Recently I posted my Pseudo Pet Dervish build on Reddit - https://www.reddit.com/r/Grimdawn/comments/eedrvq/beginner_friendly_easy_to_gear_the_immortal_army/ and it got some really mixed feedback. Among all the commotion, there started a debate regarding pet builds vs pseudo pet builds. Surprisingly (or maybe not), Maya turned out to be the main hater and continuously trashed my thread calling me names right and left. I expressed my opinion that pet builds slow down during levelling around level 60 compared to decent specs like this dervish for example. At least, that was my experience. I was called a liar, a drug addict, talking from my @$$ and many other things. I encouraged Maya to try my build and then see if her opinion would change, but only got more trashing in response.
I said cool, maybe I’m really bad at playing pet builds. Gave Maya the benefit of the doubt (more than once actually). Asked her which build she would recommend as a good reference point, so I could level a new one and compare it to my dervishes at various stages. I was suggested this spec - https://www.grimtools.com/calc/YZeKzdp2
So, I put my ego aside, said to myself that I might actually endup learning more about pet builds and maybe even finally make a fast and strong build in process. All my previous attempts were chores and I ended up abandoning them in the process.
As I was levelling and testing the two builds, Maya continued trashing me and my results. I was blamed for ‘skewing tests’ on purpose, even though those were simply my mistakes based on lack of serious experience in the area. And even with those mistakes it was already obvious that the performance difference is enormous. So I continued improving and retesting. I did over 50 tests, not all of them uploaded yet. With devotion, without devotions, with player active skills, without those. pets defensive stance, pets aggressive stance, close distance to pets, far away from pets, bosses that have mind control, bosses that don’t have it, bosses that have zero lighting res and bosses that have 80%+ fire res (my dervish is fire based). I finally got to 60 in Elite with both specs and recorded a bunch of tests.
Note, all the gear shown below is self found with these two chars only. No stash transferred items. The dervish only needed one Barthollem kill and one rogue dungeon run to get the helmet and mace. I also did a few runs to get the salazar’s balde for the conjurer and got a lucky offhand drop which added an extra pet!
Below are the test results at various stages of levelling. I don’t consider myself a good pilot of pet builds but the same goes for pseudo pets.
Level 19-20 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wkp2UityHz4&t=2s
Nothing too convincing (I’m still a total newbie here at piloting both builds). Both builds are strong and the 15 sec Dervish’s lead could be attributed to my piloting and no aggressive pet stance.
Level 42-43 - Alkamos - 2.7 times faster - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGrzmKqP3Dk&feature=youtu.be
Level 42 - Mad Queen - 2 times faster - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqJamd6HdpY
I’m still a newbie here, still not piloting the pets correctly and not using the aggressive stance. But even with those fixed, the performance doesn’t change much as you will see in the next videos.
Grimtools Level 42:
Pet Conjurer - https://www.grimtools.com/calc/wV187eM2
Pet Dervish - https://www.grimtools.com/calc/4ZDv3mz2
Char files: level42.zip (502.7 KB)
Level 50 - Fleshworks and Final Boss -
Pet Conjurer - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mev6sFvpJE&feature=youtu.be
Pet Dervish - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=husczID49QE&feature=youtu.be
Level 53 - Dummy test - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcqS7QIw9GM&feature=youtu.be
Grimtools:
Pet Conjurer - https://www.grimtools.com/calc/8NKdApj2
Pet Dervish - https://www.grimtools.com/calc/bVALrQw2
Char files:
Level 53.zip (684.4 KB)
And finally, Level 60 (my main claim that pet builds slow down significantly at this level compared to decent speed specs including this dervish) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsoDuV-SFDY&feature=youtu.be
And the first three bosses in Elite HC - https://youtu.be/MbuA_3rtGpI
Grimtools:
Pet Conjurer - https://www.grimtools.com/calc/r2BWyrDV
Pet Dervish - https://www.grimtools.com/calc/pZrWGB6N
Char files:
Level 60.zip (971.4 KB)
Speed is a relative concept. A build is a slow build compared to something 2-3x faster. Calling someone a liar based on a different baseline without at least trying to understand their position and point of view - is unfair. Calling someone names consistently is not a trait of a nice person.
Feel free to trash this thread too. I still think pseudo pet builds level much faster and are very suitable for beginners. In fact, I could level to 100 with just the gear I have now without feeling slow.
Another big thing is the AoE. You would need to make an entirely different pet build to have any hope of catching up with the dervish in full map clearing times.
Anyhow, I’m done here. Feel free to grab the char files and test them yourselves. I will continue learning to pilot pet builds, but for now, I stand by my words that every pet build I tried so far feels sluggish around level 60+, when compared to decent specs like this fire dervish (I also tried acid dervish and it was nearly as fast). Note, I’m not comparing these specs to true speed levelling beasts like WoP Infiltrator, AAR, RE and other monsters of clearing screens. That’s for another time perhaps…