The Carnival - A Guide to Pets

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
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850

Mend Flesh could work if you are willing to invest points in it. Could set the raven to defensive and use it mainly as a heal bot.

On my Will O Wisp, it keeps me alive through a lot of stuff although it does have 2x Ravens. But it won’t really do anything good for the pets (another reason why I prefer Tree over Giant’s blood).

But whether MendFlesh is worth investing into, needs to be tested. I assume that while set in defensive mode and perhaps without points invested in Lightning strike, the raven might prioritize healing more.

However, like I said, it needs to be tested and I mostly tend to leave it as a 1 pointer simply due to lack of points, which imo will be the major issue. Regardless of the effectiveness of the heal, one will need to test to see whether the points are better spent there instead of elsewhere.

To give an example, Will O Wisp relies on it to survive and can afford to put points there. But Fluffy Squishy, did not show a noticeable increase in survivability and putting those points into more offensive oriented skills ended up boosting the build’s overall power.

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851

For the newer folks like me who’ve only dabbled in this game but are coming back to try out the new stuff:

o) Dodo – Pet Conjurer: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/4ZDvk8Y2

o) Doctor – Pet Ritualist: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/nZobREQV

I built both of these out to their presented setups and the Conjurer is MASSIVELY out-performing the Ritualist. My Ritualist even has a piece or two of slightly better gear/Mythical aimed towards the Ishtar build and it still doesn’t matter. Conjurer’s kill time and survivability are both superior and the only way I see the Ritualist winning out is the full Ishtar setup making Reaps unkillable.

Would love any inputs or reflections on this. I’m enjoying the Conjuror for both the pet setups and the promise of being able to branch into multiple potential builds with the char, whilst the Ritualist feels like it’s going to end up hamstrung to Ishtar and even then be inferior.

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852

First things first, welcome to the forums :blush:

To answer your question, Conjurer is just easier to build when you don’t have many items to choose from. You have Resistance reduction from both masteries, Aura based skills that benefit you and your pets etc. Ritualist on the other hand, needs more help getting to such a point and is more item dependent.

853

Thank you!

My follow-up question:

You mentioned that the Ritualist needs more gear to get to the “same place” as the Conjuror. Is the Diviner set for a bunch of Reap ghosts capable of performing at the same level as the pet builds for Conjuror? Asking as I’ve seen on spreadsheets and some places saying the Conjuror is a superior pet class, better overall, etc. Would love to hear a differing opinion to maybe focus the Ritualist as my pet class instead and then pivot to vitality type caster w/the other.

854

Diviner Reap Spirit Ritualist can certainly perform just as well as any Conjurer.

However, as a Pet Class, Conjurers have many variety of builds compared to Ritualists and Cabalists. Hence why they usually tend to be ranked higher.

856

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857

Hm…

Re Reads Patch Notes

Makes sure Game was indeed Updated

Reinstalls entire Game to make sure

Fluffy Squishy was clearly supposed to be Nerfed according to the patch…

Sees a 7min Calllagadra kill instead of the usual 10 mins

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858

Welcome to the 1.1.9.0 party

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859

No… Birb is going haywire atm. I know base pets were buffed. I know that Lightning Strike was buffed. But I was literally standing inside Callagadra’s Tornadoes, without using any consumables or pots and pets killed Cally as if it was Ravager.

This.doesn’t.make.sense.

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Did pets get buffed so much that even if you were using 2 sets, you still get a 3min kill time difference on Cally of all things?

Did superbosses get nerfed? (they have special stats that makes them deal more dmg to pets and take less from pets)

Did pet builds get Reverse Zantai’ed?

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860

Ok… SR is now a different beast. Normal mobs there hit harder than Callagadra at SR 120 image
New maps are awesome though image

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861

Re-arranging my Pet builds in terms of power once more…

Fluffy Squishy went back to being the strongest. Can be played while drunk, half asleep, high on ice cream etc.

Ishtar remains the same and takes the second spot. Still plays like a Caster though, so a bit more care required compared to Fluffy, but hey, pets can’t die if they are already dead and are ghosts :3

Will O Wisp for some reason feels weaker. Because of the Set nerf? don’t know. Stats wise, doesn’t seem to be much of a nerf, but in practice feels so much weaker. Might need some looking into regarding potential updates to be made to the build.

Note: Callagadra was used as benchmark for Testing.

