Quite frankly, its weird that such an item exists because there is no actual ‘routing’ that makes it fun or effective to use. At least none that is obvious to me. I don’t understand the intention or optimal use case for this item given that there is no viable melee-tank pet builds by design as you end up losing character specific boosts for pet damage, let alone the boost to ‘chaos damage’ which is for… what?
Honestly I love this game, have about 500 hours in it, but even to this day there are some items that exist in it that are kind of remarkably ‘homeless’ in some regards, or their use case is entirely outside of my own particular interest or imagination.
But further I think more to the point that, I think I don’t understand how you are even suppose to make viable pet builds that are functional enough to be fun to use in their optimal configuration. Like, the underlying intention of ‘how’ its suppose to works is interesting! Basically you trade character stats for pet stats, but reductively speaking you always end up in a situation where you are forced to choose empowering your pets or your character to be viable. And even then, your pets are not viable unless you go all in as their damage will never scale high enough to feel meaningfully powerful.
Further, if you are not Occultist, you miss out on important tools to make pets actually dangerous. Such as their last two passive buffs, Manipulation specifically as Total Speed on pets is the only meaningful ‘break point’ for DPS they can have and ends up being the only stat that matters. This is for 2 reasons: They move faster to the enemy, they attack faster.
I am not sure exactly ‘how’ pets are suppose to even WORK or ‘feel’ good to use when you can’t really ‘use’ them unless you go ‘all in’ on everything related to pets.
The things I like about the potential of pet builds: The pets themselves being actual critters with their own HP that persist. Thats really cool! That feels like you could do a lot with that! But the game is very punishing to you as a player if you try to indulge the systems in relation, because again, you have to go ‘all in’ or not at all to get the most out of them at least to an extent they are statistically meaningful in terms of DPS.
All roads basically lead you to a bootleg version of the Summoner Necromancer from Diablo II. Which isn’t terrible, but certainly disappointing.
“chance on attack” doesn’t mean melee attacks or weapon hits, it means “anything” offensive you do towards enemies, cast spells, 0 dmg debuffs etc
aside from that, have you taken a look at other pet builds? I guarantee you they are worthwhile, strong or good potential, but it might take some browsing to get the hang on if raw wall headbutt practice isn’t your thing. Maya, top20, Duskdeep, Thepowerofmediocrity, GSasylum and even Automator has all posted lots of pet builds, some with more or less instructions on how to get going.
and ofc our famous hybrid hero gargabolo
As it is right now, blue items do not really exist.
They are were almost all bad and over the last couple years have only caught the global nerfs (pass-through removal, phys res removal, current faction ring massacre) and never any adequate compensation.
Now there’s only a handful or two of non-set epics left that sometimes enable a build, another handful or two that sometimes get used to fill a slot.
The item (re-)balancing efforts of the game are single-mindedly going towards legendary sets, sometimes MIs. I doubt that’s ever gonna change, as “Awakening” epics seems to be the “fix” for the dumpsterfire that is the current state of epic items.
Trying to build around a random blue item right now is going to create a passable meme build at best.
Maybe this item gets a decent awakened version in FoA.
Yes, that’s how pets work, but also how practically all other builds work.
Not really the game where you suddenly swap from a ranged to a melee build or from a lightning build to a fire build, if the situation requires it.
GD is more: “Choose a mechanic you like and make the most out of that mechanic”.
*less than peak optimal “fun” items or filler items existing is also ok (imo) just because black hand proc isn’t “bis” doesn’t mean it has 0 use
totally okay chaos pet build levelling item even if you plan to transition into something more “minmax maxed optimal” weapon slot at end
Thanks so much for the build!
Really like the concept!
Somehow reminds of old school Dark Avenger class from early days of Lineage II
I wonder if I could level it as is in HC
Bookmarked, prolly gonna try one day.
Ah, thank you for the insight. This might help Solve the mystery. Also ironically side eyeing that its a sentinel because literally every rare item for oathkeeper is Something Acid Something. Which, is annoying in a meta way to me ahahah. Feels overrepresented in a way thats kind of cringe. Even if its a fancy key to many doors. I should just go Sentinel.
Also thank for the other posts other folks. I didn’t know blue items were considered a bit off kilter. To be honest I love the blue items on principal. I feel the ledgendaries are a bit ‘flattening’ in terms of build identity.
just realized my build has a mistake in it, it has kraken in devotion, probably best replaced with crossroads + stag, this allows replacing the seal of might component on the shield with an offensive one for more damage.
Also this item actually has an upgrade mythical black scourge, but i think for this particular build the blue item is better, since as long as all physical dmg is converted the base dmg of a mace is much higher.
No I tested it, it was actually a modification of a build i already had ingame, that is why I got it so quickly, performance is similar to hybrid pet builds i have recently posted with full guides and rated as SR30
Not to disparage your efforts in finding hybrid-pet builds. It’s certainly not an easy job.
But the hybrids do perform at 30-40% of the efficacy of normal builds.
Could easily lead to disappointment, if the expectation is “can easily do SR 30-31 runs within the timer” and the reality is “can technically clear SR 30 if you play carefully and patiently”.
Generally my builds don’t have to be played carefully, because I wouldn’t be able to play them, I’m very bad at evading. You should not aggro 2 nemesis with them tho. Typically 7-8 minutes will be left on the SR30 timer.
Also i think hybrid pet builds will benefit from the new SR changes, but i haven’t tested that.
I sincerely doubt that, as the timer is now starting at 4 minutes and it’s hard to gain time, especially when you can’t clear large packs quickly.
You either finish the shard in sub 5:30 or you are out of time.
The “Nemesis give fewer points, heroes give more” is notable, but has very little impact on the actual run time imo. Especially if you didn’t have a special strategy and were just “playing the game normally” in SR.
Funnily enough, now you sometimes have two defeat 2 Nemesis bosses to get enough points, if the Shard has 2 of them early enough and not a lot of heroes around.
Running around avoiding Nemesis encounters is still a huge waste of time.
Hey, I’m just starting leveling this in HC.
Had a quick glance at augments and there isn’t a signle one from Barrowholm.
Is it safe so assume I can go smashing their guts with this character? I mean purely from a “faction” standpoint. If I don’t strictly need them for anything I would gladly go against them, because most of my other character are friendly for augments. And I really wanna have at least one where I’m not siding with them.
Figured this could be the one.
yes that is pretty safe, the only reason I could possibly think of is they have a ring that can be a temporary quick fix for a lack of vitality resistance on pets.
order of deaths vigil has augments for that so maybe prefer them over kymon for this (but even without order it is probably manageable).
just because black hand proc isn’t “bis” doesn’t mean it has 0 use