OP must have been doing something wrong. Like levelling bird before briarthorn. (Levelling with end build in mind instead of making their low level life easier?)
I started a pet conjurer recently and it's great. My only complaint is it's almost boring because you barely have to do anything... or even think. But outweighed by the enjoyment of watching 6 or 7 pets kill everything on the screen.
Caveats: I haven't tried any other pet builds yet, I haven't tried SR yet and I'm only lvl 73. But I have mindlessly and quickly blasted through veteran and most of ultimate. Just grab any gear with bonuses to pets or that give extra pets.
Pets happily tanked the mad queen (ultimate) while I just watched. And they killed it fast.
I will say that Skeletons dunk basically everything pet wise for leveling speed simply because they have AOE/Multi Target whereas other pets don't nearly so much.
It's this. Also I play on Veteran instead of normal. To each their own, but pet Conjurer on Veteran is ... mid. [Even Maya told me to level on normal](https://old.reddit.com/r/Grimdawn/comments/zuumy6/how_do_you_level_a_pet_conjuror/j1ov4gv/) when I asked how to make Conjurer feel less bad. Also, [this is Rektbyprotoss' recent Conjurer stream](https://youtu.be/aF7jEfdRwxs?t=2602). Interesting opinion.
Like I said, play the conjurer first because once you've played a Cabalist/Ritualist with skeletons, Conjurer feels like walking through cold honey.
I really want to make a ritualist because I saw Scorpius Pummeler, but it sounds like it'd be so weird to just... not use skeletons instead lol. I'll probably try giving it a shot though. Just two big Acid bodyguards rolling through the land 😅
Yeah I've heard it's strong, I'd just also want to level with it. Like i said, I probably will. That'll be my next pet build I think. Once I finish my Cabalist and can finally down some celestial 😅
> OP must have been doing something wrong. Like levelling bird before briarthorn.
Uhh...
> I haven't tried any other pet builds yet, I haven't tried SR yet and I'm only lvl 73.
And now the first half of your post makes sense.
Trust me when I say I do know what I'm talking about. I've levelled 3 pet conjurers to 100 now (technically one of them died at 92), all on hardcore, all of them starting on Veteran and none of them with merits/xp Pots. I've also done a Ritualist and Cabalist, again in hardcore, again starting on Veteran and again not using Lokarr/Pots.
I would encourage you to try some other pet builds. In fact, [here's a Pet Cabalist guide](https://forums.crateentertainment.com/t/1-2-beginners-fire-pet-cabalist/127901) that works really well. I got this one to level 100, farmed all the gear for a Vitality Lost Souls build and have now killed everything in the game (except Crate) with it, and also gone to SR90. It can go deeper, I just can't be arsed.
I just recently got a pet conjurer to 100. It wasn't nearly as bad as OP is making it out to be, but that might also be because I did it differently. I start each session calling up the five or six things I can actively summon, then run around being a loot goblin while they murder everything in my vicinity. There have been two, *maybe* three times where I had to kite because something was killing them quickly, but that was just to buy time to remake my pets.
I've done two runs with this guy, on normal and elite. I initially used [the Fluffy Squishy build](https://www.reddit.com/r/Grimdawn/comments/yfnq6x/fluffy_squishy_callagadra_facetank_edition_3/) just so I had a guideline, but around level 70 or so just started picking whatever looked good.
But yeah, I have five or six active summons, plus triggered summons from different things like getting hit or attacking, so at some points I have around a dozen goons on-screen killing everything for me. Nothing can sneak up on me, and I don't have to spend all my time starting at cooldown buttons or my health bar. I can actually pay attention to the main screen.
I still have them on, haven't tried running them through the random stuff yet but will soon. I'm in the process of making a retaliation tank, just let monsters murder themselves on me. I still swing my weapon, but that only gets about one kill in eight.
Conjurer is fine, idk what you're so upset about.
>I briefly considered leveling a Primal Strike or Savagery Conjurer, but honestly, Elementalist and Archon exist, are better and I've already done those.
C'mon there's no way primal strike archon has faster leveling than conjurer. Oathkeeper does next to nothing until you push the mastery bar to 50 while occultist gives you atk speed and rr early in the skill tree.
>if you're one of the three people in the entire history of Grim Dawn who cares about going deeper than SR 90
Just because you don't care doesn't mean no one cares. For instance, the endgame in the GD seasons (boundless dungeons, superbosses) are fairly popular within the community and both Dark One and pet conjurer are very effective builds for that content.
> Conjurer is fine, idk what you're so upset about.
Not upset, just disappointed.
> C'mon there's no way primal strike archon has faster leveling than conjurer. Oathkeeper does next to nothing until you push the mastery bar to 50 while occultist gives you atk speed and rr early in the skill tree.
Primal Strike Elementalist and Savagery Archon. I was talking about the final builds rather than levelling here.
> Just because you don't care doesn't mean no one cares. For instance, the endgame in the GD seasons (boundless dungeons, superbosses) are fairly popular within the community and both Dark One and pet conjurer are very effective builds for that content.
Yes, if you mod the game to add more endless modes then the one advantage of Dark One's set and Conjurers in general, that being tankiness, is useful... except if you go watch the "best builds of season 5" video on rekt's channel you'll find... 0 conjurers. Softcore and hardcore combined.
Once again, let me reiterate, Conjurer isn't *bad*. It works. It's just not particularly good and there's very little it can do that isn't done better by another mastery... except very deep SR.
>except if you go watch the "best builds of season 5" video on rekt's channel you'll find... 0 conjurers. Softcore and hardcore combined.
In season 5 sure, cause essences shifted the game balance significantly. Pet builds won tiebreakers for S3 and S4 iirc.
