Pets on Fire: A build diary for newer players aiming to make their first pet build

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
1

Final Edit: PoF’s journeys are now complete. She’s passed every test I had set out for her, including clearing Steps of Torment and Bastion of Chaos on hardcore ultimate, along with defeating hardcore ultimate Loghorrean*.

For a “tl;dr” summary of where this build finished up at the end of PoF’s journeys, click on the Grimtools link given toward the bottom of post #42.

Table of Contents:

Post 1: Original plans for PoF’s build (Grimcalc)
Post 1: At the end of Post 1 is a brief summary of how the final build changed and why
Post 2: Hotkey plans for build
Post 5: Discussion of Offensive Ability and Defensive Ability (Crucial information for new players)
Post 5: Introduction to Benevald (secret NPC vendor in Blood Grove, sells a variety of helpful items for SSF play)
Post 6: Brief overview of Occultist pets (Incomplete, see DaShiv’s “Dracarris” hybrid pet build for more about Occultist pet auras)
Post 11: Getting pets to hit for critical damage (see also posts 12-16 for good feedback from others about this issue)
Post 11: Initial thoughts about components for this build
Post 17: A detailed suggested build order for a newer / returning player for normal or vet normal that can work in softcore or hardcore
Post 18: Suggested order for devotions and celestial skills, how to balance offense and defense
Post 20: Analysis of pet damage (Summary: Flat damage, attack speed, movement speed, and resistance reduction are a huge help; the UI isn’t accurate)
Post 21: Brief summary of a fight with Valdaran (Aetherial Nemesis boss) in hardcore ultimate
Post 27: Description of tactics to make battles easier
Post 28: Description of first battle with hardcore ultimate Loghorrean
Post 32: I finally figure out what Grimtools is and how to use it (1st grimtools for PoF is in this post)
Post 35: Answers to questions from a poster about how to build up the number of pets and how to get AOE with this build
Post 36: Description of second battle with hardcore ultimate Loghorrean, with Grimtools for PoF’s build for this fight
Post 41: Report on results from many ultimate hardcore Twin Falls runs (average time, ease of effort)
Post 41: Report on an attempt to do a full clear of hardcore ultimate Steps of Torment (Rogue dungeon)
Post 42: Report on attempts to fight to the end of hardcore ultimate Bastion of Chaos (Rogue dungeon)
Post 42: Grimtools for PoF’s final build spec, the build used for attempts to clear the Bastion of Chaos
Post 43: Addresses questions about how this build is likely to function in the upcoming expansion

Rather than put together a build guide that focuses on end-game gearing and skills, I wanted write up a kind of build plan / diary for a variation on usual pet builds.

My goal was to solo Pets on Fire from level 1 to level 85 and all the way through hardcore ultimate (including the final Log fight) using only gear she finds on her own, faction gear, and crafted items. I played as if crucible didn’t exist, as otherwise the game gets much easier (after getting a lot of devotion points early, for example). I added in some thoughts provided for decisions made along the way.

This will hopefully be particularly interesting and helpful for newer players, but perhaps it will also interest some of those who are more experienced.

Part of the motivation for this build diary / plan stems from finding out from experience that the thoughtfully constructed and very popular “Pokemon” build works very well if you have gear and experience. But, it’s not necessarily quite as survivable or as gear independent as one might like for a new player’s first character. Thus, I’m creating this character which I believe can go all the way through the game with whatever meager +skills might be found or crafted along the way.

I learned quite a bit from others along the way, as the footnote to this first post indicates.

I’d like to mention that posts after this point are written more or less from an “I just finished this” point of view because I actually started writing this when PoF was level 1 and kept adding to the thread with updates as her journeys moved forward.

Original Plans for Pets on Fire: Pyromancer (Occultist / Demolitionist)

Grimcalc (click here)

Key active skills: hellhound, familiar, flashbang, thermite mines, curse of frailty, blood of dreeg
Key passives: possession, bonds of bysmiel, flame touched, blast shield

Planned Devotions:

Tree of life (5 of 6 pts only, in the end)
Tortoise
Ulo Keeper of waters
Solael’s witchblade
Fiend
Imp
Light of Empyrion
Panther
Solemn watcher
Crossroads Chaos
Lizard

Relic: Whatever is available, with pet relics taking priority when they can be crafted. If no pet relics can be crafted, then a defensive relic will be used.

Components: Auras for resists, perhaps enchanted flint for fire aura, others as found and as needed

Augments: Multiple pet augments, also as needed to boost hit points and patch up resists

How the Final Build Evolved out of the Original Build

The build above puts a high premium on defenses, especially with the use of Light of Empyrion constellation. My thinking was that resists could be challenging to maintain at a healthy level in hardcore ultimate. And, that constellation was quite helpful in early ultimate for shoring up some resists. But, when delving deeper into hardcore ultimate clear speed started to fall. Switching to 2 points in Obelisk of Memnir (with 150 armor being a key choice there) and getting the Acid Spray celestial skill from the Manticore constellation improved damage by a noticeable amount (resist reduction is a damage multiplier). The added armor from 2 points in Obelisk was quite helpful and the added damage from Acid Spray made PoF more fun to play (and more effective).

The detailed build plan given in Post 18 can be modified by dropping the Light of Empyrion constellation and putting in five points from the Manticore constellation and two points from Memnir’s Obelisk instead.

  • I’d like to acknowledge several posters who helped me learn more about the build (and the game) through their posts in this and other threads, including DaShiv, Nssheepster, Tyr, Ryzel, rmsinj, and Kekkuli.
2

Pets on Fire went from level 1 to dinging level 23 just before wrapping up today’s play session. Her present grimcalc is as below:

Grimcalc (click here)

With both base pet skills maxed early, a searing ember component providing fire blast support, and flame torrent (celestial on fiend), leveling speed has been pretty good.

Getting the celestial on Imp (aetherfire) is the next devotions-related goal.

