SkeleWraith Lost Souls Cabalist

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
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Lost Souls got some pretty good buffs with 1.1.2.0, and went from barely playable to quite potent. The set has support for both Skeletons and Hellhounds, but the best usage I’ve found is to use Skeletons and Wraiths. If you’re looking for a powerful, easy to play Skeleton build, this is the build for you.

Vitality

GrimTools
Dying God + Ishtak (main setup)
Dying God + Mogdrogen
Dying God + Meteor Shower

Videos
Dying God + Mogdrogen Gladiator - 6:30
Dying God + Ishtak Gladiator - 6:30
Dying God + Meteor Shower Gladiator - 6:15
Dying God + Ishtak SR 80

There are a ton of variants of this that work fine. They all perform so similarly that it’s hard to determine which performs “best”.

Vitality/Chaos

GrimTools
Dying God + Ishtak (main setup)

Videos
Dying God + Ishtak Gladiator - 6:20
Dying God + Ishtak SR 81
Dying God + Ishtak SR 79 vs Kubacabra, Fabius, Slathsarr, Sergarius
Dying God + Ishtak SR 78 vs Aleksander, Moosilauke, Kymon

This setup uses Fiendgaze Tome to convert the Wraith’s Cold and some of the Skeletons Physical damage to Chaos. Voidwhisper Bands on paper look like they’d be great with Lost Souls but it is much more important to get Reap Spirit to 23/16 to get a third Wraith, and while it is possible to do so without Spiritbinder Glyphs, the cost is not worth the benefit.

This setup ends up with a bit more DA and health than the Vitality setup, and does a little better against Kubacabra, but does worse against Reaper who is heavily resistant to Chaos. I think this is slightly more powerful overall, but the difference is within the margin of error.

Comments

Vitality
Vitality damage on pets is in a weird place. Vitality is one of the most resisted damage types in the game, and requries a ton of RR. All pet classes have their own Vitality RR, but there almost no pet items with additional RR, and the constellation with that provides Vitality RR is so far out of the way for pet builds that you’re worse off taking it than not. I’ve found that pet vitality builds the most inconsistent in both Crucible and SR of any builds I’ve played, depending on spawns and modifiers. At it’s best Lost Souls can get as low as 6:00 in Crucible and do SR 80+, but the same setups sometimes have 7:30 Gladiators runs and fail hard at SR 75.

Hellhounds
Unfortunately, Hellhounds on Lost Souls are very lackluster. Hellhound require a ton of skill point investment to make them useful and even then they are not sufficiently strong on their own to carry a build, particularly when forced into Vitality damage which is notoriously difficulty to work with for pets. Skeletons require a ton of skill point investment in both the Raise Skeleton skill tree and in support skills. There just aren’t enough points to invest in both, and the Skeletons are a lot more effective. Wraiths provide much more firepower for a modest investment, and are a better choice overall.

Another significant hurdle faced when trying to use both Hellhounds and Skeletons together is that the Hellhounds are not very good at path finding. They spend a lot of time running around in circles trying to reach targets instead of attacking.

I’ve tried doing Hellhound + Wraith Lost Souls ultimately failed repeatedly.

3 Likes
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Hi

Thanks for the build. What’s your opinion on this particular vitality/chaos build vs. your elemental beastcaller conjurer? In terms of tankinest, damage, and survivability.

and also what about using bysmial domination relic?

Question about the conversion, the weapon has 50% phys convert to vitality and off hand has 50% phys convert to chaos. How does the game calculate this conversion?

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Interesting sigatrev. Finally a proper lost soul build!
I am surprised that reap spirit is quite splashable to most necromancer pet build now. Also it’s quite a shame that all reap spirit item mod dont apply to the pet itself. Same with mod on call of the grave and bond of bysmiel.

Sent from my Redmi Note 3 using Tapatalk

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With this Lost Souls build, the player is a bit tankier than my more offensively oriented Beastcaller’s setups. It tends to do a bit better in SR because all pets die in SR at some point. The Lost Souls is designed to resummon pets at a decent rate, where as with Beastcaller’s you’re much worse off if your pets die. On the other hand, Kaisan is an extreme problem for Lost Souls, and effectively unkillable if you don’t get to fight him one-on-one.

The average Crucible clear speeds from both are about the same, but Lost Souls is faster best-case and slower worst-case. Beastcaller’s is more reliable in Crucible because once you get the hang of it, none of your pets are ever going to die. With Lost Souls you will occasionally lose some skeletons which will reduce your power until you re-apply buffs. It can still do 3x runs with re-summoned skeletons, but it does slow down a little.

Overall, I prefer Beastcaller’s for Crucible and Lost Souls for SR.

You really can’t afford to lose the +1 Necro skills. Without it, you don’t have either 26 Raise Skeleton or 23 Reap Spirit without making some other sacrifices that end up costing quite a bit.

Skill modifier conversion applies first, so First, Will of the Crypt converts 34% of the Skeletons physical to Vitality, and Shard of Lost Souls converts 100% of Hellhound Physical and Fire to Vitality.

After that, general conversion applies all at the same time. You end up with 75% Physical to Vitality (Beacon of Lost Souls + Master of Death), 50% Physical to Chaos (Fiendgaze), 100% Cold to Chaos (Fiendgaze), and 50% Fire to Vitality (Beacon of Lost Souls). When you have conversion totaling over 100%, it is normalized down to 100%. so 75% + 50% becomes 60% + 40%.