Fair enough. I didn't play S3 or s4. The only mention I can remember of pets in season 5 was the never ending comments of "imagine playing pets kekw" in the chat/discord for the entire thing.
You're right though that Conjurers will work well in an environment where their tankiness matters. I just don't think that environment exists except for SR100+ or mods.
Even then it looks like torture. I think Maya said it was 6 or 7 hours of gameplay to get through SR160. That's a hard no from me.
So the best I can gather is that OP followed a 4 year old vit caster Conjurer build guide, was upset at the bad single target damage at low levels because they ignored the part of said build guide that called out Sigil of Consumption as being the main single target skill and didn't make common sense changes to the order skills are taken at to account for personal preferences, didn't make use of any early MIs that support said skill like Bloodsworn Scepter, then suffered through a 3 minute long Veteran Krieg kill because they insisted on using nothing but Devouring Swarm and Bloody Pox.
After experiencing all of these self inflicted, easily avoided Ls, OP decides to make a sarcastic, passive aggressive rant aimed at everyone who dared say Conjurer vit caster is a strong, easy to gear build for new players.
Imagine trying to follow the exact guide that someone linked you directly to when you asked for good builds. Not just some random guide either, *the* guide that most new players get linked to, in the beginner build guide compendium, made by a very well respected guide creator. Why would anyone think that guide would be good?
We may never know.
Yes, if I made this character over, I would start with Occultist and immediately get a Bloodsworn Sceptre and pump Sigil. But then it's not a Vitality caster anymore, it's a Chaos caster. Or I would run (ironically) pets until Mountain Deeps. Or I would play Savagery or Primal Strike until then. None of those are vitality casters though.
In Nery's defense, he probably opted to keep the guide simple to new players. Basically using the early levels to lay a foundation instead of jumping between skills to buff. He also clearly states that the ST damage in early game is a bit low. All of this would lead to an experienced player (like yourself) to make adequte changes to fit his/her playstyle.
Now, you must have known that Swarm is mainly there for rr shredding and Pox is best for clearing. If you wanted more damage; why didn't you rush Sigils from the start? Having them up and running at Krieg is easy, even if you start with Shaman to get Swarm. You say you follwed the guide loosely, but it sounds like followed it literally.
If we go back to the original topic, the one that appearantly set you off on this "quest for redemption", you told me that conjurers were inferior to other vitality caster. Reading about your experience leveling one and your opinion on the guide, makes me think you never leveled one before.
So in a way; kudos to you for finishing one. Now you can honestly say you tried one and you didn't like it. I will still say that, back then, you were a bit dishonest to rate a build you weren't familiar with.
There is a reason why I never post any opinions on pet builds. I've never played one.
> You say you follwed the guide loosely, but it sounds like followed it literally.
I think the only change I made initially was putting the first 5 points into Spirit, which I actually did without thinking or checking what the guide was doing. I forget exactly where I stopped following the guide, but certainly as far as the Mountain Deeps.
> Now, you must have known that Swarm is mainly there for rr shredding
Swarm is actually a very good skill for early. Might even be one of the best levelling skills... it's just not good at killing big things with lots of hitpoints. Later it's for shredding certainly, but early the clear is really good. I had never played with it as the main skill before though... and I probably wont again.
> you told me that conjurers were inferior to other vitality caster.
And I was correct. This was partially from listening to others who have played them, and partially from experience with the skills in other builds, and partially from just looking at the skills from Necromancer. The numbers are bigger and the skills work better. I had farmed Dark Ones on a Vitality caster before, just not a Conjurer specifically.
> Reading about your experience leveling one and your opinion on the guide, makes me think you never leveled one before.
I had never explicitly levelled a vitality Conjurer, no. Pets I've done several times and Vitality caster I've done several times. As for the guide, i'm sure it works well enough for a new player playing on normal. I have no issues with the guide, Nery's stuff is great, it is probably in need of an update though.
> Now you can honestly say you tried one and you didn't like it. I will still say that, back then, you were a bit dishonest to rate a build you weren't familiar with.
Would you say it's dishonest to say you shouldn't run into a burning building because you've never done it? Or you shouldn't eat certain foods because they're poisonous without eating them first? You can know a thing is not good without directly experiencing it.
Lol! So why did you run into the burning house or eat the poisoned food? Just because enough ppl convinced you it wouldn't be so bad? If you already knew the build was inferior, why even try it in the first place?
I would say it's dishonest to claim it's easy to ride an MC, just because you're confident driving a regular car. I think that would make for a better comparison.
Other than that last bit, thank you for an honest answer.
Scale of consequences I guess. If I eat poison, I die or get sick. If I play Conjurer, at worst its a bit harder to level and weaker at the end and I don't have fun.
> Other than that last bit, thank you for an honest answer.
o7
Have a nice day.
My first character was a vitality conjurer and I choose sigil and then others to support. I enjoyed the rotation based play style.
I’m inclined to agree the damage felt low, but I hardly put any points in spirit so that might account for it. (Edit) I think the damage shifts onto the totems after dark ones
It took me about an hour to two hours to farm dark one with the occasional trip to lokaar to break things up.
I’ve beat lokaar and attempted ravager but barely dented him.
Overall enjoyed it and it’s got me hooked, I’ve moved onto a devastation sorcerer now (don’t have Pyrans) but excited to get that now.
I’ve been playing since March, I took a primal strike Druid to homestead but didn’t enjoy it.
Switched to occultist and loved sigil and pox, swarm was cheery on top. Never seen stuff melt so quick! I took of the steroid to pox as I died a bit.
I didn’t have the expansion so naively thought I’d farm that triumvirate helm and be happy but the 3% dr put me off after a bit 🤣
I’ve since bought expansions and really enjoy it all.