To manage aggro, my basic pattern has been to let minions handle mobs, throwing in some fire blast every now and again, or spamming it when fighting bosses. Minions go in first, as mobs tend to target whatever they see first, and ember claw was taken relatively early to generate more aggro for hellhound.

Hotkeys are as follows:

A - health potion
S - not in use now, but fairly soon blood of dreeg
D - fireblast for now, flashbang later
F - pet move / attack
G - not in use now, eventually thermite mines
Z - energy potion
X - some “oh shit” item or skill, probably an aether crystal
C - re-summon familiar
V - re-summon hellhound
B - Not sure yet, maybe a component or relic skill

On the “Y” hotkey, I’ll have all auras, plus a few consumables to handle awkward situations.

Pets on Fire found “Soiled trousers” today and she’s concerned that’s not the best sign about how well the promise to get her through hardcore ultimate is likely to work out. :smiley:

3

A rather odd build, to be sure. Though given your username I suppose its workable in the sense that you can just try to kite mobs until nothing’s left.

I suppose letting devotions take care of a large chunk of your resistances while probably devoting most of your item slots towards pet gear is one way to play a summoner.

You’re really better off maxing Blood of Dreeg ASAP for early game. Extra stat/health points is really easy to get with gear and the Polished Emerald component.

4

Hmm, pretty defensive devotion setup. Wondering if your pets are going to deal enough damage. Never tried maxing raven myself.

5

Kekkuli & Tyr: Thank you for your feedback!

Pets on Fire (PoF) made some good progress during today’s play session, especially in terms of improving her life / energy / resists / gear.

PoF began this play session at level 23 at the Old Arkovia Rift, with about 2200 life, 1300ish energy, and bad gear. Explorer Footpads were probably her best item, at that point. Poison & acid resists and fire resists were in the mid 50s, while everything else is 36 or below. Most resists were very low.
She had all devotions easily available at that point, meaning she had the “Flame Torrent” celestial skill from the Fiend constellation and that the “Aetherfire” celestial skill from the Imp constellation was not yet available.

She finished up today’s play session at level 36, at the Blood Grove rift, with most accessible shrines restored. She now has 3683 life, 1900ish energy, most resists in the 20s or higher, and 50ish chaos resist because of a medal bought from the secret NPC vendor in Blood Grove. She has three celestial skills now (Flame torrent, Aetherfire, and Eldritch fire).

Here is her current Grimcalc (click here).

PoF now has Rifthound boots, which offer +2 hellhound. That was quite a good find for where she is in the game.

For components, I’ve got unholy inscription on hand armor, searing ember on off hand (fire blast), enchanted flint on weapon (for the damage aura). I’ll start adding more components soon, to boost her survivability.

I was also able to craft the Guile relic with little effort, so I went ahead and did that (+physical damage aura for hellhound was the main payoff for that). It’s a “good enough for now” relic, until something better comes along.

Notes for Newer Players:

Offensive Ability (OA) and Defensive Ability (DA) - Critically Important in Grim Dawn

Offensive ability and defensive ability are two of the most important numbers for combat in Grim Dawn. The interaction between an attacker’s offensive ability and a defender’s defensive ability has a major influence on the frequency and amount of damage done, with non-linear changes in damage given and taken when OA and DA scale up.

Also, even spells can miss in this game, depending on the OA / DA values in play. That is unusual in ARPGs and probably unexpected for most new players. And, again depending on the OA / DA values in play, you can hit mobs and be hit by mobs with 100% certainty in Grim Dawn. That is also unusual and probably unexpected for new players.

Another key reason for how important OA and DA are in Grim Dawn has to do with how critical hits and critical hit damage are calculated. The best resource I know about for conveying this rather technical information (and to hit probabilities) is available by clicking on this link.

Building off the above observations, this build plan revolves around finding a way to “bootstrap” a gear-poor build to try to help pets hit mobs for critical damage (later in the game) and to reduce the odds of the player’s character getting hit for critical damage by mobs later in the game. These objectives are important because crits by pets are the easiest way to make a pet build work well and reducing incoming crits is, well, critical for survival later in the game.

I’ll write more specifics about how this build seeks to get more pet crits and to reduce incoming crits (and other damage) to the player character in a later post. I’ll also write later about the strengths and weaknesses, characteristics and quirks, of the hellhound and familiar pets.

The secret NPC vendor named Benevald

Benevald in Blood Grove (click here to see a video on how to find him) is a very helpful resource for new players, and also for self found characters. Benevald sometimes sells chipped claws and vengeful wraiths, which are often helpful for crafting. Corpse dust is also offered quite often, along with a handful of other components that are sometimes in demand.

He also offers some good amulets and medals that can help to patch some difficult holes in resists, even sometimes selling medals with high triple resists or sky high chaos resists, for example.

6

Today Pets on Fire (PoF) reached level 42 and the Fort Ikon riftgate. She has a bit over 5200 hit points and about 1775ish energy. Her resist are steadily rising, with 30 being her lowest resist and with poison and acid resist at 71.

The searing ember component is gone, with a purified salt component in its place for the aether resist aura. In place of fireblast from searing ember, a level 4 Flashbang has the aetherfire celestial skill attached to it. She has 20% armor absorption from a scaled hide component, to further reduce incoming damage, along with a couple of silk swatches and other components intended to boost resists.

She’s started on building faction by doing bounties. That will offer access to augments once she reaches honored status with multiple NPC factions, which will really help for making the transition to Elite difficulty.

PoF’s updated Grimcalc: (click here for Grimcalc)

I’ll defer a bit longer on explaining the various ways crits will be sought for pets and for explaining how reductions to incoming damage are anticipated. Below is a bit of an overview for the Occultist’s Mastery pets.

Notes for Newer Players:

Occultist pets

There are multiple ways to get pets in the game, so you’re not limited to just pets that can be summoned from mastery skills. But, there are just two pets in the Occultist Mastery, the Hellhound and the Familiar.

