Just getting back into the game after a long hiatus. Trying to get familiar with the changed mechanics and new classes.
Figured I’d start fresh and roll up a pet build just to kick off some easy farming for later characters. I’m running a Cabalist with 7 points in Blight Fiend and 6 in Hellhound. I may be jumping the gun on this but what’s striking to me is the damage output difference between the two.
Now I’ve been around for forever and it seems like the Blight Fiend is at the power levels that the Hellhound was first at. Yet the Hellhound is where it is DPS-wise due to nerfs as cited by the devs that it just too easily crushed everything starting out. So I guess that leads me to a two part set of questions.
Why is the Blight fiend dealing 3x the damage the Hellhound does starting out (at similar point investment) and get an additional AoE ability rolled into the basic ability?
Does the power gap close between the two and if it does, at what point does that gap close?
I kinda jumped over your post, not reading everything, but I have a superior idea for you. Add your Blight Friend (I know it’s Fiend) 1/12/1 and Hellhound 1/1/12/1. There’s not much sense of maxing out the ability itself, but some of their upgrades.
First upgrade of BF, the one I recommend to add 12 points into, reduces DA of all enemies hit, Hellhound’s second upgrade, again the one that I recommend to spend 12 points, is a buff which increases damage and works for everyone (friendly units only). Later on you can drop the hellhound buff and add to something else, because it might be kind of weak later, but for leveling it’s okay-ish.
You can do the same with the Bird (Summon Familiar) - add the second upgrade to the max (12 points) which is again a buff that increases damage. This one is very good if you go elemental damage.
They have different purposes.
Blight Fiend is probably the tankiest pet in the game, does ok aoe damage and has a strong but non-stackable DA debuff. This last ability is the only thing that affects your other pets.
Hellhound on the other hand has Hellfire, which gives flat damage to all of your pets (and you) and if you have a lot of pets it’s extremely strong.
//On a sidenote i have to mention it’s Blazing Death ability too, which deals huge aoe when the hellhound dies (which it also does when you resummon it not just when it’s killed). With the right items, you can get hellhounds cooldown under 2 seconds, resulting in a rather gimmickly but very fun build of what i call the “exploding doggo” (after the tabletop card game “exploding kittens”)//
Nah, tankiest pet is Briarthorn