Soothsayer Guide - The Petmaster

Want to let others do the dirty work for you?
Don't want to play a glass cannon and be basically unkillable for a change? Still care about decent killspeed?
The Soothsayer has got you covered!

Introduction

Want to let others do the dirty work for you? Don't want to play a glass cannon and be basically unkillable for a change? Still care about decent killspeed? The Soothsayer has got you covered!

Pros:

• Good for starters.
  
• No specific (hard to get) gear is required for basic functionality.
  
• A lot of items and gear approaches are very viable.
  
• Active playstyle in later stages of the game.
  
• Very high survivability. The Soothsayer is pretty much unkillable.
  
• Fast movement speed in the lategame for everyone.
  
• If you play with others, your party will love all the heals, buffs and debuffs you can provide.
  
• Forget potions exist in the game. What a nuisance - never buy, never use.

Neutral

• You are basically not dealing damage yourself during the majority of the game, be aware of a different playstyle: Healing, buffing, debuffing. And most likely some kiting while leveling.
  Aggroing mobs is often actually not too bad, since they are slowed to a crawl moving towards you, while the pets kill them without getting focused.
  
• Inactive early leveling, the pets are tearing through that content though. Pretty fun in my book.
  
• Melee/Bow users will scale more consistently, though I believe they are often harder to play towards endgame nonetheless. Those builds will have higher killspeed in the endgame. The Soothsayer is still clearing all content pretty fast, also melting bosses in mere seconds later on while being way safer overall, especially for difficulty affecting mods like xmax.

Cons

• Pet survivability and killspeed heavily varies until endgame build status is reached
  [Act I-IV/V it goes from Very Fast to Fast, to Decent, to Slowish]
  See the "Pet Knowledge" section, as to why this is the case
  
• Currently you have to Mystic-Respec-Undo all pets and Briar Ward + Circle of Power every time you start the game when you are wearing + to skills items to get the appropriate numerical values. This is nearly cutting the base values in half. Every upgrade is unaffected. Totally annoying, since you can't effectively boss farm at full strength, needing to reset them via new sessions. Waiting for a fix!
  UPDATE! Developer NGDevTwo notes that "Even if that is still the case it would be purely an UI bug. The skills work at full strength." That being said, I never felt that the class was slow doing bosses etc., just hoped that it was even stronger (as the "UI bug" suggested). I will let this stay here until this is patched out, just so you are aware.

So welcome and thank you for being interested in playing a Petmaster, searching for some knowledge about the Nature and Spirit mastery and just reading into my guide.

Game Knowledge

I think that the two following sections are very important, since the game is not very informative most of the time.
Just knowledge about game mechanics can help to evaluate the effectiveness of certain things.
This is a WiP, not everything is clear and known even after all those years. A lot of the following knowledge was compiled during non-Anniversary Edition times. Credits to Violos, Whisk33, Poinas and apocalypse80 for most of the information.

Physical Damage, Pierce Damage and Armor

Physical damage is dealt by basically all types of melee weapons, as well as bows, shields and weaponless attacks. As such it is the most common type of damage in the game. Very often it is simply referred to as "Damage", though meaning just physical damage. So please differentiate between "Damage" and "Total Damage", as total damage affects all damage types. Some weapon types convert a percentage of the physical damage to pierce damage. As such this damage part ignores armor, but can be reduced by pierce resistance.

Physical damage is reduced by armor. When being hit a body part is randomly chosen (40% torso, 20% arms, legs and head each). The damage is then reduced by 66% of the armor value of the respective piece that was hit. +X Armor adds a certain amount of armor to all body parts. +X% Armor Absorption increases the baseline 66%. Minions should have base armor values, most likely raising per difficulty, since you can get extra armor for pets via gear.

Armor is good against: A lot of smaller physical hits (not exceeding any of your armor values)

% Reduction to Enemy's Health, Life Leech, % of Attack damage converted to Health

Vitality damage is rather simple: it's increased by Intelligence as stated by the ingame tooltip and has its own resistance type. Vitality decay is the damage over time version. Can be reduced by vitality resistance. Can be increased by Intelligence, but not by +% vitality damage.
"% Reduction to Enemy's Health" is based on the vitality damage type, but not increased by it. The determined number is reduced by vitality resistance though. Heroes and Bosses have 75/80/85% and 85/90/95% resistance against % Life Reduction on top of the vitality resistance. This specific resistance type cannot be lowered (anymore).
Life Leech has its own resistance type and is only increased by +% Life Leech and by 2.5% per player level. As such it can also be effectively used by non-intelligence characters.
At "% of Attack damage converted to Health" the initial damage is calculated, reduced by armor and/or resistances and finally by the amount of Life Leech resistance.

Defensive and Offensive Ability

As the tooltip states, the chance of being hit and avoiding critical hits is being affected. But that's not all. DA is actually reducing damage taken and this damage reduction comes BEFORE armor and resistance calculations. This only applies to melee combat of course (bows and staves can't miss at all), but it is very common damage and you can get charged at and surrounded fast.
Pierce Damage is just reduced if it is part of a physical conversion and not flat pierce damage.
If the enemy chance to hit is at 99% and not above (roughly the same Offensive Abilty as the characters Defensive Ability), you will avoid criticals. Under 99% you are not only avoiding more hits, you are also reducing incoming damage.
At 99% hit chance the damage reduction starts at ~5.5% and for every 100 points of exceeding DA you used to get 5% more damage reduction and an extra 10% chance to dodge attacks. New tests are needed though (see #1 AE Patch Notes: Defensive Ability greatly exceeding the attacker's Offensive Ability yields diminishing returns).
Massively stacking DA is most likely not recommended anymore, but a good amount of it is still very valuable.