The Hellhound is a melee fighter, it’s the better than the Familiar for getting and holding aggro, and it does most of all the Occultist’s pet damage. It blows up when it is killed or is re-summoned, doing quite a bit of AOE damage whenever it blows up. The AI for a Hellhound is straightforward, it attacks quickly, and overall it performs quite well. Hellhound benefits from flat damage adders, which can make it even more effective as a fighter.

The Familiar is often underrated, in my view. It’s been buffed multiple times and, with its buffs, it’s helpful for an Occultist pet build. It does a noticeable amount of damage when built for that, it has crowd control, it buffs damage for allies, and it has a modest heal. I often hide my summoner behind the Familiar because the Familiar will often intercept mobs headed for my summoner and kill them, or at least take their aggro, and will sometimes intercept missiles headed for my summoner.

The Familiar doesn’t attack as quickly as the Hellhound. But, when the base skill is maxed the Familiar does respectable damage with its basic attack through a lightning hit, followed by 2 seconds of electrocute damage. I believe the Familiar does not benefit from flat weapon damage, being treated by the game as a caster, which does limit its damage potential.

Once both pets have a good amount of total speed, they move around pretty well. Still, Familiar will sometimes stop short of your intended destination for it. When that happens, then clicking again on the spot where you want the Familiar to go usually works fine.

7

It may be worth farming for a Salazar MI once you reach Ultimate. The drop rate doesn’t seem too bad, IMO all players should be able to get at least a crappy copy pretty quickly. The temp pet’s pretty good.

8

Only if you do significant chaos damage. On a build like this, something like the Legion Voidcutter would be a lot more useful thanks to Minion Frenzy.
Pet speed significantly increase pet aggro potential and help pets kill stuff while he kites.

The main problem with the Familiar has always been its AI. If it wasn’t missing its attacks outright thanks to some random doodad in the way or ignoring mobs half-way across the screen, it was either constantly re-positioning itself instead of attacking or it took long pauses trying to acquire targets. It’s been steadily improving though.

And yes, the Familiar is a caster, which sort of limits its damage potential. Still, augments like the Rifthound Salts are easy to get and the game likes to give you a lot of +%pet damage freebies early on (eg. Rhowari Shoulderguard/Cuirass, Wrath of the Beast Tincture).
It’s pretty much impossible to screw up an Occultist pet build in normal item-wise.

9

Nssheepster & Tyr: Thank you for your feedback!

I found the Black Grimoire of Og’Napesh last night, which creates a bit of a quandary. This is intended to be a build diary aimed at newer players. But, if the Revenant is added to the mix (especially early) then the build gets quite a bit stronger than most first-character, self found new player pet builds would be likely to be.

I’ll probably go ahead and farm for Salazar’s MI and/or seek out a Legion Voidcutter and leave the Revenant in the stash, at least for now.

I’ve worked with a maxed out Familiar in another pet build that is in late Ultimate hardcore and found it worth keeping. So, I’ve learned how to manage its AI quirks to improve its performance. The simplest step to take is to get the hellhound and familiar to move together into new areas, basically on top of each other. When the Familiar is basically on top of mobs, it’s hard to miss and it fights better.

Also, I have the flame torrent celestial skill on the hellhound because it scales so well with attack speed and the hellhound has rapid attacks, plus the hellhound attracts groups of mobs. I have the eldritch fire celestial skill on the Familiar because it doesn’t scale off attack speed and it’s helpful to have that celestial skill on a ranged pet that spreads it all over the screen the way the Familiar does. These two celestial skills are the keys to making the build work because they play so nicely together.

10

Just use it. The Black Grimoire of Ogna’pesh isn’t really a rare item - all my summoners have managed to get their own copy of it in normal/elite. It’s almost like the item is weighted to drop for characters that do lots of pet damage (or perhaps have a lot of points in pet skills).

Anyway, you CAN suggest alternatives like Karvor’s Conjuring Bone. It’s a guaranteed MI drop from act 1 in all difficulties (though where it spawns is random) that has a chance to summon a buffing pet. I see no distinction TBH, unless you assign a devotion to your Revenant - that could be problematic because you can’t do that for the Karvor’s Conjuring Bone item pet.
Another alternative are offhands with the “of Binding” affix, which occasionally spawn in stores (basically the store equivalent of Karvor’s).

The Legion Voidcutter is from the Black Legion faction vendor, available at Respected. It’s a pretty powerful item and one of the many guaranteed mainhaind options for summoners.

11

Pets on Fire is now level 50 and ready to take on Loghorrean (Log). Her updated Grimcalc is given here: (click here for Grimcalc)

For noteworthy items, she has …

Rifthound Leather Boots
Devil’s Grin shield
Legion Voidcutter

… and random stuff that adds up to close to 6700 life, 1950ish energy, and quite decent resists (80 chaos resist right now, which is helpful for the fight with Log).

Tyr: I’ll keep the “Og” Revenant on ice until about mid-elite, to better simulate a new player’s likely first experience with a pet summoner. The build really doesn’t need the help anyways, as most things quickly melt to all the fire (and other) damage and all the crits.

Notes for Newer Players:

Getting Pets to Hit for Critical Damage (crits)

The build is quite a ways toward bringing together the different elements to make pet crits frequently, insofar as a self found build can do that. PoF has two different offensive ability (OA) buffs, from the Flame Touched aura and from the buff provided by Blood of Dreeg. These OA buffs stack with each other*.

Also, Flashbang applies a hefty defensive ability (DA) debuff to mobs (-250 to mob DA, with Flashbang at level 12). With 270-ish bonus OA and 250 subtracted from mob DA, crits are routinely and regularly showing on screen for at-level and higher-level mobs.

The flat OA buffs for pets and DA debuff for mobs won’t increase the crit rate for pets in ultimate difficulty as much as they do in normal. But, to partially offset that, the Panther devotion constellation will be taken soon to further buff pets ability to crit and helping pets crit will be the focus of some attention for gear choices, when such opportunities arise.

