I would to make a Pet hybrid build consisting of Maxed Briarthorn and Conjure Primal Spirit from the Shaman tree. I’ve tried a full Pet Conjurer, but did’nt really like Familiar or Hellhound that much, and would like to have one or two offensive skills for a more active gameplay. Any ideas on class and skills for this?
Familiar is pretty awful yes. I’d suggest looking into Heart Of The Mountain and… I forget the name, there’s a helm with a spammable 2H granted skill. People have done successful builds of that type before, usually calling them “Winter King” builds as they use Bane Of The Winter King. I’d suggest combining with Night blade and using Nemesis for a relic, get two Manticores out there. Shaman has more than a few purples that grant pet and player stats. You do tend to end up more player heavy simply to survive, but it sorts out.
Summoner with Hell Hound has been one of the quickest kilers i’ve played. And that is without Primal Instinct.
The dog rocks
Hellhound deals solid damage, it has the Hellfire buff and his explosion on death can deal a lot of damage. Pretty solid pet i’d say.
Pet build, but not conjurer? Pyromancer then, with with hour or draccaris.
In words, everything looks good, but the case of the manticore from the shaman’s school depends on the damage of the pets, the manticore from the relics - from the player’s damage. In any case, one or the other will not be good at dealing damage.
Hybrid pet builds get away with it, though, especially Shaman focused over Occultist, simply because of the Shaman items. For some reason Shaman has more hybrid items than Occultist as far as I’ve seen. Plus Primal Bond itself is sort of hybrid.
Regardless, yes, one manticore will do more damage than the other. So what? If they both deal acceptable damage, it’s okay. If a hybrid build can’t get enough pet bonuses to make the Shaman one okay… Then it’s too heavy player, not enough pet. If a (presumably cold heavy) hybrid build can’t get Nemesis to do decent damage, then it’s too pet heavy. It’s a good barometer for just how hybrid your build really ends up, and which way you’re leaning.
The issue with Winter King builds is that the “set” tries to do too much at once, and it doesn’t synergize very well. You need to invest heavy in devotions/pet gear to make pets shine, and that doesn’t leave a lot of room for necessities like health/OA/resist gear. On top of that, the helm’s granted skill has anti-synergy with Savagery/ABB/Lethal Assault, which are a Trickster’s only source of OA AND it requires cast speed, which Shaman has none of, meaning you need to gear for cast speed and energy regen in addition to everything else. If you ignore that granted skill though, it has promise.
Re: OP, the best way to play a hybrid pet build is to focus on skills that benefit from CDR. This is because a lot of the power in pet builds comes from buffs, specifically from devotions (Mog, Shepard, HV, ToL) and it reduces downtime to resummon if your pets die or unsummon in the case of Primal Spirit. You also want to hit enemies as few times as possible because of how pet aggro works, so going attack/cast speed builds will make your pets nonexistent aggro-wise.
Now, the thing with Shaman pets is that they focus on being tanky and having big retaliation stats, whereas Occultist pets are more damage focused. They also all have an aura-like ability that makes all your pets stronger, whereas Shaman only gets Emboldening Roar which isn’t nearly as good. This means that as a Shaman pet hybrid, you’re playing to your strengths the most when you have only a few, strong pets that are tanking everything for you, and not so much dealing damage (except through retaliation).
With all that being said, and assuming you don’t want to go Conjurer, here are some options…
Elementalist - Flametongue and Temper would be very helpful for your group, and you could choose between CD Stun Jacks, Grenado, or even both for your active abilities. Mortar Trap may also be a possibility depending on how player-based pet aggro works, and Blast Shield synergizes well with the CDR theme you’ll be using. Flashbang is of course amazing but it procs every second that it is applied so it may make holding aggro unmanageable. Same with BWC.
Warder - Blitz, CD Forcewave or CD Blade Arc are decent choices for active skills, Field Command aura is great, and you can make yourself as tanky as your pets. Unfortunately War Cry has anti-synergy with the whole pets tanking for you thing, which steals their strengths, and you NEED maxed Break Morale to be optimal. A Witchblade could do the same idea better.
Trickster - Obviously SS is a great CD ability, but so is RoS and maybe PB. I don’t know how aggro works if a player-based pet is dealing damage (Blade Spirit, Wind Devil, etc.) but Blade Spirit may be great too. Biggest issue though is that you give your pets 0 support except through VS/Night’s Chill.
Druid - IEE line is good for the group and even has a transmuter to help pets (even though it’s garbage, should be 25%/50%/75% conversion IMO). You have plenty of active skills to choose from in OFF, CD Tempest, TSS, and Devastation. Most importantly, you can get Star Pact for ultimate CDR (although you give up Primal Bond), and you have the best utilizer of CDR in Mirror. Downside is 0 resist reduction.
If I had to rank them in terms of best options, I’d do Elementalist, Druid, Trickster, and Warder in that order. Hope that helps!
It generally seems like it gives you a Yeti, a cold skill, and cold damage… And that’s about it.
I 100% agree that using the helm skill makes ABB and Savagery awful. So? There are MULTIPLE OTHER OA sources. Those may be easy and convenient ones, but there are builds that don’t have use an easy OA source like that and get by just fine.
It’s not the best of the best hybrid build ever, but many find it fun, and many have tried to make it, so there are multiple versions to be viewed for reference. In contrast, while Witching Hour exists, gear supporting Occultists and Pets isn’t anywhere near as common, nor are Witching Hour builds as common as Winter King builds… Despite Winter King builds still being a terribly small portion of posted builds, or even posted pet builds. Hybrid pet builds in general are underrepresented, though that Draccaris one is making them all look good suddenly.