Resistances

Primary resistances decrease in "Epic" difficulty by 40% and by another 60% in "Legendary" difficulty, being able to push you to -100% Resistances. Affected are Fire, Lightning, Cold, Pierce and Poison, joined by Vitality and Bleeding resistance in the AE. Resistances cap out at 80%.

Basic math shows that there is no difference in effective damage reduction when you go from 0% to 80%. Say we receive 1000 fire damage, each resistance point into fire would reduce the damage by 10. What does increase is the point value though [Formula: 1/(100%-Current Resistance]. Each percentage point reduces more damage relatively than the last.

Examples:
At 13% fire resistance - 1/(100%-Current Resistance) = 0.0115 = 1.15% Point Value
At 65% fire resistance - 2.86% Point Value
If you still don't understand the idea, the following should snap clarify this. Let's say we could increase our fire resistance to 100% in some way.
At 97% fire resistance you would receive 30 damage from the 1000. Say we increase the fire resistance by 1 more percent. 98%, 20 damage left, 33,3% Point Value. 99%, 10 damage left, 50% Point Value. 100%, 0 damage left, 100% Point Value.
Cool, but why does this even matter? There is just so much you can do to effectively mitigate damage. These damage types are being stopped pretty much always just by your resistances and then they hit your health pool.

Resistance reduction
This one's rather complicated. There is a percental type reduction (% Reduced Resistance) and an absolute one ("-% X Resistance" or "Reduced Resistances"). Skills reducing specific resistances are absolute. Percental reductions don't stack, just the highest value is taken; absolute reductions do stack. Doing the math, skills do come before gear and absolute comes before percental reduction. Negative resistances can be pushed to absurd numbers, it works.
Get the absolute resistance reduction before a percental one for a beastly effect.

Example:
The enemy has 30% vitality resistance. We hit him with Necrosis (-119% vitality resistance) and the Liche King's "Soul Blight" for 75% Reduced Resistances and we do have 2x "The Monkey King's Trickery" socketed for 12 Reduced Resistances each.
So it's 30% - 119% = -89% | -89% * (1.75) = -155.8% | -155.8% - 24 = -179.8%

Pet Knowledge

In this section you will read everything about pet health and damage scaling and pet gear types.
A lot of this is still older non Anniversary Edition knowledge. I checked against the patch notes though and informed of unclear data. Corrections and more information are highly appreciated.

• You can't scale pets with any of your attributes [they have their own hidden attributes]
  
• You can scale pets with gear and talents.
  
• Affected by pet gear and pet specific buffs are only creatures summoned by player skills. Any item summons or converted monsters are regarded as allies. Pets are always allies as well, but not the other way around. Briar Ward and the Circle of Power are neither pet nor ally. Briar Ward and Circle of Power health increases in Epic and Legendary difficulties though.
  
• There are physical, vitality and elemental damage type buffs on gear (Bonus to All Pets:). Any bonus damage type can be added to the standard damage type a pet has. For more information regarding this type of gear, see the "Bonus to All Pets" section, as there are also some other types.
  
• Flat damage bonuses found on gear only affect weapon/hand attacks. The standard attack of the Liche King seems to be considered a spell, it doesn't benefit from pet bonuses. The percentage bonuses on gear still apply to all appropiate attacks/spells.
  
• The Sylvan Nymph deals flat piercing damage, it is not regarded as physical damage. Her natural base attack damage type is something the Soothsayer can't buff via gear or skills. Though you can add different flat damage types to her standard attack and buff these.
  
• Pets get +75%/+150% to all damage types in Epic/Legendary difficulty.
  Except Pierce and DoT Damage, those are increased by +60%/+110%.
  Difficulty buffs now also give some (flat) damage through extra STR and INT rather than just high +% to damage. Values need to be worked out again, but this is a buff.
  This leads to high damage spikes in early acts and decreasing killspeed nearing the end of each difficulty mode.
  
• Pets gain +200/+400 health in Epic/Legendary difficulty flat. They gain +100% health from difficulty changes and +100% health from a quest mid act 3 (basically middle of the game) each difficulty, resulting in +500% Health overall.
  
• Pets receive minor movement and attack speed buffs each difficulty. Exact values not known.
  
• Pets are subject to Offensive Ability and Defensive Ability calculations. They obtain about +350/+600 OA and DA in Epic/Legendary difficulty respectively. About 850 for both is considered "normal" for heroes in legendary (OA needed for melee only obv.), so the pets are somewhere in that territory.
  
• Pets definitely have Resistances
  
  The Liche King has general Undead resistances now. Values are not known to me though.

The Nature Mastery

Just to forestall some things, so you can better understand some of the explanations in both masteries. I came to the conclusion that the Soothsayer heavily benefits from + to all skills and cooldown reduction. Nearly all skills are beneficial to us and/or our allies and we have access to strong skills that have high or very high cooldowns.



Numbers stated are unbuffed and at ultimate level (+4 above normal) in legendary difficulty.
I will ignore %Reduction to Enemy's Health, since its only useful application, being boss fights, was severely nerfed.


Call of the Wild: Our grunts. Three Wolves dealing 43-71 physical damage. That's low-ish baseline damage. Medium attack speed. 34% chance to dodge attacks and avoid projectiles.

Maul: Deals bleeding damage and benefits from "Necrosis" and "Unearthly Power". The damage is added to a (gear boosted) standard attack, but it's not much. A single point for the next actually great skills.

