Most of the feedback regarding pets has traditionally been focused around specific builds and how they perform in end-game scenarios. With tougher challenges punishing specific playstyles, however, the need to establish an identity within the game is more apparent than ever. With Callagdra specifically designed to punish close-range gameplay, the fact that nearly all pets operate in melee range make their state a lot flimsier than they used to be, and with more content around the corner, I wanted to bring up an idea to make the pets more distinct in their roles.
Shaman’s Briarthorn: Was originally meant to be the “tank” pet with higher base resistances than most and a big Ground Slam taunt, but with the current changes bringing it down, it’s more like a Bleed DoT applicator and aura buffer?
Occultist’s Raven: Meant to be a long-range fighter with a big long-range Lightning attack, but the Defensive stance doesn’t allow for pets to focus on long-range fighting. The aggressive stance just puts the Raven in melee range to focus on shotgunning big targets with its projectiles; but runs into the same problems as other melee range pets.
Occultist’s Hellhound: The most versatile pet, as it can take on 2 roles: either simply maxing the base skill and using CDR equipment to turn them into bombers, or maxing out all of its nodes and making it an “off-tank” pet with a taunt and internal damage reduction with Infernal Breath. It’s very equipment heavy to maximize all of its nodes, but you’re rewarded with a pet with huge damage potential.
Necromancer’s Skeletons: Sheer numbers. The potential of having the highest DPS, and great AoE if you bind a low-CD devotion to them. They are supposed to be designed to be disposable, with resummoning a necessary evil.
And now, the Blight Fiends. There are 3 nodes, so there is extensive equipment requirements, but Rotting Fumes just seems like a useless node now. There’s often enough pet OA for the DA shred to not matter, and with nasty monsters preferring close-range ground effects instead of direct attacking, the fumble and impaired aim debuffs also do not matter. Blight Burst is a big AoE, but that all depends on how much survivability they have, as it has a rather long cooldown between uses.
Also, its base skill has an on-death proc just like the Hellhound, but the Hellhounds explosion has twice the flat damage of the Blight Fiends, which includes the Blight Fiends Poison ticks, and doesn’t include the Hellhound explosion’s 185% Weapon damage. There is a transmuter that allows you to summon 3 Blight Fiends, but with an uptime so small that it’s unlikely to stack the on-death procs.
So all in all, you have yet another melee pet on a class with no pet Phys Resistance that’s far less tanky than the Briarthorn, has a barf attack that’s short ranged and requires yet more melee, and more reliable AoE but without the sick damage potential either the Hellhound nor the Skeletons have.
So with many monsters being so dangerous close-up and many pets being forced into that dangerous range just to function, how can we improve the Blight Fiend so they aren’t effectively a worse version of the Briarthorn or Hellhound? They can’t tank well, they can’t DPS well, they’re only useful for Poison stacking, which performs much worse than other DoTs like Bleed stacking, and their designed set (Ghol’s) performs much worse than Beastcaller’s or Lost Souls.
Anyone have any suggestions that doesn’t involve redesigning their AI or attack patterns?
