Pet Conjurer - To Blood of Dreeg or not to?

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
1

Yup, what the title says. Before you call me crazy to even consider not taking one of the best skills available, hear me out.

First things first, here is my build: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/4ZDXkDWZ

Nothing special, except for the Greens, but I’ll admit right away that GDstash helped me here. And I am sure that the skills and stuff could use alot of optimizing. But it was something created as sort of an experiment and I wanted to make a build from scratch rather than copy the many available.

The idea was/is to focus on physical dmg and RR and I just stacked some health and stuff on top of it for giggles…

Murder Kitty and the Plant guys do most of the work while Puppy just runs around and the 2 Crows do something (I think). I have been considering swapping out Will of Bysmiel for Heart of the Mountain, but find my pets suddenly becoming alot squishier. I am guessing that it is due to the loss of Def.ability? I am not sure, but I guess I will put that to you guys as nother question.

Sacrificing 1 Crow and +4 sec of mana-less Murder Kitty for Mini Kuba worth it?

Now for the question in the title. To take BoD or not? With a Cabalist, it would make alot of sense. And I did read DaShiv’s pet guide and how +flat DMG works in your favour. But since you will have to take those points from somewhere and then dump some extra for +dmg and RR, I am not sure if the tradeoff will be worth it.

But I am open to suggestions and anything that makes it better while not steering too far off from the initial build is welcome. I am comfortable with the Devotion setup, but feel free to improvise there too if you want.

PS: It can Clear Glad Cruci 170 with just blessings and no consumables or banners and seem to tackle Ultimate just fine. So I am happy with it overall. But anything that makes it better is always good.

2

Yeah start by taking that BoD+AotG

3

Yes, but sacrificing what inturn?

And I am more looking towards what it would gain me vs what I would lose. The maths and stuff behind it.

Given that I am right now focusing on Physical dmg, and have plenty of HP and regen along with acid/poison resists to get by without worries, I need the incentive to sacrifice the other stuff in favour of the BoD line.

Hence the dilemma. I could sacrifice some HP I guess, but then I need the defensive options from BoD to cover for that. If I sacrifice dmg, again, BoD will have to cover for it.

I guess what I am really asking is, whether it is really worth it if you don’t go stacking acid/poison dmg along with it.

4

What pet builds thirst: flat dmg, speed and resistances. BoD provides a lot raw acid dmg, includes resistances and instant heal source. Hellfire or StormSpirit also boost your pet dmg/ resistances a HUGE. Crow is the best pet among those 3, you should invest more points on him.

5

By taking Aspect of the Guardian, you can spec out of everything that gives you and pets acid resistance in favor of damage (like augments and stuff, those aweful anitvenom salves for instance)

Don’t you have Runebound Topaz and Ugdenbog leather blueprints btw?

If you are focusing on Physical damage, aren’t there better amulet than will of bysmiel? Your Raven seems to be the pet in your line-up that deals the least physical damage after all. I guess its for the skill recharge reduction to primal spirit?

Nice MI weapon and off-hand! But is the Radient gem in the off-hand nessecary? If you want more elemental res, get the first node in Empyrion

Remove the green and the first node in Raven (+15% dmg is nothing)

I made some changes, still not perfect though https://www.grimtools.com/calc/xZyq7drZ

6

I like to pick BoD and Wendigo Totem. Pets are almost immortal, but I don’t really want WT if I can’t afford it with skillpoints leftovers.

7

The problem I have with Crow is that it can’t tank. And Focusing on it, BoD line and CoF line would not leave much points to spend elsewhere.

See, my playstyle revolves around what I call “The Headless Chicken”. And that describes it very well. I just run around with no idea what I am doing while things die around me or incase of crucible, until I get 2 reapers, get CC’ed by something and die.

So, I need safety first. And need a build that provides that first and foremost. I know BoD is supposed to be good. But not sure where to get the points from and how much to invest. 28 points is alot.

Also, to elaborate on my line of thought:

BoD has a 15 second CD on the heal. My pets have a 15 second CD with Harbinger having 10 and P.Spirit having 5 sec. If I say, take points from Bonds of Bysmiel and Heart, then would the Heal and HP regen along with the physical and poison resists make up for the loss in HP?

From the GD link, you can see that my pets are sitting at 70% poison resist. Now, the extra from BoD won’t hurt, but I don’t think I have ever had them die to poison/acid. The 12% physical resist would be much welcome, but then again, loss/gain is what concerns me.

Right now what kills them mostly is life reduction and Shotguns from the usual culprits.

And say I take it for the dmg. The OA is good, but I don’t know how much each pet has since that is hidden afaik. They already crit well enough and I don’t know how much of an improvement it will be.

The flat dmg is acid. Meaning, while it is easy to stack +dmg%, I will need to go out of my way to provide RR for it which means extra points spent on Vulnerability.

So, 38 points taken from elsewhere. And if we focus on Ravens on top of that…

8

Ok, I like what I am seeing:D, but got a question on the 2nd node of Wolverine.

Since I am not really building towards pet retaliation, would that point be better spent on either nodes of empty throne for more Aether/Chaos res?