Survival Instinct: Massive 80% damage absorption while dropping under 33% health and a huge 110% physical damage boost. If not one-shotted, they get rather tanky. After it triggers the effect is up for 6 seconds, no matter what health the wolves have during the effect.

Strength of the Pack: Another high percental physical damage boost with +90%, this time for everyone. The added armor bonus and energy regeneration is way too low to seriously care about. The +15% total speed for one point is fantastic though!
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Sylvan Nymph: 75-140 Piercing Damage, high attack speed. Her AI is still a bit wonky. Due to the high attack speed and the fact that she is affected by gear boosts now, she is a very good damage dealer. 56% chance to dodge attacks and avoid projectiles.

Overgrowth: 873 damage absorption is not bad. Casting this means she is not attacking though. Maximum points or leave it entirely.

Nature's Wrath: 155-261 Elemental Damage. Low AoE and 33% chance to pierce. It's alright, but a gear boosted standard attack is still dealing more single target damage. Max if you want to go for "Sylvan Protection" otherwise leave it entirely.

Sylvan Protection: A single target spell with an absurd enemy DA reduction. This route is point intensive though. You take this for bossing and rely on the Nymphs AI to actually cast it or you go for Earthbind, which I believe is overall stronger, but only if you play with CDR.
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Regrowth: This skill is your daily bread. Heals you and/or your allies. At 3520 healing, it refills every standard pet to full HP. With endgame equipment you could recast pets left and right, so the heal is mostly just for you. If you get "% Attack damage converted to Health" on your vitality damage staff, you could even decide to drop this skill entirely.

Accelerated Regrowth: The cooldown reduction affects Regrowth even beyond the 80% maximum global CDR. One point scaled with + to all skills is more than enough though.

Dissemination: 1770 extra heal bouncing to 3 more allies if they are near enough together. Basically your area of effect healing option. Doesn't increase energy cost. You can unskill this talent later on, because the healing gets rather minor and you can easily recast pets. A single hard point is not a wrong choice though.
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Plague: This is the butter to your bread. Pulls enemy aggro. Best debuff in the game due to the upgrades. A single hard point is enough later on, since you want to reapply every 3 seconds due to the "Fatigue" upgrade.

Fatigue: -45% total speed for the full duration, 50% reduced damage and 21 reduced physical damage for 3 seconds. Total Speed reducing Movement, Casting and Attack Speed. That's great defensive utility right here. Since we can reduce Total Speed and Damage Dealt even more with the Spirit mastery, every close enemy attacks in slow motion and deals little damage.

Susceptibility: -54% physical, elemental and poison resistance. Those damage types will hit way harder.
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Heart of Oak: +10% total speed is great. +85% Health for you and all allies. That's not much for pets in legendary, since they already get +500%, but it's a whole lot for you.

Trainquility of Water: 90% chance to reduce the energy cost of all skills by 50%. Combined with another Spirit talent you will never care about energy again.

Permanence of Stone: +31% elemental resistances for you and all allies. Good for you and even better for your pets.
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Earthbind: With CDR this skill is at ~4.2 seconds recharge. You can cut the enemy DA in half and root them in place for the same amount of time. Its massive AoE even passes terrain. Wow!
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Briar Ward with Stinging Nettle and Sanctuary: One hard point each to get Sanctuary, which provides 32% damage absorption. Sanctuary persists for its whole duration even after the whole hedge is destroyed. High Cooldown. Stationary.
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Refresh: Makes even very high cooldown skills (near) permanently usable. Since -100% CDR is no longer possible, you can just hit 70 to 80 and use Refresh one or two times for the same effect. More work, not needed, but still worth it.

The Spirit Mastery

Deathchill Aura: 4.5m radius and -33% Total Speed Reduction. Together with "Plague" nearly all melee enemies are just rendered ineffective.

Ravages of Time: A reapplicable 45% Damage Reduction for a second adds another defensive boost. The armor absorption is a major bonus for physical damage.

Necrosis: -119% Bleeding, Vitality and Life Leech resistance. Those numbers are massive. The whole reason any vitality, bleeding damage and % of Attack damage converted to Health source gets very potent. Must run near enough to enemies to affect them.
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Ternion Attack: Still remember Necrosis? Yeah, run with a vitality damage based staff and some attack speed into mobs or the boss and fire away for some serious damage output. Even without massive attack speed or INT scaling the damage is noteable. No cooldown! Consider this for your endgame build and/or when you lack cooldown reduction to help with killspeed.

Arcane Lore: Each projectile gets some AoE and is flying faster towards its destination. It's alright to clear out some huge packs.
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Dark Covenant: Basically ends all Mana needs, for you and all allies. Losing a tiny bit of health is offset by a "Regrowth" or standing in the "Briar Ward". High Cooldown.

Unearthly Power: +75% damage to vitality and physical damage and +50% to bleeding and elemental damage. Covers nearly all damage fronts for you and the pets around you.
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Circle of Power: Another vitality and bleeding damage buff. Energy Cost Reduction and Cast Speed is a nice bonus. Even the CDR might help. Works for allies. Stationary. High Cooldown.
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Summon Liche King: The best permanent pet overall. Deals 89 vitality and 107 elemental damage, low attack speed though. His Soul Blight alternative attack reduces all enemy resistances by 75% for 8 seconds, except for resistance against % Life Reduction and Mana Burn. Still very valuable.

Death Nova: Self-centered 214 vitality damage Nova with a high % of Attack damage converted to Health. Strong while the Liche King gets surrounded.

Wraith Shell: 72% Damage Absorption and 30% Physical Resistance. Strong, but one hard point should suffice.

