Oh, really, so you guys are the “Justice” one? Hahh 
Look at what you’ve done.
Are you suing this matter on foreign forums because foreigners don’t know how Master Yu misled players? To ensure the explanation of Master Yu’s mistake, we naturally need to circulate it among each other.
Tons of, huh.
Apparently we doxxed him. News to us.
If you really want to win, then you have won. Be sure to tell everyone not to learn the builds of toxic clique, not to learn the 19 builds released by GD中山狼, the 25 builds released by 龙三立, the 18 builds released by KiJearNox, the 16 builds released by 瘫得药思, the over 4 retaliate builds(some others are hidden by them) released by sduduh and Kingred424, the 3 pet builds released by 张大侠别摸鱼了, the Berserker levelling guide released by 再见Libra, and the game mechanics analysis released by 猫猫虫韭菜. Instead, learn the tons of 5 builds released by Dustdeep, and the 0 builds you released. You are the most creative, responsible, and selfless.
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Let’s keep things civil here folks and I still don’t see any posts doing what was actually asked for.
Share gt links or save files for them so the devs can take a look.
It’s actually hard to say. Pet builds don’t have to let the character itself to suffer from Vinn’s endless projectiles, Nyarlathon’s Mark of Doom, Shriek’s Aether Trap(holy who the hell come up with this), or any other crazy skills. If the pets die just resummon. And this could have been an undeniable advantage of pet builds over character builds, and I don’t think something like nerfing pet builds could change this. It is these unreasonable monster skills that should be given more attention.
Yet a closed tester who only plays pet builds could never notice these.
Have you ever stopped to wonder why so many content creators united to voice their concerns regarding you and Duskdeep86? During the DLC launch window, these creators put out well over 50 builds on Bilibili, potentially close to a hundred in total. Their work drew in huge numbers of new players and brought lapsed veterans back to the game. Meanwhile, you and the other player claimed you were assisting with official testing and localization efforts. That said, it remains questionable whether the official team actually sanctioned your so-called localization tweaks, and I won’t dwell further on that subject.
Let me pose a rather blunt question: have you actually played through the DLC content yourselves? Have you fought the Dread? Have you gathered the Frozen Aster? The truth is you did not even properly analyze the controversial build, and may not have even booted up the new expansion at all, yet you rushed to urge the developers to nerf it on the grounds that it was unbalanced. Let me state my personal judgment clearly for the first time: that build was never overpowered in the first place. It poured an excessive amount of resources into damage output and suffered from extremely poor survivability, dying constantly in combat. If you had simply taken the time to test it out for yourselves, you would never have pushed so aggressively for a nerf.
I have been playing Grim Dawn since the beta testing phase, but does hundreds of hours of play automatically validate every opinion I hold? That logic is frankly embarrassing. I do appreciate the testing feedback Duskdeep86 has supposedly provided to the devs as a so-called veteran Chinese player, since I have not contributed to that work myself. Regulatory barriers make it difficult for most Chinese fans to volunteer official feedback even if they want to. Nevertheless, past contributions do not equate to selflessness, nor do they excuse every subsequent decision made.
Since we are having this conversation on the official forum, everyone reading can clearly see which side resorted to derogatory language and petty mudslinging with piles of screenshot attachments. I see no value in elaborating on this unpleasant back-and-forth any longer.
I do want to bring up one point, which I acknowledge comes across as somewhat impassioned: over the ten-year lifespan of this game, I have watched countless talented content creators distance themselves from the Tieba community you represent. This includes early guide writers, Bilibili creators who have reviewed thousands of games, and specialists who built niche archetypes focused on Occultist or Arcanist mastery builds. As the Tieba moderator once put it, everyone has personal preferences. Those who did not align with the Tieba clique were filtered out under Tieba rules, leaving only a small group of so-called long-term insiders.
This core group leveraged their self-proclaimed status as the “largest Chinese community” to secure spots in official playtesting. They also added heavily criticized, garbled rainbow-shit edits to the official localization translation. Worse still, the official QQ group they administrated spent the better part of the last half-year discussing League of Legends and Locke Kingdom instead of Grim Dawn. When new players came asking for DLC guidance after release, they were even met with replies about League match statistics. To cap it all off, they label the genuine creators who dissect game mechanics, share detailed guides and theorycraft unique builds as a toxic echo chamber.
