You are really pushing me to use GDStash aren’t you 
I’ve tested these builds with and without devotions and the result was the same + - few sec. Still, if you are unconvinced by the results so far, I’ll cross the line here and max out devo for you! 
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Hahahahaha. GDSTASH IS LIFE.
#hailmamba
I guess a more natural set up would be to level the 2 specs using what you/maya/duskdeep have all agreed to be the fastest setup and to compare the 2
But that’s what I’ve been doing all these Xmas and NY holidays lol. I’m levelling a few chars side by side actually. 2 dervishes (acid + fire), a conjurer, a ritualist, and another conjurer just in case. It’s HC after all.
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Right. But I’m talking about down to th most minute detail. Stay poing distribution, skill point allocation, leveling pathing, etc.
And t ought to be done outside HC imo to more accurately reflect the player base at large.
But of course, this is just me being extremely pedantic.
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You got it. Recording max devo and playing SC style from now on till all the testing is done! 
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This is kinda what I hate about the internet, something as silly as:
Contragor: “Pet dervish outlevels standard pet builds!”
Maya: “Nuh-uh!”
Contragor: “Yuh-huh!”
Maya: “Nuh-uh!”
Ad infinitum
Turns into a heated argument between supposedly grown(-ish)-up people. I din’t read everything from the both of you, as my eyes were about to fall out of my sockets by then from all the eyerolling.
From what I could gather, in the beginning, you’re trying to sell this build, claiming it being “faster than normal pets”, with no proof. Maya is no better, and doesn’t provide proof either. Both only providing anecdotal experience.
You could have saved this whole argument by either saying “in my experience, but might ofcourse be wrong”, or provided hard proof from the getgo, if it’s so important it’s faster. Same goes for Maya.
Better yet, you could both have encouraged each other by saying "we actually don’t know, let’s find out together.
Lastly, imo, it means fuckall which build is actually faster. Your build doesn’t need to beat “standard pets” to be viable and fun, it just has to be/feel “fast/fun enough”.
With that said, I’ve started levelling with your Pet dervish build, and it’s a blast and fast too - also enables good kiting, which my EoR Templar was sorely lacking. Can also interject the little I played conjurer was also fast and fun, but aggro issues making me have to tank everything when playing with a friend anyways, made me change into a my Templar in the end.
I mean. I don’t deny that things could’ve perhaps been done in a better manner but we are all human, and we do make mistakes.
I prefer not to judge people solely on one incident. Maya is imo one of the most patient and easy going individuals here (rivaling even @nery for his position as the forum’s sweetheart), and contragor is an extremely giving person - never hesitating to give legit self farmed loot to less experienced players.
But I digress.
It does matter which is the faster leveling build insofar as theorycrafting is concerned lest we give newer players false information.
Why do you think we test things so exhaustively?
Surely not because it makes us feel all warm and fuzzy inside
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Yeah, I’ve noticed all three, and I’ve only been on reddit and here very little. I just felt this whole debacle just wasn’t dignified at all.
And you’re right, hence the “imo” as I don’t care either way, as long as it’s fast and fun enough! 
If it can be actually proven what’s faster for levelling, noticeably and regularly so, under objective and equal circumstances, then sure, I can understand the metric.
Righto. Unless I’m misunderstanding the situation because I frequent the forum, and not reddit, I think that’s precisely what this experiment is aimed at answering.
Because if pseudopets are indeed significantly faster, perhaps pets are in need of buffs.
I don’t disagree at all - however, it could just as easily been done leaving out the childish part, though. 
It’s the internet mate. Surely you’ve behaved childishly on it too at one point or another.
Maybe they had a shitty day irl, or whatever.
Point I’m trying to make is this: look at the bigger picture, and try to be more forgiving in how you view others.
<3
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Hey @Contragor, just watched the videos and tried the build. Very cool and easy.
Pet builds don’t really slow down at 60 since they are not the fastest to level in the first place. Also, you need to switch pets to keep doing damage: Primal Spirit and Reap Spirit respectively for Necro and Shaman. They also have early dps issues due to lack of offensive devotions.
I put together a quick Ritualist using items I had left over from my recent pet Cabalist leveling and the one’s you had on your toon. Not optimized but 24s on the target dummy; a vast improvement from the Conjurer but still a ways to go from your Dervish.
I’d definitely recommend your build over the Ritualist or Cabalist for a noob as it’s easier to play, gear and maintain effectiveness.
Also, thank you for talking about something other than Curicible and SR builds. Discussions like these are very educational for noobs as there are so few benchmarks to go by.