Arcane Blast: 164 elemental and 94 vitality damage, 6 projectiles that stun and slow. Very hit or miss due to the AI behavior and the seemingly varying projectile spread. If it hits infight though, that thing hurts badly. Most likely because each projectile carries gear damage buffs.
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Summon Outsider: Hits up to 3 enemies in an arc for 289-343 elemental damage. Temporary pet. Very high cooldown. With 70% cooldown reduction and 9 effective points into Refresh you can have him around permanently. Just cast two times Refresh and he's recastable when the time runs out. He's another big damage source and I think he's worth the hassle, but you don't need him badly (not even while bossing late game).
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Death Ward: Certainly a one point wonder. Get minor health back and minor damage absorption for 3 seconds before you die. Or max this skill and get three times the life back, which is still nothing, and 94% damage absorption for 3 seconds, which is crazy. Very high cooldown, affected by any reduction though, also Refresh!
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Vision of Death: Another one point wonder you can use in a pinch, but it's even better with more points. 18% reduced damage, 66% chance for enemies to fumble and impaired aim (melee and ranged blind basically) for 8 seconds, and a 7 seconds+ fear. More than 8 effective points are just increasing the fear time. A valuable talent.
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Spirit Ward with Spirit Bane: This is a permanent buff. Very noticeable less damage taken from undeads and high extra damage to undeads. They are not very uncommon, still a bit of a niche talent. If you intend to run Undead bosses a lot for higher farming speed in the later stages of the game (or Toxeus in the Overlord's Passage) this is certainly worth at least one point each, being scaled up by +to all skill points.
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Enslave Spirit: Used to be such a fun talent with 100% CDR, just click on all minions you see and run towards the boss. Hilarious. Now I think it's just too clunky and not fast enough, certainly not needed.
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Soul Vortex: This skill is awful and comes with a laughable duration for that high recharge time, even with CDR.
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Life Drain with Cascade & Soul Drain: You could drop Ternion and Regrowth for this, but some enemies are 'immune' to life steal. Life Drain is pretty good now, has a very low cooldown and is very convenient being just one skill for two purposes. Since this could free the staff slot for a green item, and thus a better minion damage boost, it's definetly something to consider. With the few left hard points you can spare, just go for level 40 in one of the mastery. Sadly this choice would be final, so think about this carefully. Personally I prefer the 'Earthbind' route.

Attributes

Since you can't reset attribute points, it's rather important to plan ahead and to know what they provide. Every attribute point towards Strength, Intelligence or Dexterity is raising it by the value of 4.

Strength
Totally worthless for the Soothsayer. Affects physical damage and staves do not deal this type of damage.

Intelligence
Increases vitality and elemental damage as well as every Damage over Time effect from these types.
The only real damage comes from "Ternion Attack", which can be a very notable part of our overall damage.

Dexterity
We don't care about pierce/bleed/poison damage or offensive ability. The defensive ability is great, but it doesn't warrant point investment. It makes more sense to get it from gear separately, either via dexterity on mainly jewelry (or via the stat DA).

Health
Every point gives you extra 40 Health now (up from 25 in non-AE), boosted with Heart of Oak we get 74 Health points. You can "easily" reach ~14k life, or more, depending on gear and min-maxing.

Energy
Every point gives you extra 40 Energy now (up from 25 in non-AE). We get enough flat Energy from our masteries and maybe some gear to have a decent pool. This pool is never really depleting due to our skills and items. No further point investment needed.

Conclusion
Enough points into INT to wear gear. The rest and thus the majority of the points should go into Health to reach an absurd health pool.
You can later on also invest more into Intelligence to boost the Ternion Attack damage, if you think you have sufficient health and damage is all that counts. Your choice.

Min-Maxing
You get 18 Intelligence and 18 Dexterity via the quest(s) "The Stygian Lurker". Plan with that in mind.

The BiS artifact Thoth's Glory is reducing the stat requirements for gear by -20%. You would need to be level 55 and have it pretty much right away though to use the effect without a hassle.
Since this is most likely not the case, you could use "bridge items" for a while before spending hard attribute points. Just "worth it" for the Dexterity requirements. Get a high Dexterity Ring/Amulet and roll with it until you have Thoth's Glory. This way, you don't have to put any points into Dexterity.

Items can "wear themselves" - Example: A desired item would add 20 Dexterity, but you lack 20 or less Dexterity to even wear it. You can equip another item that gives said Dexterity, equip the desired item and unequip the "bridge item".

Bonus to All Pets

Let's just evaluate which type of damage our pets can profit the most from.
There are 7 tiers of pet damage gear types with a high flat boost and a low percental one. They can be found on staves, rings and amulets and are normal prefixes (Wraithlord's & Allfather's are rare).

Prefix	Physical	Vitality	Elemental
Beastcaller's	10, +5%	8, +5%	8, +5%
Spiritcaller's	18, +5%	15, +5%	15, +5%
Summoner's	32, +10%	27, +10%	27, +10%
Invoker's	47, +10%	40, +10%	40, +10%
Ritualist's	70, +12%	60, +12%	60, +12%
Wraithlord's	92, +12%	80, +12%	80, +12%
Allfather's	111, +15%	100, +15%	100, +15%

There is also the rare "Puppetmaster's" prefix on staves and amulets providing +200 health and +10% Total Speed to pets, but it's overall just weaker than a "normal" damage buff.
On the suffix side there is "of Enslavement" giving our pets +100 health and +40 armor and two weaker versions - it's not terrible, but I prefer to get more survivability (DA) for myself and just recast the pets if they die. Lastly there is the rare "of Convocation" on amulets only, granting them 20% of Attack Damage converted to Health and +20% Total Damage. It's powerful in a vacuum, but the same written above applies here as well. But in this case it has bad synergy with "Survival Instinct", if you are playing with Vitality Damage it doesn't matter though.

