I know it is highly unlikely to be even considered at this point in game, but something that kind of came into my mind regarding Skeletons and their current state in the game.
Their strength lies in their numbers, right?
But AoE is a problem and enemies bring a lot of it late game.
They are designed to be fragile sources of DPS, right?
But you can’t replenish them quickly enough unlike say Transmuted Blightfiends unless you butcher your build and go exclusively for CDR on the skill and sacrificing everything else.
Currently the “best” Skeleton build uses them as filler DPS while going for Ghol set and blightfiends…
But at the same time, it is kind of an awkward position to straight up buff Skeletons and especially their survivability since they can quickly get out of control if you can grab enough Flat dmg.
So I was thinking, what if we remove the Flat damage from the equation altogether?
Like, remove their basic attack, remove %weapon damage components from their skills etc. As compensation buff their Base damage a little, perhaps. And give them a Skill to replace their basic attacks like how the Raven has Storm Orb.
Then, since their dps will be much more controllable from a balance point of view, perhaps their survivability can be increased or played with to make them easier to keep alive. Or hell, even make them invincible like World Gate Pets or Reap Spirits…
Ofcourse, even if something like this is feasible at this point (given that everything related will have to be rebalanced), it will still go against the initial “theme” of them being disposable minions. But imo, they never really filled that role and at this point, Transmuted Blightfiends are what you go for if you want that.
And the other direction to go for will be to keep the theme and lower their CD + increase the amount that can be summoned at once and make both easier to acquire compared to how things are atm. Like for eg, sprinkle such stats in items that don’t conflict with Lost souls so that you can actually use the Set meant for skeletons instead of looking elsewhere to get the most out of them.
Yes, I am aware that Lost Souls is meant to buff their survivability and hence, allowing them to be replenished faster at the same time might not make much sense or might sound overpowered, but I am willing to bet my Birbs that such a change won’t see them outperform BeastCaller’s or Ghol’s regardless. So I see no harm, unless Lost souls and Skeletons are intended to be weaker and a tier below the other pets.
And yes, Hellhounds are doing even worse, but that is a dead horse at this point as I am sure Crate is well aware of the stat of Doggos and that tying them to Lost Souls instead of their own set is not helping, but since nothing has been done till now, I doubt anything will change in the near future either for the Puppy.
Meanwhile, seeing every single patch directly or indirectly ending up buffing Ghol blightfiends even though they are arguably the strongest Pet builds atm while the weaker ones are being neglected makes very little sense.
No poll this time since Zantai has repeatedly said in general that it will do no good. But feel free to comment below. Also I am not providing any particular build or anything here since it is a universal issue rather than specific to one or two builds or combinations.
I think it’s hard to tell what Crate’s balance team knows about Hellhounds when I’m the only one who’s even posting Hellhound builds in the first place. I know you refer to SR75 as a joke, but even then, numerous Nemesis monsters can get out of hand if you get the wrong mutators (Regen + resistance buff + health buff).
With regards to Skeletons and AoE, my experience is that Skeletons are okay with AoE pools as long as you cap their resistances and give them some sort of survivability boost. What really kills Skeletons more than other pets, however, is shotgun pools and other rapid fire attacks. Ekket’Zul at Wave 159 and Korvaak at Wave 169 are most guilty of this, and they are much harder to fight than other potential Nemeses because Ekket has that late arrival animation when all the other bosses are toppled onto you already and Korvaak’s death animation means that you have to focus on 2-3 fast Nemeses while Korvaak has time to do the swirling fireball attack.
Vitality damage as a whole got hit the worst from the RR nerfs, which would also explain the frustration with Lost Souls set in particular. Super-bosses having 131% Vitality resistance makes using Vitality pets to fight them practically impossible, as you just can’t burst them down with any sort of speed before their most damaging attacks make mincemeat out of you.
I’m going to give Lightning Skeletons a test this weekend, as similarly to complementing Ghol’s, I think having double Ravens provide a lot of AoE DPS will allow Skeletons to do what they do best. EDIT: I don’t have my traditional means to save builds, so I’ll place the Grimtools here: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/62aAeaD2
What I think hampers Skeletons a lot as well is that outside of a few select items, the modifiers to Skeletons aren’t nearly as good as some of the other pets. I will also post my thoughts about other Skeleton builds, as I always feel something is missing when I attempt to build around them in a significant way. You’ll see me post about them in particular below this post later on.
