can i ask you the grimtools for that build? thank you. Also which option are you using for showing health percent over the health bar?
Is Primal Strike a build or a skill used by a build?
There are no clear definition of what a build is tbh.
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i think it can be said that Lost Souls cabalist is the best build for tanky skellies tho, compared to a Ritualist. Mogdrogen’s pact offers more regen but Blood of Dregg adds physical res, Skeles have even more physical res from set bonuses, they are faster, more health, and more armor, also you have more of them. with the right Bloodsworn Signets (untamed) i was able to archieve like 38% phys res on my pets. That’s sad because i like Ritualist more than Cabalist, but it’s just facts…
Before Zantai nerfed it, the skeletons on this one could fully facetank callagadra without losing a single one - Cabalist, Level 100 (GD 1.2.0.0) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator
eh that’s unfortunate but needed, i guess. Huge physical res on skellies is kinda handy. Was the build That tanky even without tree of life and ishtak?
O.o isn’t that super boring? Both grinding cruci and then playing veteran with a big devo advantage??? I mean… probably faster to just play normal and get the devo points later?
Anyway, you do you. 
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Tree + Ishtak doesnt really do much for skeletons due to them not having the HP pool to make proper use of Tree’s healing and Ishtak having a Taunt component which can backfire due to Skeletons now having Taunt as well…
The extra Physical Resistance from Ishtak would certainly be an advantage vs Cally, but build had capped Phys res for Skeletons at the time. So, it was not that much of a boost.
The idea was essentially to get Hellhounds tank as much as possible from max’ed Ember Claw while also reducing damage with Infernal Breath while Skeletons just did their thing.
This was the first major nerf -
Then various smaller, but additive nerfs to overall pet physical resistance options and increase to the power of Sunder left the Skeletons very much mortal.
As for the player, the build was never intended to be tanky. Tree + Ishtak definitely would have helped out there, but I wasn’t planning on taking it to deeper shards to require that.
Yeah, indeed. Also the vendor in the Bastion of Chaos no longer seem to sell Bloodsworn Signets so it’s harder to farm them
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it’s the Cabalist that Contragor posted earlier in the thread
sure there is, is the char centred around it or not? is it just there for trigger or bonus dmg/“flavour” or is it maxed and itemization invested in?
imo should be relatively obvious in most cases. Some make it even simpler ofc by then “highlighting” it in their build headers “Ultos primal strike warder” - if anything there the warder/class is the least significant, as we can easily make an Ultos Primal strike elementalist/archon/druid/vindicator too
Kinda sad that in the end the Cabalist is better than the Ghol Ritualist i was playing, i really liked it. It’s a shame but there is nothing i can do about that i guess…
but ghol ritualist can be made as dual poison/bleeding focusing on dot
Yeah but i was trying as a pet build with skellies blightfiends ecc
I haven’t played Ghol in a little while, funnily enough what always irked me the most wasn’t it being squish but it being tremendously piano 
Again it depends on how accepting you are of resummons too vs want peak min resummoning or absolute/“hard” 0 resummon.
You can make a tanky ritualist, it just might not be Ghol that’s the most tanky/lazy Skeleton setup then.
Someone did a Skeleton ritualist somewhere last year when we did all the 1.3 pet changes, i don’t remember how comfy it was/how lazy it was on resummon, just that it included Wendigo totem, and i didn’t appreciate that because extra button/“hassle” to run in and plop down at the boss in pet groups (to me).
So that’s a personal preference that would immediate detract some potential tankiness bonus for me, that Rit can otherwise still add in. Which could be neatly contrasted with ex Maya’s Darkone conjurer? where it then becomes over the top tanky from slapping down several totems 
, but wasn’t that more paino/annoying (no soul harvest etc) , just a “slower” clear build tolerance then ofc.
I don’t know if anyone posted a full lazy ghol Rit, nor what it would even really take to get there as it’s usually approached as somewhat dmg setup, and for me squish was never really what i looked at, but piano (traditional ghol coming with base rift scourge and talon pet just adding in a bunch already there, aside from old swarm RR cast etc)
Yeah that was the idea (the link of my build is in maya’s Ritualist thread, in the last comments. The only think i changed recently was dropping bysmiel and rumor skill for toad and typhos, so tried to be as tanky as possible and laziest as possibile with max resists)
sure it may be hard to reach max point on skelly and undead legion, but still you can stack as many dot on those 8 skelly while letting the briarthorn and 2s cd Blight fiend tank the like of ravager. This is what I would do if I’m going Ghol ritualist with skelly, though I prefer no skelly on this build
This has been my argument since the first time I posted here.
Almost every other pet build does the same thing, even if they’re not doing it to make skeletons tankier.
Of course. The raven stays at range and almost never gets hit and the Hellhound doesn’t have it’s taunt, not even a single point in the skill. It’s a walking aura. You may as well put it on passive and just have it follow you around.