Physical
Slightly higher numbers on gear, but depending on the armor value of our enemy the damage can be lessened if we don't surpass it. The pets are still dealing 34% damage against enemies with a baseline 66% armor absorption rate. With the talent "Ravages of Time" we are reducing that baseline by 45% to an effective 36.3% armor absorption rate. That's great, but we can't nullify armor completely. Nonetheless, if the damage per hit is very high, the usefulness of armor is highly diminished.
-54% physical damage resistance via "Plague". Three of our five basic attackers are dealing physical damage baseline and they get 165% extra physical damage and another 110% for 6 seconds, if they drop below 33% life at one point. The other two will gain the permanent 165% boost via talents. Very high percental boosts and thus scaling nicely with physical endgame gear.
Further, 'Earthbind' is now a very strong point for this damage type (see DA mechanic).

Vitality
This damage type has to pass vitality resistance only. With "Necrosis" we can reduce that resistance type by 119%. That's surpassing the -54% physical resistance reduction from plague by a landslide and we don't even have to break through armor.
Sadly none of our basic attackers comes with baseline vitality damage, so that they could profit from the percental boost even more. 75% bonus vitality damage and another 100% while stationary on top for all allies.

Elemental
The damage is split into 1/3 Fire, Lightning and Cold each. Not much to think about here, there is no drawback. Maybe a slight boon, since even a highly resistant enemy against e.g. fire will at least take 2/3 of the damage from the other elemental damage types. Again, -54% elemental resistance via "Plague". Our baseline elemental attacker hits like a truck, every percental increase is strong here. Sadly only a 50% elemental damage boost in our talent arsenal.

Conclusion
Well, there is not a clear winner. Enemies don't have high resistances (or absorption for that matter, which you can't bypass) against any of the mentioned damage types in general. All are kind of viable. Elemental seems to be the weakest one here though, not due to the type itself of course, but due to the class support for it.
To boost both physical and vitality damage alike we need to be in Necrosis range.
While "Necrosis" is just utterly broken, you would definitely have to bother running near all enemies to make vitality damage the powerhouse it is. For the best result you have to cast "Circle of Power" on top, but it's harder to position it in a way, that every ally gets the buff (6m radius) and it can get destroyed.
The physical damage approach is way simpler, just apply "Plague" and the wolves will do the rest with their very high percental buffs. Especially for clearing trash, 'Earthbind' accelerates this style. You should run near harder enemies too, because of "Ravages of Time", but it doesn't make or break this damage type approach like "Necrosis" does.
At least while leveling, I would definitely tend towards using physical damage on my pets. That comes with other benefits as well: tanky wolves and 15% Total Speed. But even in the endgame, this can be a very elegant approach, in particular due to the ease of use, but it's also strong in terms of powerlevel.

If the goal is to only farm bosses, you're better off with vitality. "Survival Instinct" procs late into the fight, if at all, and the damage boost might be wasted. Otherwise just go with physical damage, seems better for Tartarus farming / a more mixed gameplay. Just be aware that this is very point intensive, since you want anything vitality damage related to boost your own damage, and anything physical related to boost minion damage.

For difficulty increasing mods this evaluation may shift somewhat towards using the physical damage route, simply for the safe range and being more effective without "Necrosis".

Equipment

We are looking for these basic things on gear, kind of in that order, not just while leveling:

• +to all skills or at least +to Nature skills. +2 is needed for 3 wolves and +4 so you can get the maximum possible rank for your talents
  
• Flat damage for pets, better stack the same type
  
• Resistances. Elemental, Vitality and Pierce is very important. We can handle damage over time more easily than burst and melee attackers better than ranged ones.
  
• Cooldown reduction, labeled as "-X% Recharge". Way more important towards endgame
  
• Movement Speed / Total Speed
  
• Dexterity / Defensive Ability
  
• Health

To see the full stats, item requirements and loot tables of every item mentioned, just click on the item names; I will just mention the major stats. Numerical values shown there are random, not the average.

Staff

While staves are one of the sources for pet damage, finding one with vitality damage is nearly impossible though (Atlantis MI: Vvisssllisss). So it's mostly either Ternion or pet damage, and not both.


Moros Nyx[www.tq-db.net]: 252 Vitality Damage, Bonus to All Pets - Tier 5 vitality damage, ~50% Energy Leech Resistance and 400 Health. Best legendary staff for vitality damage based pet gear.


Praxidikae[www.tq-db.net]: ~373.5 Vitality Damage, 12% Attack Damage converted to Health, ~150 DA. Compared to the Moros Nyx, you will deal more damage, but the pets will deal less. Good legendary staff for physical damage based pet gear.


Strength of the Nile[tq-db.net]: ~397 Vitality Damage, 10% of Attack damage converted to Health, ~50 DA, +30% Movement Speed, ~225 flat Elemental Damage. Best legendary staff for physical damage based pet gear, Eternal Embers drop only though.

Head

I would recommend a rare MI socketed with an Essence of Chaos[www.tq-db.net] with the fitting Bonus to All Pets completion bonus. Or if you are going for vitality damage based pet gear a "Legendary Crystal of Erebus" that provides +2 to all skills and 25% vitality damage resistance. Since you can get this Charm only once and there is only a 11.1% chance to get the desired bonus, I would suggest to use TQVault to change it, if need be.
A great prefix would be "Hallowed" granting another +1 to all skills and 50% vitality damage resistance. The suffix can be anything that is somewhat useful. Maybe you still need more cooldown reduction and "of the Magus" is advisable. My two favorite MIs:


Stheno's Wisdom[www.tq-db.net]: 75% cast speed and 12% physical damage reduction inherently.
You can farm this diadem e.g. in Act I from Gorgon magicians in the Pythian Caves where the three Gorgon Queens rest. It is not just dropped by Sstheno, you can farm the whole cave.


