First off there’s loads more skill points to play with, none of your skills are maxed out, they all have at least another 10 levels to go and you’re not using any + all skill items. (on a side note I’d be stunned to see you survive later on with both mastery bars that low)
For a quick comparison here’s my, currently, pure summoner at level 47 (totally self found) and I’ve already got 3 toggled skills on the 2nd bar, 3 skills on the main bar, Pet Attack on RMB, 8 skill points unused, still got a couple of buff skills from the Neco to get and then maybe a 2nd class with more active skills…and I’m deliberately trying to keep the number of my active skills down due to the fact that with Pet Attack, summoning, moving, casting and healing I’ve already got more than enough to keep me busy pressing different buttons.
They pretty much carried me all the way yeah. I tried a bunch of other set ups and skills but none of them trumped just dumping 28 points into skeletons and let them work their magic. But now they’re starting to get trashed.
The problem with skellies is that it seems there’s no middle ground. They get wiped or they do the wiping.
I’m not too sure how to efficiently boost their attack either. The only pet with an Aura is the hound and that’s chaos+fire, as is used in the build linked a page back, not vitality. At least using curse of frailty will keep my ‘active’ but that’s a far cry from my goal of actually fighting alongside.
You mean, they all need to be boosted up 10 extra levels with items? So far I’ve had no luck with items giving more than meager +3 up a skill or two.
Should probably install a loot filter mod but I need to search more to find it.
Won’t that make those two skills basically worthless?
Issue with dreeg is that those pets don’t do any poison or acid damage. Defeating the purpose of the skill to some extent. Over say mend flesh which specializes entirely on healing.
Not at only level 50. more a case of the option is there, or you can use the + skills to free up your normal skill points. +3 to a single skill isn’t a meagre thing at all…not sure if you can get higher than +3, there’s also + to all skills in a class items. So far I’ve only found a total of +3 to all necro skills, +1 to Raise skellys, +1 to Undead Legion and a +2 to Reap Spirit.
I’m not using any mods and before starting this char I deleted all my stash/blueprints/everything and running with just what I find, not even bothering with crafting/buying gear.
2 x Impaling Weapons from Serrated Spikes in both hands, purely for the pet bonus as my char doesn’t attack personally and Master of Death.
Oh…
Once you cast Blood of Dreeg (BoD) you and your pets get instant heal (%, according to main skill), huge boost of OA and increase the rate of recovery of health.
Aspect of Guardian also give to you and your pets huge poison resist and (most important) phys. resist.
Agreed, Blood of Dreeg is a must have. Not necessary to max it but invest 5 or so points in both. It and Mend Flesh are your only ways, barring items, to heal your pets. It has a fast cooldown so you can recast it for the heal alone. Plus as said above, gives acid damage and boosts it (great for the Blight Fiend), adds poison resistance, OA, and which is now pretty great for a Cabalist, Vitality damage % (for the skellies). Honestly I find it useful for my own character too, as I usually end up with a low Poison resistance on Ultimate by default, using Augments to boost the more rare Chaos and Aether ones.
Btw, that said, I do want to make a not pet focused build that just has a pet to help out someday. I was thinking about making a Cold focused Nightblade to use the Nemesis relic - the relic is not good for a pure summoner (boosts your cold damage, not the pets) but it would be cool (and somewhat Drizzt do Urden-like) to hunt enemies with your faithful kitty.
Same here. I use Blood of Dreeg to heal summons, Curse of Frailty on enemies, Vine Growth or whatever the name is of that Shaman spell to hopefully entangle groups and trigger celestial skills. Plus I summon the Primal Spirit and item-given summons whenever possible. I rarely if ever go to melee on Ultimate, but before that (since I have the Blessed Cleaver of Mogdrogen) I did use Cadence on weaker enemies.
You do not need to max every skill. Some only need a few points, other just one. My conjurer has maxed the Briarthorn, Hellhound, Primal Spirit, and the pet boost toggled auras on both Occultist and Shaman. I have not maxed the Raven yet, or some of the pet passive skills, and only invested a few points into Curse of Frailty and Blood of Dreeg. Other skills you only use to trigger devotions, or that +HP/resistance Shaman aura skill only need 1 point, the +X to all skills items you wear will boost them anyway.
Umm, not true. The Raven has an aura that improves elemental damage. That means it improves the Fire damage the Hellhound does, and any other that items give your pets. Plus plenty sure that the Skeleton Mages do Fire damage too with their meteors.
Then the Briarthorn (if you go with Shaman) has Emboldening Roar, which is a huge damage boost aura affecting you and pets too.
