Please evaluate my builds

I’ve been playing GD for a while now, went through the campaign and made a legit spellbinder. Then it got me that what I enjoy most in this game is the theorycrafting, then using some tool to actually make the build and try it out. I know, it’s not legit, but hey, people have only got so much time and there are sooooooooooo many build combinations (props to Crate, GD is the best arpg ever, including the mighty D2 in my opinion)

Anyway, enough rambling. So I’ve got a couple of theorycrafted builds and when I tried them out I failed horribly. On paper some of the builds should be better than builds posted in the build compendium, yet I get smashed. I usually try the builds in the Crucible, SR75-76 and against Calladagra. Its not a slow death, I get mowed down pretty much instantly. So I’d like to ask you good people to enlighten me what I’m missing here.

Build 1: Devastation-Apocalypse Fire Templar
>> Grimtools Link <<
Against the training dummy, this build has monstrous area and single target damage. I know, its not really a survivalist build, but still, I get horribly beaten.

Build 2: Cold Damage Lifesteal-Pet Spellbreaker
>> Grimtools Link <<
Honestly, I don’t really know why this build doesn’t work. The build has excellent damage, good RR, passive 20% damage absorption and enough lifesteal so that pretty much every hit is a full heal. Yet I get beaten in two seconds.

Another two builds as the forum doesnt let me put more links in a single post

Build 3: Skeleton-Hellhound Cabalist
>> Grimtools Link <<
13 skeletons, 1 skeletal servant, 2 hellhounds. It has excellent damage, RR and everything yet, the pet horde gets mowed down in seconds by the 160th Crucible wave. I’ve even itemized so that pets are a bit tankier, yet skeletons die in 1-2 seconds.
Edit: fixed GT link

Build 4: Briarthorn-Hellhound-Primal Spirit Conjurer
>> Grimtools Link <<
So far this seems to be the most competent build out of the bunch. It has monstrous damage, training dummy HP goes down in about 10 seconds. Pets are also very tanky. Everything in the “normal” game is AFK mode, also Crucible up to wave 160. Then the pets simply get beaten. Callagadra kills everything in max 2 hits. Again, on paper this build looks better than the conjurer builds posted in the compendium and those are SR+, C+ etc, while this can’t get past Crucible 160. Briarthorn is overcapped to be able to switch offhand to Bound Wraith if more damage is needed instead of tankyness.

What am I missing here?

Thanks everyone for feedback and having a look

I like the builds. I’ve got one question: have you actually tried the builds you mention that are advertised as “everything+++”? I am probably just a terrible pilot, because it happened to me with some of those builds that I’ve tried, that I could not even survive Crucible for most of the time. Bad positioning, bad skill rotation or I don’t know. So maybe there is some of this factor, and other than that, the first 3 have a bit low HP pool and DA.
And sometimes it just happens that you change a few devotions or even devotion bindings and the build gets better. Or just 1-2 items. You have to try to improve the build like this. The top builds people post here mostly are made through multiple iterations to acheive their final form.

Now some issues I see at first blink: Build 1 no sustain at all, 2 cooldown skills. No resilience, ascension, arcane will skills picked, they are kinda mandatory picks for thes 2 classes for survivability.

Build 2: No pneumatic burst and of course no shadow dance, the main survivability skills for Nightblade. Ring of steel and circle of slaughter with the fumble attack chance is also important even as 1 pointers. You spent the points on the wps skills which give some damage but this is really a glass cannon without much chance to survive. I think with removing those points and put into the mentioned survivabilty skills the build can improve. Also 1 point shadow strike for mobility. If you are not using chillspikes, then Coldstone component on weapons gives more damage, and they both stack on both weapons. But this is actually an autoattacker build without an autoattack skill, so I would consider using Shard of beronath on one of the weapons.
Here are my suggestions for skills and the components mentioned.
https://www.grimtools.com/calc/RVvx1dvN
I did not edit the devotions, no time for that, but you have Rhowans, which is good, but no Murmur, Ultos and viper for more cold resist reduction. Resist reduction is an important part of the damage.
But spellbreaker is not really the greatest melee class of course, and Chillwhisper as you can see, is a caster set (blade does not even have attack speed), so not really suited for facetanking multiple nemesis bosses. :slight_smile:

Build 3 and 4 cannot say much about these.

I’m just starting to create builds myself, so take this with a grain of salt… I’m focusing only on build 4 for the moment:

  1. Hellhounds are… hellhounds. IMHO they are inferior to most other pets, in that they neither excel with damage nor defense. Briarthorns for example are much better tanks, familiars are better damage pets…

  2. You choice of gear is definitely interesting. TBH, I’d never thought of these rings… But…IMHO, your gear is too offense oriented. Especially health boni for pets are quite powerful. Normally, you don’t get too much %health for your pets, which makes it a valuable stat. You could start by e.g. using “Ravager’s eye” on your weapons. Maybe you could also try “Mender’s powder”. Yeah, it’s a magic augment only and you normally don’t use them… But this one might be worth a try.

  3. Your build is a Conjurer. This means you got several sources of healing you could use: Wendigo totem, Birbs with “mend flesh”. Don’t underestimate constant healing.

  4. Devotions: I wouldn’t take Light of Empyrion with a pet build. It’s a strong constellation with its final nodes - for a tank build… IMHO too many points invested for too little return.
    Also: Do you really need Solemn Watcher? Definitely a good constellation - but it doesn’t offer anything for pets. Same goes for three single points in Crossroads. Putting too many points in crossroads is usually not the best investment - and again nothing that benefits your pets.

Probably there’s much more to say. As I said - I’m a beginner myself…

I won’t make a detailed comment on the cabalist since my hatred of Skeleton pet builds is well known and anything I say will be biased.

On the conjurer however, physical Pet conjurers simply don’t work anymore. Enemies have too much armor and you can no longer hybridize it with 2x Familiars.

Also you severely lack RR on both builds + pet resistance on the Cabalist.

If you are going green/yellow and heading to Ishtak, watcher is great for the player bonuses it provides.

As mentioned, you have a few things to look at.

And you might experiment with an alternate devotion path for this concept of hounds and skellies. If the traditional regen-healing method won’t work well for you, then perhaps an adcth-focus is worth an experiment. I’ve not tried this, though.

You generally want Rattosh for a vitality-focused build, anyways, and it has -8% LLRR. With revenant and toad combined, you could get 9% pet adcth.

Adcth pathing for vit pets is one such path. Even though Revenant provides player-scaled pets for RR, I’m not sure that they will hit well with a pet-master’s stats, so I’ve also added the Eldritch hound for more coverage.

This way you have 30RR (Occultist) + 30 RR (Necro, when hit), -25%RR + 25 reduced RR from devotions. ~100 vit RR.

The example pet-master has lowish DA, so maybe green pants or a couple green affixes might need to go towards the player’s defense to get it into the 2800-ish range. Also the player has limited sustain in example.

Since skellies would see adcth leech and heals from bat (twin fangs), they might be much more resilient with a large health pool. But you’d need to test it.

wots so bad about boner bros?

Too fragile, AoE wrecks them since they rely on numbers, Vitality RR on Pets sucks etc

are they still that squishy even with buffs to lost souls?

Compared to Birbs, Briarthorns & Blightfiends, yes.

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Ah…the woes of the necromancer

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Thanks everyone :slight_smile: I’ll keep on experimenting based on the advices :slight_smile: