A lot of pet items are bloated with OA

As i started playing i was drawn to fiddle with pets alongside player-only skills. Learning more about the game mechanics itself and looking at the forum i noticed those hybrids are not realizeable cause of lack of stats. There are some niche builds wich can carry you through MC but nothing that can beat cruci 170 or reach higher shards consistently.

You are questioning the OA on those items, i have rather asked to boost offense with %dmg on more pet items to make the OA worthwhile to be there :sweat_smile:

Have made my own peace with it by the topic being a design choice. Still hoping something would be done to make offensive stats worthwhile to take and making distinct hybrid builds not only a meme.

Am a bit surprised by seeing someone else posting about this. So i am glad not being alone on that one.

2 Likes

The biggest meme is pet items with “X% Chance on Enemy Death”, like Bonescavenger’s Deathgrips
Expecting characters to have a decent chance of stealing a kill from their pets is just cruel.

7 Likes

That’s also an option, yes. Although it’s unlikely a boost to %dmg and/or OA would improve viability of such builds. I mean, there are builds that use a bunch of items with skill modifiers, 3k OA/DA, 2500+% dmg and still can be demolished by endgame content. One can say that not everything should be endgame viable, but then again why bother dealing damage by yourself if pets do just the same, but better? There’s no reason to max out Doom Bolt if it will deal 5% damage to a boss, while pets will shred him in 10 seconds.

Anyway, thanks for your input!

Yes, exactly! If they were changed to “on crit”, then at least having high enough OA would be somewhat justified.

3 Likes

I’m glad such unusual items exist. They can inspire somebody to try something different, create a new character or at least scratch their heads and ponder about mechanics.

I also like non-meta items, you can find real gems. Gavel of Ravenous Souls is one of them. But are there any builds that use it? Haven’t seen one. But I have a build revolving entirely around this weapon. It has bad resists, rather low health and OA/DA problems. So it needs to rely on 4 MIs with crazy rolls and Callagadras helmet. But damage should be great. Can’t post it right now, since I don’t have a single MI needed.

At the same time my pet build has more OA that will never find use. I’d rather have those 200 extra on above mentioned build I have than on Lost Souls cabalist.

1 Like

yes, we’re all scratching our heads here thinking what the heck with pet items that they’re bloated with useless OA instead of %armor/DA.

1 Like

For the most part, in my efforts in making pet builds, there have been very few times where I haven’t had sufficient armor / DA. I found that the extra OA is just there - the main thing is that you want to have at least not terrible OA so that attacks that have a damaging component - like Bone Harvest - do not miss completely and make things even more awful for you.

I’d like to have at least one more major pet item feedback thread before the last patch, but those are exhausting to do and no one really comments on them anyhow. If there are any egregiously bad items, I can focus on them, but the buffs to Hellhound have made things better from the equipment standpoint.

3 Likes

First things first, let me just say that the things @Nola comes up with is just plain amazing when it comes to Hybrid Pet builds and the Birb is more than just a little envious :3

That aside, personally my problem with such things on Pet items is simply the fact that they end up being handicaps if you decide to make something unique or interesting out of it.

Like for eg: I can try to make a Pet build with 3k OA, but then what? Can use it to proc things that rely on Crit Chance ofcourse, but will such a build rival a proper pet build?
Before anyone asks, when I say “proper” think of it as me saying “meta”.

Now, does every build need to be equally strong? I would say yes, but I understand it is not Zantai’s approach to things and that there is a better chance of me abandoning Pets for Non Pet builds rather than convince Z to come out of his “homogeneity badd, brrr!!!” stance.

But if you browse through pet builds (can’t say about non pets since I rarely look into them), you’d notice that they all follow the use of a handful number of items, devotions, skills etc as core and rarely deviate from them. Mostly because if you pursue true variety, you would simply end up gimping your builds.

Set bonuses and the individual item pieces still play a big role as most of the buffs are locked behind them. Like for eg; if you are going for a Briarthorn based build, it would make no sense to deliberately ignore BeastCaller’s set as no other combination of items will provide you enough stats for anyone to even consider it.

GD has plenty of variety inspite of all that, but as a builder I am not so sure that most of the players who make use of my builds want something “weak” just to have a sense of being different from the norm. And if I am to provide them with something that is actually strong, I find myself gravitating more and more towards the usual.

As a player, thanks to GDStash and Grimtools existing, I can Conjure up builds faster than I can eat Ice Cream and so I have the freedom to experiment and make, edit, discard builds as fancy strikes. But if I were playing without GDStash and had to actually farm for hours upon end to gather items to make something, I would have no inclination to go for something that is essentially a “Meme” over much safer and saner choices. Infact, if anything I would be scared to make something that is not a Conjurer due to fear of ending up with something useless because a patch had a drastic change.

Ofcourse, it doesn’t make much of an issue if you consider that most of the playerbase play the game casually and may not even do Main Campaign in difficulties other than Normal/Veteran, since pretty much anything and everything works for Story mode. But given that balancing is being done more and more based on all these top min-maxed builds made by a handful of people, while it doesn’t make much of an issue, it doesn’t make much of a sense either.

