The Two Pet Families: Which Summons 'Bonus to All Pets' Actually Helps

Telling the two families apart

Two skills can both summon something - and scale in opposite ways.

• ▸Pet-bonus pets: the Occultist's Raven (Summon Familiar) and Hellhound are the classic examples - full companions whose icons appear at the top-left, accepting stance, move, and attack orders.
• ▸Player-scaled pets: the Living Shadow devotion, Blade Spirit, Wind Devil, Storm Totem, and Summon Guardian of Empyrion (an Oathkeeper skill, so it requires FG) are typical - closer to turrets or autonomous devices, computed as extensions of your own damage.
• ▸When unsure, check the skill's page or build writeups on the Japanese wiki - and note that this site's pet builds assume pet-bonus scaling when they pick gear.
• ▸Grim Tools' Pet DB and build calculator also show which bonuses a given summon scales with (see the Grim Tools article).

Pet-bonus pets: the [Bonus to All Pets] block is the main lever

Stack all the player-side +% damage you like - these pets will not gain a point from it.

• ▸Their % damage bonuses live in one place: whatever sits inside [Bonus to All Pets] on gear, devotions, and buffs - % damage, flat damage, resistances. Your own +% damage and All Damage % never apply.
• ▸Flat damage and DoTs inside [Bonus to All Pets] are added to each pet's innate base attack (the pet's equivalent of weapon damage).
• ▸The exception: area buffs like Flame Touched that add flat damage to weapon attacks also feed the base attack of pet-bonus pets standing in range, even though that is not a [Bonus to All Pets] effect - count this when evaluating gear and skills.
• ▸When a pet triggers a devotion skill, the conversion consulted is the pet's own global conversion - not yours.
• ▸Pet attacks never trigger your Weapon Pool Skills (WPS) or gear's on-attack proc skills; only devotion skills assigned to the pet fire from its attacks.
• ▸What actually decides their power: skill level (affects nearly everything), your character level (base stats), [Bonus to All Pets], and the rank of the granting item.
• ▸v1.3.1.0 changed how pet resistances work. Player pets now have baseline non-Physical % resists, scaling from 1% at level 1 to 80% by level 80. Most pet-only % resist bonuses on gear and devotions were removed, and pet base resists were normalized across the game (many pets keep a single damage-type immunity). The change stops pets from stacking immunities and trivializing content, so treat the resists listed above under [Bonus to All Pets] as largely gone from gear and devotions.
• ▸The same patch removed the flat % Health and % Defensive Ability bonuses pets used to gain on Elite and Ultimate (about -15% Health and -6% Defensive Ability on Ultimate) and removed the Boss damage bonuses against pets. Low-armor pets such as Skeletons got higher base Armor to narrow the gap with sturdier pets. Individual pet numbers were adjusted in many places in the patch notes and are not covered here.

Player-scaled pets: extensions of your own build

These are your own skills on autopilot - whatever grows you grows them.

• ▸Player-scaled summons grow with your own damage bonuses - no pet gear required.
• ▸They apply your global conversions to their attacks; conversions granted via skill modifiers act as local conversions on the pet's skill.
• ▸Debuffs are not applied to player-scaled pets themselves, but fumble debuffs sitting on you do affect these pets' attacks.
• ▸Reflection caveat: when some player-scaled pets such as Blade Spirit or Summon Guardian of Empyrion strike a reflective enemy, the damage reflects back onto you.
• ▸'Pet build' conventionally means a build centered on pet-bonus pets - builds using player-scaled summons (Wind Devil setups and the like) are effectively caster builds in disguise.

In practice: stances and handling

• ▸1. Icon-displaying pets accept stance switching: Normal (middle ground), Defensive (stays close, fights back only), Aggressive (attacks on sight). Since v1.2.0.0, summons default to Aggressive.
• ▸2. For pet-bonus builds, compare gear starting with what is inside [Bonus to All Pets] - player-side +% numbers never transfer. The exception is area buffs adding flat damage to weapon attacks, which do reach pets in range.
• ▸3. Running player-scaled summons? Choose gear and devotions by ordinary build standards: your % damage, conversions, RR.
• ▸4. Both families gain base stats (health, OA, DA, and so on) from your character level, so they grow sturdier through leveling than you might expect.
• ▸5. Devotion skills can be assigned to pets and fire from that pet's attacks - decide which pet is the trigger when planning a pet build's devotions.

1. Grim Dawn Japanese Wiki: Combat Mechanics — Confirms player-side +% bonuses not transferring to pet-bonus pets (dedicated bonuses as the main lever), flat [Bonus to All Pets] damage feeding base attacks, the area-buff exception (Flame Touched) reaching pets in range, the three stances with the v1.2.0.0 default, character-level base-stat growth for all summons, the power factors, player-scaled conversion referencing (global / modifier-local), fumble carry-over, reflection (Blade Spirit and others), and pet attacks not triggering WPS or on-attack procs.
2. Grim Dawn Japanese Wiki: Glossary (Pet) — Confirms the two-family classification (Raven/Hellhound as pet-bonus; Living Shadow as player-bonus).
3. Official Crate Forum: Grim Dawn v1.2.1.6 + Hotfix — Official patch notes for the latest version at the time of the earlier verification.
4. Official Crate Forum: Grim Dawn Version 1.3.1.0 + Hotfixes — Confirms the pet entries of v1.3.1.0 against the original text: baseline pet resists ([Major New Features]), removal of Boss damage bonuses against pets ([Game]), and removal of the Elite/Ultimate pet bonuses plus the base Armor increase for low-armor pets ([Class & Skills]). Individual pet and item numbers were not checked.