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True. If possible many outside Tieba have the willing and ability to do the localization work which Navlord takes pride. Yet Tieba has already seized the opportunity and declared itself orthodox.
Actually not true. He had and his testing method was 
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I partially agree with you, but this is not the core point that Chinese players are arguing over. Everyone understands that balance patches will roll out sooner or later. However, not everyone believes this game even needs constant balancing.This is not an online multiplayer game where an overpowered build would wreck the in-game trading economy or render weaker setups completely obsolete.
Many players only have very limited spare time for gaming. They would rather test out meta, dominant builds within their available hours, alongside other thematic and unique builds. After all, people play games for fun, not to endure tedious frustration.
Nerfing overpowered builds is totally reasonable and beneficial for the game’s long-term health. That said, my stance is simple: I should at least get the chance to test the build myself and judge whether it is truly broken first. It’s unfair when others rush to petition the devs for an immediate nerf while the majority of us are still leveling our characters, just to deny everyone a brief period of enjoyment with that setup.
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Your expression ability is so much stronger than mine. 
I completely agree with your statement.
- Most CN BD authors are no longer active in DD86’s circles or the Tieba group. Both groups have allowed certain players to express extreme hostility and attacks against GDS users, which is why nearly all authors have left.
- Since the new DLC dropped, we have already released at least 60 builds and videos. In the previous 1.2.1.6 patch, player “Wolf” alone released at least 40 builds. None of this would have been possible without GDS—the workload is simply too massive.
- We have had almost no direct communication with DD86 and his circle. The few exceptions have been DD86 providing feedback that our builds are “too powerful” and need to be nerfed, while offering no such feedback on strong pet builds.
- Duskdeep86, If u have any problem with any of us, it is much easier to simply contact through qq. I’m curious why you hate gds users so much, I think you can explain it on the forum cuz gds is also a tool listed on the official website.
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Didn’t you hear the notification? GDS has a mysterious Chthonics magic. As long as the build author uses GDS, Kastorrans will occupy the computers of people who don’t use GDS, and they won’t even be able to get a Totally Normal Shield. 
Sorry dear Moderator the deleted PC virus joke was a bit too much… 
We don’t need jokes. What Zantai wants is builds so please post them.
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Back to the topic here,
Many perceive summoning as an easy playstyle, but they only see its strength in levelling and mid-low difficulties. Top-tier gear is unnecessary in the early game. Pets absorb incoming damage, and players merely stack health, resistances and pet bonuses. Constant kiting is not required, making it ideal for casual players and Hardcore levelling. A collection of random blue and purple pieces is enough to clear Ultimate difficulty steadily, whereas most melee and direct damage caster builds heavily rely on proper equipment and mechanical skill during levelling.
It is true that fully geared summoner builds offer well-rounded clearing potential capable of tackling all endgame content.
Maxed-out summoner setups can reliably defeat all varieties of bosses with no encounters they are completely unable to beat. It features a unique survival framework: pets deal the damage, so the player character does not need to tank every hit. As long as you maintain positioning and keep curses/totem buffs active, death is unlikely. Certain specialized summoner builds can push the highest Shattered Realm layers. These factors combined lead to the widespread belief that summoners are OP — this reputation stems from more than just one or two builds or a single advantage.
Nevertheless, significant weaknesses remain.
The biggest flaw lies in pet AI. they get stuck on walls, take inefficient paths, abandon bosses to chase trivial trash mobs, and ranged pets often stand idle.
Clear efficiency plummets sharply in narrow maps cluttered with obstacles. Direct-damage builds let you aim attacks precisely where needed; pets frequently act against your intent, resulting in inconsistent sustained damage output.
Summoners excel at single-target bossing, yet their clearing speed against swarms of scattered enemies is relatively mediocre. Summoning is suited for consistent farming, but lacks mobility skills and performs poorly for speedrunning.