Shaman's Headdress[www.tq-db.net]: Inherent ~10% recharge. You can farm the headdress in Act 3 from Neanderthal magicians.

Arms

There was and there still is just one item pretty much every mage utilizing CDR is using:


Archmage's Clasp[www.tq-db.net]: With up to -50% Recharge on its own, this item is single-handedly providing us with the majority of the needed 70% cooldown reduction. The huge cast speed bonus helps to make spells feel more instantaneous. ~40% attack speed for Ternion Attack.

Torso

Anything goes here, it just depends on what is still missing. My favorite for the endgame:


Tunic of the Magi[www.tq-db.net]: ~40% to all primary resistances and life leech and energy resistance. ~200 DA, 10% Total Damage. Somewhat inconspicuous, but very strong.

Since you most likely need another source of +1 to all skills, now that "Essence of Chaos" and not the "Legendary Crystal of Erebus" is BiS, this would be the best slot to compensate.

Legs

Same thing as with the Torso slot, shore up anything that is lacking. My personal best in slot:


Demonskin Walkers[www.tq-db.net]: ~30% elemental and bleeding resistance, ~60% Pierce and Poison resistance, ~20 added movement speed, +1 to all skills. A statistical monster in terms of resistances.

Amulet

Equip whatever you need. The amulet slot is a source for pet damage, sadly there is no MI amulet or ring in the game. So it's pet damage and a suffix (DEX / DA or get 'of Convocation', or even 'of Feasting' with a vitality damage staff). I would recommend such a green amulet, but until you fix your resistances you can go with:


Aphrodite's Favor[www.tq-db.net]: The database values are sadly totally off. Aphrodite's is providing ~48% elemental, pierce and poison resistance, ~90% Skill Disruption Protection, 900 Health, ~75% energy regeneration and +2 to all skills. No flat pet damage, but otherwise very strong (defensive) stats.

Rings

Again, the legendary options don't look more appealing than basic green rings. I would go for two rings with flat pet damage on them and a desired suffix of your choice (e.g. DEX / DA). You can socket Incarnation of the Monkey King's Trickery[www.tq-db.net] for more reduced enemy resistances. I can also recommend the Incarnation of the Ankh of Isis[www.tq-db.net] or Legendary Demon's Blood[tq-db.net] with a combined 85% Vitality Damage Resistance due to the completion bonus. The Incarnation of Dionysus' Wineskin[www.tq-db.net] is good too. You can and should just shore up any lacking resistances with Essences and Charms on your jewelry.

Artifact

You can use whatever you have, some low level artifacts are also functional in the later stages. I still think there is a great artifact to complement nearly every build:


Thoth's Glory[www.tq-db.net]: Nearly fills any missing secondary resistance and gives +1 to all skills. The reduction to all requirements comes late, but it's possible to min-max nonetheless. A common completion bonus is health, that's most likely perfect. Otherwise Elemental Resistance can be awesome too, depending on your gear setup, although it's a rare completion bonus.
You can find information on what you need to build the artifact in the link.

Leveling

After some basic gearing advise, there are still some things to look out for while leveling and I will also drop some skill suggestions you can follow.

First of all set the game speed to fast or very fast in the settings and assign a key to control all pets (in my case F1). Set all pets to agressive ... everytime you start the game *sigh*.

Look out for "Shrines of Mastery", they will add +4 to all skills for a period of time. Recast all your pets in that timeframe. Your pet will keep that level and the boosted level of all skills until it dies or you restart the game. Starting with level 18 you can cast three wolves and they will completely destroy anything up to and including Act II. With at least level 5 "Survival Instinct" (1+4 from the Shrine) they will stay alive for quite some time. Playing in a longer session with those minions alive is highly recommended.
Look out for any gear that gives +to Nature mastery or even +to all skills for three reasons:

• You can't rely on getting the "of Mastery" effect at shrine points (short of restarting at a well near a shrine and retrying until you get the desired Mastery shrine)
  
• Reach ultimate rank (+4 to max rank) to further boost pet stat numbers
  
• Single point investments into skills become more valuable

Just pick up and carry jewellery and rare+ stuff to sell later on, that's sufficient money and it doesn't clutter your inventory especially early on.

You can "easily" shop for some valuable items:

• Normal "Wanderer's" prefix on a staff or amulet for +1 to all skills in Nature Mastery. Req. lvl 12
  
• Normal "Druid's" prefix on a staff or amulet for +2 to all skills in Nature Mastery. Req. lvl 25
  
• Any desired flat damage for pets, preferably with another suffix
  
• Rare "Hallowed" prefix on headgear. +1 to all skills. Req. lvl 15
  
• Rare "Divine" prefix on amulets. +1 to all skills. Req. lvl 25

Later on you should shop for "Allfather's" rings and amulets to complete your build.

Don't forget that pets are very strong when moving into a new difficulty (that also means starting in normal), so you can easily farm some items (from bosses/telkines) in Act 1 & 2, if you so desire.

Please use your own judgment on when to deviate from the provided skill suggestions, e.g. + to all skills can go a long way here.
You get 10 skill points via quests in each difficulty: 1 in Act 1, 4 in Act 2, 0 in Act 3, 2 in Act 4, 3 in Act 5 (Ragnarök) and 0 in Atlantis.