Components (Round 1)

Components are an important part of gearing up in Grim Dawn.

For this build, key components already being used are as follows:

Enchanted flint (Offers Burning Weapons aura, helps pet damage)
Purified salt (20% aether damage resistance for PoF and for pets, plus 3% added to max aether resist)
Mark of the Traveler (6% move speed, other bonuses)
Scaled hide (20% armor absorption is key here, as it’s a great way to reduce incoming physical damage)
2 x Silk Swatches (18% bleed and 18% pierce resist) x 2
Aether soul (16% aether resist is the key here)
Wardstone (15% bleed resist and 7% elemental resist)
Runestone (12% aether resist and 12% elemental resist)
Unholy inscription (10% vitality resist, 15% bleed resist)
2 x Corpse dust (6% vitality resist, life bonus, health regen bonus) x 2

Components have made a big contribution to PoF’s toughness (and some contribution to pet damage).

All of these components can be crafted with relatively little effort by a first character, with a bit of luck.

For a more general set of resources concerning components, this is an excellent resource: (click here to view components)

  • My thanks to those who pointed out my earlier error, as I thought the OA buffs didn’t stack, at first.
12

Different sources of OA stack, so AFAIK Flametongue and Blood of Dreeg should stack.

13

OA/DA modifiers (as do other modifiers) follow the same stacking rules as resistance reduction, per the following cheat sheet: https://goo.gl/BCqKCf

Flame Touched and BoD are both Category B OA buffs, which stack freely. Buffs are generally Category B.

Flashbang is a Category A DA debuff while Vulnerability is Category B, so they can stack with each other. However, Flashbang cannot stack with another Category A DA debuff, such as Blindside.

14

My reading was that flat modifiers (ie: +133 OA, -250 DA) would be Category A buffs / debuffs, which is why I believed Flame touched and Blood of Dreeg OA buffs wouldn’t stack and also why Vulnerability and Flashbang DA debuffs wouldn’t stack.

If all of these things stack, though, then that makes the build quite a bit stronger.

15

Outside of resistance debuffs figuring out which things stack or don’t is usually something you have to test yourself. Things like Blood of Dreeg and Flame Touched stacking is an important feature for hybrid summoner builds because just about every buff stacks with the main exception of the exact same skill. They’re also pretty easy to test (just check your character sheet).

Debuffs are trickier to test, and it doesn’t help that the devs like to change them every so often. I’m pretty sure Solael’s Flame is now a category B debuff, for example.

16

Based on feedback, I tried switching on and off Blood of Dreeg and Flame Touched and they do both add to OA on the character sheet at the same time (ie: they seem to stack).

This helps the build quite noticeably. I’m glad I was wrong.

I’ll edit the earlier post claiming that different flat OA sources didn’t stack.

17

Pets on Fire is far along in Elite hardcore, at level 67. I’ll follow up on her journeys in Elite hardcore in a later post, though. For this post, I’ll take a look back at (veteran) normal difficulty, as described below.

Notes for Newer Players

This post provides suggestions for a newer player or a returning player about a build order that should be able to successfully complete either the softcore or hardcore version of veteran normal difficulty.

Suggestions for (Veteran) normal difficulty

Leveling speed will be brisk on either normal or veteran normal difficulty for a self found summoner following this build.

Veteran normal hardcore is the difficulty I recently finished playing Pets on Fire and all dangerous situations were self-inflicted (ie: when I was rushing, neglecting defenses, or not noticing bosses mixed in with other mobs). I think it’s probably better to experience the game first time with this build on veteran normal (hardcore or softcore) so elite isn’t as big of a difficulty jump and your summoner will (perhaps?) be a bit better geared ahead of transitioning to elite difficulty.

Still, the exact build order I followed is probably better for players who have some experience with the game. So, I’ll present below a more step-by-step build order, and some principles, for somebody who is either newer to the game or returning after a long layoff.

My key suggestion is to switch back and forth between building up offense and building up defenses. Also, in my experience the oft-heard guideline to have about 100 hit points for level is a good suggestion that you can probably start to easily surpass, as of about level 36-40, depending on your luck with gear.

If you find your summoner starting to fall noticeably below the suggested “100 hit points per level” threshold, and especially if your resists are also low (so you take more damage) and your defensive ability total is low (so mobs have a better than 90% chance to hit you, which leads to being hit for critical damage), then you really need to be careful for that period when playing. Also, if your summoner reaches this level of vulnerability, then I’d suggest switching to prioritizing defenses until your summoner’s level of defenses is repaired.

As a general plan for stat points, all stat points can go into Physique from level 1 to level 65. This choice leads to a better defensive ability (DA) total and to more life, plus you can wear gear with higher armor totals. It’s probably good to save the last 20ish stat points, or thereabouts, so you can allocate stat points in ways that work well with however your endgame gearing seems to be shaping up.

Devotions will get their own section, following the leveling advice given below and in a subsequent post.

Early levels 1-5 Getting to Hellhound ASAP
(Click here for Grimcalc)

Take your first four level-ups in the Occultist mastery, up to level 10 in the Occultist mastery, picking no skills until you reach hellhound. Put two mastery points in hellhound, once you can access it.

To get to level 5, explore the map, sniff some mutated flowers, and bash things that move, backing off if your life total gets low so your character’s constitution can kick in with some fast healing. If you find a missile weapon, then this phase gets even safer. Otherwise, swing the hardest hitting melee weapon you can find until things fall over, using doorways and positioning to minimize incoming damage.

When you have two mastery points in hellhound, you’re ready to complete the first quest given to your character, in the Burial Cave.

