My issue with pet builds

I feel that permanent pet skills need a small revamp specifically targeted at the auxiliary pet skills that can be ranked up. The point investment for pets (speaking only for pets which scale off of pet bonuses and not player bonuses) is extreme, in my eyes. Often, it’s not worth investing in any of the extra pet skills that isn’t the Hellfire Aura and maybe Mend Flesh.

It would be better if these skills, which the pets use passively, were those single point skills which augment a skill rather than normal skills with 12-16 ranks; leaving the point investment at just the prerequisite mastery investment + a single point per extra skill. The extra investment of using pet bonus gear and devotions feels like enough of a tradeoff for strong pets.

A pet focused build leaves very little for the player to invest in active skills of their own unless that player skips the extra pet skills. It’s also impossible to invest in pet skills across two classes, say Occultist/Shaman, without ignoring the extra pet skills even without accounting for skills such as Bonds of Bysmial/Manipulation/Primal Bond which are designed for the dedicated pet build and have a steep 50 mastery point prerequisite.

A final hang up I have with pets is Primal Spirit. It scales off of pet bonus stats and yet it is a temporary pet rather than permanent. Temporary pets are less like minions and more like actively managed DoTs with special targeting. This works well for something like Wind Devils, which will scale with player bonuses, but is a rough sell if they scale with pet bonuses, and yet they offer less than 100% uptime potential.

Despite all of this, pet builds are quite strong, but it’s not very intuitive that strong pet builds outright ignore, for the most part, the extra pet skills.

I have a feeling that future items will allow the primal pet to be up most of the time. dont worry, most of your requests will most probably be addressed in the expac: more skill points, more mythical items… and just more love for pets overall… just you wait and see…

I can’t say as I mind temporary pets, as long as the strength of the pet is higher than the permanent pets. It’s only fair, at that point.

I’m pretty sure the skill point thing is intentional, specifically to PREVENT a player from having a full pet build AND well leveled active skills. Hybrid builds have to choose what side to let go to fit the other one in, and I think that’s kind of the point.

If you made them a one pointer, they’d basically be a Transmuter. If they WERE that cheap, everyone would take them, and it’d be no trade off.

Also… Mend Flesh? You mean you’re USING the Raven? Even with that teased Mythical whatever that adds a second, I’m pretty sure I STILL won’t touch Raven. Until they triple that idiot bird’s IQ, I’m not going near it again. Watching that thing fly into trees and shoot lightning the wrong way was just painful.

3x 0 is still 0. Damn thing hardly ever attacks, lets its stupid buff (that would be totally worth it if it were an aura!) fall off constantly, and when it heals it heals one of my temp pets that is gonna die soon anyways instead of me. Why is it ever healing pets? If I go, Theoden the bird dies! Code it so that it only ever heals me and you might have a halfway not-an-embarrassment pet.

Be nice… It might have ONE IQ. So four. XD

It really should be an aura, and it needs a prioritization code in that heal. IE, heal me if I’m damaged, then other permanent pets, then itself, then temp pets.

I’m no math genius but if you times 3x1 you get 3, not 4 O.o

I tried to to the full zoo build, but by the time you get to ultimate it really isn’t that viable(hellhound, raven, briarthorn, stormhound, and revenant). They just don’t do enough damage. Especially the stormhound and revenant which basically are liabilities and end up dying far too often with recharge times that make them not worth having.

So I went ahead and got Witching Hour(Thank you mad_lee), switched out my savage relic with Primal Instinct, and then linked my Eldritch hound(better then Stormhound and Revenant combined) to Curse of Frailty. Now I have Hellhound, Briarthorn, Raven, and Primal Spirit . Eldritch Hound and Swarmlings(Primal Instinct) appear regularly(chance on attack) and when I kill something I occasionally get some undead help(necro deathgrips). Add to that Primal Bond, Bonds of Bysmiel, and the Witching Hour skill(Really awesome) and my pet build isn’t so bad and viable. I’m just helping out my pets now and I’m killing stuff way faster(actually more fun when I’m helping). I’m still not done tinkering since I’m not at 85 yet.

Went dor the full zoo build as well, had not troubles with ult log. Crucible higher than aspirant though…:cry:

I don’t think even a full zoo build has enough skill points to max all the pet skills (or even half of them!)