Not to beat a dead horse, but I had the most fun with Skeletons when I use the Burning Blade and Ascendant Cowl MI to summon 8 of them at once. I would recommend raising the number of Skeletons summoned as a baseline from 3 to 4, or maybe keep it at 3 and introduce +1 Summon when you hit 12/12 in Undead Legion and maybe +2 at 22/12 (to encourage hardcapping the skill instead of leaving it at 20/12).
…a slight buff would help, 3% base dmg or sth dunno
This!
Why not reducing base CD from 18 to 12. Yep! Minus 6 seconds.
With capped Unholy Legion you get to 4.
CDR pushes it to 0-2~~ (% works from base if i recall right)
Spectral Crown (other legs) lets them be spammable even without capped/much CDR
Maybe adjusting CDR items a bit, but letting reach low CD even without any of them. You catch the drift.
So what??
Skellies need to get spamable, simple as that. (only filled with water)
Wouldnt make them overpowered or anything, just finally fun to play.
I’m not well versed in the use of pets and time on my side is limited to test as much as I would like too. However @Maya and @thepowerofmediocrity observations are on point, especially when it comes to vitality as a damage source and the rr changes. All opinions are my own and not necessarily correct
I’ll address the vitality thing first: the high resistance to this damage source has a thematic purpose only to it (seems to be) And as much as I understand it, I also don’t. Changes to it are likely not to happen at this point so oh well.
Skeletons: so they are to be the expendable, constant re-summon, squishy pet that’s fine. However there in lies two huge issues. The lack of quick re summons to hold aggro and the issue of them putting out dps if they die the moment you summon them without having to micro manage your life into oblivion and even then, as pointed out, shot guns will wreck you.
Lowering the cool down could be an answer but I think a different, unique method, like having the skill almost like an aura that spits out a skeleton (Or more) every x period of time and adding a bit of sturdiness through items or some such with something that will help with aggro like taunt might make them reach a point where we can place them in a build where they are the highlight and not just an after though to blightfiends. After all you could amp there dmg through the roof but they will still likely get killed before doing any real substantial dps.
Skill lines for pets: I’ve always had an issue with these. They have too many point investment requirement to be of any really use (not all pets of course). Why not bake in some of those to the base pet nodes and adjust the damage and put other transmuter or nodes in that change functionality (Like blightfiend which to me is well designed pet)? Like bake the 3rd node of the skeleton line into the base skill and add a transmuter that makes you summon less skeletons but they are more sturdy or a node that takes an advantage of their fragility like imparting their stats on other active pets when they die so that as skeletons die they buff the other skeletons for x time.
Taunt: I don’t like the aggro system in this game. Personal issue. Imo, non dmg de buffs should never cause aggro. Again that’s my issue.
Hellhound: I default to the more seasoned players as I never played with the pet since launch.
I won’t write a book. I could keep going.
It is important to point out that it appears there is still some life left to development and small changes here and there over time can get things to a better spot. No one said that Crate has to make huge changes all at one time. There will always be players willing to shell out a few $ (like me) for small content here and there.
Also it would help to understand what is the yardstick being used to balance things…SR? What floors? CR? What waves. MC? Like what can I expect, as a new player, to get out of skeletons. Do I feel like sinking in 50-100 hrs only to find out that my dream skele build just gets smashed when I try to do something outside of MC.
Anyone got a video of a skele centric build go up against a maxed summoned celestial totem? On paper that seems a nightmare. Let alone doing SR 60.
I’m in for any buff to skelli and doggo survivability. One thing that I wanted is for skeleton to have similar mechanic with the act V Reanimated Horde from Diablo 2. Each time the skeleton killed they wait for 5 second to ressurect themselves again and the skill have a cooldown of 10-15 seconds independent from each skeleton.
On Grim Dawn I think it can work using the Korvaak/Kupa death mechanic. It go like this: Skeleton lives and happy > skeleton dead and spawn another same class skeleton > newly spawned skeleton have spawn animation that last 5 second(like korvaak) and unselectable until it start attacking > skeleton lives and then the skill cooldown started > skeleton is killed once again and if the cooldown is already up the process above repeats, if the skill is still on cooldown the skeleton is dead permanently and the summon skeleton skill needs to be recasted.