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It could. It was my fault to get pissed at dozens of comments like “why not just pets, they are better” or “this is not beginner friendly” or “this is not good for HC, you are nuts” and many others, after actually making an effort to offer something interesting to the players. I got annoyed and frustrated by the negativity, and even though some people PM’ed me and suggested to ignore it, I didn’t.
But in my defence, I at least tried answering all comments with in a non-hateful way. And yes, in the process, I said that pseudo pets felt much faster than normal pets. Which might have triggered more hate. But at from that point on there was only one hater (guess who) who refused to even consider a possibility that maybe my claim wasn’t too far off. Everyone who tried this build eventually agreed with me about its performance and ease of levelling as well as suitability for HC and newbies. It doesn’t require super rare items to get to 100. It doesn’t require a single blue or legendary items to reach 100 at great speed.
And since one particular hater who happens to be the top pet builder continued to attack my thread, I decided to spend a few days to record pseudo pets and normal pets levelling side by side. Was willing to accept that I could be wrong and apologize for making bold statements. I’ve learned some new stuff about pet builds in the process. It’s nice to see some variations do more damage than all my previous attempts (thank you Duskdeep86, really strong setup). Yet compared to pseudo pets they still fall behind, significantly. Even in single target department where they are one of the strongest normally.
It started as a hate and negativity, but grew into an attempt to learn and better understand the game. At this point I’m excited about pushing both pets and pseudo pets to the max and seeing how far and high they can go during the levelling and endgame.
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Nice! This is around 24-25sec which is faster than my conjurer at the time. And while the dervish is still 2x faster in this very test, it’s nice to see a viable ritualist. Just realized that I abandoned my ritualist at level 53 lol. Do you have a GT link for this setup?
Cool, I’ll add the ritualist in the mix from this point on! Thank you.
hey @Contragor,
So I loaded up your Dervish and it seems to run 100-120k dps on a single dummy. Pretty HUGE for lvl53.
I’m not very good with pet devotions. Mostly just follow Maya’s builds. And can’t be bothered to get all the right gear. But I got a Ritualist to pull 80k-100k with spikes of 120k when Howl of Mogdrogen and Shepards Call overlap. I’m pretty sure I can make it better if I knew what I was doing lol. Here is the build.
https://www.grimtools.com/calc/bVA3EqBN
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PS. The conjurer you posted that follow’s Maya formula build does 25k single target with little AoE. Ouch.
Only noticed this thread now because there was no @Maya…
If anyone wants to discuss my reddit posts, feel free to PM me and I shall explain
(The people in Discord know)
Now for the “results”, I have already addressed the obvious mistakes or bias seen in the videos like the Mad Queen one where the Familiar, the major source of DPS is seen attacking from behind the pillar and not hitting the boss for like half the time.
Never actually showing the ingame skills/items/devotions of the Pet Dervish in the videos is another thing.
The Theodin Kill for eg; I have no idea what the ingame stats of the Dervish looks like, nor do I have any possible way of knowing which stages the devotion levels are at. Also the actual difference in the video is about 19 sec though for some reason OP felt like adding the time to get past the trash mobs to it.
Now for those curious about what I took offense at in his reddit posts, the tl;dr version:
- And good luck farming krieg or dark one with a pet ritualist/cabalist/conjurer. You actually have to change your build a LOT to get those items.
- go farm the helmet in the new dungeon
easy to gear - Yes, it’s easy to gear compared to builds that require full Ghol + Bysmiel trinkets sets to function at level 100 in Ultimate.
And good luck farming those on a self found Cabalist without a lot of supporting legendaries. - But the pet builds ALL slow down significantly around level 60-70 without good supporting gear including level 58-75 legendaries.
- I followed every one of your pet builds in the past several months. The one I really liked was Ritualist but it FEELS slow at level 60+.
(Note that I do not have a level up guide for Pet Ritualist, funnily enough) - 3 guardians at level 20. That’s way more damage than having 3 Briars or 3 Blighfiends. I’d say it’s similar to having 1 Briar + 3 Fiends + Hound + Raven + 10 skellies. That’s just my feeling based on testing so far.
- hard to level, hard to gear “friendly pet builds”. How can a pet build be fast if you don’t even have a single teleport skill? Only medal slot is all we get.
- Most pet builds require full sets plus a number of legendaries to work.
- Not taking Assassin’s Blade even though I explicitly mentioned it as comparison is being done before Mindweaver becomes available and without any items that gives phy > Ele conversion
- Log went down in 20 sec (including all the pauses between phases) while it took the Conjurer 30 sec even with the revenant skeleton from the offhand (a lucky drop) and a summoned Harbinger from the sword. That is a 30% performance difference at level 44.
