I find it extremely weird how lots of people occasionally pop up to say something about hybrids but when a hybrid build does get posted there’s just about zero reaction from most people.
It’s like saying “hybrids are impossible” is the Grim Dawn equivalent of being a hipster.
What’s worse is that these people apparently don’t even have any idea about pet build thresholds.
“Ooh I saw that pear gear does absolutely zero for the character, that must mean you must stack a lot of them to make a pet build work!”
Speaking as someone who actually plays pet builds and did my time to make them work and mark important stat thresholds, there’s a naivete in such sweeping comments that makes me want to slap someone.
And NO, making all pets scale with player damage doesn’t work. Diablo 3 did that, and do you know how they make summoners work over in that game?
By introducing items with specific pet bonuses.
Big surprise, I know.
There are lots of great and interesting builds on the build forum to expand one’s thinking about what’s currently viable. It’s a lot broader than most would think.
I love how one set is shown and obviously no other sets or gear will work with a necro. This is from misadventure 114 : Necromancers employ horrifying minions and debilitating spells that harvest the very souls from their foes, making them a deadly combatant at any distance. Their greatest strength lies in the use of Aether and Vitality magic, though they do not shy away from using Cold and Poison as well.
Now that’s what I call a gear fit for a Necromancer.
But I will probably hunt down only half of it for the Ilusionist, because I’m planning to create a Death Knight when the expansion comes out.
The problem with this is that this can force you to stack the same type of damage of your pet, while one of the advantages of making a pet build is to have different types of damage indirectly from your pets while your character invest in another.
My problem with hybrid pet builds at the moment is that there’s a lot of possibilities, but the problem lies in getting the right green gear.
But this is not just a problem for them, it’s for every kind of build. Double Rares and Monster Infrequents are, in my view, this game equivalent of runewords from Diablo 2. They are, in theory, solid alternatives to Legendaries and sets that don’t fit that well in a build that’s too different, but they are even more harder and frustrating to find compared to Legendaries for one reason or another. In Diablo 2 it was because you needed a piece of gear with the EXACT number of slots for the runes on top of having them, in Grimdawn it’s that you need to drop the item plus cross your fingers for it to come with the TWO right affixes. And Double Rares are not limited to MIs, the belts you get from faction blueprints also comes with affixes, being even more frustrating since you have to waste resources to craft a LOT just to get the right one.
I remember that people complained in the past that min-max variations on Legendaries stats suck, but that’s something I can live up with. At least the core structure of the Legendary is intact, so they are still useful.
An Enchanter NPC of sorts that can modify affixes (for a fair price of course) could mitigate this problem and truly opem for new possiblities IMO.
That’s… Actually not a bad idea.
This would give them more versatility outside devotion skills, although their skills are too strong to have them all at the same time IMO. What I would do is trade-off: Make them all available to the pets, but nerf them; Change the skills in the actual character tree into modifiers/upgrades for the pet skill to “turn them back” to the pre-nerf state (or maybe make them slightly better); I would also reduce the skill point cap necessary to max them. (12 to Mend Flesh, 8 to everything else)
Ugh, people need to chill out about this set. The Occultist 5-piece set, for example, is all about poison. That doesn’t mean that Occultists aren’t equally good at Chaos and pets. This is just one of TWENTY new sets coming with the expansion. For all you Cold and pet lovers out there, just wait. Today was not your day, but the expansion will likely have something for you.
All i see is retextured Ultos’ Spaulders, Hood of Dreeg with two extra horns, and Iskandra’s Vestments, just added skulls. Please do not think that I’m not pleased with the xpack, I understand that doing models from scratch is much more difficult, but I would like more variety, I hope the rest of the new sets will please us with a realy unique look. In any case, thank you for the excellent game and the work that you have done.
Im not a new player, but I am new to the forums. Last I checked, I didnt see any builds that accomplished what I was looking for.
I never said hybrids were impossible, just that they werent really endgame viable. I suppose I should clarify: compared with full pet builds, or builds that dont bother with pets at all, hybrids builds are not as strong. Obviously, they shouldnt be as good at one part or the other as the pure version of either case, but the sum of their parts should be on the same level.
Its just my opinion. Obviously you dont agree, and thats fine. For me, the most fun I get out of a pet build comes when I can summon lots of minions and still be able to do relevant combat actions with my player character. I have not personally been able to do that in a compelling way.
This game already DOES have many pets that scale off of player stats, from item skills like the nemesis, devotion procs like raise the dead and unknown soldier, and actual learned skills like wind devil and blade spirit. They are far from being overpowered, and they add interesting flavor to a lot of builds. From my experience building characters with those skills, it seems like tilting pet design in that direction overall would be a boon.
Yeah, thats kind of what i was thinking too. Either make them take less points, or put them all into a “skill pack” thats around 16 points that bestows all the skills. The numbers would likely have to be tweaked, as youve said, but I wouldnt have a problem with that personally. I think the pets being able to functionally do more would make them more fun overall.
Big question to devs - we will see DX11 implementation (optimizations and stuff) only after GD’s Expansion will out, or DX11 will be released first in original GD before Expansion will be released?
Yeah, thats kind of what i was thinking too. Either make them take less points, or put them all into a “skill pack” thats around 16 points that bestows all the skills. The numbers would likely have to be tweaked, as youve said, but I wouldnt have a problem with that personally. I think the pets being able to functionally do more would make them more fun overall.
A total of +32 OA over 5 items! The total resistances are pretty low as well, max aether is decent, but I can’t see anyone using this ammy over Peerless Eye because it DOESN’T HAVE FUCKING OA on it. The shield you get for completing the set will be useless unless you changed the way shields work, this will block around 10 hits from a Chthonian Gorger, yay.
The hat seems pretty good with 100% terrify retaliation, but the rest of the set seems awful.
Looks awesome though, but stats look like they are Ulzuin-tier.
One of my favorite things about Titan Quest was how amazing items looked. Even the low level meh stuff was pretty. Great to see this game carrying on that tradition.
Thanks for sharing your build! Looks pretty solid to me. I had a build resembling that at one point. Didnt have most of your greens, and more importantly, didnt realize the effectiveness of all of that flat dmg. Watching the video, I cant quite tell what the breakdown is, but you seem to be doing a lot more than your pets. How does it feel in practice?
Pet builds would be so much cooler if pets had resistance to Convert, seeing a mechanic that works fine through the entire game to become shit against the final boss was so frustrating.