But that’s not really the point, I think. You aren’t supposed to be able to max everything so that’s fine. What is NOT fine is that those skills just aren’t worth the skill points in general. The benefit you get for them compared to almost all other options is just plain worse, EVEN WITHIN A FULL ZOO BUILD ITSELF, WHICH IS WHY EVEN FULL ZOO BUILDS DON’T TAKE THEM.

If everyones’ FULL ZOO BUILD consistently find it more worthwhile to point skill points elsewhere (like say, maxing a skill to buff pets or a pet passive like manipulation) instead of putting it into pets’ skills, something is wrong.

Really, considering the various factors in them (pet AI, cooldowns, not being able to target them, and cast times during which your pet won’t be attacking), the skill effects are simply usually too weak compared to what you can get by putting the skill points elsewhere. The exception is the one pet skill that doesn’t have those factors (the hound’s aura skill, which does not have to worry about pet AI because it’s always on, does not have to worry about cooldowns because it’s always on, does not have to worry about not being able to choose where to target it because it’s always on its targets, and does not have to worry about cast time because it has no cast time). The rest of them, if those factors aren’t going to be mitigated, then they’re going to need serious buffs elsewhere to make up for them.

My own suggestions:

Mend Flesh: Make the raven prioritize the player character first, as mentioned. Possibly increase it’s Area of Effect and give it a regeneration property as well, but also give it a small cooldown in addition to that.

Storm Spirit: The main issue I (and at least one other person in this thread) have with this is that the raven waits for it to wear off before re-casting it, which leaves a brief period in which your character, if relying on it for resists (one of its primary uses), is extremely vulnerable. I’m not sure if this is intended design or not, though.

Lightning Strike: Give it a cooldown (it doesn’t seem to have one at the moment) but greatly increase it’s damage. Right now, without a cooldown and increased damage to compensate, because the raven must spend time in its casting animation during which the raven can’t do anything else, it takes a ridiculous amount of skill points as far as I can tell to make this worth having over the opportunity cost of just saving the skill points and letting the raven do its auto attack. By switching it to a longer cooldown but stronger effect skill, the raven uses it less but gets greater effect from using it, which decreases the time the raven must be spending in its casting animation. As it is, because casting it takes time to do compared to the small benefit from casting it, the skill’s actually a DPS loss compared to the raven’s normal attack at lower skill point levels, and by the time you reach higher skill point levels, you really wish you had those skill points for other things.

Ember Claw: Probably just needs a damage increase or something. Not sure what else to do with it. At least the taunt works now when you have lots of skill points into it… kinda. Maybe this skill animation and effects also needs more visual oomph so you know when it’s gone off and your foes are taunted. Despite my zoo build being my primary character and using the pet skills for the hell of it to various degrees, I’m actually still not sure to this day what this skill looks like when used.

Hellfire: Again, the only pet skill that’s generally worth it because it doesn’t have to worry about the factors that kill all the other ones (pet AI, cooldown, can’t choose target, animation/casting time)

Infernal Breath: I’d rather this have 0 cast time and instead when the Hellhound activates it, it just starts belching the flames but can also do anything else too while it’s belching. After all, just because it’s mouth is breathing fire doesn’t mean the claws aren’t free and available. Might look kinda silly though. As it is, at the moment the long animation means you’re going to have to invest in a lot of skill points before this stops being a DPS loss over just letting the hell hound do normal attacks. It does really strong damage at ultimate ranks but good luck getting there when gear that gives + to Infernal Breath is nearly nonexistant.

Ground Slam: Same as Ember Claw.

Emboldening Roar: For a skill with 66% uptime at best (worse than that due to pet AI, casting time, etc), the effects of this buff aren’t really very good, IMHO. The resistances it gives have the same flaws as storm spirit, where relying on a not-100%-uptime buff for your resistances is extremely dicey because it’s not like you always know in advance when you’re going to get smooshed and when you aren’t so not knowing if that resistance buff will be on you when you need it seriously makes those skills less appealing. In this case, it’s probably intended (or else he would have had 100% buff uptime in the first place) but you’d think the offensive gains from the buff would be really nice to make up for it. Maybe this skill is just a victim of power creep on gear because these days +50% damage for 12 skill points with 66% uptime (at best) is really lame. I suggest adding a total speed component to it or something. That’d also make the skill more special and noticeable cause you’d feel your character zipping around faster 66% of the time.