Okay, so I’ve done some preliminary Crucible runs with Lightning Skeletons. Even with 2,200% Lightning Damage (with the potential of adding another 1,500% on top of that), I’m only getting around 4 minutes to beat 150-160, and I’m getting relentlessly swarmed in 160-170, either from Aleksander + the heal bots in Wave 161 or the really tough Shar’Zul + Father Kymon + Alkamos combo in Wave 166. I don’t know how well @Maya’s Will-o-Wisp build does in Crucible, but compared to non pet-builds getting < 6 minute runs easy, Skeleton builds are just not viable in comparison.
Screw it, just give Skeletons a straight flat damage bump. Whether it’s in the base skill or from Will of the Crypt, they’re just not performing for how many skill points you need to make them work.
I intend to have a go at it soonTM, will post link here along with the build thread depending on how it goes. This was my original attempt though: Woof - Pet Cabalist (but a lot has changed since then)
I should have specified, when I say AoE, I am also including and non single target attacks and not just pools and such.
Like, if you have 10 pets and they can only die 1 by 1, it gives them safety in numbers.
But if they can all disappear in a second, while also taking much longer to replenish, the quality of quantity is no longer there or atleast not near anywhere as effective as it has to be to compete with other options.
I am honestly a bit puzzled with the RR nerf. It feels much worse than it should be given the the RR lost is 5% from a mastery. And I am not even talking about Superbosses, but in general.
Healer mobs however are what has become a pain for me rather than the likes of Ravager and Callagadra.
Agreed and personally, it feels more restricting when building around it. Perhaps I should test them ingame more rather than fiddling just in GT, but is kind of hard to make a build that looks like something I would want to make ingame.
Aye, I can accept that they are to be fragile and replaceable, but provided it is just as easy to get them back up as it is to lose them. So more summoned at the same time could work.
I was going to cross my fingers and hope for the best, but…
That is sad to hear, but definitely something I can understand.
That said, none of my builds perform well in Cruci atm time wise. All of them are heavily tuned towards SR and superbosses, so Crucible performance had always been more about Resilience rather than fast clears.
Someone like @Plasmodermic or @sigatrev will need to chime in on how fast Pets can clear Cruci atm. Since 5:04 (Plasmo’s Ghol Ritualist) was the record in 1.1.6.2.
But imagine if they also had wings and the ability to shoot lightning…
I believe someone once told me that it was balanced around the rather high Vitality RR provided by Devouring Swarm. Having only a T3 devotion provide -%RR is also odd (Rattosh).
Personally, I would love to see it more homogenized similar to other resistances and RR, but… yeah…
Interesting proposal and would be pretty cool to see how it would work out, but given the stage of development in GD, I don’t think we will get something so different from what already is
I believe that Crate’s stance on this is that there will never be non cosmetic minor DLCs sold like that, which I kind of respect, but in turn would mean that it will be either a free update, or not at all (since a major DLC is not planned atm).
No videos, but SR 75-76 should be pretty doable if you pull 1 by 1, even with the RR nerf.
Before all these little changes, I even managed to take down Crate with it (a hell alot of luck involved with me piloting like my life depended on it + many previous failed attempts).
Imo, the only real thing about totems is that you need to avoid getting swarmed and helps if you have a displacement rune or something on your medal to get out of it if you end up getting surrounded. Kind of wish they would pop up a few at a time rather than all at once, but I am ok with them the way they are atm.
Would certainly be interesting to see, but imo, the CD would need to be much shorter than that considering that Transmuted blightfiends can be Spawned at 3Sec CD and even though you can only have 4 of them at once, they bring much more to the table and with a much better performance.
I heard you like walls, I so made another wall to add to your collection of walls
For those who want to see Skeletons performance in video form, here’s me beating 150-170 with Lightning Skeletons:
For comparative sakes, Beastcaller’s Druid & Elementalist complete Crucible around the 12 minute mark, while this build did around 13-14 minutes. Skeletons could definitely use a damage buff as Necromancers don’t have Elemental RR the way that Occultists and Shamans do, and having the double RR definitely trumps the additional pets Skeletons bring to the build.
Seems like aggro’ing harder enemies and splitting the action of enemy attacks on a map like “Cruci of Sands” is a must or skellies would be crushed with one false movement. Remembering my own tries with skelly Cabalist and Ritualist i can only salute to this incredible performance. My runs often endend with the frustration of losing all skellies and running around like a madman summoning already broken bones, lol. An average player couldn’t stand a chance. Even very good pilots need immense attention and the know-how to pull that off.
That “Overseer’s” prefix is pretty much a necessary i assume?
Whats your ingame DA?