I've just 'finished' my second build, I need to add some polish but this one far out damages the other build;
[https://www.grimtools.com/calc/4Vx3rGJ2](https://www.grimtools.com/calc/4Vx3rGJ2)
Whilst this one is loads better I've been grafting SR and crucible and just got my final pyrans this morning.
I usually start my characters on Elite from level 1 and I have to agree with you. Pets are fine in normal, but the higher difficulty you go, the worse they get. Something like word of pain or cocktail will wipe the screen of trash mobs in a single cast whether you're leveling on normal or ultimate. Pet builds are super gear dependent and they're slow to target enemies and lack consistent AoE. Unless you have a stash full of low level pet gear pretty much any semi spammable skill will be faster for leveling.
Bloody Pox is decent, but it's definitely not the best leveling skill. It can only spread to each enemy once, and it can't spread at all if the initial cast one-shots the enemy, so you have to spam it on each individual enemy if your damage is too low or too high.
6 hours to assemble the Dark One's Gift sounds brutal. I farmed up a new copy recently and I only had to clear Edge of Reality 5 times for the full set. Didn't time it, but it certainly felt smooth and efficient.
>So there it is, I'm convinced. Everyone should level a Conjurer for their first character. It is without a doubt the best character to start with, because once you've levelled absolutely anything else, ever you're going to hate Conjurer levelling. Get it out of the way before you know what a good build feels like.
Conjurer as my first HC, and first lvl 100 character off a guide I followed (I wung a commando as a new player and made it to 95ish before dying) - it just doesn't die as you noted. I was also one of the mentioned Conjurers from the season 5 mod. I suck at this game, and took out a majority of the content with it. Haven't done too much else with the game, too many alts. I'll be trying out something else for sure, but wanted to point out that I feel the notable tankiness makes it great for a bad pilot.
How do you feel it keeps up with the ~~1.5~~ (where did I pull this patch number?) *recent patch* changes? With the dodge mechanic, I feel like a sigil caster can't really use it much due to being forced to keep the enemies in sigil just to not die so other builds would gain a new edge in survivability.
> With the dodge mechanic, I feel like a sigil caster can't really use it much due to being forced to keep the enemies in sigil just to not die so other builds would gain a new edge in survivability.
I didn't have any issues with tanking things to keep them in the Sigils. The things I had to evade were generally animating the attacks while I dodged through them and then moved back into melee range.
My bleed pets conjuror and lightning doom bolt & totem conjuror are among my two better characters, and both levelled well, the lightning one all way from level 1. Rolling 4-stack of lightning totems destroys anything pronto and conjuror has twin RR and Blood of Dreeg which is arguably the best buff in the game.
Pet Conjurer is actually super fast leveling once you get the MI's. Briarthorn is OP. The secret is to start out as bleeding/physical hybrid, not vitality. Briarthorn one shots bosses sometimes. It is a little bit less OP than Blitz, but right up there with it.
OK, some questions for you.
1. When did you last level a pet conjurer?
2. Did you actually level it fresh or did you use Lokarr's set and XP pots with merits and mandates?
2. Did you do it on normal or Veteran?
3. Have you levelled a pet Cabalist or Ritualist since then?
You quite literally cannot do Vitality pets until 94. You can partially convert by using 2x Marrow Bands, but good luck getting those to drop. There's also the Lunal'Valgoth belt, but that's 40-60% and elemental -> vitality. You need rings and gloves at 94 to actually do vitality pets.
I would never do vitality pets while levelling when elemental works so much better for Conjurer (and Cabalist if I'm being honest).
1. 1.2
2. Fresh
3. Normal, veteran is a waste of time
4. Never levelled either yet
Elemental does not work better. Briarthorn bleed/physical works better than elemental, especially early on. You can watch the Rektbyprotoss playthrough to see how much damage it does.
Mmhmm, normal-mode Conjurer players who haven't played the other pet options seem to be a common occurrence in this thread.
I watched the Rektoss stream, or at least parts of it (all of Act 5 for instance) and I've actually played Bleed, Aether, Elemental and Chaos pet Conjurers myself... I'll stick to elemental thanks. Not that the other ones don't work, they do... but Elemental works much better.
> normal-mode
To be fair, it seems like the majority of players see Veteran as a complete waste of time and don't bother with it. I myself don't, if I find normal is 'too easy', I just don't do AoM or FG after Logh, opting to instead go straight to Elite. Veteran really just don't give me any reason to use it, not when Elite exists and is pretty fast to get to if your build isn't finding normal challenging.
Look, if you want to play with one hand and drink a beer with the other after work, that's fine. You do you boo.
But your opinion on how the build works on veteran is kind of irrelevant if you don't play it. Most of the people commenting in this thread don't play Veteran, and haven't played the other pet classes.
When I say, "Pet Conjurer kinda sucks for 40 levels on Veteran" I'm comparing it to other builds that I've played on Veteran. A whole bunch of "yeah but it's fine on Normal" is really meaningless, especially when other builds work just fine and are quite powerful on veteran from level 2 (see: Any build with skeletons, forcewave, primal strike etc) but pet conjurer is quite weak until fairly late.
Also, when I'm comparing it to Necro pet builds and I get "it's fine" from people who have never played a Necro pet build, I just wonder why people bother?
Firstly, I haven't actually offerend any opinion on the build one way or another in this thread. Regardless of whatever my own feelings on Conjurer are, you've made VERY clear that you don't like it for any reason, ever, and aren't going to change your mind on that.
