The Raven summon simply isn’t cutting it. It doesn’t do enough damage for the points spent, it misses all the time, the AI makes it cancel attacks/act completely insane/not at all–it needs a complete rework.
As I was raised to never complain without having solutions, however here are a series of solutions that I feel will make the ability balanced and viable:
1) Make the pet scale off of champion stats, not pet stats.
Reasoning: it doesn’t really take damage anyway, and this will make it a good options for people that may not want to run a full +pet bonus build but still have a bird.
2) Make it an invulnerable, energy reserved summon.
Reasoning: Again, it doesn’t really take damage, anyway
3) Remove electrocute damage and change autoattack to regular lightning bolt (the one from the sky) OR chain lightning 3-5 targets.
Reasoning: this solves all the problems with it hitting its targets and/or makes the damage much more reliable once it is in position to start hitting them.
4) Change mend flesh to an aura. Something like "The raven channels eldritch energies to mend the flesh of wounded allies and protects them from death. Increases healing by 1 + 1%. Casts a shield for (X) hp that absorbs all damage with (Y) cooldown when your champion reaches 40% hp.
Reasoning: right now, it often currently doesn’t work/get cast at all. Additionally, the shield represents the damage the crow would’ve tanked/taken for you if it was actually agroable and took damage.
5) Change storm spirit to an aura, or significantly increase the aoe, and force cast every (X) cooldown (so long as it has spirit available).
Reasoning: currently either doesn’t cast and/or misses. This solves both problems.
6) Change lightning strike to modify basic attacks with electrocute damage and give a chance to stun, or a guaranteed stun every (X) seconds on next auto.
Reasoning: 100% solves all the reliability issues currently experienced.
If your raven is missing its attacks then you’re not stacking enough OA from buffs/pet gear or -DA debuffs. My own raven does excellent damage with its attacks, assuming its projectiles don’t get blocked by random doodads.
The AI is a sore point for everyone.
The raven also scales with caster level. It has ~9k base HP at skill level 1 and caster level 85, iirc. That’s decent for something that usually gets ignored in ultimate, and you can simply resummon it if it dies.
See 1. I see no reason to make it invulnerable.
It has been suggested before. As I mentioned, raven AI is a sore point for everyone.
Not my experience, my raven spams this whenever my HP falls below a certain %. Very problematic if I wanted the raven to attack mobs instead. Would be nice if it was was changed into a heal over time so the raven only needs to cast it occasionally.
Not my experience, the raven uses Storm Spirit on itself/my character whenever possible. The problem with the skill is the tiny AoE. It also seems to prefer attacking/healing instead of using Storm Spirit in combat, unless you’re moving.
Lightning Strike is going to need a lot more than that to be useful, considering skillpoint cost and the presence of devotion procs. I’ve already submitted my own suggestions regarding skills like Lightning Strike and Infernal Breath in the feedback section. These skills need to be upgraded into an Exclusive, for people only interested in a particular minion.
Also, your suggestion would backfire since it would draw attention to the raven. You use the raven either as a buffer (or possibly debuffer, spreading debuffing devotion procs) in which case you want to draw as little attention to it as possible; or as an extra DPS source, in which case you’re better off giving it an offensive devotion proc instead of leveling Lightning Strike.
There’s certainly a need for the familiar to be redone. Nobody in the history of Grim Dawn will ever max the entire skill line because it honestly feels like you’ve just gimped yourself hard. Also because the pet plays more of a support role. If used offensively you would probably max lightning strike and the familiar itself but leave the rest as one pointers. Etc.
The chain lightning idea as a main attack has been brought up before. It’s direct attack now just requires the player to reposition the familiar if it try’s to attack enemies through objects/walls etc. But this gets annoying really quickly.
Some of your ideas are a little on the OP side however, not that I would mind if they were all added as I tend to overlook the familiar these days.
Regards 4) The % health that the Raven heals at all depends on whether you have it set to aggressive, defensive etc, I cannot remember what the thresholds are for the 3 pet modes, but it did used to be a different amount of % health on each one.
The Raven was a Druid skill in D2, and that version is nowhere near as useful or as powerful as the GD Raven. The OP brings up a few very good points but obviously lacks experience in using the Raven effectively in the first place.
My complaint with the Raven is pretty simple: I want it to heal my other pets, and the dumb thing won’t. If its AI is set to defensive, it should heal them when their health drops below 50% in combat or if their health is not 100% outside of combat.
I think it’d be really neat if it had two modifiers at the end of the tree that allows you to drastically tailor it’s capabilities as you wish. Without selecting a modifier it behaves and is more or less how it is now.
Say, with one modifier, the model becomes ethereal, or made of raw lightning and it forgoes all capability of dealing damage in exchange for becoming invincible and having significantly stronger party buffs.
And with the other, the model becomes bipedal, like a raven-harpy, and drops all buffs to become a powerful nuker/spellcaster, easily on par with the other stronger pets.
Since every conjurer basically runs the same Briarthorn/Hellhound and Revenant group, it could provide a compelling reason to choose the Raven Familiar, in either of its forms over any of the others.
Allow the storm orbs it fires to phase through obstacles. (Lower the damage if need be. Might take less work than giving the raven better AI.)
Convert Mend Flesh into an always active AoE regen. It won’t have the same cool factor as a full heal, but at least it will heal pets. Right now the AI is really messed up for Mend Flesh.
Convert Mend Flesh into an always active AoE regen. It won’t have the same cool factor as a full heal, but at least it will heal pets. Right now the AI is really messed up for Mend Flesh.
I like the idea of an aoe heal, but regen is boring and overused. I think something like a low cooldown aoe pulse heal would be kinda fun. Of course, compared to how the skill is now it might need to be toned down slightly since it is designed as a single target heal.
An area of effect regeneration effect… like blood of dreeg, which sits just above the raven in the skill tree and does exactly what you just described?