Level 8
Max "Call of the Wild" and pick "Heart of Oak" mainly for the +10% Total Speed. A point into Regrowth, so you can comepletey forget those pots now and do something with your mana.

~Level 18
Stay in the Nature tree and invest a point each in "Maul" and "Survival Instinct" while going for the Nymph (max). Go directly for a point into the "Regrowth" upgrades each. "Survival Instinct" really helps to keep all three wolves alive with its damage reduction and the damage boost is rather meaningful early on. Remember that summons keep the talent at the level they were casted at (1+4 in this case), so you don't want to lose them easily and that is why "Survival Instinct" really shines here.

~Level 27
Go for " Summon Liche King" (max) and skill "Dark Covenant" for the +10% Total Speed in boss fights or when you need mana. You might want to grab "Vision of Death".

~Level 45
Move towards "Permanence of Stone" and pick up a point in "Strength of the Pack".
Ramp up "Survival Instinct" to increase the Damage Absorption, 15 points are enough though for the maximum 80%, so calculate with your + to (nature) skills gear. While leveling, you should "ignore" the damage boost from that talent and just top up your wolves with heals to keep them alive.
That being said, invest more into "Regrowth" and upgrades whenever you feel the need to from that point onwards. You can start with -%Recharge and the "Dissemination" only, to be able to spam the heal a bit more and to be able to counter AoE attacks a bit better. Be aware that you can't reliably control who gets healed, the bounce can even hit full hp targets. Keep the jumping range in mind and press "Regrowth" a bit more often, usually works out just fine. Since the "Dissemination" heal value will surpass the Level 1 Regrowth fairly fast, just "heal" a target that doesn't (really) need it and let it leap to the target that you actually want to heal - that target can of course also be you.
Beyond that point skill "Plague" and "Fatigue" more or less evenly, to get a good ratio of duration and total speed reduction. Putting 1 point into Susceptibility doesn't hurt.

~Level 60
Now I like getting my attribute points, health and energy via the mastery bar as well as more permanent power with the Deathchill Aura. I also pick up "Death Ward" as a 1-point wonder.
As mentioned beforehand you might want to level up "Dissemination" and "Accelerated Growth" to spam AoE heals.

Anything beyond that point are mostly high cooldown skills that are nice for bossing only or can (nearly) permanently be used when you get that massive cooldown reduction. Getting "Earthbind" is mainly valuable with high CDR, thus being rather endgame only. It's totally overkill anyway. I honestly just love getting a permanent "Dark Covenant" for that unlimited energy and the now permanent +10% total speed. Outsider, Briar Ward, etc. is not even really needed for a strong build. The "Sylvan Nymph" with "Overgrowth" and "Sylvan Protection" is also a viable point outlet. Just try it out!

The best pet build of them all?

First I will assume that we can all agree that Nature is a must have in every Petmaster combination. Four permanent minions, crazy strong debuff and an elemental resistances buff for everyone.
So let's evaluate the other secondary valid mastery choices step by step, from worst to best.
Every extra pet that is able to be affected by pet gear is naturally rated very highly.

Earth

The combination is called "Summoner", what a joke. You get a single extra permanent pet, that at least deals physical damage and as such complements with the wolves. "Earth Enchantment's" flat fire damage boost is nearly nonexistant and the Core Dweller is the only one dealing marginal fire damage, the physical boosts you can get here are fine though.
And that's basically it, there is nearly nothing here to get for pets and utility overall. There are better hybrids around. Personally I would play Earth purely as a caster with cooldown reduction only.

Dream

You get a single permanent pet, that increases % Total Damage for all pets (not you, not allies, only pets). "Trance of Wrath" and "Hypnotic Gaze" both reduce % resistance and as such they don't stack. "Trance of Convalescence" is the better alternative anyway. You can get Defensive Ability, % Total Speed and you can utilize "Distortion Wave" for the armor reduction effect against some tougher foes.
Sadly the "Nightmare" is, like the Liche King, not affected by flat damage gear boosts. The mastery will provide you with strength (instead of dexterity), totally wasted.
Since you really don't need to go for CDR here, you might want to aim for "Stonebinder's Cuffs" providing +3 to all skills, and thus making something out of the strength attribute.
Dream Image adds some damage for boss fights and Psionic Touch is now a usable Auto-Attack-Replacement for staves, although it still can't compete with Ternion Attack (lacking Necrosis from the Spirit tree).

Storm

Gives you a permanent pet with the "Wisp". He is affected by flat damage gear boosts and buffs elemental damage for everyone. The new "Storm Nimbus" provides all pets with a flat buff to cold and lightning damage (~ "Ritualist's" prefix value). Slowed Attack and Movement retaliation around your character. Definitely go for elemental damage pet gear. "Squall" is a nice debuff: reduced % resistance, reduced % damage and 100% Impaired Aim. "Freezing Blast" can be good in a pinch.
Other than that, you need to be a caster first and foremost to get real value out of this mastery. Luckily, "Ice Shard" is one of the strongest spells in the game. It has no CD, thusly scales with Cast Speed and can shotgun (all damage parts can hit a single enemy). No cooldown reduction gear needed for this build.

