went occultist first character. i rushed mastery points and put 1 point in all the skills to test them out. it quickly became clear that dreegs evil eye outperforms all other skills by a massive amount. the initial explosion will reck entire mobs on contact without the need for the DOT. i dropped a few evil eyes on the training dummy and the DOT ticks pump out way more damage than my pets do. i am assuming this is because putting points in mastery increases spirit which increases damage for spells but not pets. the lack of pet damage compared to evil eye damage is also compounded by the fact that lots of gear has poison damage but there is not as much gear with pet damage. i also noticed no pet damage components on the wiki.
looking at the skill tree the only skill that increases passive pet damage besides the pets active skills is manipulation. now when you compare that to all the +poison damage from the evil eye line, the blood of dregg, possession, and the debuff from curse of frailty, it sure does look like pet damage will never come close to poison damage. example, possession 135% poison damage. manipulation 65% pet damage. when you add up all the rest of the poison damage it’s a landslide for poison.
so i decided to go for a DOT build. evil eye, bloody pox, devouring swarm. after awhile i quickly found myself using only evil eye cause the damage from bloody pox and devouring swarm was not comparable. casting only evil eye got boring quick. i kept trying to work bloody pox and devouring swarm in to my rotation but it felt useless cause even with both of them i could not kill mobs by the time my evil eye cool down was over and could obliterate everything with 1 shot.
at this point i really started to question the balancing so i downloaded a trainer for testing purposes. i maxed all skills in the occultist and shaman tree that had to do with poison, vitality damage, and bleeds so all skills can be on an equal level. i also took off all my gear so there were no damage modifiers effecting my tests. evil eye was ticking for thousands while bloody pox and devouring swarm were ticking for hundreds. with this in mind, i realized that i would basically be spamming evil eye until late game and lost interest. long story short, pet damage needs to scale with your character, evil eye needs to be toned down.
Devouring Swarm isn’t quite a standalone like DEE. Its real strength lies in the -X% Vitality Resistance, which supplements other sources of Vitality damage.
Pets are a different mechanic in that they allow you do damage without generating nearly as much pull as attacking enemies yourself so it makes sense that they aren’t quite as strong. That being said, a lot of pet damage comes from gear and Devotion rather than the raw skills.
Bloody Pox…well, you’re right about that one sucking
i understand devouring swarm won’t be as effective cause it lacks the skill tree that evil eye and bloody pox has. it’s main use is to add a little extra DOT damage and supplement bloody pox damage. but even the combined devouring swarm and bloody pox doesn’t come close to the evil eye cause evil eye does both burst and DOT. swarm and pox also does not have the large AOE radius evil eye has. swarm has to be cast several times to cover an area and pox has to wait to spread.
i also understand pet damage can scale with gear and devotion. the problem is so can spells. so basically spells can scale 3 ways while pets only scale 2 ways. it’s not an even playing field. the lack of pet scaling from spirit is a huge deal cause when you can put 100 points in to mastery which increases spell damage drastically the spell damage vs pet damage is like a race between a bugatti and a hyundai.
Again, try elite and ultimate. And consider the abilities in the context of the other masteries. swarm is fantastically good already. And there’s more to killing things than listed dps (resist reduction is huge later on).
if early game is not balanced i doubt end game is either and it’s not encouraging to push forward and find out. this game clearly has alot of mechanics going on. the distinction between poison/acid and bleed/trauma says this loud and clear. games like this don’t launch perfect. it needs tweaks and patches. i’m gonna wait for more community feedback and balancing. this game just launched. it needs to cook for a few more months.
Well, if you boost it up to ultimate levels and/or have the right debuffs (Curse of Fraility and/or Devouring Swarm etc). My BP build, while squishy, can rapidly depopulate most zones, although it’s lost some effectiveness due to taking ultimate points out of the BP tree to get to Possession for it’s buff to vitality.
Anyhow, combing DS with BP and the Wendigo Totem’s Blood Pact + Storm Totem with vitality damage modifier and you have a very potentially lethal build. Add in constellations with debuff abilities and all but the biggest HP pools shall fall before you :3
Say something like this: http://grimcalc.com/build/4wyjtF Though certain bits of gear would be needed for maximum effectiveness and to improve survivability. Pretty much planning to do this build, but have gotten stuck with grinding for crafting materials and levelling up certain builds through onto elite. Plus Offworld Trading Company has eaten my recent gaming time.
As Misguided pointed out, I’d try getting through elite/ultimate first before making sweeping generalizations about how you think the game works.
In a nutshell, the reason your results are flawed is because of the way enemy resistances work at higher difficulties. Among other things, your results also fail to account for the extensive amount of +pet bonuses available on items/gear (especially stats like OA), the fact that a character using pets can still attack/perform other actions, the fact that Bloody Pox damage scales with enemy HP and the fact that not stacking defensive bonuses on a DoT build is suicide at higher difficulties.
