Personally I feel that Elemental is in a pretty good place when it comes to pets.
I do have some reservations about how Vitality Pets feel like they ‘need’ Shaman because Devouring Swarm RR, but I can look past that just like the forced conversion of phys > Vit on Master of Death, making it unattractive for all non vitality builds.
Similarly, options for Chaos, while strong are kind of lacking in terms of options. Eg- If you want Elemental to Chaos conversion, you have like 2 off-hands for that and that is it.
Pet Bleed and Acid are ok-ish, in my opinion, but could use some additional support although I am not sure where or how.
Pet Aether seems limited to Necromancer since neither Shaman nor Occultist provide Aether RR and even with Necro, you end up unable to convert half your pet’s damage since Vitality to Aether Conversion for pets is non existent. To make matters worse, only -RR to Aether from Devotions is Widow, which compared to Murmur and Solael, feels extremely weird to use on a pet build while kiting bosses, especially with the mines/bombs having an “arming time”.
There is zero option to convert any damage type into Pet Physical or Pierce. Primal Spirit for some reason still has Pierce damage…
I know I am supposed to provide build examples to show where things are lacking, but I think I rather leave it to others to further discuss the topic and provide their thoughts on it since my “metrics” for what makes a good build tends to be different from others, just like my playstyle and build making style.
Also, I don’t know much about where Pet Hybrids stand atm, so if anyone wishes to discuss that, feel free as well.
Here’s the testing I did with Aether pets, and for the pet Apostate in particular, I just converted the Vitality damage to Lightning since they share the same %RR devotion in Widow, and pet builds tend to overflow with %all damage as opposed to a single type %damage, so you’re not losing much by having dual damage. However, Aether tends to lag behind by a full minute or so compared to other builds like Chaos and Vitality, so I wouldn’t mind seeing a damage boost, even if I’m not sure where you’d put it, since the gearing is quite limited for Aether pets (Beastcaller’s Set if you’re picking Shaman, all the pet Aether gear if you’re playing Necro).
For Acid, Ghol’s Conjurer is one of the sturdiest builds you can create, and it can beat SR75-76 quickly because of how you can just go from pack to pack and survive everything that comes at you. I doubt you’re going to see much in the way of improvements there, though I know Maya specifically is not a fan of Blight Fiends and nobody likes the transmuted Blight Fiends (seriously, it’s awful). I’d love to see a way that Blight Fiends get a buff while also not breaking the Witching Hour + Ghol’s Chaos pet build, but that’s a tough call as to how a buff like that would happen.
I personally haven’t tried AlkamosHater’s old Physical + Bleed pet build when I went through my gauntlet of testing, but I know other people have tried full Physical pets and haven’t had any issues, especially with the amount of flat 22/12 Mogdrogen’s Pact gives you. I don’t think the lack of conversion is a roadblock.
If there’s a conversion I’d like to see, it’s converting Acid damage to anything. Blood Orb converts Acid to Vitality, but it also converts Elemental to Chaos, so you can’t maximize the conversion value there. Bonescavenger’s Grips convert 50% Acid to Vitality, but there’s no way to complete the other 50% conversion. There’s one dagger that converts Acid to Chaos, but only at 33% or so. Then the Bysmiel set converts Acid to Elemental, which is tough to take full advantage of because of the three different types. Having a weapon that fully converts Acid to Chaos would be neat, having the Fleshwarped Bulwark convert Acid to Physical would be cool to see too.
All of this is speculation, however, so I’d like to test things out and see how they end up working.
It may just be Physical + Bleeding that gets a good rap, because I’ve tried incorporating Bleed into other pet builds and it just doesn’t feel impactful at all. I’ve tried out this build here:
I know that the World Gate doesn’t have Weapon Damage so it can’t apply Bleed, but having Bleed sources from Hellhound + Primal Spirit + Primal Instinct doesn’t seem to give the oomph needed to differentiate it from a standard Cold build, such as Cold Briarthorns with the Beastcaller’s Set. And I’ve tried other pet builds that incorporate large number of pets inflicting Bleed damage, but they don’t seem to be impactful as well (not to mention that gearing for many pets leads to a lack of pet resistances, so all those pets just end up dying without inflicting much in terms of Bleed)
I would personally up the Bleeds across the board, make it feel like an actual Bleed build with large Bleed ticks. Builds like this have the RR to make Bleeding impactful, why not provide the damage that comes with it? Especially when multiple pets like the Raven + World’s Gate can’t even provide Bleed damage in the first place, limiting the type of pets that can inflict Bleed enough to make it worth investing in.
