Hello, I’m new to the game. I just got it for the free weekend and I’m enjoying it a lot. I recently made a Soldier + Occultist because I wanted to have a pet (Like the Raven in the cover) but I’ve been trying the build calculator and I just can’t make it work
Looking at other people’s Soldier builds it seems soldier takes 90% of the points and Occultists only uses Curse of Frailty and Blood of Dreeg. This seems really boring to me and no pet builds seem to work with soldier unless you go 100% pet and no offensive skills soldier.
Oh thanks for the advice, that’s disappointing to hear because I was going half and half
Your build looks really interesting but it doesn’t feel like a soldier at all and you don’t have any attacks except the Occultist Debuff. It just feels like the pets do everything and you’re just a decoration >.>
Thanks for the help, I just wish I could be 80% warrior 20% pet but I guess is not possible…
Aye, unfortunately, pet builds tend to be pretty passive. You most of the time simply buff/debuff stuff and occasionally cast something to proc devotions or use the pet attack command.
If you don’t mind using pseudo pets (pets that scale off of the player stats instead of pet bonuses) then you’d probably have more options like the BloodKnight set.
Pseudo pets are the likes of Wind Devil, Blade Spirits, Guardians of Empyrion etc (Shaman, Nightblade and Oathkeeper pets) They are pretty much immortal and you can focus entirely on the player character since they scale based on your stats. In other words, they don’t get any benefit from pet bonuses.
Oh ok thanks, but I already picked Soldier + Occultist…you can’t reroll your class right? I think my only answer is to make a gimped soldier with a bird xD
I wish this game gave more skill points so you could be a hybrid instead of just a small splash of another class. Then they could make a difficulty system like Diablo 3 that basically scales forever.
While pet hybrids are definitely possible, they are also very technical builds. You need to know your way around which thresholds count as good or bad as far as pet /character damage goes. In your case, you’d need to be very familiar with both how a soldier works and how an occultist works to come up with the synergy that holds them together. From your analogy your build must be 40-60% warrior, 40-60% pet and >20% synergy factor. The synergy factor can be anything from your character drawing enemy aggro/attacks so that your pets are allowed to wail on your enemies in relative peace to abusing item procs; usually it’s a combination of various things.
After all that, you STILL need to know your way around which “static” items (items you can always, or at least, almost always find) will complement your build.
There’s no comprehensive guide for hybrids, though there’s enough bits and pieces of info on the subject if you look for posts like DaShiv’s or even mine. It’s definitely not something I’d recommend for a new player though.
Diablo 3 is hardly a good benchmark for builds since sets = builds in that game, with only a handful of exceptions. Grim Dawn is different in that it takes really outrageous content to break a good build, and even then most builds will be pretty good at at least one of the different end-game content available. Or at least, it’s not as bad as D3 in that respect (which is a bit unfair I suppose since end-game D3 content boils down to one thing, but meh).
Anyway, respecs are a lot easier now and worse case scenario you smudge a few skill points/re-level devotions/re-arrange your stats to fit the type of end-game content you want to do - although the possibilities skyrocket if you don’t mind (responsibly) using tools like GDstash.
Feel free to experiment.
You could make a guy with Blitz, War cry and Overguard and use birbs for damage and heal. At worst, it will look like you are always doing something (even if you are not).
https://www.grimtools.com/calc/Q2zAYmLN something like this, except there also should be a way to include Rhowan’s Crown and/or Viper and sacrifice one of the used constellations.
I’m pretty sure it will be viable, simply because birbs are stronk. Though it was much easier to come up with the devotion map for a physical pet build, I’m not exactly sure how to do it in this case.
Oh ok thanks a lot for the advice, you offered me some hope xD Could you give me a build example? I will try to experiment as much as possible until I find one I like.
You could make a guy with Blitz, War cry and Overguard and use birbs for damage and heal. At worst, it will look like you are always doing something (even if you are not).
https://www.grimtools.com/calc/Q2zAYmLN something like this, except there also should be a way to include Rhowan’s Crown and/or Viper and sacrifice one of the used constellations.
I’m pretty sure it will be viable, simply because birbs are stronk. Though it was much easier to come up with the devotion map for a physical pet build, I’m not exactly sure how to do it in this case.
Oh this is the closest build to what I want from what I’ve seen so far! Just a couple of questions. I heard Mend Flesh from the Birb(?) xD tree wasn’t very good is this true? and the only thing missing from your build that I would like is a way to hit foes hard with something like Cadence. So would it be a good idea to lower Mend Flesh and add it to Cadence? Also I would need a couple of points from somewhere else maybe, I know the Curse of Frailty is amazing and War Cry but maybe I could switch out one for more bashing power? or is this not a good idea?
Also one more question why do you have so much Spirit rather than Cunning? is there any specific reason? Also why the shield with a gunner ability?
Damn, you have a good eye. I just swapped some items plus changed skill tree and devotion map from the build in your first post, you obviously only need spirit for stat requirements.
That shield gives you some good resistances and +1 to all skills, which is more important. Personally, I would also get some green shield of Barricades with Mark of Myrmidon, to have 100% block recovery when you need it - you can find (and use) those from the very beginning. Max Summon Familiar -> Overguard -> Shield Training, and you’ll be fine on Veteran.
In this build Cadence will do precisely nothing after normal, while Mend Flesh, War Cry and CoF will make make your life much more comfortable. You can still charge with Blitz, hit stuff and scream at stuff.
And it’s merely an example, you still need to fix resistances, optimize constellations and swap some skill points to your liking. I just changed a few things from what I’m doing with my skeleton DK, but birb Witchblade is definitely going to end up much stronger.