As for early game/normal, you fail to account for item granted-skills which significantly outdamage anything else at low-mid levels. Combined with pets, you’re basically looking at quantity over quality - you have A LOT of skills up and running on the screen, and you can assign a devotion proc to all of of them.
There’s a reason DEE spamming does massive damage in normal. It’s compensating for something.
i don’t make any generalizations about end game. my experience is with early game. and when you can one shot entire packs with one spell all the way to late game i think it’s fair to say early game is not balanced. lack of balance in the early game makes me care less about the end game.
i’m sure there are extensive amounts of +pet bonuses available on items later on. but i’m also sure there are extensive amounts of spell bonuses on gear as well. so this is a mute point. the real issue is not lack of pet gear. it’s the lack of pet scaling the same way spells do. being able to cast while my pets work however is a good point. i don’t expect pets to be more powerful than spells. but it’s disappointing when they don’t directly scale with your characters progression and they feel inferior in the damage department.
, i realized that i would basically be spamming evil eye until late game and lost interest. long story short, pet damage needs to scale with your character, evil eye needs to be toned down.
Do what you like, but your conclusions are premature.
my feedback is a response to what i have experienced thus far. i know for a fact i can make it though normal with just evil eye. with poison focus and mastery pumping i would not be surprised if i can make it through elite too. my assumptions might be pre-mature but when you can make it through the entire game by spamming one spell it’s safe to assume the game needs a few more patches regardless of the difficulty played on.
Devouring Swarm is one of the best spells, lets you cruise through most of normal, always hits and has the best % value of debuff in the game making vitality conjurer the most comfortable caster to play. Its a package spell which works best when used in synergy with other mastery like for bleed warder or vitality conjurer
Yes early game is not balanced but it does not matter to me as there is barely anything there other than to level up
i guess this is where i see things differently. i know ultimate is different. but just being able to cruise through the game with no effort is not fun for me and provides no excitement to keep playing. it feels more like a chore to get to the challenge and by that time i’ve already beaten the game twice and lost interest. even on veteran it feels like i’m playing on too easy with evil eye build. the challenge is what makes me push forward and without that challenge i don’t care enough to keep grinding.
game does seem cool though. just wanted to share my feedback with hopes of improvements.
Even though pets seem weaker than spells in general, They have fairly powerful bonuses on alot of cequipment and skills. Where this one item gives you 10% lightning damage, this other one of the same level gives you 12% total pet damage.
On top of that, as you continue on through the game, chances are you’re going to come across an item that summons more pets for you, thus essentially multiplying the damage you do, and the defense you get. By the time you reach max level, you can have a small army of pets at a time (assuming all the proc pets happen at the same time) with each getting a significant amount of bonuses.
Your assumption is wrong. DEE is a strong spell but later on you will need additional sources of poison/acid damage plus ways to reduce resistances and some form of CC. It’s hard to tell when because it depends on how you skill and what gear you have at what time, but even with very good gear it will happen.
You seem to overlook that other skills have different functionalities. With a pet build for example your char escapes tons of damage. Devouring swarm reduces resistances and gives you damage to health conversion. It’d be bad balancing if they were damage wise on par with DEE at any given time.
Using a pet build does not necessarily decrease the amount of damage you take, at least not directly. The main advantage of playing a summoner is that your character is free to do something else while your pets deal damage, even if that something is nothing (as is the case of passive summoner builds).
Mirenheart is correct, though not so much with just pet damage as pet bonuses in general. OA and %total speed can be tricky to stack on players, for example, but not on pets.
Normal mode is designed to help players familiarize themselves with game mechanics and enemy types. It simply doesn’t make sense for the game to just drop you in the middle of an enemy group without telling you that some of them can use stuns/charges/teleports/debuffs/extremely powerful AoE attacks/DoTs/on-death abilities/etc. It doesn’t make sense to scale up mob difficulty when the very ground your character is standing on can kill you if you’re not paying attention. It doesn’t make sense to scare players away by forcing them to deal with mid/late-game mechanics as soon as they start playing.
It’s ironic how you claim to play games for the challenge, when one of the first things you do after playing GD is use a trainer.
before i get sarted on anything i agree wqith op about one thing.
i wish pets scaled off playerstats … but thats just because i dont like being a summoner… i like being a beastmaster… this games pet class is a summoner… with your theory… youd be able to use pets and be good at fighting yourself … whjich is the way i like playing beastmaster … but the way it is now … pets are wastes of points unles your fully decked out in gear of pet+x% damage .
okay so heres the deal…
Your playing a ranged spell caster…
try playing a melee 2h and tell me you got through veteran without dying once.
and yesw even so… veteran is nothing … its the training grounds for the real game … elite/ultimate
if the most broken op builds are having a tough time in veteran… than the poor weak melee builds ( NON DW) are going to get wrecked.
this game was mde for all types of characters … not just for people who like to play overpowered play styles…
in almost every game ranged spellcasters are king … why would you think any differently here?
