The Carnival - A Guide to Pets

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
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709

As is often the case with this set, the rough thing about Lost Souls is that it blocks all the good options you could have. Going from Vitality to Chaos, if you were to go Cabalist, you’d go from a double RR class to a 0 RR class, and you don’t have double trees + cat to give huge flat damage to make up for that, compared to going Chaos Conjurer. No weapon to provide Chaos RR, no Conduit for either Occultist or Necro to give good RR either. You’re stuck with less than ideal equipment and the set doesn’t do too much other than beef up the Skeletons and give a second Hellhound.

If you were to go Skeletons alone, however, you have a few decent options - either Inquisitor or Demo. Demo has more RR in Thermite Mines, while Inquisitor has the heal and Vigor for more Skeleton Health. It’ll likely go Apostate, in which case I’d like to know how Chaos Skeletons compares to my above Fire Skeletons.

If it weren’t for Reaper of the Lost being the most difficult Nemesis, I’d have a hankering to try Aether + Chaos Skeletons just take advantage of all those skill points in the Voidwhisper Rings + flat damage from Bysmiels Domination. I’ll leave this link here in case I ever want to revisit whether to switch it to full Aether pets or Chaos pets: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/eZPjK3B2

710

You don’t need RR from masteries on a Chaos Pet build :stuck_out_tongue:, never did.

As for not having P.Spirit or Briarthorns, don’t need them either. Any extra dmg you’d require can be provided by Reap spirits.

And Lost Souls doesn’t block any of the items needed to make Chaos work, atleast not the way I would want to build it.

Ofcourse in the end it won’t be Beastcaller’s or Ghol, but Beastcaller’s is generally a well built set and Ghol is borderline broken at this point, especially with all the buffs to the items and stuff that complement it.

711

Can we expect some lightning skeletons some day ? The bysmiel set would fit perfectly there too

712

If I make Lightning Skeletons, it would still be with Lost Souls :stuck_out_tongue:

That means no Mantle :3

713

Best of luck trying to get Chaos Lost Souls Cabalist to work. Even with the slight enemy resistance nerf, I don’t see how you’ll fare well against SR75 Reaper of the Lost; when I theorycrafted a Cabalist, the amount of points for Hellhounds, Skeletons, and Reap Spirit was far too steep to go for. My bet is it’ll be a combination of Hellhounds with only investment in the skill and Hellfire, Skeletons, and Reap Spirit.

With a huge %Health + Skeletons buffs, I can somewhat see it work if the Skeletons can survive Reaper. 2 Hellhounds - even with maximum investment - can’t beat SR75 Reaper :frowning:, so I hope the Skeletons are enough of a boost to get past the hump.

714

Why is the online carnival pdf and the one for download different?
The online one has the weeping queen build while the downloadable one has will-o-wisp.
The online guide has a leveling section “how to level” on page 32 while the downloadable one is missing that section which i think is really good for beginners to have.

Thanks for the great work nonetheless.

715

Did Reaper get buffed in SR? If not, he has never been a problem <85 :3

But considering that this is the build I intend to go for: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/a2dzxg5Z
Moosi, scares me :sob:

Um… do you have the latest version downloaded. Because both links should be the same. I just checked :yum:

716

Hello fellas!I am so happy to be a part of great comunity like this.I learn something new every day from you guys.
Can i get help for my current pet build: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/d2j4gdmZ
The main problem in my opinion is in devotion tree.My skelies die so easy from some of the bosses in SR and i wanna fix this but if its possible wihtout much dmg sacrifice ofcourse :slight_smile: I guess my pets resistances are not good at all and in 2nd the devotion Tree of Life, do i need this to keep all of them alive?
Another question is about RR chaos.Is that S.Witchblade good enough or i need something more like Manticore.The main idea of the build is as much as possible summoners (skelies) and chaos dmg convertion.For this i use pair bands and offhand Plus Master of Death (because rings convert vit dmg to chaos only)

717

Honestly, I wouldn’t really recommend skeleton pet builds to anyone atm unless you want to make one for the meme status or are using skeletons alongside other pets as an extra source of DPS.

They aren’t at the same level as other pets atm. Sorry if it was not the answer you were looking for, but I am not sure on how to properly build them either.

718

I should try now my max SR. For now hit 50 without any problems, sometimes pop up hp pots and some bonus dmg pots for pets. Comfortable to SR 50 can i say.

719

He hasn’t been buffed recently that I know of. Chaos builds have the hardest time with Reaper as it has 81% Chaos resistance and Hellhounds are very squishy as pets, so it’s hard to keep them alive to take advantage of all their buffs. Low RR + Reaper’s multiple Wraiths + Hellhounds that die a lot and you’ll have a very, very bad time on your hands.

I’m running my Chaos Reap Spirit build through 65-66 to see if the RR changes and the general buffs are enough that I’m able to beat it when I wasn’t able to before. Without Reaper, it’s definitely easier than it was before. With Reaper, however, I can’t say what good it’ll do.

I have 2 pet builds ready to post (both easy SR65-66, but one failed at SR75 and I haven’t tried the other yet), but I want to try a Pyromancer out and see how it does before I post them. Patch 1.1.8.0 was kind to pet builds in general, even if there wasn’t any new equipment to try.