Perhaps try Heart of the Sand King amulet and Mark of the bloody ends Medal (if you haven’t already). Could even add in the Black Hand of Sanar’siin and try to take Nighttalon along with the flat bleed from Huntress.
Imo, the issue with going Bleed + other damage types is that you won’t be able to support both equally, just like say Chaos + Lightning Pets.
This is the build I use when I try out Heart of the Sand King / Mark of Bloody Ends.
Problem is that there’s no sustain in the build so I end up losing every Crucible attempt I’ve tried. I’ve since abandoned the build. I can try other pet builds but I’m of the opinion that only fully invested Briarthorns with the Beastcaller’s Set is going to make a suitable Bleeding pet build, leaving builds like the above Ritualist a bit dead in the water.
I’m sure pet players are still not satisfied with this set and honestly, I’d argue it needs a niche or reason to be picked up to begin with. So I think adding 100% Elemental to Physical pet conversion to the full set would be an interesting move in making the set more considered/played and opening up pure Physical damage primarily for the:
Familiar
Hellhound
Swarmlings
Chillmane Yeti
And some meme options in Necromancer like Skeleton Mages or Reap Spirits. Though for Physical pets Necro to really become self-sufficient it also absolutely needs Vitality to Physical or Acid to Physical pet conversion somewhere but I’m uncertain where I’d place it.
It is with Beastcaller set and double Briarbutts though. I believe @thepowerofmediocrity was trying to avoid using the set to see if bleed pets are still possible.
With the set, there are quite a few options for bleed + another damage type.
Is it just me, or are Cold pets much weaker and harder to pilot than other types of pets? I thought it was just trying to combine Cold + Bleed which gave me an unnecessary handicap, but when I tried purely Cold pets, I still don’t feel much of a difference.
A 26/16 Brairthorn, a 26/16 Hellhound (with the sexy Cold Fx), and a 22/12 Primal Spirit should be enough to run through Crucible, especially with damaging devotions bound to all of them, but the build just seems very weak overall. I can get <6 minutes playing Fire pets and just around 6 minutes playing Lightning Pets (doesn’t matter if it’s Lightning Briar focused or Lightning Primal Spirit focused, both builds play very well), I can’t get below 9 minutes playing the Cold build.
I don’t know if it’s just a matter of it being too piano getting the RR devotions up, or the fact that there’s no chance of 1500% Lightning damage like there is with Voidmancer’s Cord, but something is up that’s making Cold pets a lot harder to pilot. I’ll try and get a Crucible video going to compare and contrast with my other Elemental pet builds, because this shouldn’t have a 50% difference in Crucible times between them.
It might be a case of trying to compare 1:1 type of building? Or perhaps full hellhounds conversion and skill investment is too expensive compared to an ammy slot pet.
This player did cold pets around 6 min CR with a 2x Winter King itemization.
Although it says hybrid, it is basically full pets with similar RR. Both your and this build don’t have birds, so the main difference is the hellhound skill investment and itemization - and a different method to proc extra pets - as well as fairly substantial Wendigo Totem investment. I’m not sure how much the acid pet damage contributes.
I just tried the above build and got just over 6 minutes in Crucible, so it’s probably a matter of Ghol’s being really good (the flat RR bound to Mogdrogen’s Pact alone is very good, much less the bonuses Briarthorn gets), the dual Cold/Acid damage pairing, and Hellhound being too expensive in getting its base stats high but no investment in its auxiliary skills Ember Claw and Infernal Breath.
Still, nice to know that Cold pets can perform very well and it’s a matter of Cold FX Hellhound maybe needing a boost to make it worth investing in compared to regular Hellhound / other Cold pet builds.
I would also like more options supporting the obscure pet damage options, though my opinion is certainly worth less than Maya’s.
My personal preference is for more support for aether pets. For instance I’d like to build around Warden’s Judgment. It suggests that aether pets Spellbinder could be done - but I am quite skeptical this is going to work without more conversion and RR options.
Balancing is probably tricky. When pets work well they’re basically faceroll simple, and it’d be best to avoid buffing other good builds (e.g. aether -RR should probably not be too easy for non-pet builds; we’ll probably be stuck with Widow).
Could aether -RR could be added to some of the pet auras (storm spirit, hellfire, or emboldening presence)? Or, phys/vit to aether conversion could be added to pet-related abilities (primal bond, bonds of bysmiel, call of the grave?).
I don’t think my suggestions are very helpful but for more aether pets support especially.
The one issue I have with Aether damage on Necro pets is that there is no Vitality to Aether conversion. I suppose, could go with dual damage type, but feels weird…
for more aether pets support especially.