But regardless, I am willing to bet that other pets save for the Hellhound will do just as much damage or more with the same amount of investment interms of items. Like for eg; A 26/16 familiar with 22/12 Lightning Strike.
Then again, Briarthorn does get more stuff interms of greens. Could add in a Scorpius Pummeler on top for extra Crit for eg.
Yeah, same way I leveled my Occu and Necro. Although… I kind of cheated on Necro leveling with Lokarr set.
Since I like to take weird combinations of masteries for pet builds and didn’t want to bother with providing guides for each of them (like say Pet Spellbinder), simply decided to make it in a way that all potential combos would be covered.
Definitely! I think it just boils down to what “flavor” of build you want to do. Dog has nice off-hand that you can vendor farm from Hyram and also gets bonus from Zaria amulet and Halion medal. Birb is kinda strong as it is, even though there is no (?) easy to get MI that will boost its performance outside endgame items.
No, but the usual advice given is to reach said endgame asap and then farm, or atleast wait until lvl 94 and just rush through everything to get there.
One can “twink” a char at any level if they really want to.
Birb’s best bet would just be to get as many +skills on its line asap from affixes and stuff.
That actually is one skill that makes me rage whenever it is called an “AoE”.
Imo it does a rather poor job in that department although it is rather strong in all other respects.
I noticed quite substantial faster totem/shrine clears even with just 1 hard point invested. But true, it is no a “real” AoE spell in the sense that it distributes damage more or less equal across the screen, but more of a shotgun spel ala Ravenous earth / Rune of Haggarad.
Thus ground slam will shine where mobs are more tight together, e.g. monster totems and shrines.
Yeah, but I would still prefer something like Lightning Strike or Blight Burst whenever the option is there. Like, you never look at Ground Slam and go “this will cover all my AoE needs”. It has always been more of an Aggro generating tool which over the course of patches also became rather good at applying bleed dot and extra burst damage.
Like, you need mobs to completely surround your Briarthorn to get max value out of it… If it is say just running upto a mob, you get like 2 or 3 spikes max.
From my experience leveling builds (heck I even did retaliation leveling and cadence leveling) AoE is only needed in certain circumstances. By skipping trash mobs that gives almost 0 experience, you basically boil down AoE needs to tightly packed areas where mobs are blocking your way, desecrated shrines and monster totems (which are optional).
If we are just talking about leveling shaman to 94 asap, then maelstrom and storm totem is your friend Get a sky effigy from https://www.grimtools.com/monsterdb/196/items and BAM build done Perhaps not easy in terms of playing, if HC, though since you need to play very good not to die unless you go with some healing devotions or a secondary class that has heal on demand. Primal strike with https://www.grimtools.com/db/items/12667 or https://www.grimtools.com/db/items/8719 is also very fast, and then you can make use of attack damage converted to health for sustain. Should be way faster leveling than pet solo shaman (not sure if safer though).
I just did a slightly modified version of Fluffy Squishy from Maya (swapped Gate to many worlds to Solael Void Tome to give me more points to invest a little in wendigo totem) and yesterday i killed callagadra, ravager and farmed crate for his amulet on HC, so i can at least say that conjurer is on a great spot for pet builds, it gives amazing defense for the character and the pets aswell. This build is not the best offensively, but you know, makes no difference at all killing calla in 8 min than in 5 min.
OMG, YES! I just did a re-spec into max Lightning Strike and around 12/16 for the familiar and the difference is just monumental.
Well, I don’t have that many +2 items for Familiar, so my Briar is still 1+12/16, but I’ll start bleeding points into it slowly but certainly after I max the Familiar back out. Thanks a TON, this helps so much.
I read your carnival guide and where you said
is where I think I went wrong. I just invested into it way too early. Thanks again
Hello, I have made an amazing mod for Grim Dawn called “Pet Patch”. If you are interested in a pet-focused play-style then it might be something for you. https://www.nexusmods.com/grimdawn/mods/120
but level 40ish is not “endgame”
Perhaps not easy in terms of playing, if HC, though since you need to play very good not to die unless you go with some healing devotions or a secondary class that has heal on demand. Primal strike with 