This second round of conversion applies to what is left of the physical, so it’s converting 60%/40% of the 66% that was left after Will of the Crypt.

The total damage split in practice is ~70% vitality, 30% chaos (based on numbers from Grim Internal).

I am surprised that reap spirit is quite splashable to most necromancer pet build now. Also it’s quite a shame that all reap spirit item mod dont apply to the pet itself. Same with mod on call of the grave and bond of bysmiel.[/QUOTE]
Thanks!

The duration boost took Reap Spirit from almost never used to usable almost everywhere. It was a very nice change, imo. Huge for QoL, and it adds a lot of flexibility. The itemization for Reap Spirit can be hard to work into pet builds without some big sacrifices though.

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Thank you and appreciate your detailed explanation! :slight_smile:

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Excellent as always.

Was it hard to decide and drop Shepherd’s Hook? I can’t usually imagine a pet build without it.

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I realized when making my old 1.0.6.1 SkeleFamiliar Cabalist that sometimes it makes more sense not to use it. If you already have 2500+% damage, other bonuses or extra offensive procs can be more effective. I originally used it on the Vitality version of this build, but eventually decided I was better off using Blizzard + taking Ulo over Panther.

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In the devotion of the chaos version you use stag instead of panther, why is that?

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I still have no clue about how pet builds work, just came here because I saw “sigatrev” under the build’s name. One question though, is it a TOP STARTER BUILD or not? Asking for a friend.

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In regards to the RR issue: Dravis is a real dick to Lost Souls builds… https://www.grimtools.com/monsterdb/1799/skills

Not even switching to the vitality/chaos setup solves any issues with this guy, sadly. Thank god he’s not a nemesis.

Really interesting setups. Out of curiosity, how come you don’t pick up the 1 point Ember claw for threat generation? Given how fast you can resummon hellhounds I would imagine it would be at least useful in some form.

EDIT: This is sort of what I was going for when I looked at lost souls in terms of devotions, mostly because more skeletons more better: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/m23JBQnN – even if they’re player scaled… could be a fun alternative.

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Need it for the resistances. Panther isn’t all that useful anyway.

I’ve gone back and forth on it depending on the setup. It doesn’t make a huge difference either way, so if I need the skill point elsewhere I’ll use it elsewhere.

I tried a setup using Raise The Dead for the lolz, but it was less effective for sure.

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Could you please post your devotion paths… i’m pretty useless at working them out

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Which of the devotion setups were you interested in? The general strategy for ordering is:

  • 1) Take whichever crossroads nodes you need for the T1 constellations.
  • 2) Take the T1 constellations.
  • 3) Take any of the T2 constellations you already have enough affinity for, and repeat until you can’t take any more of them.
  • 4) Take additional cheap T1 constellations to get enough affinity for the T2 constellations you’re still missing.
  • 5) Take the remaining T2 constellations.
  • 6) Buy back T1 constellations you took in step 4 (if any).
  • 7) Buy back crossroads nodes you no longer need.
  • 8) Take the T3 constellations

There are usually a few shortcuts you can take, but it isn’t critical.

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Solid work, really amazing.
Wondering if Diviner’s Codex won’t be better than Cataclysm Eye.
Or full Diviner’s Set with Beacon of Lost Souls.
Which devotions are considered top for Vitality/Decay based builds?

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The +All Skills is worth more than what you get from Diviner’s Codex on this build. Cataclysm’s Eye is the off-hand of choice for almost all pet builds that have the option.

Using Diviner’s Set results in a very different build. Outside of Lost Souls, Skeletons don’t survive well enough to be worth the skill point investment most of the time.

Of the setups I’ve listed above, I’d recommend the Dying God + Ishtak one. If you’re asking generally, there is no answer. Devotions cannot be separated from the rest of the a build.

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Last thing that i was trying to execute was completly removing bone harvest.
The animation of it feel not that smooth according to me.
Removing Bonds of Bysmiel and Jackal to spend them on Staff of Ratosh and 1point into red crossroads.
And respecting left points from harvest points into +pet dmg boosts.
You have any ideas how to reduce active skills to only 2?
Or will this completly trash this build capabilities.

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If you really need to only use 2 active skills, I would drop Reap Spirit. Curse of Frailty and Blood of Dreeg are non-negotiable under pretty much any circumstances. You could do something like this, but I wouldn’t recommend it unless you’re only doing main campaign. Crucible clear times go up to 10+ minutes and the success rate drops significantly. survivability is hit similarly.

Dropping Bonds of Bysmiel for Staff of Rattosh is also a mistake because Bonds of Bysmiel provides important RR. If you want to drop Bone Harvest, bind Reap Spirit to Bysmiel’s Command and leave Cleansing Waters un-assigned instead.

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Are Ghol gloves really not the play on just every pet build nowadays? Especially on the Fiend’s Gaze version.

Some sort of 1x Voidwhisper Band/Ghol’s Reach/Deathwalker boots swap.

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i’m trying ur build on veteran now and it’s seem lack of dmg if i’m not take the flame torrent devotion. does flame torrent still as good as before on the skeletons?

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HI!
Why not Arcane Wastes with it perfect RR?