With this change Hellhound becomes a lot more powerful since the amulet and main hand slots are unlocked. However the beastcaller set is still is one of the worst ones in the game in terms of the stats it gives you.
The only generic %damage you get is behind a 60% uptime proc. Since the big pet rebalance patch pets became very reliant on stacking a lot of %damage, which is the reason vit/chaos dominate at the moment.
The removal of the crit damage makes a build that wants to use briarthorn as their main pet even worse. Briarthorn has been the most underwhelming pet in terms of main damage output for a while now and has mostly been relegated to a one pointer tank for it’s aura.
Briarthorn MI’s were nerfed a lot back when briarthorn was good and it feels like some slots don’t provide much value. Main hand especially doesn’t really provide anything for briarthorn aside from cold/acid convert, which again is anti synergistic with beastcaller’s pet bonuses. I think buffing Briarthorn specific MIs and legendaries is the best approach for bringing Briarthorn back to relevancy. Maybe even adding new modifiers to some of the less used pet items.
Phys pets really need something special to make them a viable option (a lot more %damage imo). Enemy armour is a big problem for pets due to the nature of your damage being divided between multiple pets. Maybe adding pet stats to Bear could be an interesting approach.
Not much to go on in this thread. No data, no build(s), no run times, no comparison to make your argument that the removal of % Crit damage was detrimental.
This is a mastery combo set, not a mono-Briarthorn set and that is what it’s being balanced around.
May it be possible to change pet sets to tri mastery combo set? I mean sets supporting 2 pet mastery and 1 other mastery, to make pet spellbinded, pet pyromancer, pet druid, pet trickster or pet deathknight more available/playable. Though we already have some gears supporting them, it’s not enough at all. They are all meme builds. These semi-pet mastery combo need more support to be available.
p.s. especially druid, whose name gives people a stereotypical impression of pet.
I wouldn’t say that the set is one of the worst pet set in the game considering the set theme/focus is on pets defensive attributes and cc resist, it can also be used as dual physical/bleeding damage with minimal effort like this to be more offensive:
By changing the pants and one of the ring it can even reach 22/22 on both Emboldening Presence and Mogdrogen’s Pact.
I like the idea of giving 3rd mastery support, Druid Beastcaller, could be a DOT Internal Trauma pet build, with Overload converted to IT by that elemental to physical pet belt. Warlock can gain extra IT from Infernal Breath and Lightning Strike. The Arcanist part can also give flat OA+DA reduction to Nullification for easier debuff.
If I had to make an educated guess I think beastcaller may be the strongest pet set now, but it’s frustratingly difficult to tell until pet damage over time stacks properly again. Trying to quantify a bleed build using this set is now basically impossible.
I think it is if you try to max out hellhound’s ember claw considering at the time, beastcaller wasn’t very good when it came down to aoe. With the extra hound, it should be in line with most well known aoe builds