Cant think of the shown 2,6k have been enough for this performance to happen. Although the frenzied Devotion from the relic caps the phys res from 50% to 80% when procced.
Surprised seeing Wendigos Mark being used, but it makes so much sense. Its fully converted, has 0 CD and makes Skellies leach some life.
How many tries did you need? Success rate in %? (even assuming is okay)
I would guess its in no way possible to pull it up consistently.
Mhh… Dont want to bombard crate with any immature suggestions, but come on, skellies really need some kind of bump. Especially to not be dependend on Hourglass if shit hits the fan. And looking at this well thought out build, skellies still end up more as an decoration and not as an fearsome undead army. Would guess ravens deal like 70% of the damage done.
Wet dreams:
CD of skellies being reduced
a Deathknight set till patch 2.0 wich enables a hybrid play with sturdy hard hitting full converted physical skeletons (The Guardian of Death Gates)
Seeing a modifier targeted at Defiler to enable exploding skeletons (if possible to transfer the hellhound one to skellies engine wise)
Hope hears our call and has resources to provide some kind of solution.
Careful what you wish for! If I understand correctly what’s written in the Carnival guide, Physical is horrendeous for pets since each instance of flat Physical damage is reduced separatly by enemies’s armor.
At that point, I think this potential Deathknight set (why Soldier though, for themes I guess?) would be better of giving Vitality or Cold RR.
As for hybrid playstyles, that’s just not how the game is designed, the closest being using melee or ranged spam attacks to enable pet buffs, but most of your damage will come from the pets anyway. I saw maybe one hybrid Ligthning Shaman build that was doing half damage from self and half damage from pets, but imho it begins to be complicated if you have to ensure you’re tanky enough to stay melee on top of having sturdy and damaging pets.
Converted physical damage bypasses armor absorption. So any vitality or elemental damage would turn into good offensive power thats not being reduced.
Yep. Its kinda an aesthetic thing based on my early experiences with the Guardian of Death Gates weapon. No matter how i tried to make sth to conquer crucible, it just hasnt worked out. MC was fine. Maybe my own expectations were set a bit too high though.
One of my favourite builds is this Trozan/Bysmiel hybrid. And it is a true one.
Its has on the pet side:
x / y with sheperd’s call
810 / 1000% pet dmg (plus hidden ele%)
52% pet OA
45 / 73 crit dmg
wich basically makes the pets worthwhile to have around.
Player side:
around 1650% cold/light trozan shards
good sustain with Sigils, Giants Blood, Mirror, Prismatic Diamond and Aether Crystalls
14k life
~ 3,0k OA and 2,8k DA
CDR makes resumming dog and bird an easy task, wich doesnt happen in MC most of the time since resists are fine. Build completed all dungeons, Morgoneth is really painful. Reached cruci ~160 (could be able to complete 170 once for the hype, but not a farmer in any sense)
Thats the best i could come up with a hybrid build.
Its extremely hard to play in terms of all those possible manouvers with pets and spaming the skills correctly with holding a good position to stand your ground.
Seeing how pet items have also damage increase for the player and some of them being intended to enable such play i cant accept the opinion of hybrid playstyle is not a design choice at all. Looking at weapons such as Dracarris and Bane of the Winter King, wich are vanilla items after all, gets me thinking there was a notion where such ideas found grip by the devs.
With the evolving game and add-ons being created that notion got little thought of how it would be able to be implemented so those builds could at least catch to, like, semy performing builds. One has to mention its a difficult task to enable hybrids without pushing pure pet builds to overperform. So its only chance is by the means of dedicated hybrid items pure pet builds cant abuse.
In MC its no problem. The difficulty level is fine to get a hybrid going pretty well.
I think a few dedicated items wich fill some holes would bring the needed change to make it possible to experiment more with hybrids. So they could also serve as an viable Cruci or SR build. But maybe thats too much to wish for like you mentioned.
Mmmmh, yeah, maybe I was a bit peremptory by saying it was not designed with pet Hybrid in mind, most likely it’s not the direction the players have managed to push build performance. It’s just that you overall need to reach certain stat thresholds for a build to perform, and since pets have their own stats, hybrid builds need a LOT of stats. I feel the problem is that you need both you and the pets to survive, so you can’t really compromise on defense, and you end up having mediocre offense both for the pets and the master. But maybe it is worth trying a little harder, mmmmh.
