Unleash the Storm with Pet Ravens: A Grim Dawn Hybrid Build Guide

Are you ready to command the battlefield with a tempest of lightning and a murder of empowered ravens? In Grim Dawn’s Version 1.0.6.0, pets have received a significant power boost, opening up exciting new build possibilities. This guide dives into an unconventional yet incredibly effective pet build: a hybrid Pet Raven setup that not only conquers endgame content but also lets you stand shoulder-to-shoulder with your feathered allies in the thick of the fight. If you revel in the chaos of close combat, love the electrifying crackle of lightning magic, or simply enjoy smashing foes while your pets watch (and assist!) in awe, then prepare to embrace this electrifying pet raven build.

This isn’t your typical pet build where you merely stand back and let your summons do all the work. This is a hybrid, a powerful blend of player-based and pet-based damage. To truly define its hybrid nature, this build is designed to consistently defeat Nemesis-level enemies using either player damage alone or pet damage alone. It’s about synergy, empowerment, and unleashing a storm of damage from all fronts – with you and your pet ravens at the heart of it all.

Unleash the Storm with Pet Ravens: Grim Dawn Hybrid Build Stats and Skills

Strengths of the Pet Raven Hybrid Build

This pet raven hybrid build in Grim Dawn boasts a compelling array of advantages, making it a formidable and enjoyable choice for tackling the game’s most challenging content:

Gladiator Crucible 170 Viable: Proven to conquer Grim Dawn’s toughest challenge, the Gladiator Crucible up to Wave 170. (As demonstrated in this video: https://youtu.be/5SRBDr_9b3o)
Exceptional Tankiness: Remarkably durable, often requiring kiting only in the most extreme situations like Gladiator Crucible Wave 170, allowing for aggressive, in-the-fray gameplay.
Massive Resist Reduction: Enemies suffer from over -100% resist reduction, amplifying both your and your ravens’ damage output to devastating levels.
Buffed to the Feathers: Over a dozen dual buffs enhance both player and pet capabilities, creating a synergistic powerhouse.
Resilient Ravens: Summoned Ravens are surprisingly survivable, contributing consistent damage without constant resummoning.
Adaptable Build: Easily transitions into a full-fledged pet build with minor adjustments (around a dozen skill points), offering flexibility based on playstyle preference.
Low Precision Gameplay: Forgiving and easy to pilot, requiring less intricate micro-management compared to more fragile builds.
Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds” Reimagined: Experience a live-action rendition of avian chaos, but with significantly more lightning bolts – turning the Grim Dawn battlefield into your personal electrifying aviary.

Potential Drawbacks

While incredibly strong, this pet raven hybrid build does have a couple of considerations:

Gear Dependent for Peak Performance: Reaching maximum potential requires specific gear pieces. However, Gladiator Crucible 170 is still achievable with patience and less-than-perfect items.
Lightning Overload? The sheer volume of lightning effects might be visually overwhelming for some players – though for many, this is a feature, not a bug!

Gear and Skill Synergy for Raven Mastery

The equipment for this build is carefully selected to maximize both player and pet effectiveness, creating a true hybrid powerhouse. Key items and their roles include:

Light’s Defender Set (2 pieces – Chest and Hands): Provides substantial survivability boosts, including Defensive Ability (DA), resistances, and valuable offensive player stats, grounding the build in resilience.
Skybreach Bulwark: Offers defensive bonuses, a useful proc, and crucial skill points, enhancing overall robustness and skill access.
Spark of Ultos, Voidmancer’s Cord, Glyph of Kelphat’Zoth: A potent combination delivering a spicy mix of both pet and player offensive stats, ensuring damage scales effectively from both sources.
Mogdrogen’s Ardor, Ravager’s Dreadgaze: Provides a massive influx of skill points, unlocking crucial skill ranks and offering decent general bonuses. Dreadgaze also adds a helpful support skill.
Will of Bysmiel: This is the cornerstone item, enabling the summoning of two Ravens simultaneously, doubling down on your feathered damage dealers.
Mantle of the Patron, Wendigo Conjuring Seal, Occultist’s/Warlock’s Wendigo Gaze: Dedicated pet bonus items that also grant skill points to Summon Familiar, directly amplifying raven power.
Solael Sect Legguards, Rare Stoneplate Greaves: Used to strategically fill resistance gaps, ensuring well-rounded defenses against various enemy types.