Speaking of Skeleton memes:

Fire Skeletons for the win! (Shut up about my bad Crucible times, lol)

720

Ah, Hounds are mostly there to draw aggro and die :stuck_out_tongue:
If you rely on them for DPS, that is going to be a struggle. As much as I hate skeletons, Hounds are in a much worse state atm. Tbh, I might probably get more benefit out of putting those points into Blightfiends…

And that is a pretty good time for a meme build actually :yum:

721

You guys ruin my dream :smiley: to realize this chaos build. Joke ofc i should try to mix max it as mush as i can.In other hand if i leave chaos convertion and change Voidwisper rings with Spiritbinder gluph and offhand with mythical Reaper of the Accursed and with it definitely will fix my elemental resistance on my pets.Now main source of dmg should be vitality and i can RR with CoF.

http://prntscr.com/us4qif SR 70 is real without any pots and deaths

722

My browser must have malfunctioned. It works fine now.

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723

I have a question about your evaluation of Crab Spirit (Hysteria relic) vs. Storm Hound (Savage relic). I was fortunate enough to find the blueprint for Savage earlier than I got Homestead up to Respected, so I had a lot of time with it before gaining access to the Crab. (I’m a newbie who’s only been playing GD for a few days)

And I gotta say, while I’ll take your word for it that the Crab is about the same power as the Hound, despite the much weaker attack, I do think the stats on the relics themselves are perhaps even more relevant because the difference between the pets is supposedly a wash. And with that in mind, Savage seems to absolutely trounce Hysteria.

GrimTools shows this as Savage’s stats:

+46/+70 Offensive Ability
Bonus to All Pets:
  10/14 Elemental Damage
  +28/+42% to All Damage
  +8/+12% Health
  20/30% Elemental Resistance

While Hysteria offers:

+80/+120 Health
+16/+24 Defensive Ability
Bonus to All Pets
  +6/+10% Health
  +6/+10% Attack Speed

That certainly seems like a significantly weaker offensive and defensive statline for your pets than Savage offers. But maybe that’s just my noobishness shining through?

724

Savage is supposed to be better than Hysteria.

The debate is whether it is worth going for since the Crab Pet brings more AoE and utility in the form of Freezing enemies. And in practice ends up being more useful, atleast in my runs. Also, in general Hysteria is easier to get access to.

But if you are looking at the stats on the Relic and have all the materials needed, on hand, then there is no reason not to go for Savage.

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725

So… I heard you guys like Ghol Ritualist Builds and Resistance Reduction +OA/DA Shreds.

Is dat true? :3

https://www.grimtools.com/calc/O2G05xLV

Who needs off-hands when you can go with Shields instead Thunking

726

The Witch Doctor - Pet Ritualist updated to 1.1.8.0 with a variation of the above build.

It feels soo gud :3

My birbs are now properly jealous at Ghol and the sheer amount of RR it can get…

727

Now, something unrelated to the above 2 posts that I wanted to talk about…

Crucible is becoming more and more “not worth it” for my pet builds. The Clear times are increasing and it is harder to keep your pets alive in some of the builds (they lose blessings upon death which further increases clear times).

Meanwhile, Ultimate SR 75-76 is a joke atm and can be cleared with your eyes closed even without any camera/aggro tricks.

But, if you must choose Crucible for some reason, stick with the good old Crucible of the Dead. The new Crucible maps aren’t good for pet builds, or atleast for my pet builds.

Also, I won’t be testing any of my new builds or updates of my builds on Cruci from now on due to the above reason.

I will end up making like 100 new posts at this rate, so going to simply edit this one for this…

So, my Top 5 gets gutted into top 3…

New changes to RR had made dealing with a lot of stuff take much longer, or atleast it feels that way, especially when going up against Healers in Crucible/SR.

Guide will be updated soonTM, but this is how my main builds fare atm:

  • Will-O-Wisp somehow withstood the test of time and is working the same as before (RR from only 1 mastery is probably the reason. So there would have been no nerfs here).

  • Fluffy Squishy feels like it lost a good deal of its power even though it should be only -5% RR.

  • Ishtar is kind of in a weird spot atm. Vitality is one of those damage types that needs all the RR it can get. And when you are relying only on Reap Spirits to get the job done, you need things to die fast due to lacking pets to tank for you and lacking AoE to clear groups of enemies efficiently.
    That causes problems in Deeper SR and such. But build is pretty tanky and so, it should wither the storm just fine.

O

Weeping Queen (offensive version of Fluffy) & Sanguine Lupus (Bleed, Briar/P.Spirit Conjurer) don’t feel “safe” to use anymore and hence were removed from the top 5.

Ghol builds got buffed for some insane reason… but they still struggle against Crate. So those will never see top anything in my list.

I refuse to acknowledge Skeletons at this point and will simply pretend they don’t exist.

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728

The PDF links have been updated.

Only change is the removal of Weeping Queen and Sanguine Lupus from the Guide + replacing old GT links for Fluffy Squishy & Ishtar with the new ones :slight_smile:

(I did think about adding another page or 2 to the guide, but decided against it because I was too lazy to type it all out)