Now, considering that my thoughts regarding actual pet items which conflict with Sets pretty much steer towards the same, I am not sure exactly how valid my criticism should be considered as. But if we are to use Sets as Core and build around them, then I rather see items that complement Sets rather than Conflict with them. And if we are to use non Set items as standalone, without having to rely on Set bonuses, then it feels like a major Shift in Power needs to happen where Set items and the bonuses they provide become something “interesting”(like Conduits for example) rather than a Requirement.

4 Likes

Thanks for thorough explanation of your vision!

Totally agree. Besides, we would need more OA than the items in the list provide, so this means we will hinder pet bonuses (and even player’s stats as well) by chosing non-pet augments for example, or devotions. And all of three main pet masteries provide us with OA already through Blood of Dreeg, Master of Death + Spirit Binding, Emboldening Presence (as well as Shepherd’s Call). But all we get in the end is… Bone Harvest critting for 20k once in a blue moon? Why would we want that in the first place? Wouldn’t Blood Knight with pseudo-pets be better?

And DA is not necesserely a problem. I have a Beastcaller Conjurer that is very sturdy overall, but died a couple of times in SR 65 because of CC-locked by Moosie and Benny. So I’d rather have trap and freeze res on pet items, cuz they don’t exactly grow on trees.

1 Like

I feel like some people on this forum need to review what homogeneity is. It comes up an awful lot in nonsensical ways.

Hybrid pet builds are a weak point in the GD build spectrum, I freely admit that we did not hit the mark with that play style and realistically probably won’t at this point in the game’s life cycle.

Are hybrid builds viable for most content? Sure. Will they be setting records or make the list for endgame suggestions? Unlikely. Could the issue be addressed at this point? Not without some serious review and likely undesirable repercussions echoing across other builds (Cough Bane of the Winter King Cough).

We’ve heard that opinion about pets and sets for a while, so we are taking steps to reduce the impact of sets on pet builds with the next update.

This will largely come by taking some of the power pet sets provide and baking it into baseline stats for pets from all sources. Bonuses such as increased summon limits for the non-skeletons in the room will remain the domain of sets however as that much power simply cannot be on a single gear slot, history has shown that gets out of control fast.

Baking increased summon limits into the base skills could happen, but not without significant rebalancing, which is ill-advised at this point. It would not be as simple as cutting the base damage of those pets in half as anyone building pets knows well that each additional pet has major implications for endgame damage scaling. Not to mention that halved damage would be undesirable for the leveling phase.

Maybe consider for a moment that those stats are not budgeted the same way on pet items. Some stats are there as a bonus, not taking up stat budget from “more desirable” bonuses.

7 Likes

I am just using it because the word gets used as an argument against balance requests and personally I am of the opinion that it should be irrelevant or even purposefully ignored if needed.

Essentially all I ask for or am asking for even if my wording might have pointed to something else, is pretty much how the 3 races work in Starcraft(I don’t like SC2 and will argue BroodWar as the best iteration, but that is for a different place and time). Yes, I am comparing an RTS to an ARPG and balancing 3 races with a handful of units to hundreds of different items along with all the skills, devotions etc creating the potential variability of a multitude of options. But it is easier for me to do it since I am not the one in charge of actually having to deal with the balancing and can easily avoid the headache.

But to put it into GD’s terms and in the context of pets, For eg; I would want Skeletons to swarm Callagadra while Blightfiends explode repeatedly in its face, Reap Spirits doing what they do right now, Familiars acting as mobile turrets and shooting it down from a distance while you kite, Briarthorns straight up getting in its face along with the Primal Spirit, Hellhounds doing… I am not sure what niche they are supposed to fill yet, so I will just leave them as support for Familiars.

However, in the end, I would want all of them to be able to tackle Callagadra with similar levels of efficiency even if using/employing different tactics. Is that Homogeneity? If so, I have a problem against it and if not, I suppose I have no reason to bring it up further.

Yet Hybrid Pet items continue to remain as they are without seeing any change.

On Death or On Crit procs could be changed to On Attack or On Hit even regarding things like Deathgrips or the infamous Dracarris, which last saw its time in the spotlight back in [1.0.0.9] Dracarris Incarnate - Pet/Fire Hybrid Pyromancer, 6s Mad Queen, Solo Gladiator Extra Spawn

Or, the most recent one I can think of being the Ghol set’s gloves proc’ing spiders on Crit. Ofcourse, one can go the other way and make OA easier to access on Pet builds if the On Crit function is to remain, but asking for the player to get the kills on a Pet build is unrealistic.

Bane of the Winter King, personally atleast feels like it is fine actually. Maybe a little bit of nudge on the pet part to make it more attractive, but it is still usable even for endgame purposes. Perhaps not on a Pet Trickster, but on a Pet Conjurer for eg; more than viable though if I am allowed to be greedy, I would ask for Mana regen or CDR on it, atleast Mana Regen…

Personally, I would prefer all the hybrid options to be changed to either Pet or Player or having 2 different versions to satisfy both crowds, but that would mean more work in balancing both though.

