Usually Pet builds won’t really rely on armor and instead focus more on Physical Resistance, dmg mitigation in the form of stuff like Fiendflesh boot proc, DA etc on top of heals and having pets soak up the damage for you.
But if your resistances are at a safe level, definitely feel free to go for more armor as more survivability is always good 
Facetanking Superbosses while drinking Burrwich Brew when? 
Hi, i was wondering, why of all pet builds this one can facetank ravager/mogdrogen? Not that im doubting, i just dont understand, does it have leech from casting reap spirit? super high regen? because against ravager, the armor and phys res are not great, do the pets taunt the target? How does this pet works, hes not invincible (tooltip like guardians for example), he just has like idk 99% damage reduction innate? I know briathorn taunts the target, but i cant find on reap spirit abilites something that says it taunts…
Anyway, just editing this before you see it, on the current patch do you recommend this one for HC or fluffy? Or another of your builds?
Wendigo Totem + ill Omen’s dmg reduction + Primal Bond (and Ishtak’s) dmg absorption + Tree & Giant’s Blood + Mogdrogen’s Pact for some extra regen and having 30k HP on top of everything, making risks of getting 1-shotted much less.
While you can get the same on Fluffy Squishy (no ill omen, but can use Hound and World Gate’s dmg reduc), going for all those like Totem, giant’s blood etc, will make its damage go down even further and Fluffy isn’t exactly known for being a DPS beast.
Ishtar however, does not have any issues with outputting damage, so I can focus more on defensive (heal related) stuff.
Reap Spirit is a rather curious pet. It simply has absurdly high resistances across the board which also get more from whatever bonus pet res you have. At the same time, it is on a low cooldown and comparatively much higher duration. So while they aren’t immortal like Guardians, you will pretty much never see them actually die to enemies.
Regarding pet aggro and taunting, both Reap Spirits and the Swarmlings from Relic are rather poor at taunting enemies or even holding aggro. But that is where our secret weapon comes into play, the reason why the devotion route is going for Ishtak instead of something like Mogdrogen + Rattosh (which will give more dmg, but at the cost of tankiness). Whenever Ishtak procs, it essentially makes all of your pets taunt, which means even without any innate skill to generate aggro, your Ghosts and bugs instantly become mini Briarthorns.
Regarding face-tankability, I would say it is mostly Totem doing the work with everything else helping out. Also why the build becomes much more squishier against Callagadra and Crate since you need to kite those.
Regarding HC, it depends… some prefer Fluffy while others rather play Ishtar. Both have their own qualities and different strengths and weaknesses. Major difference is that Fluffy plays like a traditional pet build while Ishtar feels more like a caster. Fluffy is more passive while Ishtar is more of an active playstyle etc…
While Ishtar has the advantage of pets not dying, it is terrible to play if you ever need to kite like in deep SR. But Fluffy’s low stun res for eg can cause problems as well… So it is like they both work and at the same time have issues in certain situations.
So, pick either or both depending on what you like more 
thank you so much for the answer. didnt know you could make reap spirits even more tankier, but as it seems from your guide its not worth investing in that because they’re already pretty tanky. I’ll give it a thought about what build i’ll play, id like one to do 75-76 fast farm and celestials aswell so i wont go too deep SR with it.
Last question, how does the taunt from ishtak works? Better, how does taunt works? does the pets taunt for the full duration of the ishtak buff? if so, that seems kinda op lol
yeah, no need to make reap spirits tankier on purpose, but they will still be tankier than base stats show since you will inevitably end up with more resistances and stuff.
Taunt just pulls the enemy/boss to aggro’ing on your pet(s). But bosses also have taunt resistance, so it is not as op as it sounds 
Note: build updated. Now has Dryad and +200 DA because Behemoth is too random 
Hey im pretty new to grim dawn, i was wondering if it matter to which of the factions you side with in the homestead for this build.
cheers
You can choose either.
The only faction choice that really matters is Barrowholm. Choose to side with them to gain access to their augment used in weapon and off-hand.
Good news
Will cryptstalker be a better choice since it give a permanent vitality debuff instead of chance? it gives pet bonus too.
Cryptstalker - Items - Grim Dawn Item Database (grimtools.com)
First lee, now maya is updating builds from the grave. This is definitely necro meta right now
Looking at the patch notes of 1.1.9.6, there’ll be more.
except cockatiel is maya’s alt account
You really think lee hasn’t took over Dragon’s soul by now? : inspector:
I´m new to pets.
Why the blood pact - do pets also benefit from its aura?
I would recommend contacting Maya directly on Reddit. But I assume that it does.
I did manage to find some info on it on the forums. But things might have changed since then.
[1.1.9.0] [Ritualist] Deacons of the Deep __“We add more flat damage to our Skeletons through Soul Harvest, Blood Pact, Mogdrogen’s Pact, our Khonsar rings and Corruptor set proc.”
Stupid me. The buff is being displayed @ player and the pets. So it works, yes.
Follow-up:
The Totem must be in 5m range of enemies for it to leech. But the player does not need to be in that radius in order to gain the leeched life, right?
Maya kinda suggests so, when claiming she never stands as close as 5m to an enemy.
No idea.
But these remarks by Maya suggest that you do need to be in the radius of the totem.
Maybe Totem was used for Mogdrogen and Ravager since the first post says those were face tanked.