Grimtools?
EDIT: If you’re using the build linked above with the Guardian at Death’s Gates then I can see why you’re having skeletons die in SR32. Not having the Physical Resistances and 60% more health on them from the Lost Souls set is going to hurt.
Try this instead, I quite literally walked through SR30/31 without casting anything and it worked fine.
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Actually i was using guardian of death’s gates so i had 12 skellies XD
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it was not mine nor a point i ever raised, and kept pointing to the specifics from the getgo
almost every other pet build does not go tree ishtak to solve basic survival/tankiness, they can safely go mog/dg etc because Briar/Doggo etc is just that slightly bit more sturdy on those routes… - they go tree ishtak for that peak chonk, like deep sr, where still then Bonez may crumble on the same.
and during campaign they also don’t require specialized farming, repeat item cycling, to get by satisfactory or be "complaint"free
and yet it’s not only something some players want, some even “except” it from the other pets allowing it, again the point of the disparity being caused there between pets and either not knowing about it or struggling to accept it.
it does not the way i play
same as skeletons, no taunt, heck atleast doggo has “some” aggro in Breath here, skeletons have nothing but base attribute.
Yet one might die from aoes/collateral dmg etc, and the 1pt doggo might not
“tell me you’re not following my drift without telling me” Skeletons Discussion - #29 by ContragorX
looks like semi regular chaos lost souls, like we did on 1.3+ ? if so that’s a very example of what i mentioned in the very beginning, others showcasing it can indeed do X/clear SR without resummons, but i didn’t manage
It’s not me trying to prove a “point” running you guys builds and “bashing” them to the ground as if some fail state, it’s a very basic missed consideration of our experience/pilot skills also mattering even on something as pets or “tanky” pets too. Which is what adds to shaping that perception other players have/get about skeletons being squish, because it’s not merely “build wrong”, but an element of x000hours expertise/control too playing in
Skeletons don’t need Ishtak for basic survivability. They need it for the unrealistic expectation some people have of never having to resummon them. You can play without it and go quite deep into SR. I’ve gone to SR100 with Mogdrogen the Wolf map. Dead enemies don’t kill you in general, so killing them faster reduces incoming damage by a lot.
Skeletons don’t need specialised farming. They use the MIs for the skill and the same resistance augs that Conjurer uses. Have you levelled a pet class in the last few years? It’s not rocket surgery. Do it on Normal instead of Veteran and it’s even easier.
Damage is a taunt. Your Hellhound’s damage doesn’t exist. Maxed out skeletons does.
You can do this with Vitality or Lightning as well. Lost Souls set with Tree/Ishtak devotion map = easy street.
It’s not a skill issue. It isn’t a piloting issue. You quite literally just walk around and things die. If you can manage to cast Curse and Ill Omen, they’ll die faster and you’ll be safer. The issue you’re having is you have a bad build. Not using Lost Souls on a skeleton and hellhound pet cabalist is a mistake almost every time.
Literally do nothing but keep Blood of Dreeg active and this build will walk through SR30/31 and lose no skeletons.
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again, that very much depends on your experience, play, and what your notion of basic surviability is.
It’s not a 1 size fits all, so you being able to go to SR 100 with regular setup doesn’t detract from others not having that experience then forming a different perception that skeletons are more squish/dont’ work that way
Again, the literal poin from the very beginning being that very thing, they have those perceptions for a reason, and they are not magically invalid by you being able to perform a different feat, or using tree ishtak to solve it
scroll up to the very specific comments used to “solve X”
i’m not saying this for fun, but because it was outright made as counter/fix by you guys as to the perceptions people had. And that’s the point, it’s not a fix, if it’s the pigeonholing itself
that’s literally not how it works
Taunt is a breakpoint for aggro scaling, something skeletons don’t have, doggo has it on emberclaw and breath. All skeletons have here is base threat gen on basic attacks, that all pets has now, Doggo has outright threat attacks via Breath; but it doesnt’ matter when we have briar and BF with multi taunts etc (aside from Ishtak proc applying ofc)
no, you can do it, others can do it, but i’ve so far been unsuccesful in reliably replicating it (same as other players/“complaints”) - difference is i’m okay with it, and dont’ label it a detractor from skeletons, because i’m ok with them needing resummons (once in a while), and i have that initial understanding they are not like Briar and were never meant to be that default innate sturdy.
literally not, i went trough the multitude of pet builds, including various lost souls iterations we tested last year/summer for the big pet update and after. “stuff so good it caused nerfs before live release”
I’ve mentioned this before i’ve tried “the good” builds, and still i fail more, it doesn’t mean the build is bad, or wrong, it just mean i suck more and have to be fine with a summon once or twice, which is fine - but others don’t feel that way and “never” want to summon them like they were briar. Hence disparity of perception being formed… on something as basic as pilot “skill”/attention