stuck_out_tongue:

Devotion reasoning: I use Hourglass for better uptime of pets/buffs and it also helps to have 100% uptime on Dying God. Twin fangs as the main only way of lifesteal. I used Tree of line instead of Meteor shower - was much more tanky, but the meteors give me really decent AoE damage.

My current set up: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/eZPlyalZ
(i don’t use GDstash and i simply don’t have better gear :D)

Something achievable that i aim for: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/JVlKoJ52

“It aint happening baby” setup: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/mN4qvM02

2

Firstly, good stuff for being inventive.

I’m not an expert but there are some things that I learned from playing around with Pyro hybrids that may be of use:

  1. If you want to get the best value out of Primal Instinct,you’ll want not only attack speed but move speed (global, mostly) for this pet. These things move slow. If you have a lot on the map, they might be slow to engage. With the CD it takes 10s? to get a full compliment going.

  2. Thus primal works best with maxed Manipulation skill for the above reasons. And further with pet devotions that pump speed and damage.

  3. For Hellhound and Familiar, resists are important for longevity. Hellhound dies fairly fast with low investment in base skill (unless set to less-agressive maybe?)
    It is not so critical with the Primal on many mobs, but AoE mobs can wipe the pack.

  4. There is a damage output balance point for mob aggro. Meaning AI aggro will target you if you are the biggest threat. So if you don’t want to be the focus, you’ll need to restrict your fire/damage, increase pet damage, or some combo.

That said, I assume:

  1. you plan to be the aggro pull
  2. you want to benefit mostly from the pet auras and some help from primal instinct that also get the pet auras. And you hope Primal Instinct adds a lot of damage.

For you being the focus of aggro, you’ll want to aim for 2700+ DA to avoid most crits. And increase armor absorption to close to 100%.

I 'm not sure that the primal pets are constantly contributing to damage by themselves too much, considering the amount of respawning required from deaths(AoE etc).

I’d think about either:

  1. Swapping Primal Instinct for something that helps your FS focus. Keep the other pets for aura boosts, and maybe devotion procs (familiar can be a decent proc machine, depending). Swap the other equipment to focus on FS, as well.
  2. Or…focus much more on the pets. Aim for more pet boosts/resistances through devotions (Shepard’s Crook, Staff of Rattosh, Basmiel) and items such as Mythical Will of Bysmiel amulet for 2x familiar, Beastcallers Cowl helm for proc/resistances, pet resistances through equipment, etc. A pack of Primal Instinct should chew though stuff fairly fast with support and uptime should be significant.

I can’t say for certain, but it looks to me that your current mix of FS/BWC and pets works out to generally about the same damage as a focus on FS, except that the pets die fairly frequently. FS and BWC by themselves are huge skill point sinks, and it is hard to find the points for everything.

3

Hey! Thanks for the tips!
I need to do some testing on how much actually primal pets contribute. I was thinking on switching it to mogdrogen ardor for that total speed and +1 to all skills.

Yes I pull the aggro and DA is the problem - im usually tanking everything and crits usually gib me!

BWC is used only for OA/physical dmg debuff - and then i added one for resist reduction, i need to check if I don’t have anything non-stacking. And one point was unneeded, will respec it.
Lots of these points are from + to skills.
I have some ideas but i have limited resources (time+items) so I wanted to ask you for help.
Maybe Korvaak Deception and switch the weapon riftstone to something more usefull…

Edit: did some testing on primal pets - they do hit REALLY nicely, and they spawn on top of enemies, but they are slow AF and tend to die in AoE.

4

Yo man I like your approach really much.
Unfortunatly I think its not possible to make decent dual wield pet hybrid build (p.e. huge lack of attack speed)
What I tried for you is a more pet focus supportive playstyle build.

I simply throw all your stuff in to assist your pets as good as you can (shred resistances and OA/DA).
Therefore i’ve complety re-done your divotions and skill points and switched components and augments.

I dont think this is the strongest build or something like that but I can imagine its lot of fun to play.

https://www.grimtools.com/calc/d2jqrqmN

Advantages: More HP, significantly more DA, overall higher pet stats.

To make that possible I had switch two parts of your gear.

Please let me know what you think about that. :slight_smile:

5

Yeah I also started to think he won’t be “OP FS PET PYRO 8 minute crucible farmer no banner no blessing” build :smiley:

But I really like the character feeling and that it has decent potential to grow and improve. And if i could solo 170 with banners and blessings that would be it. And i really want to use this char in Forgotten Gods - maybe there will be some nice fine-tuned items and devotions for me :smiley:

I like your build quite much, but it did something very similar to what was already done earlier with DaShiv build.
I recently had similar, more defensive devotions set up, but I got quite fond of meteor shower. But this is one step I’m really considering.
You also switched do fire, and i can see why - as it has much better +Damage and -Resistance possibilities. I need to consider this too.
Maybe I don’t need all these T3 devotions and I should take all the T2 goodies instead, like giant blood, chariot of the dead, the shepards stick etc.

