You know, stormcaller, deathchill and inferno, those 3.
I guess that since most builds rely alot on lifesteal, using them over Banners doesn’t really help?
But I took my pets for a few rounds with Stormcallers and seem to get similar clear time. So was wondering if anyone else had tried those out and if so, what were the results.
Sparky puppy crucible pics for reference:
https://i.imgur.com/02k14Yn.jpg (Stormcaller beacons Lvl-1, 4x)
https://i.imgur.com/wxOHcDT.jpg (Vanguard banner Lvl-3)
The fact that no build thread ever mentions these should tell you everything.
It doesn’t though, tbh. That is kind of why I am asking.
There could be any number of reasons why they go unused. I could ofcourse do the tests myself, but I figured I might as well save myself some time and effort, not to mention my area of expertise (if you can call it that) is with pets.
Like I said in the OP, the only thing I can see that would make anyone outright say no to them would be Lifesteal not benefiting from them. But we have all kinds of builds in GD, hard to believe no one ever even bothered to try the beacons.
I hardly ever do crucible, but I’ve used them in challenger. They were helpful for me, but I don’t imagine they’d do much for a build that can clear gladiator in 7 minutes. I’d say they’re meant for people leveling in crucible, or people like me who only do it occasionally. They would most likely be a waste of tributes for an expert.
Beacons cost the same as Banners though.
Also, in my test, I used 4 Lvl-1 Beacons, meaning less tributes spent compared to a fully leveled Vanguard banner (5 less). It also actually lowered the clear time by a few seconds, but that could be attributed to the mutators and nemesis combos.
But, pets being pets, can’t be used for drawing conclusions from for the rest of the builds.
I do agree that there is probably a cut-off point regarding beacons/banners where one is clearly better than the other.
Some if the chinese builders use them. IIRC, enemies killed by beacons originally didn’t add towards your final score which affects the rewards of one chest. That was an initial reason why beacons were not used. Idk if this was changed. Vanguard banner (and stonewall, in extension) is indeed more attractive but I saw some chinese videos that used beacons and cleared in 6 mins.
I just meant that the slower you are at clearing, the more time the beacons have to do their thing and the ratio of beacon damage vs player damage is more even. When you’re good enough to clear gladiator in a matter of minutes, the beacon/player ratio is probably pretty low and it might not be worth spending the tributes at all.
That’s pretty interesting about the chinese videos though. Beacons might do more damage than I’m giving them credit for. Like I said, I hardly ever do crucible.
Hm… seems the score thing still stands; Nemesis vs Conquerors chest. Well that clears it up 
It’d be interesting to compare the dps of a beacon with that of the average top tier build. It probably won’t be pretty.
The detailed stats of the beacons are available in Grimtools btw.
For tier 3 beacons:
https://www.grimtools.com/monsterdb/1769/skills
https://www.grimtools.com/monsterdb/1766/skills
https://www.grimtools.com/monsterdb/1772/skills
I did not know this, thanks.
They have some nice debuffs but the damage looks unimpressive. Most of those debuffs don’t stack. The only ones that do stack are on a freeze spell, sigh.