You send in your pet(s) first as scouts when exploring a map, so assign the “pet attack” hotkey to a convenient hotkey after picking up hellhound because you’ll be using it a lot. Assign “Summon hellhound” to a hotkey you can easily access, but that you’re unlikely to hit by mistake (an accidental and unnecessary hellhound summoning can make a battle go south fairly quickly, in the wrong circumstances). Also, assign your left mouse button hotkey to “walk” so you don’t accidentally aggro a large number of mobs with a default ranged attack (for example) and so you don’t end up swinging at mobs when you wanted to run away. Finally, wait until mobs have spotted your pet(s) before initiating any action by your summoner because what a mob first notices usually becomes it’s default priority for aggro, often until it dies.

I often re-summon the hellhound when I know the next battle is at least several seconds away and I know that his death-AOE will probably kill all mobs in the area. It’s one way to speed up leveling that you can practice early in the game, while the risks associated with making a mistake are relatively low.

Levels 6-10 Max Hellhound
(Click here for Grimcalc)

Hellhound is so efficient in the early-to-mid part of act 1 veteran normal in part because most mobs move slowly and they don’t hit very hard. So, you can neglect defenses almost entirely, at this point, and just focus on maxing hellhound as a top priority. “Run away from mobs while circling around your hellhound” works well as a defense, at this point. Also, if you don’t know what type of attacks a specific boss has, then use scenery bits when possible to block possible incoming missile damage.

Watch for an opportunity to complete a “searing ember” or a “mutagenic ichor” component. When you complete one of these and put into an appropriate item worn by your summoner, you end up with a component-based ranged skill that does good damage for early game, especially when the DOT component is considered. Searing ember is a bit easier to use, in my experience, but both can work just fine. As suggested before, let your hellhound get aggro before attacking with your summoner.

During this part of the leveling phase or the next is when you’ll probably come across Jillius the Decayed, an undead boss with electrical damage that you kill as part of the “Something for Nothing” quest from the NPC Harmond. If you search for corpses close to where you find Jillius, you’ll find a green off-hand called Karvor’s Conjuring Bone. It provides some modest pet bonuses and also a temporary pet that buffs your summoner and your hellhound.

Levels 11-14 1 point in Ember Claw, 1 point in Blood of Dreeg
(Click here for Grimcalc)
With offense in good shape for now because of a maxed out Hellhound, switch gears to defense. Take 10 more mastery points and get 1 point into Ember Claw and into Blood of Dreeg. The added stats from investing in mastery will help for gearing, boost hit points and energy, and also boost offensive ability and defensive ability. Ember claw gives your hellhound a kind of taunt ability, which will reduce the number of mobs that go straight after you summoner (although not to zero). It’s probably not worth more than 1 point, though, because of all the other priorities that need investment.

[u]Levels 15-19[/U} Max Blood of Dreeg
(Click here for Grimcalc)

Blood of Dreeg is an excellent early leveling tool for Occultists. When maxed, it heals for a good percentage of life when first used and it also offers over 100 hits points of regen per second, while active. In addition, it offers a hefty OA bonus, which means your hellhound (and probably your summoner) will be hitting for critical damage on a regular basis. Finally, a maxed Blood of Dreeg offers a substantial amount of flat damage to your summoner and to the hellhound, plus an acid retaliation total that is very damaging to mobs early in the game that hit your hellhound or your summoner.

For this build, at this point in the game, no other choice for mastery points comes anywhere close to the value offered by maxing out Blood of Dreeg. The difference in how the build plays is striking, after maxing Blood of Dreeg.

Levels 20-27 Max Familiar or get 1 point into Bonds of Bysmiel & Hellfire, + points in Familiar
(Click here for Grimcalc)

By the time you’ve maxed blood of dreeg you’ll perhaps notice your summoner’s life total falling noticeably below 100 hit points per character level. If that’s not true, then start putting mastery points into Familiar, aiming to max the base skill. If your hit point total starts to noticeably lag, though, then put points in mastery until reaching level 32 in Occultist mastery, and then put a point in Bonds of Bysmiel and Hellfire. Also put points in Familiar as you can, without letting hit points fall well below 100 hit points per level.

Your summoner is probably beyond Cronley at this point and shortly after that there ends up being multiple choices for advancement. The simplest and safest path is to not complete either the Arkovian Undercity or Steps of Torment dungeons until you feel your summoner is pretty sturdy, and instead get the Broken Hills rift outside the Arkovian Undercity, and then head toward Homestead.

There’s no need to rush either the Arkovian Undercity or the Steps of Torment dungeons. It’s nice to have the devotion points from these dungeons and collecting ectoplasm / vengeful wraith component pieces is a good thing for a build like this. Getting more Rover faction is also a Very Good Thing. But, both of these underground dungeons have their challenging points. The end boss in the Arkovian Undercity (Kilrian) has a ranged attack with a strong DOT (damage over time) component. You definitely don’t want your character hit more than once in a row by Kilrian’s ranged DOT attack, unless your summoner is sturdily built (really, not even then). It has a wind-up and a peculiar sound when it fires, just so you’re forewarned. The end boss in the “regular” (ie: non-Rogue) portion of the Steps of Torment dungeon (just before the door opened by a skeleton key) is Zarthuzellan, who has a lot of fire damage and quite a few helpers that spawn.

Once Familiar has good investments in mastery points, it will add noticeably to your summoner’s effectiveness. More damage is more damage, after all, and it will trigger celestial skills that are assigned to it. Also, the familiar will often hit mobs that are chasing your summoner, sometimes drawing their aggro and often killing those mobs on its own. On that note, sometimes mobs chasing your summoner will be hit regularly by your familiar when the hellhound is not doing much damage because it’s struggling to catch up with mobs that are chasing your summoner. For example, Bloodfeast, in Tyrant’s hold, is a fast-moving Dranghoul boss that sometimes decides to ignore pets and target only your summoner. That can be a very annoying fight if you don’t have a ranged pet, such as the familiar. Adding a single point into the Familiar’s “extra” skills offers added crowd control, a small damage / resist buff, and a modest heal that are likely to be worth the point invested in each skill.