Extra summon limit being a Set Bonus is fine and I do not argue that scaling can get out of hand due to multiplicative effect of Flat damage, not to mention having multiple bodies in the field to tank for you has another advantage of its own. And I rather not see early game gutted just to make endgame more viable either.

Ofcourse, personally I would like to atleast try and see if making extra summon limit a part of going 26/16 on a Pet would be workable or not, but summon limit is technically not the problem.

My issue with it is simply that if I make a build without using the 4 piece Set bonus, it feels like I deliberately gimped myself regardless of how I try to make up for it using other items. If I can find other items to provide the build a comparable amount of strength, that would make up for it. But so far, even going that route tends to favour individual items of the Sets rather than standalone ones.

One question I have asked myself regarding Sets vs Non-Sets however, is how to make the full Set attractive then if Non Set items provide similar levels of power. And if they do not, Sets will continue to dominate endgame while non set items act as placeholders until then.

Hence why I brought up the case of Conduits as I vaguely remember them being considered as something to enable weird, out of the box and quirky builds. Endgame Pet sets are limited in number, but I am not sure how reasonable it might be at this stage and yet, that is what I personally think Set bonuses should gravitate towards > Enabling builds otherwise impossible, but not necessarily stronger than the non set options.

But at this point it is more just spewing out all the things that come into mind, so I will just wait for the next patch to see how it turns out I guess. Meanwhile, I still haven’t forgiven you for taking away my Blightbombs and instead I will be heading off to make Puppies Explode. (Hellhound buff feels nice even though I don’t want to admit it)

1 Like

The easiest thing i could get to is giving alldmg% to pet items across the board (like on ghol and bysmiel). maybe adding here and there some other offensive stat too (some devos). It would not change any pet builds or non-ones, but give hybrids some room to breathe.

At least consider for GD2 pets to be also played alongside player skills. That really would be awesome to experience.

Thanks for the masterpiece of a game. Its a real beauty on its own!

I know people were complaining about pet balancing and stuff for a long time, but hell, didn’t want you guys to put up even more work than you already did. But I guess we’ll see what you have in store for us in future update(s), then.

But can at least pet affixes be changed to have CC resists for player - especially trap and freeze? This will prove useful for those elusive hybrid builds as well =)

Do not think they make meaningful impact on pets in general. Would still be nice to see them if they thematically fit to the item i guess… mhh

Looking at https://www.grimtools.com/petdb/ recently made me realize innate pet resists are worth to consider when building… There also 3rd page resists listed! @XandeRoot

Example:
Occultist’s Hellhound
grafik
grafik

Edit: Raven has 500% trap res lol :slight_smile:
grafik

4 Likes

For pets, they don’t. Except for maybe Freeze Res for when you get Moosi in high SR.

But for the player, both are useful.

1 Like

Hm, I didn’t even know that deathgrips worked like that - used them on a pet-ritualist and always had these small spirits run around together with my big ones :slight_smile:
Not sure how I was able to consistently deal the killing blow instead of my pets though. Maybe the DoTs from reap spirit? Those were quite strong despite being a fully pet-focused character.
(Though I only played story content and just up to SR 25 to grab the skillpoints, self-found character, so can’t speak about endgame, but the item worked completely fine for me).

Depends on the build. If you have enough AoE, DoTs or high damage nukes (the Reap Spirit skill itself being one of them), you can proc it. But if you are consistently proc’ing them that is an indicator that your pets are not doing enough damage.

I meant for players. Forgot to specify that, oops. Edited my post =)

1 Like

I haven’t had the chance to work with the Briarthorn Winter King Ghol’s build that’s posted before, but I’d love to see whether the changes you have in mind for the pet set / non-set dichotomy could end up buffing all non-Beastcaller builds. I’d be excited to see the ramifications of that for sure.

The main problem with making hybrid builds work is that the skill synergy is simply not there. There are a few items that give bonuses to both Blight Fiends + Dreeg’s Evil Eye, but DEE is a bit underperforming at the moment, and there’s a whole lot of skill points to invest for a mastery that has both Raven and Hellhound. Something like Blight Fiends + Ravenous Earth would be interesting, but items like the Yugol rings give bonuses to Foul Eruption, which is just a bad skill, period.

Now that Occultist’s Hellfire gives flat Fire Damage, giving Demo items pet bonuses is practically worthless outside of trying a double Flat damage Fire pets Pyro. Even there, the Pyro skills you’d have to focus are either Thermite Mines for the RR (which a lot of items conflict with pet items) or Blackwater Cocktail (which has no synergy with pet items). With the proper synergy, anything could work, but you need the gear support to make it possible, and greens can only do so much (and even then, there’s only 1-2 green suffixes that give pet resistances, which drastically limit what you can equip for pet builds).

This topic was automatically closed 90 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.