I went to grimtools and checked all the mythical belts out there.
Found six options that are at least remotely helpful. In no poarticular order:
Tinker’s Ingenuity looks like a very HC friendly option with flat HP, flat and % health regen, melee avoid, +7% max bleed and acid resist and an HP regen circuit breaker
Spiritseeker Cord for %total speed and some resists for pets and a sweet +3 to Maiven’s. +4 to IEE onnly gets us to spend more energy on casts, but I don’t think it’s a problem.
I think if I ever get this character to 94 I’ll go and check different options.
I’m not brave enough to also parse all the Epic belts, and these are already enough to choose from.
The FireWood mentioned in the comment above (Fire Beastcaller) performs the best out of all of my current builds, but it does use a ton of Double Rares. The tests were done without any Ascendant bonuses so, you don’t need to worry about those atleast.
My Ghol Blightfiend Cabalist is in second place atm since it did manage to kill Uber Nerfatal and has zero greens, so you don’t need to worry about getting the perfect affixes on that one. Also, who doesn’t like farting everything to death …
Fluffy Squishy is third atm, but the only reason it has been pushed down in ranking is because you cannot defeat Nerfatal by out-tanking it and Fluffy simply lacks the damage to kill it.
My Bleed Pet Conjurer performs as well as it did before, but I am a bit reluctant to update it atm since I don’t want to flood it with double rares and it seems to have reached it limit otherwise. Bleed having to be tacked on and not available by default on most pets does not help with things…
Skeletons… I have no idea what to do with them atm. They feel extremely weak vs anything that doesn’t immediately die. It feels as if you either instantly delete the enemies or your pets get instantly deleted. I shall leave it to others to make the bonergang great again…
Reap Spirit… the setups I have managed to come up with have all been too glassy for me, so this is also in bit of a limbo atm.
Hello Maya,
Does conversion on pets also apply to auras? For example, the Wight Frost Channeller, does this convert Storm Spirit? Or the Ice King’s Adornments change Hellfire to cold?
Edit: Does it change the damage those auras apply to other pets?
i haven’t checked for FoA, but i’m like 99% sure it didn’t use to before, just like player buffs don’t actually convert.
So regular rules apply, flat dmg gets converted in the sense the buff applies flat dmg to the pet itself that’s converted as normal via pets own conversion, %buff dmg is not converted.
it would be very easy to check, slap on item, skill storm spirit/hellhound aura, check your own player dmg/%stat in char sheet 2, does hellhound aura give you %cold dmg now instead of chaos/fire%?
Skeleman sadness. I noticed my chaos dominator blade cabalist started falling off on damage in the last 20 levels as I was dumping points into stuff that should have turbocharged the damage output. I did some labs. 52 points into Blood of Dreeg, Hellfire, Storm Spirit, and Soul Harvest took their baseline damage from 8k to 10k.
52 skillpoints for a 25% increase. Yeah, this ain’t it chief.
For contrast, I experimented with skeletal archers and the baseline skelemans. Skeletal archers, for example, go from 6k to 10.6k damage which is about a 75% increase. I asked the grimtools guy and he uploaded the skeleman stats.
35% damage ratio lol. Yeah, so no wonder. Only thing saving their single target damage output is that their nova attack capable of shotgunning?
Other observations:
Skeletal mages are jihadists. They run into melee range. Which is a boon for their shotgun, but suitability is a problem with bosses. Also makes Flame Torrent devotion more usable on them than I thought it would be since they just hold hands around their target.
Skeletal archers actually stay away and shoot from safety.
If you equip both the dominator blade and the wight frost channeler, it will spawn exclusively archers.
I haven’t tested it out ingame yet, since I am holding off on updating or making new stuff until 1.3.1 hits since it is supposed to have some noticeable pet changes…
Hello Maya! Just getting into Grim Dawn and I’m a Summoner player at heart. I’m hoping you’d be able to help me choose which of your builds to follow.
Looking for a build that has lots of pets/summons to do my bidding, least amount of ‘active’ buttons (eg Curse of Frailty, it’s okay to cast a curse but I don’t want to have like 6+ active buttons, think Summoner Necromancer from Diablo II if you know lol), and can complete the entire game (I dislike respec / making second characters).
I saw your thread on Reddit but it doesn’t seem updated so I found the link to here! On Reddit it said your strongest build (that looked very pet oriented and aligned with my above ‘goals’) was Fluffy Squishy. Just wanted to check / confirm / get your opinion before I commit! I was looking at Skulls & Bones because it seemed even more pet based but it seemed weaker and to have more active buttons than Fluffy Squishy.
Callagadra is more dangerous than Uber Bobr now because Bobr is a DPS check and if you can get past it, he is not much of a threat atm. Cally meanwhile has those annoying Tornadoes and if you are using TDM potions on top… yeah…
The extra kiting required made Cally kill times for all 3 of my top builds more or less the same as you can see above. Yes, it got worse after using Amplicorum due to both the pets and the player getting extra damage taken debuff.
Another thing to note is that as of this comment, only my Nurgle Bath Bombs - Ghol's Pet Cabalist is able to boast clearing all contents without relying on double rare items .
Gameplay wise, FireWood - Beastcaller Pet Conjurer is actually the easiest to play because it has the most damage and can opt to not take the TDM potion modifiers and still kill everything. It also has the least amount of active button pushing required. Downside is that its “tankiness” comes from killing things before they can kill you. It cannot facetank anything. Also, it relies a ton on those double rare greens to achieve its performance.
Fluffy Woofy - Ice King Pet Conjurer has become my new Fluffy Squishy. No, it does not have the same Facetank capacity, but feels pretty comfortable to play and atm, I am kind of not a fan of Bysmiel’s Trinkets. So… after years… Fluffy Squishy has been dethroned and is not even in my top 3 anymore .
Now, regarding both Fluffy Squishy and Skulls&Bones, both are in need of updating before I can recommend either for FoA.
So, before I recommend a build (or make a new one to fit the criteria provided), let me ask some questions -
It has to be a pet-scaled pet build and not a pseudo pet build, right? (pseudo pets would be the likes of Blade Spirit, Guardian of Empyrion, etc).
How many pets minimum? I ask because more pets is not always better and Skeletons atm are not exactly in a strong spot.
What is the maximum number of active skills you are comfortable with and does this include things like Blood of Dreeg?
Entire game as in every single boss and content? because certain bosses are going to invalidate most pet builds as viable choices while also keeping up with the rest of the requirements.
As long as it summons something “permanent” (in quotes because summons can die, obviously) it’s okay with me! If it has duration that’s less fun to me.
Good point, I guess there’s no real minimum. Just that the build should focus almost (if not fully) on pets doing the damage. I basically just want to be their helper casting a curse/debuff here and there and providing auras etc. (I basically want to be the Mercenary and their the main character(s) lol).
You point out Blood of Dreeg but as I read it it’s a long(ish) duration; I’d say skills like that are okay with me. I understand the strength of Curse of Frailty so casting that consistently is okay as are longer duration skills such as the pointed out Blood of Dreeg. I just don’t want to have like 5+ skills I’m casting every 2 seconds. Long answer short, outside of resummoning pets, like 3-5 skills?
I have no idea the extent of this game sorry; I just saw your “Ever wanted…” text that says a few of the builds can “…and you can do absolutely everything ingame with it.” and was like “heck yeah” !
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