Are pet builds the game's easy mode?

[malawiglenn]

I knew you would exercise your pedantic behavior and correct me on this one. I just knew, so I didn’t bother to change it. So predictable.

Don’t insult me now

[Zantai]

And we had such a nice thread, it’d be a shame if something happened to it.

[malawiglenn]

But it definitely sparked some interest to revisit some of my older theory-crafted builds.

Sounds great! Pet builds have become much more interesting the last patches

And we had such a nice thread, it’d be a shame if something happened to it.

It’s your fault for not separating between real pets and player scaling “pets” enough in the game!!!

[Maska322]

We can easily fix this, just make every pet scale with pet bonuses
Definitely not Maya alt

[Nery]

We can easily fix this, just make every pet scale with pet bonuses
Definitely not Maya alt

@maya will buy you some ice cream for the idea

[malawiglenn]

every pet scale with pet bonuses

Mortar Traps and Wind devils too??

[Maska322]

Would be fun lol

[Evil_Baka]

Wouldn’t making all pet-scaled pets scale on player stats be better though? Not that it’ll happen for GD but it’d be an interesting prospect for GD2. We might actually see Winter King Tricksters running around with player-scaled Briarthorns/Primal Spirits one day!

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Hard mode is getting up in that demon’s face and beating it to death with your warmaul.

Fantabulous

[thepowerofmediocrity]

Cold Infiltrator is the game’s easy mode.

And once you use that to get enough gear, you then go into super EZ-mode:
Banana beating Crucible 150-170 by walking around and not attacking anything at all.

[malawiglenn]

Cold Infiltrator is the game’s easy mode.

I am playing that one myself, as some kind of “guide review” and you definitely need good piloting skills to pull if off in a similar way as Professor Banana does.

I still think one my next beginner build guides will take the “easy mode” into the next level of memeness

[Nery]

I still think one my next beginner build guides will take the “easy mode” into the next level of memeness

Let me guess, class name starts with ‘‘C’’ and finishes with onjurer? Or you are gonna do retal as well?

But easy mode helps players with getting into game, finding bosses and enjoying your strength. So certainly it’s good for new players to have these options. And pets offers very different and unique experience.

[ya1]

Not sure I agree pet builds are easy. It’s just relatively lately that pet builds monopolized the niche of deep SR super tanks that don’t even bother measuring performance in Crucible. But those guys who actually did those SR120+ know it was everything but easy.

Before that time, chaos pets based on Witching Hour were the very fastest steamroller glass cannons and some of the most skill demanding builds to pilot (had to control movement of both the summoner and - for max DPS - also the pets). Even now making a fast pet build is super hard.

[ya1]

That’s because you are taking a small section of the game and compare that, whereas what you should be doing is to look at it from a broader perspective and see that pets will trivialize more than 90% of what the game has to offer

No beef but the broader perspective would be that all endgame builds trivialize 90% of what the game has to offer.

Pets kill celestials and go deep in SR easier than others. At the cost of clear times. That’s all.

[malawiglenn]

pets will trivialize more than 90% of what the game has to offer, thus they undeniably are the game’s easy mode.

How do you measure that? How much weight do you assign getting to level 100? What amount of % is that for instance? I’d say its 5%

I deny it, I still claim vitality casters as THE easy mode.

[malawiglenn]

I already stated how I measure that in my very first reply in this thread. You are welcome to read it again.

Yes, they are. You can easily get all those things, but as always, you omit the most important aspects (and why they are superior):

1.) You only have to scale 1 attribute (DA), no need for OA aside from the standard you get.
2.) You don’t have to engage in battle yourself, giving you plenty of opportunity to kite and avoid damage.
3.) Your DPS pretty much never goes down, since “you” can deal damage while you are dodging shit.

It’s the core advantage any ranged or pet build has (the former having additional distance to allow more damage before enemy reaches you). Luckily, Crate put at least some thought into that and implemented enemies such as Flesh Hulk with a rush skill, so the game isn’t super dull in the process.

Oh, and the same can be said for DoT builds (at least for the “easier” part), though this is a bit harder to achieve in this game. This is more something you can attribute to PoE.

So how is that 90% of what the game has to offer being quantified here? Game offers 36 dual mastery classes for instance, how can pet builds trivialize that? Am I supposed to make a pet commando?

Level 100 is nothing but a timesink.

That is why it is important to be happy about it and making celebration threads

[medea_fleecestealer]

Ahem.

And we had such a nice thread, it’d be a shame if something happened to it.

Stupid 10 chars

[medea_fleecestealer]

So how is that 90% of what the game has to offer being quantified here? Game offers 36 dual mastery classes for instance, how can pet builds trivialize that? Am I supposed to make a pet commando?

Not a Commando, but …

Bottle Fwuffy - Pet Battlemage

Foreword: If you haven’t seen them, first let me link you to my Fwuffy's Harbinger - Pet Dervish & Crazy Fwuffy - Pet Purifier. A long time ago, someone had challenged me to make a Pet Battlemage, but I don’t remember who it was. All I remember is the challenge itself. And such things do not go unanswered. So, here is the Pet Battlemage in all its glory and all its horror. [Pet] [1.1.6.2] (g3) (sr+) Bottle Fwuffy - Pet Battlemage (Maya) Damage: Pets Active Skills: Summon Skeletal Se…

[malawiglenn]

You are welcome to discuss this thread any further with me as long as you drop your antagonizing demeanor and actually offer a civil discussion. Otherwise, I will simply not respond to any of your posts.

So, who started this? In fact, that behavior is called “baiting” IIRC

I knew you would exercise your pedantic behavior and correct me on this one. I just knew, so I didn’t bother to change it. So predictable.

You are still most welcome to explain how 90% of what the game has to offer is to be quantified according to you. What the game has to offer is subjective to a high extent.

I still think, that even for a fresh noob - a vitality caster will carry them much further than what a pet build would (unless they are willing to spend some time reading and following guides of course). Hence vitality caster is THE easy mode, imo.

Pets do not trivialize things, there are some aspects that make them easier and more forgiving in nature than other build archetypes, but there are also things that make them harder (in particular on the theory side of things).

I mean you did not even know that damage dealing devotions can be binded to pets and thus scale with +%pet dmg, or that Mogdrogen devotion is used in generic pet builds for the speed proc. You could also argue “well I did not even have to know those things, my pet build performed great anyway” and that is fine - I can tell you basically the same with vitality casters (which I have helped quite a few ppl with gearing and building up), even though they had no idea what kinds of RR stacks, importance of DA, armor absorb, over-capping resistances etc, they still manage to plow through content after content just because of the nature of vitality damage and life steal (and did I mention the easily accessible Dark One set, and easy to farm MI’s?). BUT they did not had to bother with either kiting nor finding and fiddling with gear that provides defensive stats for themselves AND stats for their pets.

Helping noobs with pet builds is too complicated for me, too many things to explain and for them to remember xD That is one reason why I consider vitality builds to be THE easy mode.

[Maya]

We can easily fix this, just make every pet scale with pet bonuses
Definitely not Maya alt

@maya will buy you some ice cream for the idea

Ice Cream bought, but was eaten right after

Somebody should lock this thread before Maya sees it.

Too late

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Now as for the thread itself, I think I will stay out of this one and just enjoy the popcorn. Also, the best way to find out whether something is easy or hard is to just do it yourself and see. That way, no need to bicker back and forth about whose opinion is correct

Now then,

[TheBigHam]

Pet mode=ice cream mode confirmed