When fighting formidable bosses, summons repeatedly die and need to be recast, creating tedious micromanagement. Coupled with numerous buffs that require attacking to trigger, the playstyle demands frequent button inputs, leading to a generally underwhelming gameplay feel.
I havent played Pet Builds for years, but I think overall Summoner builds ≠ overpowered (OP). This archetype boasts an extremely high skill floor, yet suffers inherent mechanical flaws. New players will find it overwhelmingly strong, while veteran players who compare builds side-by-side will recognize it has a clear power cap; it should‘t be labelled an unbalanced broken build.
But if there is solid evidence showing it is overpowered in any aspect, I will acknowledge rigorous data analysis and community discussions, and support reasonable balance adjustments from the developers. This view applies not only to summoner builds, but to all archetypes.
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As I’ve mentioned, pet builds do almost not need to prove their advantanges. But you are right so here are all of DD86’s tons of videos and builds.
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The author himself has admitted all the ascended affix are no mandatory requirement. The 2nd one can AFK CREX180-190 in less than 4 mins, and the 1st one has been battling SR50. Imagine what
would do to non-pet characters in SR50.
Yet as I’ve said,
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I don’t agree with simply nerfing pet builds, and don’t wanna mock you anymore, just let others who see this sentence decide whether to hold back their laughter or not.
Pet builds can achieve almost unimaginable things with ordinary equipment, and some people think it’s too troublesome to do such things that other builds dare not even imagine, so everything is normal for pet builds. ----and Aether Trap and Mark of Doom.
And what about the other Chinese builds that are OP since as DD86 is a playtester I expect Zantai’s already had access to those during closed testing.
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You know, actually they aren’t. When you have a holier-than-thou and moralist attitude towards what should be adversarial debate, eliminate the ability for people to be angry at one another and for discussions to ensue, you may think you have solved a problem in your head. But in fact you made it worse.
Moderation used to be about letting people go and only intervene on edge cases of unacceptable social behavior (or, admittedly for a forum like this here, business interest). This is actually what allows for thoughts to expanded, matters to settle, and provides a great deal of feedback to onlookers, like devs.
But nowadays is mostly about the sharpeness of the moderator axe, a purposely vague TOS on the matter, and which side of the bed they slept that night. Because of this, we (internet communities) really no longer have good moderators, just people like you who think telling about how many years they have been doing a bad job is a flex of some sort. Glad you left. Even if it is a forum I never participated in and can’t even speak the language.
So now, here you are discussing your views on the matter, while silencing a bunch of other folk. Have you been to reddit? You should try it.
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How OP do you wanna see in current game? SR60, 70, 80? Have the nerfed builds achieved these?
Top pet builds have nothing to write home about. Just those several sets. Maybe slightly change some affixes or Devotion or skills. Every pet author creates such builds so I won’t send the almost same contents.
Oh hey, medea definitely wouldn’t be that kind of person
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Hey hey hey. I have no prejudice against pet builds. Their pros and cons are both obvious.
The problem lies within the initial design of FoA itself. Devs don’t want us to facetank everything, which is not a fact back to FG because you still have to avoid Meteor from Alex or Nullification from Voiddrinker or something else, so the devs designed a lot of sick bosses whose spells are so dangerous that we have to avoid but are not easy to avoid. Especially in SR or CR where these bosses appear in group, avoiding all deadly spells are very difficult. This results in the fact that you have to fast kill these bosses before they spell or play pet builds and let pets tank them. This is in fact decreasing the interactions between players and enemies. Back to FG you can choose to facetank everything+low damage, or facetank majority+high damage, or facetank minority+very high damage. But you have no choice now. Facetank is nearly impossible, and those builds which didn’t get enough damage powercreep are very struggling. Can you now find a CT build that plays good? I bet you can’t.
So everything goes reasonable when people are having prejudice against pet builds and the two players. When they enjoyed pet builds’ pros and posted a fast-killing non-pet build and decleared it needing a nerf, it’s not hard to understand people begin to hate them.
Let us now just leave “balance” thing alone and talk on the deeper cause. The root issue to blame is devs’ overconfident idea of enemy design. Back to late patches of FG there was no such conflict between pet players and non-pet ones. Close-beta players should be responible as well.
Again, trash game so far.
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