With Mythical Beastcaller Helm and Darkblaze amulet its possible to reach 200% AS, I also recently found decent boots and shoulderpads “of kings”, so that also may be a step in right direction, because I will have more than 80% stun resists, and maybe I can switch the ring/medal augments to something more defensive.

In my actual build i finally crafted and socketed 2 runebound topazes and even this 100 DA and 300 HP boosted my survivability quite nicely :stuck_out_tongue:

6

I remembered that I had a made a comparison a while back:

*My point of this reply is not to promote a particualr build - but to highlight that if you focus on the pet bonuses, Primal Instinct + familiar/Hellhound hit hard. Note the hybrid pet resists and speed are important. This improved pet survival and all the bonus of pet oa/%dmg/%crit + BoD heal/regen = ouch.

Even though this conversion experiment was somewhat of a fail with pets (BoD conversion did not affect pets), it demonstrated to me that Primal can be quite nasty with good support (see devotions and pet items). And with the recent patch, a couple of devotions received even more pet bonuses…so even more goodies.

In spite of conversion shortcomings and this being acid, this was my favorite Hybrid Pet test build: GrimTools DW Acid Pyro FS/Pet Hybrid

This was a not-pet variant that I used for comparisons: No pets, DW FS acid pyro (yes…no ghoul on purpose! - I was tired of this and some other too-common devotions at the time and wanted to test Arcane bomb’s mechanics - call me crazy). Lowish DA and no Ghoul = kite more to survive.

Gears are self found.

The hybrid was obviously safer and quicker on bosses.

  1. Some very good damage from the pets but also note that a stationary fight means more damage over a shorter time.
  2. Kiting breaks up damage.
  3. Kiting with pets is counterproductive for pet damage, just as it is with a non-pet build. No player aggro= no kite.

This particular hybrid was the most fun for me for a number of reasons:
-pet damage was slightly above the threshold point and I could compare the AI aggro behavior with small tweaks.
-FS damage was enough to kill much of the content without the pets. Thus even though Primals could be half a screen behind when zooming through content, things would still die quickly to FS. If you get too far ahead, the pets “teleport”, but that’s a different strategy.
-Boss burst damage was very good with the pets

Experimentation:
-aggro thresholds tweaking
-Eldritch hound testing (Bysmiel Bond proc). It was ~meh, but fun to test
-Flexible for moving points around in the Familiar skill line to compare the effects of various familiar boost (Base Orb vs Lightning Strike or just boost other vs Storm spirit.
-Similar with Hellhound, but 2x familiar is obviously a better focus value
-This MI Ugdenbog Launcher is somewhat flexible for affix/suffix for experimentation which means self-found is quickly up and running.
-lots of speed so Primal bugs move fairly quickly
-lots of FS attack speed so primal bugs are usually at max. numbers

Things to know:

  1. The elemental->acid conversion on BoD does not apply to pets, sadly. I had originally built this hoping that it did (ie, converting the familiars elemental dmg type), but in spite of that loss, the overall damage was decent. So, more gear tweaks would profit from that learning. I think the aura was designed such as to not mess up multiplayer play.
  2. Devotion procs assigned to pets use the pet damage and bonuses, so iirc Blizzard in this case is not getting converted, sadly , but the pet has decent % bonus damage and Blizzard is pretty OP anyways. I just left it like that even after I figured this out, but could be tweaked to something better with that new understanding - different proc, or pet items, etc.

This particular test build is fun MC (as is most anything), but not something you’d likely want for Crucible. It could be better with item and devotion tweaks (ie, Solael’s devotion chaos RR, etc); the acid conversion idea was proven invalid.

I farmed with it until max devotion xp caps, to see how the pet devotions improved with xp. It farmed fairly quickly in Ultimate Roguelikes, etc. It requires positioning for tougher battles.

TLDR:
Hybrid pet power needs focus on the pets. Since there is not a lot of hybrid item support (ie, items with both + pet and + FS), it’s similar to outfitting a pure pet build. Even my messed-up hybrid test performed better overall than the non-pet counterpart…simply due to pet power and a primary focus on pet bonuses/survival.

7

Wow Hammyhamster! Amazing :smiley:

I think you just wanted to showcase me how good double shotgun chicken on steroid is :wink: And I love to acid flavour of the build

I need to farm some gear and I know I will rework a lot of my build. There is so many things that can be modified that’s amazing. Basically everything :wink:

8

Your thread got me thinking about hybrids again. They are fun.

For your goal, I might try something like this : DW melee FS hybrid pet Pyro fire/chaos focus

I swapped the devotions, components, and items around, but simply use it as an idea guide for what your hybrid compromise goal may be.

Changes:
-more pet devotions
-more pet powah through items
-still some FS damage, but had to juggle points and reduce a few related skills.
-procs from shepard’s crook and beastcaller’s hat are very good with pets. 3-piece bonus is nice too, but the hat is desirable for the pet-boost proc.
-manticore means no need for either BWC or Rowan’s crown. I like manticore because it is everything RR, unlike Elemental Storm (rowan crown)

You could juggle points how you want, but you’ll be surprised how fast these Primals chew up stuff with the focus.