Skill point allocation is focused on empowering both the player and the pet raven aspects:

Maxed Ultimate Ravens (Summon Familiar): Unleashes the full potential of your ravens, allowing them to fire five projectiles each, dealing significant damage per raven. With shotgunning, debuffs, and critical hits, the damage output is substantial.
Maxed Lightning Strike: Your primary player-based damage skill, dealing significant area-of-effect (AoE) damage. Combined with debuffs and critical hits, Lightning Strike becomes a massive damage dealer.
Storm Spirit (Points): Provides a noticeable flat damage boost to both you and your ravens, further enhancing overall damage output.
Vulnerability and Raging Tempest: Crucial skills for applying a combined -65% elemental resist reduction, significantly amplifying all lightning and elemental damage.
Blood of Dreeg: A fantastic buff providing flat Offensive Ability (OA) for both you and your pets. Its modifier grants valuable physical resistance, further enhancing survivability.
Heart of the Wild and Wendigo Totem: Combined, these skills provide exceptional sustain, making you incredibly resilient against most threats.
Bonds of Bysmiel & Manipulation (1 point each): Bonds of Bysmiel is essential for pet builds. Manipulation is taken for a single point as raven scaling with total speed is less impactful compared to other pet types.
Briarthorn & Primal Bond (Points): Briarthorn and its modifier add further survivability and a slight OA boost. Primal Bond significantly increases pet critical hit damage.
Savagery & Tenacity of the Boar (Points): Provides player offensive potential while boosting OA and DA, contributing to the hybrid nature of the build.

Devotion Path for Enhanced Ravens and Survivability

The chosen Devotion path prioritizes a balance of pet power and player defense, leaning towards Primordial/Order affinity for shield and defensive bonuses:

Shieldmaiden, Solemn Watcher, Obelisk of Menhir: Provides strong shield-based defenses and general defensive stats, enhancing player survivability.
Widow: Essential for applying much-needed resist reduction, further amplifying lightning damage.
Ishtak and Bard’s Harp: Provides two powerful buffs that boost both player and pet OA, DA, and survivability, creating excellent synergy.
Shepherd’s Crook, Raven, Panther: Dedicated pet bonuses that directly enhance raven damage and effectiveness.

The Mogdrogen the Wolf devotion was tested but found less impactful for ravens compared to other pets, leading to the chosen defensive and offensive balance.

Gameplay and Build Variations

This pet raven hybrid build excels at aggressive, in-the-fray combat. Engage enemies directly, using Lightning Strike while your ravens unleash their barrage. The build’s tankiness allows for facetanking most regular enemies, with kiting required only against the most formidable foes.

Alternative build variations exist, allowing for further customization:

Manipulation Focus: Investing more points into Manipulation by reducing Savagery can be effective, though the impact on raven speed is less pronounced.
Rhowan’s Crown for Resist Reduction: Swapping Bard’s Harp for Rhowan’s Crown provides another source of elemental resist reduction, further boosting damage output.
Full Pet Build Transition: Easily shift to a more traditional pet build by reallocating points to maximize pet bonuses, though this might sacrifice some of the hybrid playstyle.

The Primal Instinct relic was initially considered but found to be less effective due to pet fragility in high AoE environments like the Crucible. Similarly, while more pieces of the Light’s Defender set could be used, the current setup prioritizes pet bonuses while maintaining crucial player defenses. A Riftstone component can be added for increased mobility, but the overcapped aether resistance from the current setup is highly valuable for tackling specific endgame threats.

Embrace the power of the storm and the might of your feathered companions. This pet raven hybrid build in Grim Dawn offers a unique and potent way to conquer the game’s challenges, blending pet mastery with engaging player combat. Prepare to unleash a tempest of lightning and ravens upon your foes!