Edit:

“Top 3” becomes “Top 4”
Skeleton Cabalist of all things gets the 4th spot…
And yes, it can do all content ingame as of this patch :3

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862

Hi there Maya, kinda new to GD (I have one self-made level 100 character, but he can only really run Elite and doesn’t cut it on Ultimate) and I’m following your guide with the basic Necromancer levelling setup, and added in Briarthorn as well so far as you suggested. It’s going awesome! I’m planning on moving towards the Ishtar build once I have enough items for it.

https://www.grimtools.com/calc/RZRwAO4N

These are the items I’m running right now, with Reap Spirit, Skeletons, Blight Fiends, and Briarthorn. I found a Scorpius Pummeler MI, and it seems like it should be pretty powerful with Blight Fiends and Briarthorns since it’s hard to scale pet Physical damage, and lot easier to scale monster Acid/Poison with Master of Death having Acid/Poison damage scaling (and the Gallstone weapon component giving a considerable Acid/Poison scaling bonus to pets as well).

However, the Epic I’m using right now gives points to Skeletons, the Vitality damage that Master of Death is also converting and scaling, and general pet damage. I tried out Grim Internals to see rough pet DPS with each weapon, and it’s almost exactly the same, like within 1,000-2,000 DPS or so, with the Pummeler resulting in way more acid damage than phys damage %wise though.

I’m thinking if I could farm a Scorpius Pummeler with some good suffixes/prefixes for other skills I use, it might be better than the Deadbeater? What do you think? I don’t know if I should even bother, lol. It just seems like such an interesting MI, and also seems like Acid damage might be better than Physical damage in general since I think monsters typically have good armor, but not great resistances if I’m correct? Hopefully it’s alright to ask random questions like this in this thread lol, don’t know where else would be better with you being the famous pet build expert.

EDIT: Also, what does “Total Damage Modified by 35% to Summon Briarthorn” mean on Bloodsworn Codex?! Modified in what way?! Do Briarthorns now do 35% of their previous damage?! Why would anyone want that?! Do they do 35% MORE damage? How does that differ from a 35% All Damage mod if that’s the case? Is it an entire extra multiplier for the calculation? Or do they do 35% LESS damage?! WHAT DOES IT MEAN

863

Modifiy is bad spelling. They deal 35% more damage multiplicative so it is dope. Should read “ampified” really

864

Hey @Maya

Do you think I could use your Ishtar - Pet Ritualist guide as a beginner? Out of your collection this one seems to be the one I like the most. Do you think I will be able to start with this and progress forward after leveling? Also if there is a budget/beginner version of this build without the items that would be cool.

865

First of all, welcome and glad to hear that you are enjoying the build.

As for your question, currently either works since we are using Master of Death. But, as soon as you get enough points for Primal Bond, you will be switching to that. So there will no more physical to vitality conversion for pets. That is where Scorpius will completely outshine Deadbeater as the choice of weapon.

That said, there is very little reason to not switch to a good rolled Scorpius if you come across one. Even in the worst case scenario, as you yourself noted, you can’t go wrong with Scorpius. It can only get better :stuck_out_tongue:

As for “Total Damage Modified by 35% to Summon Briarthorn”, it essentially multiplies the damage your Briarthorns do, by 35%.

To differentiate between that and +X %dmg,
Let us say that your Briarthorns are doing 100 dmg each atm.
Then you get +1000% pet dmg.
Your Pets will now do 1000 dmg each, right?

Now, let us say that you get +35% “pet dmg” on top of it
Your pets will now do 1035 dmg each.

But with +35% “total damage”, your pets will be doing 1350 dmg each instead.

866

Fair warning, I have no idea how this would perform…

But, here: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/lNkG3DRN

867

Pulsing shard?

868

I don’t think the Crit dmg bonus affects Pets :thinking:

869

True… :thinking: …

870

Alright, rearranged builds on the list.

After gathering more info on stuff and making sense of things that at first didn’t make any sense…, I can safely tell you this:

“Do not go for anything other than my top 4 for the time being”

Fluffy Squishy apparently doesn’t care about stuff like damage and remains a defensive monster. Its power is currently coming from exactly the defensive nature of the build because my other variants of the same build feel terrible to play atm.

Ishtar hasn’t been affected by the patch. It had high damage and Crit before as well and as predicted, using only 1 set gave it bit of a safety net.

Skulls & Bones got a rather significant buff thanks to Skeletons getting some love in the current patch.

Will O Wisp should be fine for most stuff, but I am trying to see if I can squeeze a bit more out of it as it doesn’t feel upto my standards for now.

I can’t really say how others might feel about the rest of my builds, but personally, I don’t like playing them anymore. I might update my Bleed Pet build, but seeing as how there is a monster of a Bleed Pet Conjurer already, I will only be doing so if I can find something unique to go for with it.

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