The build thread includes screenshots of SR 90-91 and a Crate kill, so I think it’s safe to say the content it can do is “yes.”
Who else has played this build?
You’ve played Ishtar? How did it perform in endgame content?
Oh sorry, I thought you were referring to Fluffy Squishy.
I thought I had a really nice Aether / Lightning Reap Spirit build concept using the Aethereach gloves, but when I actually test in out in Crucible / SR, it was a total dumpster fire. I don’t know how you manage to go so far with meme pet builds, as if I don’t deliberately tank myself up, I feel so pathetically squishy.
Then I farmed SR 75-76 with my Skeleton Ritualist, and I felt better. It’s nice that I’m able to have at least 1 non-Conjurer pet build that can go this far, makes me feel good that some of my pet-building efforts paid off.
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Yeah, wanted to make a Aether / Lightning Reap Spirit build with trinkets, diviner’s and aetherreach myself. But gave up in GT itself since it looked too weak 
Aether pets need more options to be good. Personally would like to see something on Arcanist since thematically that is the Aether based mastery.
As for making meme pet builds, I simply follow one crucial rule: Run like you are a headless chicken on fire and never stop
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Have a look at this. It is an Arcanist (Spellbinder) Pet build that is more a Chaos Elemental Build. It is a bit weak when it comes to Nemesis boss fights… But it is fun as it still works. I still try to optimize it…
https://www.grimtools.com/calc/qNYkLJBV
Why Chaos? Because most of the big bosses have not so high Chaos resistances… This build was growing by playing. I did not had something in mind with it. I was just inspired by a Twitch gamer and started this build as well.
And yes. It can ruuuuuunnnnnnn!
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That is basically a Pet Necromancer with arcanist taken simply for the IEE line 
(kind of like my pet witchblade and stuff 
)
And going chaos on it is terribly unoptimal. It will work, sure. But that would never be as strong as a proper build. You need Occultist for Chaos Pets.
I was talking more about Arcanist being made a solid mastery choice like pairing with Occu/Shaman. Since Aether pets need more love and Arcanist is terribly short on usefulness for pets, I was thinking adding something there.
Why does veteran difficulty Warden hate my skellingtons?!?
Had more luck with “Bird & Stinky” dealing with him, skellies just die waaaaay too fast.
Builds are basically maxed first two skellington nodes or max first birdie node and maxed Stinkys first node gear beign equally bad and Shepard’s Crook beign bind to Curse.
Moar grind for better buffs before?
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I would assume it is related to a lag of resistances. Mainly aether and physical resistances. Probably not enough armor you would get with Will of the crypt for the Skellies.
After the first phase Warden creates an Aether pool you should avoid with the Skellies. Bring them out of the pool and respawn them if necessary. If you have a look at the grimtools database you can see the damage types Warden is using. Of course it is difficult to get the right items in this early stage of the game but it would be a explanation.
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Dear Maya.
Thank you very much for your reply. 
After I have read your reply I went back to Grimtools to try to understand how I could optimize my build for Chaosdamage. It is more the conversion from Vitality to Chaos. Do you think it is really an super unoptimal way to go for? I ask myself right now if I have a mistake in my thoughts. The conversion is made by the two rings (Mythical Voidwhisper Band). So I try to get as much Vitality damage as possible. But I think right now I have still not understood the way how conversion works.
A real overview of damage for pets would make it much more easy to understand what damage types are used when pets fights. But I have heard that the tools like GrimInternals can show you a bit more. I think I should use it to get a better understanding what pets are really doing within fights.
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Chaos damage is unoptimal for non-Occultist Cabalists because there’s very little flat damage (unless you’re going the Blood Orb route for full conversion, but Arcanist with no Health Regen and multiple sources of health drain? Yikes!) and no RR. Yes, there’s Vitality to Chaos conversion, but Vitality damage is much more useful for Skelemancers in general because there’s multiple sources of Elemental to Vitality conversion as well as inherent Vitality RR in the Necro line. There’s no point to using Arcacnist’s IEE line if you’re not to make good use of all that flat damage, in my opinion.
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What @thepowerofmediocrity said above
Also note that IEE converts physical to elemental if you take Manifestation. Since that can’t be converted again into chaos, you are also losing a bit of dmg there.
To be truthful. I have no idea how to make skeletons work atm beyond the first few levels of Normal. They die too fast for my tastes that I avoid them like the plague and as such can never truly recommend them to anyone.
I had a feeling that what I said here was player error instead of a damnation of the build, so I kept going at it: my problem with Crucible is that I keep thinking that Vanguard banner is good. 
After sticking with it for a few days, I found that Aether Reap Spirits perform similar to my Chaos Reap Spirits; good enough for easy SR 65-66 running, and at least fast enough to perhaps get 100-150 Crucible, though I have an awful time fighting trash waves with a huge number of Hero enemies. Anyway, here’s the build post - hope it’s to someone’s liking.
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It is. just that depends on the build. After a certain threshold Vanguard does more for you than beacons. But for lower dmg builds or ones that require constant running, beacons are better.
Hi Maya! I’ve got a question on relics for you, right now I have Ancestor but I have access to craft Dirge of Arkovia and Bysmiels Domination, how would you rate them and which would you recommend? Thanks!
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Generally, it would be Mogdrogen’s Ardor > Bysmiel’s Domination > Dirge of Arkovia > Ancestor.
Mog’s Ardor is pretty strong in general due to the +1 to all skills and the pet resistance it gives on top of the other bonuses.
But if you don’t need the +1 to skills and/or resistances, Bysmiel’s Domination has a strong proc that tremendously helps any and all pet builds. Pets love +%Total Speed 
Dirge used to be one of my favourite Relics, especially for the extra Pet it provides. But a recent patch saw the Pet’s HP cut down by half. It was supposed to be just fixing a visual bug with Pet HP being displayed incorrectly before, but doesn’t seem that way ingame and feels like Pet HP was actually nerfed.
Regardless, I don’t really use it in my builds anymore since the pet dies too fast now for my tastes and it was already too slow and used as a tank in my pet builds. It is still however better than nothing if you don’t have Mog’s Ardor or Bysmiel’s Domination.
Ancestor is basically the poor man’s choice of general pet relic (you can also make do with Hysteria/Savage), for budget setups that you use until you can make something better
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Thanks for the detailed response. Sounds like I’m going to be crafting myself a Bysmiel relic! I’m level 73 now and have almost finished crafting my Beastcaller set, the build is absolutely wrecking stuff. Thank you so much for your guides and help it’s been a lot of fun. I’ll checkin again later when I’ve made more progress. My goal is to make it a “lightning pets” build. I’ll need a few specific items for that so we’ll see how it goes. Thanks again.
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