Need guidance with Apostate gunslinger for fun build

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
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My character in question: Apostate, Level 61 (GD 1.2.1.6) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator (Normal, Veteran)
Hello!

I’m not an experienced GD player so I don’t have much knowledge of synergy and items. My idea on this one is to use Skeletons as a wall to eat projectiles and the rest is shooting and healing them.

Right now I’m trying to get Widow, Rovans Crown and Murmur, but I’m not sure if there is anything better for the character.

I’d like to get Apothecary set but had no luck finding other 2 items. And probably a Marauders talisman or a higher talisman of the same type of WPS, but I don’t have all of the recipes yet and don’t know where do I get them.

Any constellation suggestions, where to put attributes and which items would fit are very welcome, I’d just like to keep the idea of my build almost everything else is optional. Thanks

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I think you will really run into two issues here,
First one is that some of these blues don’t contribute much while also not giving you good resistances. While you do have everything capped for now except for Aether / Chaos I have no clue how you felt going through for example, Fort Ikon. You can definitely look into some Green items that will give A LOT more bonuses to whatever you are trying to do while also having a different spread of resistances to cover everything.

Second, what are you trying to do? It sounds like you want to have a hybrid of pet and ranged options however nothing on your gear has pet bonuses. Again, looking for greens will let you see there are a lot of items with bonuses to pets that you will really benefit from. Otherwise if you only want to use them as a bone shield, do you really need to spend 40 skill points in there? If you are fully investing it would be nice to support them a little through items.

That being said Skeletons are damage pets, they are there to do damage. You are focusing on cold and elemental damage types with Murmur and Rowans so you want to somehow convert pet damage to those types as well (otherwise they are mostly Vitality with some Physical and Fire for mages). But as I said, skeletons are damage pets. If you want a bodyguard the Blightfiend is a better pet for that as it is made for tanking. Even then without items that boost pet resistances and stats, they will still go down like tissue paper.

But even before that for your survivability and damage you should also take a look at the Spectral Binding / Wrath nodes. That is a huge source of HP and damage with your guns with resistance shredding.

For obvious reasons hybrid builds are hard to make good as for example if you put all your gear into making your gunning skills good your pets start to do little compared to the skill point investment you put in them. And vice-versa if you focus on pets too much your damage will become insignificant. That’s not to say it can’t be done, but it is a hard balancing act.

TLDR: Please look at green items they are awesome. Spectral Binding and Wrath are way too good to pass up! Check out smelly potato pet.

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Thank you! I did put on a green ring and neck because of item level issue. I didn’t know there were better green items for the other slots, I just don’t have that experience. I will try to look more instead of selling all of them right away!

… how you felt going through … Fort Ikon.

I could film a video of me going through Fort Ikon content of your choice, if that helps. I just don’t remember how it was, I was binge-playing it two days ago through Homestead-Necropolis and didn’t mind to get a couple of deaths. If I summarize what I do remember, It really was just choosing a place where to stand so my Skeletons clamp up the entrance. Sometimes It resulted in regular, heroes and bosses get confused and lose their pathfinding. Sometimes they become stunned/frozen before they get to me. Sometimes I do get hit, most hets I get even now are chaos/aether bombs and single-target spells like some red lightning and such. Right now I use evade and RMB ability to dodge some of it.

Archon Barthollem was mostly kited, I also did Father Abbadoth in Burrwitch Cathedral and the Sentinel in the temple of three the same way, though, the benches really helped so much against the Sentinel. I probably died to all of them at least once, but not too much, yes XD I did not manage to kill Rashalga and it is REALLY hard for me, but I raised the DPS metric like twice from last time (lvl ~50 → lvl 62 with 1 more into Widow constellation), probably.

Second, what are you trying to do? It sounds like you want to have a hybrid of pet and ranged options however nothing on your gear has pet bonuses. Again, looking for greens will let you see there are a lot of items with bonuses to pets that you will really benefit from. Otherwise if you only want to use them as a bone shield, do you really need to spend 40 skill points in there? If you are fully investing it would be nice to support them a little through items.

I don’t know which items give resists and health, I have some small bonuses on components, abilities and constellations. But that’s it. So I will probably need to get some directions on how to search these exact items. I have like only Deathchill now and I had Hell’s bane ammo instead of Blessed Steel, but that’s it for now. My stash is not huge with pet buffs, there are some, not much. Like I have one Marrow band and a few other items without damage conversion.

That being said Skeletons are damage pets, they are there to do damage. You are focusing on cold and elemental damage types with Murmur and Rowans so you want to somehow convert pet damage to those types as well (otherwise they are mostly Vitality with some Physical and Fire for mages). But as I said, skeletons are damage pets. If you want a bodyguard the Blightfiend is a better pet for that as it is made for tanking. Even then without items that boost pet resistances and stats, they will still go down like tissue paper.