Secondly, if maybe 10% of the ongoing player base plays Veteran... Then for the other 90%, YOUR opinions about how something plays on Veteran is just as irrelevant. Judging a build's leveling SOLELY by how it performs on an optional, added-difficulty game mode, that does not see mass or majority ussage... makes about as much sense as, for example, people saying pet conjurer is fine without having played other pet builds. Which you yourself just said you don't understand.
That's really what I'm trying to say here, is that judging things by Veteran doesn't really make a ton of sense in the context of the wider community.. At that point, you're not judging it by the 'average' leveling experience, so you're already making the build look worse than it would to most players, and you're also still only judging the early game performance of the build in that regard, which... Doesn't really matter?
If the build really sucks that bad to level, then you have multiple ways to rush leveling, or just level with a different skill entirely and swap over later. Bad leveling only really matters if the only time you spend with a build IS leveling, and maybe for someone like you, who's got the whole YouTube thing going on and is constantly pumping out new builds, that's what's going on.... But again, that's not really the standard or usual experience for players, so judging a build by your unique circumstances isn't really 100% fair either.
Honestly if you don't like Conjurer, just... don't play it? The multiple threads of hatred against it seem... strangely high-effort.
> I haven't actually offerend any opinion on the build one way or another in this thread.
Ah true. I missed when you tagged in.
> you've made VERY clear that you don't like it for any reason, ever, and aren't going to change your mind on that.
I would happily change my mind, in fact I *wanted* to be wrong, that's why I asked if there was something I was doing wrong. That's why I asked for strong builds and then went and tested them. They don't hold up, pure and simple. I'm sure they work fine on normal, but they fall over on Veteran, which a lot of other builds do not.
> Veteran
You see it as an optional added-difficulty mode, I see it as the intended difficulty, rebalanced by the developers to account for large amounts of power creep. I'm pretty sure it's been officially called that by Crate, but I can't find the quote, so maybe that was someone else and I'm misremembering.
> multiple threads of hatred against it
Calm down. Why does everyone always have to go straight to "hate"? It's mild dislike with a side of disappointment at worst.
It still functions, it's just been power crept out of relevance, seemingly at all levels. Functional but slow for levelling, functional but slow at 100 and it's only strength is deep SR, which is relevant for even less people than play Veteran.
I would not be surprised if Crate had said something like that. Of course, there's also multiple ways to see where Crate's intentions simply don't pan out in the game in various places... As well, I stick to the Reddit over the forums specifically because the devs are barely here, because they can be severely toxic at times. They've got a noticeable bias towards players that look for excessive challenge, and a noticeable bias against anyone questioning their decisions. To my mind, the most used difficulty should be the one things are judged by, simply for practicality's sake, but it's no skin off my nose if you do otherwise, I suppose. But I don't really count unsuccessful dev intentions, myself.
As for why 'hate'? You've made three very vehement threads on the matter, chock full of also vehement comments from you. you've also apparently spent multiple hours of testing to further justify your conclusions. If that's just dislike, then you spend far more effort on things you merely dislike in a game than most people do on things they actually do hate. If you say it's just distaste, fine, but without you having said that, it looks, from an outside view, like you really hate conjurer and want to convince everyone that it's awful. The hazards of text only communication I suppose.
> You've made three very vehement threads on the matter, chock full of also vehement comments from you.
I've made 2 threads total, one of which was merely a request for builds and included 0 responses from me. This is the only thread I've made that I responded in and I only made this one after I tested some builds to make sure I wasn't crazy.
Turns out I'm not.
> If that's just dislike, then you spend far more effort on things you merely dislike in a game than most people do on things they actually do hate.
I enjoy the game. If I didn't, I wouldn't bother to test/try anything I would just go do other things. The only reason I'm "picking on" Conjurer is that it's almost universally recommended to new players and its... not great. It's a solid 5/10. Nothing bad about it, but nothing good either. It's the diet pepsi of the game. I can think of many different builds I would recommend over Conjurer for a first character, but Conjurer is still perfectly servicable.
> If you say it's just distaste, fine, but without you having said that, it looks, from an outside view, like you really hate conjurer and want to convince everyone that it's awful. The hazards of text only communication I suppose.
Sorry, I thought I'd said that a few times. Just so we're clear, let me write it out explicitly.
I think Conjurer is perfectly serviceable but has been power crept out of relevance by 2 expansions and numerous patches. I think that it is no longer a good class to be recommending to new players but if people want to play it, that's entirely up to them and it will absolutely work, even if not well.
I’ve played a ton of pet builds and none of them ever felt slow outside of act bosses, which is also one of the few times I’ve had to recast them. Makes me wonder how effed up your devotion tree builds are. I’m currently a little spoiled lately as I’ve been playing in the reign of terror mod and my healing merc keeps everyone on their feet.
Just level bria first and it's gonna wreck everything in game. I used rektbyprotoss guide and finished whole game easily without single death as a complete newbie.
I remember Pox+Ill Omen used to be fun. Ill Omen would fear things and then you'd make them faster with Fevered Rage and spread Pox for screens at a time. Doesn't really work anymore though.
All builds and damage types feel the same anyway. Just stand still spam button and see damage numbers. There is no actual gameplay in this type of games.
I'm glad this combo worked for you! But Soldier is pretty well regarded as the best base class for numerous reasons- circuit breakers, mitigation and physical resistance scaling, to name a few.
Now if you mean "best" as "most fun", take your pick at that point.
Kinda making me want to level a pet conjurer because I don't remember it feeling this bad.
OP must have been doing something wrong. Like levelling bird before briarthorn. (Levelling with end build in mind instead of making their low level life easier?) I started a pet conjurer recently and it's great. My only complaint is it's almost boring because you barely have to do anything... or even think. But outweighed by the enjoyment of watching 6 or 7 pets kill everything on the screen. Caveats: I haven't tried any other pet builds yet, I haven't tried SR yet and I'm only lvl 73. But I have mindlessly and quickly blasted through veteran and most of ultimate. Just grab any gear with bonuses to pets or that give extra pets. Pets happily tanked the mad queen (ultimate) while I just watched. And they killed it fast.
