Necromancer nerfed?

Holy crap, did you all nerf the hell out of my pets? I am level 75 going through elite mode and at the final boss of the normal game, loghorrean. i go with 8 skeletons, blight fiend, revenant of Og’Napesh. they immediately get swarmed with mobs and aoe and are dead. geez man, I tried fighting this boss for an hour and could never get past 75% thanks to the 10 mobs spawning at once, all the freaking aoe’s. you all talk about balance, but WTF. this game was fun but lately it is just a big pain in the butt. playing level 75 and running into level 80 boss mobs that just wipe out my pets. you all need to rethink this crap.

Can you post your build?

Have you tried getting feedback about your build to see if the problem is in there instead of instantly blaming the devs and assuming that it’s all their fault?

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Necromancer’s pets were last nerfed in November of 2017. Since then, they’ve only seen buffs.

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Yes sorry I was a bit frustrated and part of the problem in my opinion is that there is always such a big discrepancy in mob levels compared to my level. At level 75 I am fighting 78 to 81 level mobs. But that is just my opinion and o course the higher the level the mobs the easier it is for them to just wipe out my pets. I am away from my computer but will post my build. I had hoped Grim Dawn was not one of those games where only certain builds are viable. But I guess I was wrong. I can tell you I have skeletons maxed out as we as the blight fiend. The pet master one is also maxed with +2. I have used this build till now a d it has worked ok good except for a few bosses where they just drop like flies

Some builds are easier to pull off than others.

When it comes to skeletons, they are the most squishy pet and if you are to focus on them you need to get their cooldown down so that you can keep them up. Also with pets, you need to make sure you invest into their defensive stats as well.

Keep in mind that Skeletons are a level 1 skill/pet. How would you feel about if I complained that Word of Pain do not deal enough damage after level 40? I don’t, see it as a leveling skill - or decent if I get plenty of gear with item skill modifiers.

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Necromancers have been buffed by quite a bit afaik.

But can’t say much without looking at your build. Rest assured that you can even take a Solo mastery necro all the way to level 100 atm.

Skeletons are tricky. I will tell you more once I see the build.

Sounds like you need to look at a few things there:

  • Pet resistances. Get these up, Skellies especially are frailer than other mastery pets like Shaman’s Briarthorn/Primal Spirit or the Blight Fiend so you want to prioritise pet resists where possible even more.

  • Pet sustain. You want some way of actively healing your pets or keeping them alive. Shamans can use Wendigo Totem, Occultists can use Blood of Dreeg and perhaps Mend Flesh, the Toad/Revenant constellations provide your pets with a bit of life steal which can be made more effective if you bind them to a devotion ability that deals frequent amounts of weapon damage. Binding a constellation with built-in life steal like Twin Fangs is also an idea.

  • Using the Pet Attack command. If you see your pets are being swarmed by AoEs, move them out of it. For example, one of Log’s notable skills to watch out for is the Acid/Poison vomit that can spike in damage but is telegraphed - as soon as you see his mouth start to froth green, move your pets back.

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I am definitely interested in seeing your build. I’m currently 81 with my burning dead defiler, but it’s a struggle. I killed Loghorrean before level 75 so I can’t quite compare.

https://www.grimtools.com/calc/gZwJWeqV Here’s my setup at the closest point to yours if you want to compare.

Speaking of which, my solo necro at 80: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/62aE4gb2
It was a faceroll at that point :yum:

Hey all. Thanks for all the tips and advice. Sorry for being so negative at first. I should have figured build would make a difference and shouldn’t have blamed the devs. I was just frustrated after fighting him for an hour and coming up short.

here is my build.
https://www.grimtools.com/calc/vNQd1DMZ

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Well, to start, Apostate isn’t the best class to play a pet build. Not saying that you can’t make it work, almost everything work enough to complete campaign in GD, but there are better choices for pet builds. If you won’t miss pets too much, I suggest you to rework your build into something different (Necro and Inquisitor have a good synergy for Aether damage, per example). Anyway, I think it’s important for you to know how to make pets work.

Let’s begin saying that hybrid builds aren’t very effective (with some rare exceptions) because you basically become a “master of none”. If you want pets to work you have to invest almost all your resources into making them powerful. So, you need to ditch Flames of Ignaffar and Ranged Expertise and abandon any dream of dealing damage by yourself. Instead of that you should focus on buffing your pets, so you definitely want to invest in Word of Renewal and Inquisitor’s Seal. The seal gives you mainly flat absorption and elemental resistances to everything standing over it, and the arcane empowerement nod adds some offensive stats to the mix. RoW heals yourself, your allies and your pets in a radius and gives them DA, greater effectiveness against eldritch and chthonian enemies (precisely against Loghorrean), HP, cc reduction, flat and % damage and aether/chaos resistances. Those are some stats that you don’t want to miss. Maxing those two skills would definitely make a difference.

Second, your items are all over the place. I think that’s the biggest problem here. Just three of them have any direct benefit for your pets. You need to look for items to boost your pets, specially their defenses. Some faction vendors offer nice options in items if you don’t have a good budget yet.

Third, your devotions are ok, but there is a lot of room for improvements. I’d remove Rat (no benefit for your pets) and Scales (as a petmaster you generally don’t want to get hit) and spend those points on other constellations. I was thinking something like this, although I admit that I’m not that good deciding constellations for pets and those last points spent in Obelisk of Menhir could go somewhere better. Maybe someone else could give you better advice on that aspect.

Lastly, it’s important to pilot your pets with the pet attack skill that you get by default, to make them avoid nasty attacks or focus on bigger threats first.

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Thanks for the tips. I will look at changing my skills to pick up those 2 you mentioned. I did change my devotion a bit to get the Tree of Life boost (healing rain) and Ishtak, the spring maiden boost (natures Guardians) and I was able to defeat him. Before I get into Elite Ashes of Malmouth I will clean up my build even more. Thanks again everyone for the help.

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Ooh… Apostate. First things first Pet Apostate can and will work well enough to do everything ingame except Callagadra/Crate of Entertainment (Mogdrogen not tested)

Here are 2 possible endgame paths:

BlightFiend based: Fat & Fwuffy - Pet Apostate
Reap Spirit based: Friede - Pet Apostate

Both can farm Gladiator Crucible easily and do SR 75+ on Ultimate.

Skeletons are however a no go for endgame stuff. That said, since those builds above require specific items and stuff to work, this is what we will do in the meantime:

Lvl 80: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/gZwJlEnV
Lvl 90: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/D2p89yJ2
Lvl 100: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/w26RmLA2

Disregard the items for the time being. Work towards this as a budget setup: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/q2mlmjWN

Once you get to that, then work towards getting the items in one of the two endgame Apostate builds I posted. You can farm Skeleton Key dungeons for the random legendaries.

If you have questions, feel free to ask :yum:

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Have you thought about this?
Korvaak’s Burning-Blade

yes.

@philman you seem to equip first best epic / legendary over other items that actually boosts your pets damage and survival. For instance there are many green items that provides pet health, damage and resistances.

The skills you should use from Inquisitor is the Word of Renewal line and Inquisitor seal.
Word of reneval will work as heal and DA/cc/dmg/resistance buff for you and the pets.
Inquisitor seal damage absorption and resistance buff (good for dot and shotgun spells) as well as damage buff. Place it under your pets.

You can use Ill Omen or Ravenous Eart (Decay) to reduce monster’s damage output and use for devotion triggers like Shepherds call.

Thank you, and thanks everyone for all the tips. I definitely have lots to learn.

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