For all my obsession with Pets, a major flaw that I have is that I am too set in my ways regarding how I make my builds. And even with my meme builds, I rarely deviate from that style unless I am tailor making something for someone at their request.
As such, there are times when certain things elude my attention as I fail to even consider the possibility.
So, it is kind of a delight when someone comes in with something unexpected like @Nola’s Hybrid.
Speaking of which, I would love to see its performance in SR as Crucible atm is not exactly Pet Friendly based on my recent experiences. So it might have better luck there.
For example, my meme builds can’t complete Crucible either. But they still manage SR 75-76 in SC (with difficulty and deaths, but still…)
And discussion related to this if needed, can always be moved to The Carnival - A Guide to Pets where it might be more relevant
For the helmet MI, the important affix is the “Caged Souls” to give pets Bleeding resistance. I took Overseer’s prefix for the Physical resistance and armor absorption. For all my builds, I give myself a personal goal of having 2,000 Armor with 100% Absorption, I feel the difference between having it and not having it when fighting Iron Maiden and other big Physical hitters.
DA in-game is just under 2,700 DA using Physique crafts for the weapon and off-hand. I thought it’d be a big weak-spot as well, but I’ve seen other Crucible players win with 2,500 DA or even lower than that.
This is the first time I’ve used the Wendigo Mark devotion, but the constellation has really good stats, and I always love no-cooldown devotions attached to Skeletons. It’s roughly 85% conversion since Bysmiel’s medal converts Vitality to Elemental, but yeah, I think it was a great decision to use it.
Hourglass was an obvious choice for me, mainly because I wanted to try the newly buffed Call of the Grave and I much prefer skills with greater uptime than having an ability that’s only active <50% of the time. Faster BoD heals, better uptime on Bysmiel’s amulet buff; it’s not just for getting Skeletons when they’re down.
Reliability, I had to pin down exactly what order to kill enemies with before I started seeing success. My Beastcaller pets could kill Karroz at Wave 167 before the onslaught of enemies come; this build doesn’t have the burst DPS for that, so I had to compromise and whittle the trash before facing it. My pet builds in general have a much easier time with Theodin Marcell + Krieg than the combo of Korvaak & Dravis “have a TASTE!” Urobrook. This build has an easier time with Reaper, but now Valdaran & its 92% Lightning Resistance is awful, and Kaisan is always a gamble as to whether I can beat him or not. It really is an uphill battle when it comes to Skeletons & Crucible.
So, I know it has been attempted before, but I’ve theorycrafted a Diviner Spellbinder hybrid. Concept is Aether pets that are kinda disposable, and Devastation in the mix. Goal is all Rogue-like, all Nemesis, Bourbon and Lokarr, SR 50, and Cruci 150. I used 5 MI items, I allowed myself to plan for precise affix/suffix combinations, unless a specific rare affix/suffix is needed (like on the pants and on the medal), then I skipped the other “fix” altogether. Here’s the plan, I’ll tell you how it went after trying it : https://www.grimtools.com/calc/L2J1majN
65-66 is already pretty heavy. With 12/1/1 Trozan shards and 12/1 Sigils supported by only 1800% damage, its just not able to cleer fast enough. The help of the two semy good Ravens dont get it cut to push the damage to an enjoyable pace. Even some hero mobs take quite some time. Here some pics:
Searched for the screenshot button and we died at the same time lol thx Fabius
First bossroom in 65 was ez with pulling one hero at a time (???/Bloodlord/Duskreaper/Maiden). Kaisan got me a bit mad on 66chunk3 with 2 “un-necessary” deaths (timer run out). Fabius was around the corner and he triggered me from afar with his presence on the minimap, considering our unlucky encounter at the double death fotoshooting. So i could not perform that well against Kaisan.
This was right before calling it a day and capturing a last shot
Think its better in the crucible with buffs and banners wich make a huge difference. Havent tried bigger crucimaps since the aggro changes, wich should make more sense to that build. Kinda still stuck on those “Crucible of the Dead”-autopicks without thinking of changing it up.
In summary 65-66 is its beatable cap if lucky with bossrooms.
@thepowerofmediocrity Thanks for the insight with your setup. It makes so much sense how you describe it. Your piloting is also a blessing to watch. That Elementalist’s Briarthorns triggering fissure, so tasty to think of. Considering style points, top flavor for sure.
(only filled with water)
(if possible to transfer the hellhound one to skellies engine wise)
hears our call and has resources to provide some kind of solution. 