In the expansion, both got changed from skills that needed recasting to permanent auras, and both are worth investing into.
Plus Mend Flesh, which sadly is quite bugged (sometimes the Raven uses it, sometimes not) is now more useful given how many skeletons you have. Certainly more useful for a Cabalist than a Conjurer.
No, it won’t. Ember Claw can be used to proc some Devotion skills if needed and Hellhound will still do damage with it and Mend Flesh is basically useless anyway.
If you compare Mend Flesh to Blood of Dreeg at max Mend Flesh only gives you a 1 meter radius, 15% + 635 health restored while Blood gives a 30 second duration which means it works for longer, 20 meter radius which means it reaches pets/allies that Mend Flesh won’t if - like me - you have pets set to aggessive mode, 106 health regen per second which will apply for the whole 30 seconds duration of the skill, plus OA, some acid damage and acid retaliation. Yes, you have to keep casting it, but you wanted to push buttons and it’s cooldown time is well within it’s active duration so you can effectively keep it up all the time.
Out of all the pet builds posted - and these are people who know how to build the best pet builds out there for GD - none of them have taken Mend Flesh and all have maxed or nearly maxed Blood of Dreeg. So what does that tell you?
If you want auras then Raven’s Storm Spirit and Hellhound’s Hellfire (not Ember Claw) should be maxed or at least have several points in them. Both have wide target area radius and their damages will apply to all pets within the auras’ range.
Isn’t the OP really asking: why is skill diversity not encouraged? I guess it is implied: there is* an inherent disincentive to deviate from spending points in a narrow set of skills, and this is* (English has no explicit subjunctive form for is) particularly noticeable in summons.
Have you looked at the builds that are out there? Lack of skill diversity isn’t part of GD. I’ve seen threads where people have complained that they’ve run out of hotkeys on both sets because there are so many skills/buffs/auras they have from classes, components, relics and items.
With my cutdown Conjurer I’ve got 6 pets to summon (5 permanent, 1 timed), 5 permanent buffs and a timed buff plus Blood of Dreeg. If I wanted more and went back to JayNyne’s build of April 2016 I could add Curse of Frailty, Bloody Pox, Grasping Vines, and Devouring Swarm as well. Where is the lack of skill diversity? Yes, you often only have one point in a skill because you use it mainly for procc’ing Devotions rather than for the skill’s damage itself, but you still need to use it to get the proc.
No. Just no, sorry. I absolutely hate complicated builds and I still had to settle with 6 active skills (7 if you count potion) on Skelemancer. And that’s as straightforward a pet build as you can design.
Sorry, but there’s plenty of skill diversity AND build diversity. Granted, there’s a new meta every other patch cough, nerf but that’s the nature of any game like this that is actively updated by the devs.
Forums can be a bit of a bubble, because the people who stick around here are usually the people who are concerned entirely about endgame builds. Even so, the 1-99 experience matters, too. It can be frustrating playing 80% of a game with one hand, even if the end-game will be more interesting.
That said, I found my skelemancer cabalist to be fairly active and engaging compared to leveling a conjurer.
I did but it doesn’t explain the synergies you expect to boost Skele damage. I’ve read about the multiplying effect you can achieve with Pyro and Hound auras but I’m a cabalist so that’s out of the equation.
Short of that skeletons do base vit, phys and piercing damage. Potentially cold. But occultist pets have ele, chaos and fire boosting auras.
There aren’t many synergies indeed, but if you’re going to rely on just vit damage and skeletons raw damage output, don’t expect them to be beasts in ultimate. It will be like any other skill raw damage. Flame torrent proc on each of them does a very respectable job and will like double your dps even if you don’t debuff for fire all that much. Hound and raven auras also buff skele mages damage. Its almost frustrating how at higher ranks of the skill they are almost all mages and revenants, with maybe 1 crossbowman and 1 warrior inbetween. It may take you a dozen attempts to summon enough crossbowmen, and what if you need to resummon in a fight.
Hum, I suppose I should put a brief explanation in there for newer players as to how the build works. Short answer is lots of pet damage boost, synergistic non-total damage pet boost (fire/chaos/vit/elemental), flat damage stacking which is mostly synergistic (acid gets less than the rest but still gets total pet damage and comes with sustain effect), pet OA and pet crit (>3 pet crit endgame), good enough RR via Vulnerability/witchblade/foul_eruption, and game mechanic synergy with flame torrent stacking for single target dps.
I think that about covers it. Will consider putting that in the guide.
EDIT: Put an intro up on the guide. Let me know what you think. (Did it help answer your questions?)