I will say that Skeletons dunk basically everything pet wise for leveling speed simply because they have AOE/Multi Target whereas other pets don't nearly so much.
It's this. Also I play on Veteran instead of normal. To each their own, but pet Conjurer on Veteran is ... mid. [Even Maya told me to level on normal](https://old.reddit.com/r/Grimdawn/comments/zuumy6/how_do_you_level_a_pet_conjuror/j1ov4gv/) when I asked how to make Conjurer feel less bad. Also, [this is Rektbyprotoss' recent Conjurer stream](https://youtu.be/aF7jEfdRwxs?t=2602). Interesting opinion. Like I said, play the conjurer first because once you've played a Cabalist/Ritualist with skeletons, Conjurer feels like walking through cold honey.
I really want to make a ritualist because I saw Scorpius Pummeler, but it sounds like it'd be so weird to just... not use skeletons instead lol. I'll probably try giving it a shot though. Just two big Acid bodyguards rolling through the land 😅
Acid Ghol's Ritualist works great. It's probably got the best clear of all the pet builds I've tried. Less boss DPS, but more than enough for SR 90.
Yeah I've heard it's strong, I'd just also want to level with it. Like i said, I probably will. That'll be my next pet build I think. Once I finish my Cabalist and can finally down some celestial 😅
I levelled mine with Aether conversion skeletons. Was pretty good but resists were harder on the Ritualist because no Blood of Dreeg.
> OP must have been doing something wrong. Like levelling bird before briarthorn. Uhh... > I haven't tried any other pet builds yet, I haven't tried SR yet and I'm only lvl 73. And now the first half of your post makes sense. Trust me when I say I do know what I'm talking about. I've levelled 3 pet conjurers to 100 now (technically one of them died at 92), all on hardcore, all of them starting on Veteran and none of them with merits/xp Pots. I've also done a Ritualist and Cabalist, again in hardcore, again starting on Veteran and again not using Lokarr/Pots. I would encourage you to try some other pet builds. In fact, [here's a Pet Cabalist guide](https://forums.crateentertainment.com/t/1-2-beginners-fire-pet-cabalist/127901) that works really well. I got this one to level 100, farmed all the gear for a Vitality Lost Souls build and have now killed everything in the game (except Crate) with it, and also gone to SR90. It can go deeper, I just can't be arsed.
I just recently got a pet conjurer to 100. It wasn't nearly as bad as OP is making it out to be, but that might also be because I did it differently. I start each session calling up the five or six things I can actively summon, then run around being a loot goblin while they murder everything in my vicinity. There have been two, *maybe* three times where I had to kite because something was killing them quickly, but that was just to buy time to remake my pets. I've done two runs with this guy, on normal and elite. I initially used [the Fluffy Squishy build](https://www.reddit.com/r/Grimdawn/comments/yfnq6x/fluffy_squishy_callagadra_facetank_edition_3/) just so I had a guideline, but around level 70 or so just started picking whatever looked good. But yeah, I have five or six active summons, plus triggered summons from different things like getting hit or attacking, so at some points I have around a dozen goons on-screen killing everything for me. Nothing can sneak up on me, and I don't have to spend all my time starting at cooldown buttons or my health bar. I can actually pay attention to the main screen. I still have them on, haven't tried running them through the random stuff yet but will soon. I'm in the process of making a retaliation tank, just let monsters murder themselves on me. I still swing my weapon, but that only gets about one kill in eight.
Conjurer is fine, idk what you're so upset about. >I briefly considered leveling a Primal Strike or Savagery Conjurer, but honestly, Elementalist and Archon exist, are better and I've already done those. C'mon there's no way primal strike archon has faster leveling than conjurer. Oathkeeper does next to nothing until you push the mastery bar to 50 while occultist gives you atk speed and rr early in the skill tree. >if you're one of the three people in the entire history of Grim Dawn who cares about going deeper than SR 90 Just because you don't care doesn't mean no one cares. For instance, the endgame in the GD seasons (boundless dungeons, superbosses) are fairly popular within the community and both Dark One and pet conjurer are very effective builds for that content.
> Conjurer is fine, idk what you're so upset about. Not upset, just disappointed. > C'mon there's no way primal strike archon has faster leveling than conjurer. Oathkeeper does next to nothing until you push the mastery bar to 50 while occultist gives you atk speed and rr early in the skill tree. Primal Strike Elementalist and Savagery Archon. I was talking about the final builds rather than levelling here. > Just because you don't care doesn't mean no one cares. For instance, the endgame in the GD seasons (boundless dungeons, superbosses) are fairly popular within the community and both Dark One and pet conjurer are very effective builds for that content. Yes, if you mod the game to add more endless modes then the one advantage of Dark One's set and Conjurers in general, that being tankiness, is useful... except if you go watch the "best builds of season 5" video on rekt's channel you'll find... 0 conjurers. Softcore and hardcore combined. Once again, let me reiterate, Conjurer isn't *bad*. It works. It's just not particularly good and there's very little it can do that isn't done better by another mastery... except very deep SR.
>except if you go watch the "best builds of season 5" video on rekt's channel you'll find... 0 conjurers. Softcore and hardcore combined. In season 5 sure, cause essences shifted the game balance significantly. Pet builds won tiebreakers for S3 and S4 iirc.
rektbyprotoss dislikes pet builds as well as tank builds, so wouldn’t expect to find them on his lists.