(Loghorrean has mind control which makes it terrible for comparing pets vs non pets) - Calling this an easy to gear, beginner friendly setup: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/gZwmBnX2
- Comparing Test Dummy results. As a random person once said, “boards don’t hit back”
That’s a nice setup, but keep in mind, that some of the items you are using can’t be reliably obtained while levelling. I’m comparing 2 builds that are supposed to be beginner friendly and require no rare gear. The amulet, the offhand, the lokarr’s set, all are normally out of scope, which reduces the damage output. For example, I could use ignaffar’s gloves at this level that add 30% pierce to fire conversion (both blade spirits and nemesis would benefit from that greatly), there are quite a few other legendaries and epics that are sitting in my stash begging to be used with this setup. But all I’m allowing myself to use is the stuff farmed along the way with just these two chars, to keep the testing as clean as I can.
@Maya, I’m going to politely ignore you from now on, let this be my final reply to you on any forum:
This is NOT what I called an easy beginner friendly setup. If you took time to cherry pick quotes, you can also pay attention to chronology of events. I added the endgame GT later, since lots of people were PMing me a asking for it. I also stated multiple times that for this build to be a good MC farmer, all you need is the helmet + mace, regardless of the rolls.
Yeah right, only dummy tests? Check the vids posted here. I have recorded every boss kill up to level 60, and not a single case where your conjurer would be close, with devotions, without, without support skills, etc. Even Ekket’zul who has 80% fire res at level 45-50 (will double check the vid) went down 50% faster with the dervish. All you have provided so far is words, not a single evidence and yet you are yourself keep blaming others for not showing proof. Anyhow, I’m glad there are pet players who are willing to test stuff and be constructive here. So we gonna keep testing and learning together without you.
Oh, so here we go again, more excuses. Tell this to new players who struggle with those bosses and then give up on builds because they feel boring and slow. Yes, Log has mind control, but it’s one of the bosses in this game. I don’t cherry pick my fights. In fact, I didn’t even know it had this ability until you started accusing me of skewing tests.
Endgame? to be relatively fast? The builds that are shown as very strong, when you say stuff like “Calla 10-15 min kill, very easy actually…” You bet they need some sets. And if they don’t, they need some legendaries or other gear that isn’t just a 30% drop chance from a boss that can be farmed at level 20 like Barthollem (But hey, apparently that makes my build super hard to gear).
Exactly my words. That’s MY FEELING about it. If I see 3x performance difference at certain level, that’s like having 3x number of beasts in my opinion. Opinion. If you had an opinion that your pet builds are 3x times faster and you expressed it, I wouldn’t call you a drug addict or liar or talking out your @$$.
That’s my experience compared to faster builds like this dervish. I don’t even go extreme and choose insanely strong levelling specs like WoP infiltrators, AAR, and other 'blast all" specs. And yes, I played them all and at least have some basic idea of how they compare without extreme focus and optmization.
True story! If you kill fast but are dragging and trudging along the map like a snail, - your build may feel slow overall compared to other builds. You really notice the difference in MP games. I only spent about 1k hours playing GD multiplayer, not much, but that was enough to notice this aspect. A build with +2 extra blink spells has a huge advantage in speedfarming!
Not +, should have been ‘or’ my bad.
2 runs on average is all it takes to get it drop. Compare this to your ‘target farmable’ Krieg’s or Dark ones. Which btw, you yourself claimed to have never farmed. And yet you somehow tried telling me that those are comparable to farming a helmet that has 10 times higher chance to drop and can be obtained on Normal!? Where’s the logic?
You can cherry pick my posts all day but that doesn’t change the facts. I’ve uploaded GTs and char files. If you have anything concrete to say, say it with evidence and let’s see who starts to skew the results, altering builds and changing playstyles.
In all this testing, I actually gave you the benefit of the doubt. I put aside the Conflagration relic and used Nemesis to keep my dervish in the pet zone (even though Conflagration adds 30% damage at level 60!). I also only allowed myself to put a single point into EoR (even though I could easy max it out at this stage and have +40K DPS) to only use it for the damage reduction and devotion proc.
My dervish is actually handicapped by about 70k dps at level 63 now, just to focus on pets and their performance more. But hey, that part nobody cares about, right? And I’m the one picking wrong bosses and testing every suggested tweak here to get to some level of truth.
So, I will no longer respond to you or anyone who jumps on quotes out of context instead of trying to be constructive.
Quite a few people reached out to me in the last few days, saying that they love this pet dervish and find it very easy to play and gear up. I do my best to respond to all questions and try suggestions.
But it’s comments like “I’m loving this build, it’s by far my favourite now…” what makes me feel that this wasn’t for nothing!
Forums or real life, stay decent or bust.