Blightfiend is annoying to summon and it has 1 unit at a time with 18 second cooldown. That was my experience. And I’m not blocking entrance with just a fiend, having 8 Skeleton units with 3 as resummon helps a bit. I have a hound with more HP as an automated summon, but that damages with acid and poison, yeah, I need conversion for sure. Well at least hound doubles the hp from the fiend and has 10 second cooldown and to upgrade the fiend I need like 30 points which will become just attributes while skeletons are 20 points + cost itself and hound is half-free - still takes up constellation space but not skill points. I’m hating the potato, I’m sorry, ahaha. I’m down to help current pets get more HP and rez.

But even before that for your survivability and damage you should also take a look at the Spectral Binding / Wrath nodes. That is a huge source of HP and damage with your guns with resistance shredding.

Ok. Is it worth after maxing Censorship Aura and Yap-yap of Renewal? Of should I put a few there and leave some for this?

And vice-versa if you focus on pets too much your damage will become insignificant.

Rn I’m at around 10.6 k DPS with max beronaths stacks and 9,? k without them. I have absolutely no clue how to calculate pet damage, if that helps to judge.

There is a small possibility to change main damage to fire, I have some items for that, but I guess I lose freeze stun or something

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Hi, as someone who has posted a lot of endgame hybrid pet builds I can tell you what you try to do is very hard, even for hybrid pet build standards.

honestly you may want to consider using a save game editor like GDstash to refund the necromancer entirely and replace it for occultist, because that combination has much better synergy for a hybrid pet elemental inquisitor shooter.

However if you want to continue with this concept you should know this build can in the end only work with 2x bysmiel rings, like this one: Bysmiel's Authority - Items - Grim Dawn Item Database

this is really not how the game works, skeletons are useless for defense you need a tank pet that pulls aggro. alternatively you use your skeletons as major source for dmg and build your character to be very tanky (but that is really an awkward choice for a pistol build)

You feel this way because your pet defenses are much too weak, you need much more resistance on them, get steel resolve to 10/10, a green armor piece with ‘of the caged souls’ for bleeding resist and ‘of the wild’ for more elem resist.

For devotions i would have gone very differently, probably Rhowan’s crown + ulo of the waters + behemoth as highest priority, to get many of those useful pet stats. In the endgame the build should probably aim for eye of korvaak devotion and staff of rattosh along the way.

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Hello! Ye, I see, and the leveling is not funny sometimes. At least I have only a couple of levels to go XD I will look up your posts

Nooooooo (add Darth Vader sound here) not the occultist, but It does have elemental synergy. Now I know what to do in the future.

Yes and no. Using space to my advantage is intended game rule. I’ve seen some Hardcore players dying to getting stuck in a dead end facing nemesis or whatever it’s called and not being able to run around and avoid death. I did this to myself many times too. If this action is punishable and there is no workaround besides teleport or dash, then am I really crazy for using it?

On the other side, yes, you are right, that getting stuck and clamping the passages are not intended in the way that mobs AI is not perfect and it is mostly abusing that I can’t produce consistently. And there were many open spaces where I had to use running and other spells. You are correct that Skeletons are not tanking much. I do feel now that Skeletons were not intended to tank and about weird stuck and pathing, I really should not rely on it.

Not changing the pistols for now, but I have some constellation, skill and attributes resets, so I will think about that. Thank you :pray:

Damn that’s very expensive, but I’ve noted the item suggestions, thank you!

Writing that down.

In my defense, that is not what I’d do at level 20-30. But I see how it’s intended to be.

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Another option if you want to insist on hybrid pet inquisitor + skeletons, is to not be a gunner build but use Flames of ignaffar instead, this is because most pet weapons are melee + offhand items
so you have more options at lower levels such as Korvaak's Burning-Blade - Items - Grim Dawn Item Database

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:thinking: that is actually possible, I’m not throwing away fire items so when I will find this I can try it on. Thank you!

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if you forgo the gunner aesthetic I would fully focus on Vitality pets as it is much easier with Necro pets default damage and use Leafmane Trophy to add some Vitality resistance shredding to Inquisitor which normally does not have any synergy with Vitality damage.

edit: omg I almost forgot Aether pets would of course have innate synergies with Warden Krieg’s mace as well if we’re abandoning guns. I was still thinking gun + off-hand for some reason which isn’t very useful as you cannot make use of inquisitor top row with that anyway.

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Will look, It is sad that I can’t shoot with two pistols, but I can wear it for a few levels