Pets will help later on with some distraction for the monsters. If they can take the heat of your character for just a second, it can help keep you alive.
so i re-rolled a vitality/bleed build. i’m in the necropolis. much like evil eye, entire mobs die with one cast of devouring swarm or bloody pox. i understand it’s on normal/veteran. but i still don’t think entire mobs should die with one spell cast.
anyways, i have been saving all pet gear since level 1 so i can try a new build on elite. having been through the whole game now, i can rightfully say pet gear does not drop as often as poison/bleed/elemental etc. also, i have not received any gear that summons/procs addition minions. i was hoping to have a small army ready for elite difficulty. now i am realizing that will not happen. i know there is a skeleton, a yeti, a storm hound, freeze hound, and a few non permanent pets. i have not seen any of them. i’m sure some of them are found on end game gear. but to get absolutely no new pet for my first game clear kinda sucks.
so basically, it will just be me, my hound, and briarthron. i feel like the bird is useless cause it’s DPS is pathetic. i understand it’s a support pet, but a pet build is heavily reliant on pet DPS. the heal is not not needed cause of the abundance of health potions. the buff does not get cast enough and when it does most of the time only myself and the bird get buffed cause the other two are ahead of us. the bird does not keep up with the group very well. the hound and briarthron rush ahead to tank. the bird often gets left behind and isn’t even on screen and has to teleport back when it gets too far away. it’s attacks often miss cause of projectile collision or the fact that the other two kill whatever the bird was aiming for before the projectile reaches it’s target. it also gets positioned behind a door or wall and likes to attack with an obstacle in it’s projectile path.
kinda disappointed with pet mechanics so far. the only thing i was pleasantly surprised about is assigning devotion skills to pets. that is really cool.
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You can actually -buy- items with pet mods, store stocks are random but they’re not particularly rare either. Many faction items also have pet mods.
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Raven AI is a sore point for everyone, though it seems Crate is working on it. Otherwise, it’s not that much different from other pets.
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As we keep pointing out, there are lots of ways to break normal. The difficulty increase should start to become much more apparent by the time you stop fighting humanoids, though.
i won’t mention normal balancing again. now that i have cleared normal with a different build it’s clear normal is broken.
the only pet item i have seen from factions is some kind of buff applied to weapons and i can’t get that until i’ve grinded rep for them. i have not seen anything that summons new pets from factions nor have i seen any components that grant pet bonuses. the lack of pet scaling is worth mentioning again. i feel like the pets got the short end of the stick and i’m only crying about it cause that’s the build i really want to play.
You need to remember 1 pet modifier from an item APPLIES to ALL of your pet. Let’s say you have 4 pets and you have 50% total damage for pet. You increase your damage by 200%. Also later in the game you will find many proc from item or devotion that give you additional pets.
i know. it’s just that i had a massive amount of skeletons in diablo 2 and a small army of fetishes in diablo 3. two pets just feels kinda lonely and not very exciting. the pet build doesn’t feel like it got enough love cause of the heavy gear and skill point requirements. pet build requires 11 points in occultist and 11 points in shaman before i get both level 1 pets. compare that to the 17 points required to max devouring swarm which you get at level 1 and absolutely recks stuff even in trash gear the pet balancing feels so awkward. the pet damage skills are both all the way at the end of occultist and shaman tree too so even if i put no points in spells i don’t have enough points to max all the pet skills.
what pet do i get from devotion? would also appreciate knowing what items grant me pets regardless if they are permanent or proc.
From skill alone conjurer can have 3 pets (raven, hellhound and briar) and 1 timed summon. You can get additional proc summon from affix. AFAIK keeper’s and of Binding affix give you pets on proc. So you don’t really need epic or legend grade item to get procced pet. Just some luck with the loot dropped and magic grade can also summon pet
I think you can pass normal game with any character just by maxing 1 spell in any skill tree.
Occultist => Eye
Shaman => Surge
Demo => Blackwater cocktail (the mobs dye just by the explosions, which does 1/3 of the burn dmg…)
Arcanist => Callidor’s Tempest
Etc…
Spells are designed with good based dmg so that you can easily go through normal, to get confortable with your build/character/enemies.
Stretching for the elite and ultimate !
Just imagine if the normal mod was hard and you needed to farm the warden before getting to act 2. It would be a nightmare for beginners, and really boring.
The game become to be hard lvl 50, when you have many devotions and skills to make a build.
The game is balanced in this way => Easy THEN hard, not hard then harder 