Hunting

While there is no extra pet to gain here, the sheer power of the mastery is enough that I included it right here. While this is a weapon-focused class first and foremost, a lot of buffs/debuffs are helping out the Nature pets quite nicely, even if you run the pets purely as sidekicks. "Study Prey" with its low cooldown damage resistance reduction is just beyond powerful, also reducing bleeding and pierce resistance and % DA on top! "Art of the Hunt" gives your pets movement speed, some projectile avoidance and bonus % pierce and bleeding damage. "Call of the Hunt", for those boss fights, is increasing attack speed, % pierce and bleeding damage, and adding massive OA. Seeing all those pierce and bleeding damage buffs you want to run with maxed "Maul" for the wolves, but mainly the Nymph is massively profiting from the pierce buffs/debuffs. Sadly all the INT from Nature might be rather wasted here, although you can utilize 2x Symbol of Tanit[www.tq-db.net].

Rogue

With the new changes the "Traps" are now considered pets. Three temporary pets that deal pierce damage, can pass through enemies and have no cooldown on ultimate level. The AoE type attack that the traps provide is really something else. "Flash Powder" is a great defensive ability against melee enemies: high chance for confusion and fumble attacks.
That's it, but having three pets that can carry damage bonuses is worth a lot. You don't need more than +4 to all skills and no cooldown reduction gear.
The mastery will provide you with the rather useless strength attribute and no energy. Again, you might want to aim for "Stonebinder's Cuffs" to make it worthwhile.

Spirit

Just to have this here as a direct comparison and summary. The "Liche King" is not affected by flat damage pet gear, but it's still better than the "Nightmare". The very high resistance reduction it provides, the tankiness, and the possibility to shotgun with "Arcane Blast" make it stronger for sure. The hard hitting temporary "Outsider" can be a permanent follower with CDR. While ALL other classes struggle with energy, you have infinite mana that you can also trade in for life. You will become nearly unkillable with "Deathchill Aura" plus "Ravages of Time" and the "Death Ward". 94% damage absorption, even while having just 1k health, is like having another ~16k life pool for 3 seconds. And it's ~25k when you're also in the "Sanctuary". Then you just "Refresh" to have it up again. You also get a boost to pretty much every damage type, +10% Total Speed for everyone and "Vision of Death" that you can use (in a pinch) against melees, rangers and mages alike. "Ternion Attack" has no CD, can shotgun, scales with Attack Speed and just deals high damage when used with a vitality damage staff combined with "Necrosis". This and the mentioned massive utility are easily compensating for the overall ,just solid' pet section.

Warfare

Yes, Warfare. The best second mastery for an endgame pet build. You might want to play this as a hybrid melee CDR build with two Bone Crusher, so the strength stat from the mastery is potentially not wasted and Dual Wield, Onslaught, Battle Rage and all that good stuff becomes usable. Even if you lack some own physical damage due to tight item management, you will get noticeable damage output due to the wolves "Strength of the Pack" and the double -% Physical Resistance from "Plague" with "Susceptibility" and the "Battle Standard" with "Triumph" (also awesome defensive utility). The "Battle Standard" adds flat physical damage to everyone on top ... and it's like having an extra two more "Allfather's" rings equipped.
You need more pets to profit from the banner? No problem! Summon FIVE! "Ancestral Warriors" to your aid, that deal flat physical damage. You can also press "War Horn" every ~4 seconds to stun every enemy on the screen, and it stuns for ~4 seconds, so have fun.
This class needs so much things though and it's hard to gear and play it from scratch. Depending on your gear approach you might need to allocate attribute points throughout STR, DEX and INT. You can also play a pure INT caster, again mostly just dumping points in health, and getting the pet damage boost via the staff, without dealing physical damage on your own. Endgame potential is also ridiculously high, but you still need the gear to make it click. More tanky, safer and more than enough damage: most likely better, but feels less fun.
Personally I prefer Spirit due to the infinite mana, its tankiness and because of the static nature of the banner; damage is rarely an issue in this game. But it would be unfair to deny the absurd amount of damage you can deal with a champion, it IS pretty hilarious and fun.


If you have questions, more information or just a different opinion: drop it into the comments below.
Happy TQ-ing!

[materafa13]

Hy! I know it's not a recent post, but I didn't see Guardian (Nature + Defense) in "The pest build of them all?" . I tried a Guardian build, and it's a lot of fun, and of course really safety for HC playtrough ! What do you think ?

[󠀡󠀡]

if only there was a video to review the build

[Charmadon]

is there a build link or picture anywhere in this guide? Overall, very nice guide, thanks

[Nemull]

This needs pics since URLS doesnt work propperly :)

[Syn]

Just to clarify: It was one link that had to be deleted.
The links to tq-db and tq-calc are causing no harm.

[Syn]

@izgule
Thanks for the heads-up. I will delete them immediately.
So kirmizi is basically down.

[izgule]

Got literal malware Phishing popups from the links here.

[Ferathos]

Loved the guide, any way to get the skill trees working? Not even deleting the amp seems to work

[Syn]

@Davoker
It's okay, thanks for trying to help.
The problem is indeed steam, because the redirect link simply adds accelerated mobile pages (amp). Nothing I can really do about that.
Usually you should be able to change to a "desktop" webpage view on the targeted site though.

[Davoker]

Okay, sorry for being a bit persistent xD I can confirm that Steam is the culprit here. Something has changed; links to calculators from other sites like the Titan Quest Fans Forum or Reddit work correctly, while those posted on Steam display the duplicated "&" sign error. Instead of just displaying "&," it shows "amp;&," which is why the "amp;" is redundant, but Steam adds it when opening the link.

Again, the only solution is to delete the "amp;" from the link. In the address bar above, there are about 5 "amp;" throughout the link; you have to remove all of them and hit 'enter.' The link will reload, and now it will display correctly.

PS: An easy alternative is to provide the complete link in the guide and "ask people to copy and paste" it into the address bar; this way, it will load perfectly. However, clicking on the link directly will give you the error. I hope I'm explaining it properly.