From what I understand, when pets are proc’ing devotion skills, the amount of damage is based on the player’s stats, not the pet’s stats. And usually when you make a pet build, you want to optimize for pet damage rather than player damage. Which means than usually the devotion skills proc’ed by the pets are not your main source of DPS.
Has anyone considered making a build optimized for player damage with multiple damage devotion skills (e.g. Ulzuin’s Torch, Magi) and pets that are mainly meant to serve as a way to proc these skills?
I was thinking of trying a Pyromancer with 3 or 4 pets (Familiar, Hellhound, Revenant of Og’Napesh, possibly Stormhound) and most constellations aimed at Fire/Chaos damage buffs and skills, as well as a bit of pet and player survivability.
But the thing is that I don’t have a good grasp on how much damage devotion skills can actually cause when optimized for. I’m mostly using them to provide extra damage (e.g. on my Saboteur), not as a main damage dealing mechanism.
Anyone has some experience to share in this domain? I’m especially interested to know if it’s a lost cause before I invest too much time in levelling up this character.
Hi, I have a bleeding trickster who does exactly that, stay at distance spamming grasping vines for CC(and falcon swoop proc) and letting pets proc bleeding devo skills like rend. But I have to say that I exclusively use pets that scale with player damage like Blade Spirits and pet from nemesis relic.
Here´s a vid of the build(not up to date ofc, its an older build of mine, and it was recorded prior to several falcon swoop nerfs, but its still very viable):
grimcalc is in the vid description, items are pretty standard for a bleeding character(e.g. Vileblood Mantle, Emp. Bloodbathed Links, Brutallax,…)
I have just completed a pure summoner (level 85 occultist/shaman), and I precisely wanted to experiment among other things the possibilities to enhance the pets damage output.
Here is the army and the devotion abilities assignments:
to all pets:
Life Bonus: +120%
All damage: +630%
Speed: +60%
Army maintenance/Survivability: Blood of Dreeg+Wendigo Totem+Nymph’s Touch/Apothecary’s touch
Average damages in late game: 1000-5000 for the normal hits, 6000-12000 with the critical hits, and up to 20K with the Wrath of the Beast Tincture.
Since 99% of the bonuses that you will find for the pets are “to all damage”, assigning one type of attack or another basically makes no difference. They will enjoy whatever you will give them.
This army is really good. When you manage to improve the total speed and +% all damage, and have the devotion abilities leveling up, the battlefield is a permanent mess of all sorts of abilities. 500K HP (yes, a total of half a million of health points on the whole when the temporary pets are here) and 90% of all the possible damage types (only vitality is missing. extra acid damage is supplied thanks to blood of dreeg, extra piercing thanks to empowered piercing aura, extra chaos damage thanks to Hellfire). By managing well the pets statuses and the healing abilities, you can keep them all to full HP during most of the battles.
I have leveled up that build with a commando partner. The Flame Touched+Squad tactics combo makes wonders with such an army. A pure summoner is more a build I would advise for team games.
But there is a trick: the weak point with a pure summoner is the summoner himself: If you happen to die, it is all over. Which is why you will have to keep a profile as low as possible. I never attacked with that guy after the level 10 (where I could get the second mastery and therefore the second first pet, and enough army to give up on direct attacks and start focusing on army bonuses). The other problem with such build in multiplayer is also possible low framerate: the players with slow computers and/or high display settings may experience massive lags during the messiest battles. When the pets go crazy, the whole screen is full of elemental storms and whirlpools and fire waves and so on.