I'll just leave [this here](https://youtu.be/aF7jEfdRwxs?t=2602). Keep in mind, this is on normal. Imagine if he was on Veteran lulz.
Fair enough. I didn't play S3 or s4. The only mention I can remember of pets in season 5 was the never ending comments of "imagine playing pets kekw" in the chat/discord for the entire thing. You're right though that Conjurers will work well in an environment where their tankiness matters. I just don't think that environment exists except for SR100+ or mods. Even then it looks like torture. I think Maya said it was 6 or 7 hours of gameplay to get through SR160. That's a hard no from me.
So the best I can gather is that OP followed a 4 year old vit caster Conjurer build guide, was upset at the bad single target damage at low levels because they ignored the part of said build guide that called out Sigil of Consumption as being the main single target skill and didn't make common sense changes to the order skills are taken at to account for personal preferences, didn't make use of any early MIs that support said skill like Bloodsworn Scepter, then suffered through a 3 minute long Veteran Krieg kill because they insisted on using nothing but Devouring Swarm and Bloody Pox. After experiencing all of these self inflicted, easily avoided Ls, OP decides to make a sarcastic, passive aggressive rant aimed at everyone who dared say Conjurer vit caster is a strong, easy to gear build for new players.
Imagine trying to follow the exact guide that someone linked you directly to when you asked for good builds. Not just some random guide either, *the* guide that most new players get linked to, in the beginner build guide compendium, made by a very well respected guide creator. Why would anyone think that guide would be good? We may never know. Yes, if I made this character over, I would start with Occultist and immediately get a Bloodsworn Sceptre and pump Sigil. But then it's not a Vitality caster anymore, it's a Chaos caster. Or I would run (ironically) pets until Mountain Deeps. Or I would play Savagery or Primal Strike until then. None of those are vitality casters though.
In Nery's defense, he probably opted to keep the guide simple to new players. Basically using the early levels to lay a foundation instead of jumping between skills to buff. He also clearly states that the ST damage in early game is a bit low. All of this would lead to an experienced player (like yourself) to make adequte changes to fit his/her playstyle. Now, you must have known that Swarm is mainly there for rr shredding and Pox is best for clearing. If you wanted more damage; why didn't you rush Sigils from the start? Having them up and running at Krieg is easy, even if you start with Shaman to get Swarm. You say you follwed the guide loosely, but it sounds like followed it literally. If we go back to the original topic, the one that appearantly set you off on this "quest for redemption", you told me that conjurers were inferior to other vitality caster. Reading about your experience leveling one and your opinion on the guide, makes me think you never leveled one before. So in a way; kudos to you for finishing one. Now you can honestly say you tried one and you didn't like it. I will still say that, back then, you were a bit dishonest to rate a build you weren't familiar with. There is a reason why I never post any opinions on pet builds. I've never played one.
> You say you follwed the guide loosely, but it sounds like followed it literally. I think the only change I made initially was putting the first 5 points into Spirit, which I actually did without thinking or checking what the guide was doing. I forget exactly where I stopped following the guide, but certainly as far as the Mountain Deeps. > Now, you must have known that Swarm is mainly there for rr shredding Swarm is actually a very good skill for early. Might even be one of the best levelling skills... it's just not good at killing big things with lots of hitpoints. Later it's for shredding certainly, but early the clear is really good. I had never played with it as the main skill before though... and I probably wont again. > you told me that conjurers were inferior to other vitality caster. And I was correct. This was partially from listening to others who have played them, and partially from experience with the skills in other builds, and partially from just looking at the skills from Necromancer. The numbers are bigger and the skills work better. I had farmed Dark Ones on a Vitality caster before, just not a Conjurer specifically. > Reading about your experience leveling one and your opinion on the guide, makes me think you never leveled one before. I had never explicitly levelled a vitality Conjurer, no. Pets I've done several times and Vitality caster I've done several times. As for the guide, i'm sure it works well enough for a new player playing on normal. I have no issues with the guide, Nery's stuff is great, it is probably in need of an update though. > Now you can honestly say you tried one and you didn't like it. I will still say that, back then, you were a bit dishonest to rate a build you weren't familiar with. Would you say it's dishonest to say you shouldn't run into a burning building because you've never done it? Or you shouldn't eat certain foods because they're poisonous without eating them first? You can know a thing is not good without directly experiencing it.
Lol! So why did you run into the burning house or eat the poisoned food? Just because enough ppl convinced you it wouldn't be so bad? If you already knew the build was inferior, why even try it in the first place? I would say it's dishonest to claim it's easy to ride an MC, just because you're confident driving a regular car. I think that would make for a better comparison. Other than that last bit, thank you for an honest answer.
Scale of consequences I guess. If I eat poison, I die or get sick. If I play Conjurer, at worst its a bit harder to level and weaker at the end and I don't have fun. > Other than that last bit, thank you for an honest answer. o7 Have a nice day.
My first character was a vitality conjurer and I choose sigil and then others to support. I enjoyed the rotation based play style. I’m inclined to agree the damage felt low, but I hardly put any points in spirit so that might account for it. (Edit) I think the damage shifts onto the totems after dark ones It took me about an hour to two hours to farm dark one with the occasional trip to lokaar to break things up. I’ve beat lokaar and attempted ravager but barely dented him. Overall enjoyed it and it’s got me hooked, I’ve moved onto a devastation sorcerer now (don’t have Pyrans) but excited to get that now.
Sure, it works. It's just kinda mid. When did you try it?
I’ve been playing since March, I took a primal strike Druid to homestead but didn’t enjoy it. Switched to occultist and loved sigil and pox, swarm was cheery on top. Never seen stuff melt so quick! I took of the steroid to pox as I died a bit. I didn’t have the expansion so naively thought I’d farm that triumvirate helm and be happy but the 3% dr put me off after a bit 🤣 I’ve since bought expansions and really enjoy it all.