Also, yes The Amulet is primarily for Murder Kitty. But I am open to suggestions there too :slight_smile:

9

Sorry, I missclicked, you just need the first node in Wolverine for the pet pierce res so yes you could do a node in throne according to your taste/needs

here I made another devo plan for you

https://www.grimtools.com/calc/r2B6D6b2

the two unused dev points you can get the third wolverine node if you want more pet bleed res, or grab the two nodes in throne for aether/chaos res, or 2 nodes in toad for more pet OA, or first node in Typhos for more pet armor… many choices

notice that you get about +500 DA with this, less needing of running around since you will get hit & crit less

you can also get skill bond of bysmiel to 11/12 since you have diminishing returns (you already have like +250% pet health!) and spend it in blood of dreeg skill for higher heal and more pet OA or why not get Curse of Fraility higher? more RR = more dmg

10

Redundant overcaps (whole Mog Pact line first, then BB-Manipulation), useless pet skills (all but raven’s lighting strike is meh)

11

Hm… I will play around with it. Ty for the help :smiley:

12

Yeah, not going to do that.

But I have a pet cabalist in mind focusing on poison. The Crows will have to play there ;p

13

Do what you will, lemme just tell you this:

Mog’s Pact after softcap:
first node = 2-3 flat per point, energy regen (tree of life makes it redundant), life regen is bogus
middle node = 1% health per point
last node = ok, armor and pierce res… but still too pricey and you don’t need that in such abundance with that health pool

Pet skills at one point = DPS loss, regular attacks are stronger

BoD: heal, flat oa (real sweet with all that extra %oa by curtesy of GDStash), phys res, all acid res in the world, flat acid

I’m no veteran myself but look at sigatrev. I bet all his occultist builds have BoD. In fact, pets or no pets, acid no acid, pretty much all occultist builds have BoD, it’s that good

14

I don’t know shit about pet builds but I would take that advice. Sigatrev is at the top of pet builds game at the moment, I think he did every possible thing with pet builds, I would just copy everything he does if I were you and try and understand his decisions behind this or that and go from there.

15

Concluding my humble input, I cite:

“To blood of dreeg or not to blood of dreeg
That is not even a question”

  • William Shakespeare
16

I’d recommend something more like this. There are 20 spare skill points you can use to customize as you see fit. Wendigo Totem is a great option if you can pilot well enough to utilize it, but doesn’t really fit well with a “headless chicken” approach. Ground Slam isn’t that great of a skill, but it is certainly lazy so it might be a good option.

Details:

  • Putting extra points into Bonds of Bysmiel is generally not worthwhile. Pets already have massive health and their resistances are pretty good.
  • Don’t overcap Manipulation unless you have more points than you know what to do with. The main benefit of Manipulation is the speed, and that only gains 1% per point after 12/12.
    [li]Don’t overcap Emboldening Presence. The main benefit is the physical resist which doesn’t scale well past 12/12[/li]Hellhound isn’t worth putting a lot of points into unless you’re going dedicated Hellhound build
  • Changed devotion setup to use Manticore, as it provides additional physical RR. This is not strictly necessary but I’d recommend it. I’ve tested the effectiveness of all the T3 Primordial + Order devotions and found that Ishtak, the Sprint Maiden is the only one that makes a really big difference for a pet build.
  • Changed Amulet to Mythical Heart of the Mountain. The Chillmane will be far more useful to a physical build than the extra Familiar, and with 27% CDR and Bound Wraith the Primal Spirit has 85% uptime already.
  • Changed leg armor to Mythical Chausses of Barbaros. The boost from Battle Cry is larger than the pet bonuses from Wildshorn Legguards with pretty good uptime, and the pants provide much needed Chaos resist.
  • Changed the prefix on your weapon to Seer’s with +3 Briarthon. The extra +1 Briarthorn and CDR are more useful than the bonuses provided by Conjurer’s prefix to this build.
  • Changed a bunch of components and augments to balance resistance and increase damage output.
  • Changed the completion bonus on the relic
17

I was talking about focusing on the Ravens ;p

18

Thank you for the suggestions :smiley:

19

Btw, I have noticed that people generally do not go for the Raven’s Healing skill. Why is that? Is it bugged atm or just random/unreliable?

20

At 16/16 Mend Flesh is 15% + 635 every 2 seconds to one target only. Compare that to Wendigo Totem, which at 12/12 (less skill points) heals 10% + 1000 every 2 seconds to everything in range.
Totem has about 75% heal power of Mend Flesh but for 75% the amount of skill points, but it hits everything instead of 1 target.

For your build, 1 point into Mend Flesh = 4% + 110 healing every 2 seconds on one target only, with a pause from raven damage.
Also for your build, 1 point into Wendigo Totem = 4% + 120 healing every 2 seconds on all targets, with no pause from raven damage.

The x2 from your amulet is negligible because Wendigo Totem essentially has x4 or more depending on how many things it’s healing.

Also totem splits its healing into smaller increments so it essentially reacts faster to damage.

tl;dr: why go Mend Flesh when you can go Wendigo Totem?