Clickbait title to whine about potions as active buffs, again. But also some (a lot) of the pet design requires the amount of inputs per second that is completely antithetical to the playstyle’s identity.
So in this build that enables low cd spawn (and explode) of Hellhounds you need to press:
two active potion buffs
two active buffs skills
two active rr% skills
pet attack
hold feral claws to reduce Hellhound cd
spam Hellhound spawn to maximize on death explosions
use your multiple movskill abilities to avoid danger you invite from using Feral Claws
I haven’t played anything this straining for fingers in a very long time. After 40 minutes of play I started being worreid I wouldn’t be able to work today in the evening cause it involves a lot of typing.
The build has a lot of active buttons, and 2 more from the potions on top tip it over the edge. The gameplay becomes constant frustration instead of enjoyment. And please save your “you don’t have to press everything if you don’t like it”. This is a loot/progression based aRPG, optimizing your dps by using all tools available to the player is the essence of the game.
Potions as active buffs are the single worst thing in the expansion for me, by a very long shot.
As a side feedback, the dog exlpoding play is underwhelming. As you can see in the video, you get barely more dps out of it than just playing dogs as is, while exposing yourself and your fingers to more danger. Maybe it’s because the constantly summoned dogs don’t get any benefits from rallying cry and potion tdm, maybe it’s because of pets’ AI. But Blazing Death doesn’t do nearly as much in game as you hope looking at those big numbers.
GD2 won’t have pet scaled pets. They will all be player scaled like Empybros .
Tbh, part of me wonders if doing that right now would be worth considering . Yes, that means a ton of work for Zantai since he will have to rebalance everything related to pets. But… that is for Z to worry about .
Tbh is not a bad idea. As much as I love that GD has a lot of different mechanics and different damage types (not talking about Chaos and Aether and Physical etc. but about pet damage, player damage and retal damage) in reality a lot of the times it leads to some stuff being neglected and forgotten in balance patches (like retal was for a long time), some stuff doesn’t work at all or some stuff is suddenly super op (like Ice King Reaver that doesn’t use pets).
I would love if Crate takes the approach that “less is more” and instead has fewer mechanics/damage types that all have their unique strengths and interactions etc.
Yeah, once upon a time, I would have passionately protested anything of that sort. But given that every single one of my experiences with player scaled pets, from totems to blade spirits / empy bros, to my own wacky setups, etc have been positive, I am no longer against the idea of homogenizing in this context.
It will also help with future balancing even if there will be a good amount of upfront work, especially with pets. Though even in that department, we already have things like player scaled Ravens, so the groundwork is already here.
Also, it should help with the issue of pet builds requiring their own balancing regarding aggro/threat mechanics.
Similar thing goes for pierce and bleed damage. They are coded differently in the engine but bleed could have just been treated as a DoT for pierce. They would be together on devotions, on RR, on items… Juste resistances would have two different icons in char sheet.
you cannot change pets to player scaling without fundamentally changing the whole game
if all pets are player-scaled and can draw aggro then any build can easily put a pet in there (even if it doesn’t do any meaningful dmg) and use it as a facetank device, therefore bypassing all the sunder/evade mechanics
player scaled pets should then also no longer be invincible and inherit player resistances or keep a separate resistance system even if their dmg scales with player stats.
We already have it with both Ravens and Reap Spirits (both of which can hold aggro if you have Ishtak devotion and I have abused that in the past to get to tank for me).
The idea, atleast mine, is that they lose their ability to draw aggro and become similar to blade spirits or wind devls.
In return, the player will need to be provided tools to survive without relying on pets acting as meat shields.
This means they can use the same baseline as non pet builds in terms of tankiness and survivability that does not rely on keeping the enemies occupied with your minions.
Personally, would consider that an overall good thing because there is no more “afk” playstyle and like the devs want, pet builds become more engaging without requiring multiple nerfs to either pet or player survivability and hopefully, it can also bring pet builds to be more in line with non-pets in terms of strength without the scales tipping too much in either direction.
Should also help with the piano issue if you no longer need to worry about pets dying and having to be resummoned.
“Hybrid” playstyles would also become rather straightforward since you are just playing a normal non-pet build at that point.
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. Yes, that means a ton of work for Zantai since he will have to rebalance everything related to pets. But… that is for Z to worry about 
to tank for me).