Levels 28–41 Max Manipulation, Max Familiar, several 1 pt investments
(Click here for level 40ish Grimcalc)

Getting Occultist mastery to level 50 has beneficial defensive effects on it own and also allows access to Possession and Manipulation. Put a point in Possession right away, in part because it offers 100% skill disruption protection (never a bad thing) and in part because it offers a place to attach “on hit” defensive celestial skills, such as Turtle Shell. Max out Manipulation as soon as you can without neglecting defenses because the added damage and (especially) the added “total speed” make your pets much more effective.

A point in Curse of Frailty, Vulnerability, and Flashbang are suggested. Even at level 1, Curse of Frailty and Vulnerability are modestly helpful and can each have a celestial skill attached (ie: Cleansing Waters for Curse of Frailty). Plus, Flashbang will be the next big step forward for the build because the debuff to mob defensive ability (DA) is so large and because, when maxed, there is a 50% chance of confusing mobs when you throw it. The DA debuff on mobs plays very nicely with OA buffs from blood of dreeg and (later) flame touched, making pet crits against enemies a regular occurrence.

On that note, once pet crits are regularly happening, it’s helpful to mix in Wrath of the Beast Tincture for tough boss fights. It’s sold by the Rovers faction vendor and having +100% crit damage for your pets makes many bosses just melt away. The presence of Wrath of the Beast makes it functional to lean a bit more heavily toward improving pet critical hit chance over improving pet critical hit damage when you need to choose (although getting both is great, when possible) because you can lean on Wrath of the Beast Tincture for critical-driven spike damage, when in tough fights.

For faction choices, I recommend choosing Death’s Vigil over Kymon’s chosen for normal and elite, for the pet buffs offered. But, perhaps Kymon’s Chosen is better for ultimate because some of their gear and augments are quite useful. So, I’d get Death’s Vigil to Revered status in Elite, stock up on their gear / augments in Normal / Elite, and then switch to Kymon’s Chosen for Ultimate. Also, I think it’s quite helpful to side with the Black Legion NPC who wants you to kill Anasteria (the Outcast), in normal difficulty. That gets your character to “Respected” with the Black Legion faster, which allows you to do Bounties to build Legion faction and also gives you quicker access to the “Legion Voidcutter”* weapon. The Legion Voidcutter provides a good pet buff and it is sold by the Legion faction vendor. You should get Legion to Honored faction status by partway through Elite this way, at which point you can purchase the 50% bonus to Legion faction and you’ll be on your way to Revered from there. With Legion faction doing just fine by Elite, I’d side with Anasteria in Elite and Ultimate difficulties.

I’m the kind of player who gets both Duncan and Angrim (just in different difficulties), so perhaps I’m a bit more of a pragmatist and less of a purist when it comes to choosing allies and partners. Others may (or may not) find that objectionable.

  • My thanks to Tyr for mentioning how good the Legion Voidcutter weapon is. I hadn’t particularly noticed it before it was pointed out to me. I also hadn’t even noticed the Wrath of the Beast Tincture, which I now sometimes feed to PoF when fighting purple mobs.

Level 41-51 Max Flashbang and Flame Touched, start building Demo mastery bar toward 32 and get at least two factions to honored (Rovers and Death’s Vigil, for example, perhaps also Homestead)
(Click here for level 50ish Grimcalc)

Level 50 provides a noticeable boost to the quality of available gear, when compared to gear that can be used by level 49, for example. It’s typically the case that you can substantially improve your character upon reaching level 50. In my experience, as well, the upgrades in the resistances offered on level 50+ gear tend to lead to a lot tougher character, before taking on the final fight with Log that opens up the option of going to Elite difficulty for your character.

Just doing missions that naturally crop up will take you a long way toward level 50, especially if you explore maps and sniff flowers along the way. Faction bounties can also help quite a bit toward taking you the rest of the way to level 50.

Level 52-54 Normal Log fight, prepare for Elite difficulty
(Click here for Grimcalc)

If criticals by pets were happening frequently before, then they’ll be happening much more frequently after getting Flashbang and Flame Touched maxed out. At this point, even with no relevant +skills you’ll have a swing of a bit over 500 in the OA / DA ratios for many mobs (-250 DA debuff on mobs, over 260 OA buff for pets), which will lead to a large increase in pet damage.

I don’t believe that boss mobs resist DA debuffs (or the impaired aim / fumble debuffs in Searing Light, the skill associated with Flashbang). So, your pets should be getting criticals against pretty much any mob on a regular basis.

Personally, I prefer to build up the Demo mastery in the low range of the level 50s and go straight for Blast Shield, as damage is likely to be in pretty good shape at this point. I can see the possible attraction of putting some points into Curse of Frailty and Vulnerability right about now, though, as resistance reduction is a damage multiplier and it makes this kind of build much stronger.

I’ll buy from Isaiah Redden (NPC vendor in Homestead) the consumables needed (ie: perhaps +25% chaos resist, for the Log fight) to be prepped for harder battles toward the end of veteran normal difficulty. I often cycle between Benevald in Blood Grove (a secretly located NPC) and Isaiah Redden in Homestead when doing shopping tours because they each sell things that are often helpful for self-found characters of pretty much any build.

My targets ahead of entering Elite for life / resists / DA are to have about 8-10K life, or thereabouts, to have most resists at 60 or higher, and no resists of below 50%. DA is hopefully high enough that mobs cannot hit my character with critical damage (ie: their “to hit” chance is less than 90%). I prioritize pierce, acid & poison, and bleed resists when changing difficulties because DOTs can be surprisingly deadly, after reaching Elite (or Ultimate). Physical resistance is usually high on the wish list because internal trauma can be such a deadly damage type to receive. But, physical resistance can be tough to find (at least in large quantities) and that just seems to be how things go.

I’ll look at a suggested order for devotions for this build in the next post after this one.

Edit & PS: I realized all my initial information was off by one level (!), and I made adjustments.

18

In a follow-up post, I’ll provide a kind of summary of PoF’s journey through elite difficulty (she’ll be level 73 quite soon, she’s now in early Ultimate hardcore). In this post, I’ll outline suggestions for devotions, as given below.