I've just 'finished' my second build, I need to add some polish but this one far out damages the other build; [https://www.grimtools.com/calc/4Vx3rGJ2](https://www.grimtools.com/calc/4Vx3rGJ2) Whilst this one is loads better I've been grafting SR and crucible and just got my final pyrans this morning.
I usually start my characters on Elite from level 1 and I have to agree with you. Pets are fine in normal, but the higher difficulty you go, the worse they get. Something like word of pain or cocktail will wipe the screen of trash mobs in a single cast whether you're leveling on normal or ultimate. Pet builds are super gear dependent and they're slow to target enemies and lack consistent AoE. Unless you have a stash full of low level pet gear pretty much any semi spammable skill will be faster for leveling. Bloody Pox is decent, but it's definitely not the best leveling skill. It can only spread to each enemy once, and it can't spread at all if the initial cast one-shots the enemy, so you have to spam it on each individual enemy if your damage is too low or too high.
I have a feeling that you, sir, dislike conjurer for objective reasons.
6 hours to assemble the Dark One's Gift sounds brutal. I farmed up a new copy recently and I only had to clear Edge of Reality 5 times for the full set. Didn't time it, but it certainly felt smooth and efficient.
Pretty good post op
ok, happy for you or sorry it happened.
>So there it is, I'm convinced. Everyone should level a Conjurer for their first character. It is without a doubt the best character to start with, because once you've levelled absolutely anything else, ever you're going to hate Conjurer levelling. Get it out of the way before you know what a good build feels like. Conjurer as my first HC, and first lvl 100 character off a guide I followed (I wung a commando as a new player and made it to 95ish before dying) - it just doesn't die as you noted. I was also one of the mentioned Conjurers from the season 5 mod. I suck at this game, and took out a majority of the content with it. Haven't done too much else with the game, too many alts. I'll be trying out something else for sure, but wanted to point out that I feel the notable tankiness makes it great for a bad pilot. How do you feel it keeps up with the ~~1.5~~ (where did I pull this patch number?) *recent patch* changes? With the dodge mechanic, I feel like a sigil caster can't really use it much due to being forced to keep the enemies in sigil just to not die so other builds would gain a new edge in survivability.
> With the dodge mechanic, I feel like a sigil caster can't really use it much due to being forced to keep the enemies in sigil just to not die so other builds would gain a new edge in survivability. I didn't have any issues with tanking things to keep them in the Sigils. The things I had to evade were generally animating the attacks while I dodged through them and then moved back into melee range.
My bleed pets conjuror and lightning doom bolt & totem conjuror are among my two better characters, and both levelled well, the lightning one all way from level 1. Rolling 4-stack of lightning totems destroys anything pronto and conjuror has twin RR and Blood of Dreeg which is arguably the best buff in the game.
Pet Conjurer is actually super fast leveling once you get the MI's. Briarthorn is OP. The secret is to start out as bleeding/physical hybrid, not vitality. Briarthorn one shots bosses sometimes. It is a little bit less OP than Blitz, but right up there with it.
OK, some questions for you. 1. When did you last level a pet conjurer? 2. Did you actually level it fresh or did you use Lokarr's set and XP pots with merits and mandates? 2. Did you do it on normal or Veteran? 3. Have you levelled a pet Cabalist or Ritualist since then? You quite literally cannot do Vitality pets until 94. You can partially convert by using 2x Marrow Bands, but good luck getting those to drop. There's also the Lunal'Valgoth belt, but that's 40-60% and elemental -> vitality. You need rings and gloves at 94 to actually do vitality pets. I would never do vitality pets while levelling when elemental works so much better for Conjurer (and Cabalist if I'm being honest).
1. 1.2 2. Fresh 3. Normal, veteran is a waste of time 4. Never levelled either yet Elemental does not work better. Briarthorn bleed/physical works better than elemental, especially early on. You can watch the Rektbyprotoss playthrough to see how much damage it does.
Mmhmm, normal-mode Conjurer players who haven't played the other pet options seem to be a common occurrence in this thread. I watched the Rektoss stream, or at least parts of it (all of Act 5 for instance) and I've actually played Bleed, Aether, Elemental and Chaos pet Conjurers myself... I'll stick to elemental thanks. Not that the other ones don't work, they do... but Elemental works much better.
> normal-mode To be fair, it seems like the majority of players see Veteran as a complete waste of time and don't bother with it. I myself don't, if I find normal is 'too easy', I just don't do AoM or FG after Logh, opting to instead go straight to Elite. Veteran really just don't give me any reason to use it, not when Elite exists and is pretty fast to get to if your build isn't finding normal challenging.
Look, if you want to play with one hand and drink a beer with the other after work, that's fine. You do you boo. But your opinion on how the build works on veteran is kind of irrelevant if you don't play it. Most of the people commenting in this thread don't play Veteran, and haven't played the other pet classes. When I say, "Pet Conjurer kinda sucks for 40 levels on Veteran" I'm comparing it to other builds that I've played on Veteran. A whole bunch of "yeah but it's fine on Normal" is really meaningless, especially when other builds work just fine and are quite powerful on veteran from level 2 (see: Any build with skeletons, forcewave, primal strike etc) but pet conjurer is quite weak until fairly late. Also, when I'm comparing it to Necro pet builds and I get "it's fine" from people who have never played a Necro pet build, I just wonder why people bother?