About weapons:

2x Dracaris would work, and the Black Scourge Scepter looks like it has an interesting pet-scaled (I don’t know this) it could be a nice bonus. And it has some needed pet resist and some nice pet bonuses. **However, The issue with both these weapons is that on-death procs need you to make the killing blow. You may not get the kill because kills by pets do not count for this proc. You’ll have to decide if this manner of proc is worthwhile for you.

-normally I’d reduce Possession a bit in order to free up skill points, but needed the chaos resist.

-Flame torrent might be better on firestrike for your melee, but you’d have to find some more skills to link the rest (may have to add a skill for proc, maybe). All good stuff for experimentation.

-Attack speed is a bit low for FS, though…it’s all about the compromises, though. You need some adcth to offset Hungering Void and damage so put restless remains on gloves for 3%. It may not be enough. Perhaps there is a better way…

-don’t forget about the faction potion for the occasional pet boost.

  • I think I read somewhere that Emberclaw (Helhound) was an ok attack for hellhound, so maybe a point in Emberclaw is worth testing. This and a pet adtch bonus (from something like the Fiendblood spellblade) might help it survive and add some damage. I didn’t experiment with Hellhound all that much but someone on the Forum is certain to have.

All good fun.

Edit:

Imho on-death procs are questionable when you compete with pets for the kill, and apart from that proc, Dracarris is not a great FS weapon. It occurred to me that since the recent patch change, it would be better to go with a Blazeheart sword. It is a strong FS sword by itself; Blaze heart would likely double or triple your current FS (from physical conversion, attack speed, and greater elemental RR support). This is one of the key areas where you can boost FS attack without sacrificing too much in pet numbers. One of a few combos would work well:

  1. DW 2x Blazeheart
  2. BH + Mytical Ortis sword (has a heal proc)
  3. BH + some other weapon, perhaps with pet stats
  4. BH + a +1 to-all-skills offhand, as skills are hard to find
  5. BH + MI of Kilrians Skullbreaker mace (city of dead boss)
  6. BH + MI of Bloodlord’s Blade sword (Thalonis drop).

There are potential rare pet affixes/suffixes for these MIs, but mind that they are rare rather than magic bonuses, so…not an easy grind. You’d probably be good with just an alacrity bonus for speed.

So, this would more possibly be a better hybrid mix for what you envision:A better hybrid FS/pet version

(I upped the adcth a by swapping a ring, as I’m pretty sure that the extra sustain will be needed. you could add that sustain in many possible ways).

9

I kind of wanted to make a hybrid pet build for a long time. Hell, one of my very first characters was a hybrid although i paired Arcanist with Shaman instead. It later ended up as a TSS druid :frowning:

So, anyways… best of luck and hope you succeed in your endeavour.

10

The blazehearth is amazing, opens up the view. And i could get easier RR when i will focus on fire instead of chaos. Mythical Dracarris is really good, and with blazehearth there will be no problems with getting kills.

The only thing i find missing here is stun resistance…
I wonder what can you create using some MI’s :smiley:

I dabbled a little bit with MIs and:
https://www.grimtools.com/calc/m23eDzjZ
Here pets have MUCH weaker crits and I have 100 OA less, but more Total Speed, have the wraith pets, the eldricht pet, the Time Dilatation for uptime of buffs and pets, and +4k HP and max stun resistance for some quality of life. Also Firestrike hits better :slight_smile:
Edit: Hmm I find it hard to increase my fire damage % above chaos % so that fire to chaos conversion goes to hell…

11

^looks like it could be a fun go.

You should see better FS damage with a Blazeheart even though chaos does get a big bump through Dead God. The 100% flat physical convert is pretty significant, even though the Dracarris has no physical. Seal of Might adds some, though.

Also, this Lost Souls set DW concept could be an interesting comparison: DW Blazeheart + LS set

It’d be interesting to see if the 2x Hellhound can compare for damage - there is a fair bit of potential flat chaos. That LS set is a tough juggling act, though!

12

This looks less like a hybrid and more like an autoattack with flat from pet auras. How much dmg can pets really do as one-pointers, not even halfway to softcap? I’m not sure it’s even worth investing in pet stats at all when your familiar is at 2/16…Can Bonescavenger summons carry a build?

13

Well the familiar is not the king here- i already know how strong 26/16 5 bolts double familiar is.
But as you said- auras play big role. All of the pets use weapon damage, so they get flat bonuses from BOD, Flame Touched, Hellfire and Temper and storm Spirit. The problem here is now with survivability of thr pets - but when you pull the aggro, then it becomes better.

I tested my current build with more defensive devotions and more focus on pets - total speed starts to kick in and giving nice results.
But as my pets get more deadly, I start not to have 100% uptime on that sick Dracarris proc. Happens rarely but still.
For lost souls- fire to vitality conversion would be better but item like that, outside of alreqdy taken conduit, doesn’t exist.