As general resources for newer or returning players, here is a list of constellations (Click here for list of constellations) and here is a list of locations for shrines that unlock devotion points in each difficulty … (Click here for shrine locations)

Devotions – A Newer / Returning Player Friendly Approach

A more experienced player can go all offense with devotions in the early game and they’ll probably pay no price for that choice. Instead, they just end up leveling faster for being quick about taking constellations that boost damage. For newer and returning players, the risk of that not going well is higher, especially if playing hardcore.

For a safer approach that still supports a brisk leveling speed, I suggest getting the Tortoise constellation and the Turtle Shell celestial skill earlier in the game, building up offensive devotions, and then remaining mostly focused on defense until the last Tier 3 devotion gets taken late in the game. With this thinking in mind, here is a suggested order for taking devotions, with some commentary for choices made.

Devotions for Veteran / Normal Difficulty

  1. Crossroads Chaos (1 point)
  2. Fiend (to get the Flame Torrent celestial skill and a noteworthy bonus to pet fire damage). (5 points)

Flame torrent can stack if it triggers often enough. It benefits greatly from pet total speed and from anything else that gives your hellhound more attacks per second. Leveling speed will pick up noticeably and immediately after flame torrent is assigned to the hellhound.

You can have this before finishing up Act 1 in normal / veteran difficulty.

  1. Crossroads Order (1 point)
  2. Tortoise (to get the Turtle Shell celestial skill and boost life / defensive ability (DA))
  3. Remove Crossroads Order (5 points / 11 points total)

The celestial skill here is a “circuit-breaker” skill that will hopefully save your character from dying, from time to time. Also, the tortoise constellation helps to reduce incoming critical hit damage against your summoner by boosting your character’s defensive ability (DA) total, and it boosts life.

You can have this before finishing up Act 2 in normal / veteran difficulty.

  1. Imp (to get the Aetherfire celestial skill and to support getting other key constellations). (5 points / 16 points total)

Aetherfire can be assigned to the Familiar, for now. It provides a modest boost to damage and it also has a chance to confuse enemies, both of which are helpful. This constellation’s main value, though, is in helping to unlock access to Eldritch fire celestial skill, while also helping to provide access to the Healing Rain celestial skill later in the game.

You can get this unlocked early in Act 3 on veteran / normal difficulty.

  1. Jackal (temporary, getting prerequisites for Solael’s Witchfire) (3 points / 19 points total)

  2. Solael’s Witchfire (for the Eldritch fire celestial skill, a key skill for this build)

  3. Remove Jackal after finishing up Solael’s Witchfire, as you no longer need it. The quickest way to do this is to wait until you have 2 points into Solael’s Witchfire and 1 devotion point not yet assigned. Then, do the following:

10.1 Assign the unused devotion point to Crossroads order
10.2 Visit the respec NPC in Devil’s Crossing
10.3 Take 3 devotion points out of Tortoise (temporarily)
10.4 Assign those 3 devotion points to Solael’s Witchfire to finish up that constellation
10.5 Remove Jackal
10.6 Put those 3 points back into Tortoise
10.7 Remove the point from Crossroads order

Thinking long term, the cost in crystals is low for doing this and leveling speed immediately increases once you have Eldritch Fire attached to your Familiar (put Aetherfire on your Fireblast component power). (5 points for Solael’s Witchfire, 21 points in total)

You can get this unlocked late in Act 3 on veteran / normal difficulty.

  1. Lion (temporary, to get Ulo, Keeper of Waters constellation) (3 points, 24 points in total)

Boosts life, helps pets, a nice temporary devotion pick.

You can get this unlocked early in Act 4 on veteran / normal difficulty.

  1. Ulo, Keeper of Waters (For resists, life, leech resistance, pet resists, and Cleaning Waters celestial) (5 points / 29 points total)

The ability to remove buffs from bosses and to take debuffs / DOTs off your pets or your summoner is helpful all through the game. The Cleansing Waters celestial skill allows you to do that. It’s pretty good when attached to Curse of Frailty for this build, in my observation, with Flashbang probably having Aetherfire attached to it after you retire the fireblast component skill and swap it out for either enchanted flint (for the damage aura) or for a defensive aura (aether resist or chaos resist, perhaps).

This will finish up Normal difficulty for you.

Devotions for Elite Difficulty

Devotions in elite difficulty are almost all about boosting defenses, from beginning to end.

  1. Remove Lion (get 3 points back)
  2. Eel (3 points, 29 points in total)

Swapping out Lion and swapping in Eel costs some life, in exchange for more more DA and a bit of resist / run speed. Early elite is pretty safe, in general, so it’s a good time to make this swap. Also, this sets the stage for being able to take Solemn Watcher, which is a solid defensive constellation.

  1. Solemn Watcher (5 points, 34 points in total)

This devotion offers a good boost to DA and some resists, plus some physique.

  1. Panther (4 points, 38 points in total )

This constellation makes pets hit harder and it also opens the way for the Tree of Life constellation

  1. Tree of Life (6 points, 44 points in total)

The priority here is to get the celestial skill “Healing Rain” as soon as possible, as it heals both your summoner and nearby pets.

<You may get the first point into Light of Empyrion (below), but to complete it you need to go to Ultimate difficulty>

  1. Light of Empyrion (7 points)

This is a mostly defensive constellation with a damaging / debuffing celestial skill as the final pick. If you want to get the celestial skill, then you need to settle for taking 5 points in Tree of Life, in the end (instead of all 6 points).

19

Pets on Fire in Elite Difficulty

Elite hardcore difficulty went by in a bit of a blur, quickly and more smoothly than veteran hardcore. There were several reasons for this.