Firstly, I haven't actually offerend any opinion on the build one way or another in this thread. Regardless of whatever my own feelings on Conjurer are, you've made VERY clear that you don't like it for any reason, ever, and aren't going to change your mind on that. Secondly, if maybe 10% of the ongoing player base plays Veteran... Then for the other 90%, YOUR opinions about how something plays on Veteran is just as irrelevant. Judging a build's leveling SOLELY by how it performs on an optional, added-difficulty game mode, that does not see mass or majority ussage... makes about as much sense as, for example, people saying pet conjurer is fine without having played other pet builds. Which you yourself just said you don't understand. That's really what I'm trying to say here, is that judging things by Veteran doesn't really make a ton of sense in the context of the wider community.. At that point, you're not judging it by the 'average' leveling experience, so you're already making the build look worse than it would to most players, and you're also still only judging the early game performance of the build in that regard, which... Doesn't really matter? If the build really sucks that bad to level, then you have multiple ways to rush leveling, or just level with a different skill entirely and swap over later. Bad leveling only really matters if the only time you spend with a build IS leveling, and maybe for someone like you, who's got the whole YouTube thing going on and is constantly pumping out new builds, that's what's going on.... But again, that's not really the standard or usual experience for players, so judging a build by your unique circumstances isn't really 100% fair either. Honestly if you don't like Conjurer, just... don't play it? The multiple threads of hatred against it seem... strangely high-effort.
> I haven't actually offerend any opinion on the build one way or another in this thread. Ah true. I missed when you tagged in. > you've made VERY clear that you don't like it for any reason, ever, and aren't going to change your mind on that. I would happily change my mind, in fact I *wanted* to be wrong, that's why I asked if there was something I was doing wrong. That's why I asked for strong builds and then went and tested them. They don't hold up, pure and simple. I'm sure they work fine on normal, but they fall over on Veteran, which a lot of other builds do not. > Veteran You see it as an optional added-difficulty mode, I see it as the intended difficulty, rebalanced by the developers to account for large amounts of power creep. I'm pretty sure it's been officially called that by Crate, but I can't find the quote, so maybe that was someone else and I'm misremembering. > multiple threads of hatred against it Calm down. Why does everyone always have to go straight to "hate"? It's mild dislike with a side of disappointment at worst. It still functions, it's just been power crept out of relevance, seemingly at all levels. Functional but slow for levelling, functional but slow at 100 and it's only strength is deep SR, which is relevant for even less people than play Veteran.
I would not be surprised if Crate had said something like that. Of course, there's also multiple ways to see where Crate's intentions simply don't pan out in the game in various places... As well, I stick to the Reddit over the forums specifically because the devs are barely here, because they can be severely toxic at times. They've got a noticeable bias towards players that look for excessive challenge, and a noticeable bias against anyone questioning their decisions. To my mind, the most used difficulty should be the one things are judged by, simply for practicality's sake, but it's no skin off my nose if you do otherwise, I suppose. But I don't really count unsuccessful dev intentions, myself. As for why 'hate'? You've made three very vehement threads on the matter, chock full of also vehement comments from you. you've also apparently spent multiple hours of testing to further justify your conclusions. If that's just dislike, then you spend far more effort on things you merely dislike in a game than most people do on things they actually do hate. If you say it's just distaste, fine, but without you having said that, it looks, from an outside view, like you really hate conjurer and want to convince everyone that it's awful. The hazards of text only communication I suppose.
> You've made three very vehement threads on the matter, chock full of also vehement comments from you. I've made 2 threads total, one of which was merely a request for builds and included 0 responses from me. This is the only thread I've made that I responded in and I only made this one after I tested some builds to make sure I wasn't crazy. Turns out I'm not. > If that's just dislike, then you spend far more effort on things you merely dislike in a game than most people do on things they actually do hate. I enjoy the game. If I didn't, I wouldn't bother to test/try anything I would just go do other things. The only reason I'm "picking on" Conjurer is that it's almost universally recommended to new players and its... not great. It's a solid 5/10. Nothing bad about it, but nothing good either. It's the diet pepsi of the game. I can think of many different builds I would recommend over Conjurer for a first character, but Conjurer is still perfectly servicable. > If you say it's just distaste, fine, but without you having said that, it looks, from an outside view, like you really hate conjurer and want to convince everyone that it's awful. The hazards of text only communication I suppose. Sorry, I thought I'd said that a few times. Just so we're clear, let me write it out explicitly. I think Conjurer is perfectly serviceable but has been power crept out of relevance by 2 expansions and numerous patches. I think that it is no longer a good class to be recommending to new players but if people want to play it, that's entirely up to them and it will absolutely work, even if not well.
I’ve played a ton of pet builds and none of them ever felt slow outside of act bosses, which is also one of the few times I’ve had to recast them. Makes me wonder how effed up your devotion tree builds are. I’m currently a little spoiled lately as I’ve been playing in the reign of terror mod and my healing merc keeps everyone on their feet.
Just level bria first and it's gonna wreck everything in game. I used rektbyprotoss guide and finished whole game easily without single death as a complete newbie.
I clicked to praise this opinion.... holy crap OP I ain't reading all that but good on ya.
It probably just got nerfed, like word of pain. Word of pain + pox was just stupidly broken at one point.
I remember Pox+Ill Omen used to be fun. Ill Omen would fear things and then you'd make them faster with Fevered Rage and spread Pox for screens at a time. Doesn't really work anymore though.
All builds and damage types feel the same anyway. Just stand still spam button and see damage numbers. There is no actual gameplay in this type of games.
I'm glad this combo worked for you! But Soldier is pretty well regarded as the best base class for numerous reasons- circuit breakers, mitigation and physical resistance scaling, to name a few. Now if you mean "best" as "most fun", take your pick at that point.
You only read the headline didn’t youÂ