Ritualist help with pets and skills

[WindChaser]

Okay, so I've just got into Act 2. I've managed to get +2 nature skills. Mainly INT.

So far things have been insanely fun with the wolves, nightmare and nymph. Can't pick up the loot fast enough. Mainly cause of maxed wolves. Telkine was rough tho until I leveled and got Dissemination.

This is so far:

http://www.titancalc.com/TitanCalc.a...-0-0-0-0-0-0-0

My aim is to play support and heal, then level up Plague and DR.

Do I push for SoTP and max it, or do I go for ToC or MM? I'm going for them all, but what order should I do it in to max my durability and kill speed?

Thank you experienced people

[Violos]

SotP is prabably best, especially if you have physical pet jewellery.

Though I would also put some Points into Temporal Rift for Act 4.

[Shalie]

Your items will be more important to boost your pets than those skills, you need to really focus and get a damage boost to pets on every slot.

And I would also recommend Temporal Rift to help out.

[Tyr]

Yep. Prioritize +pet damage gear over +% bonuses/boni in normal when it comes to pet damage. Even (base) level 7 wolves can crush Hades if you have full Spiritcaller's/Summoner's gear and maxed Plague. +% bonuses are significantly more useful in epic and legendary though. DR/TR is too high up in the Dream tree, it might be worth it to just go DW/PI (max PI) in the meanwhile.

You can build your character pretty much however you want but as soon as you get to around Wusao Mountain in Act 3 you may need to switch to a nuke build temporarily. There are other ways, and you're welcome to try your hand at getting your build through act 3-4, but switching to a nuke build (max plagued line and DW/maxed PI) is much more straightforward. You also get to keep and utilize the skillpoints you've invested in Dream Mastery so far.

[Medea Fleecestealer]

Pet items or petgear by the way consists of a staff/s with prefix Beastcaller, Spiritcaller, Summoner, Invoker or Ritualist and also rings and necklaces with the same prefixes. These items give boosts to pets specifically like either Damage, Vitality Damage or Elemental Damage and may also provide things like Armor, Health, Energy & Regen or Defensive Ability bonuses. They come in yellow or green with green giving other types of bonus. So a green Spiritcaller's Pine Arcane Staff of Frost gives you +1.3 Energy Regen per second with pet bonuses of 19 Vitality Damage, +6% Vitality Damage, 8 Cold Damage and +10% Cold Damage. A full set of pet items is a staff/s, two rings and a necklace.

[Violos]

+% bonuses are significantly more useful in epic and legendary though.

Actually... no.
To the contrary. Their effect is being diminished by the way TQ and IT scale their pets.

In legendary they get something like +150% to their damage from the start. - As a normal passive bonus, to which others just add.
So what used to be, say, a real +75% boost from Mastermind, boosting the damage from 100% of its original vlaue to 175% of it, then boosts it from 250% to 325% - a relative increase of only 30%.

So in fact, flat pet boosts are generally better if you can get your hands on them.
They make full use of those free %, rather than "competing".



It is true that pet gear is more important to pet damage than pet boosting skills... if that was mutually exclusive. So one should care about gear first.
But that, too, is mainly because the skills usually give only %, while the gear also gives a realtively high flat increase to base damages, for any % to work on.

(With the exception of Battle Standard, of course, which is a great skill because the bonus is flat.)

[Tyr]

I meant in the general sense. My point is that unless you export them, stronger +pet damage items like Summoner's staffs/staves, Greater/Divine Scrolls of Stalwart Alliance, and Invoker's/Ritualist's gear only drop in Epic/Legendary so +%bonus mods would be a relatively more powerful then. Also, you probably won't have enough skill points to develop the necessary skills to make +%bonuses work in normal without gimping other things like survivability. Finally, you don't actually need the extra damage in normal as long as you have maxed Plague, a full 4-piece +pet damage set and a scroll for bosses.

Now strictly speaking, I agree that you are correct. Especially if you have the skillpoints to spare.