  1. PoF had more foot speed in elite than in veteran, so moving from battle to battle took less time. This was perhaps the single biggest reason for moving through elite more quickly than through veteran.
  2. Defensive ability (DA) was finally built up in elite, through devotions, to the point where nothing could hit PoF for critical damage and a fair number of mobs swung, and then missed. This meant less spike damage hitting PoF.
  3. With OA buffs and DA debuffs in place for Elite, pet crits were routinely happening. Also, pets had quite a bit of total speed / attack speed by elite, so speedier attacks and lots of crits quickly wrecked most mobs.
  4. Resist reduction started to accumulate to noticeable levels, which further multiplied damage.
  5. The Revenant of Og’Napesh joined PoF’s menagerie after she reached Fort Ikon in Elite. It added noticeably to damage.
  6. Tree of Life was taken late in Elite, with the Healing Rain celestial skill taken ASAP, which helped to make certain fights easier (ie: Elite Log).

Tree of Life was a game-changer, as it (sometimes) allowed PoF to face tank mobs that were chasing her so pets could more easily damage them. There was also reasonable grounds to hope hope that the Healing Rain celestial skill would be triggered when face tanking mobs, to heal up both PoF and her menagerie.

20

Ultimate hardcore - How much pet damage is enough?

For those who might be wondering what DPS benchmarks you might need to meet to have your pet build do well in early hardcore ultimate difficulty, below is some information about Pets on Fire’s current state.

POF Basic Stats:
level: 76
last riftgate reached: Broken Hills
life: 9105
energy: 2799
Devotions: 50 points
Grimcalc (without +skills, with devotions, click here) - See below for +skills …

+skills:
+1 to bonds of bysmiel on a rare ring
+2 blast shield on Empowered Templar’s Headguard
–> No other +skills

PoF’s Defenses:
DA: 2,098
Resists: 74 bleed is lowest, 78 pierce is second lowest, 83 chaos is highest.
Armor (average): 861, lowest is 573 for boots
Armor absorption: 20%

User interface listed pet damage damage bonus: 218%

  • The main reason to mention this is so new players realize that the pet information screen leaves a lot out. For example, the total given above underestimates damage by PoF’s pets by a wide margin, so see below for a better breakdown of damage (and other buffs / bonuses).

Pet Damage Totals and Some Other Bonuses

Offensive ability (OA) bonuses … 251 OA, +14% OA
Total speed bonus … 33%
Attack speed bonus … 29%

Flat damage bonuses … 212 fire + 218 acid + 29-49 elemental + 13 chaos

Crit damage bonus (total) … 60%

% bonuses to particular damage types …

Fire damage (578% = 218% all damage + 250% fire damage + 110% elemental damage)
Lightning damage (428% = 218% all damage + 100% lightning damage + 110% elemental damage)
Cold damage (328% = 218% + 110% elemental damage)
Physical damage (243% = 218% + 25% physical damage)
Chaos damage (228% = 218% + 10% chaos damage)
Acid and poison damage (218% all damage)

None of the above totals include bonuses from Minion Frenzy or from Wrath of the Beast Tincture, as those buffs are not always activated. Both of these offer good spike damage, when they’re active.

Pet damage here is far below the totals usually cited in pet build guides, and yet this build works just fine in hardcore ultimate, at level 76. Battles with tough bosses are not over in an eyeblink, with low end gear. But, battles are seldom endurance tests, either.

Retaliation damage is not very high, so I didn’t bother listing it.

Debuffs to enemies and defensive buffs are also listed further down, for those who are curious.

Debuffs to Enemies: (force multiplier for pet damage)

flashbang = - 250 defensive ability (DA)

fire resist = - 61%, Vulnerability, Thermite mine, Eldritch fire
lightning resist = - 41%,Vulnerability, Thermite mine
chaos resist = - 20%, Eldritch fire
acid & poison resist = -17%, Vulnerability
physical resist = -8%, Curse of Frailty

Gear, Mastery Skills, and Devotions that Make Pets Stronger

Bonuses from Gear:

Enchanted Flint (component, easily crafted, aura) … 8 fire damage, 75% fire and burn damage
Rhowari amulet (faction) … 20% all damage, 10% crit damage, 6% attack speed
Rhowari shoulder (faction) … 26% all damage, 4% ADCtH, 14% health, 5% DA, 20% elemental resists
Legion voidcutter (faction) … 32% all damage, 8% attack speed, Minion Frenzy (15% chance for 45% total speed buff when summoner is hit, duration 12 seconds, recharge 20 seconds)
Ancestor (relic) … 28% all damage, 8% DA, 20% vitality resist, Ancestral Bond aura (12-32 elemental damage, 15% crit damage, 100% elemental damage, 25% physical damage, 50% health regeneration, 8% total speed, 100% retaliation)
Black Grimoire of Og’Napesh (found) … 18% all damage
Rare ring (found) … +1 bonds of bysmiel, +19% all damage
Ward of Illusion (found, Aura) … 50 DA, 8% to avoid projectile damage
Mogdrogen’s Blessing (Augment, x3)… +10% crit damage, +3% OA, +5% attack speed
Wrath of the Beast (tincture, Rovers) … +100% all damage, +100% crit damage (temp buff)

Bonuses from Mastery Skills:

Bonds of Bysmiel … 20% health, 20% energy regeneration (with +1 to skill)
Manipulation … 60% damage, 25% total speed
Blood of Dreeg … 138 OA, 218 acid damage, 152 acid retaliation damage, 106 life regen per second
Flametouched … 133 OA, 204 fire damage, 100% fire, burn, lightning, and electrocute damage
Hellfire … 13 chaos damage, 10% fire, chaos, & burn damage, 9 fire retaliation
Storm touched … 17 elemental damage, 10% elemental damage, 3% elemental resists

Bonuses from Devotions:

Fiend … 65% to fire damage
Panther … 15% all damage, 5% crit damage, 5% Offensive ability (OA)
Tree of Life … 10% health, 40% health regeneration
Ulo, Keeper of Waters … 15% poison and acid resists, 10% elemental and chaos resists
Light of Empyrion … 25% elemental resists, 15% vitality, aether and chaos resists