Pet changes in 1.1.9.0

Grim Dawn Ideas and Feedback
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Good day

I would like thank Crate for their job and the excellent game we enjoy playing.

Changes to pet sets conjure (oh, the irony) serious concern, especially for Conjurers who build around Beastcaller set and Primal Spirit (bleed, lighting, physical, elemental, vitality builds).

changes from the last patch:

  • Beastcaller’s Regalia Set: added 6 Physical damage bonus for pets. Removed % Health % Offensive Ability and % Crit damage bonuses for pets.

  • Beastcaller’s Cowl: reduced % All Damage on the granted skill

  • Nature’s Call Regalia Set: added 15 Physical damage bonus for pets. Removed % Health % Offensive Ability and % Crit damage bonuses for pets. Removed Duration modifier for Conjure Primal Spirit.

  • Mythical Beastcaller’s Cowl: reduced % All Damage on the granted skill
    Ghol’s Malice Set: reduced % Attack and % Cast Speed debuff on the summoned pet’s aura to -8%. Removed % Total Speed and % Acid/Poison damage/duration bonuses for pets.

  • Summon Familiar: reduced % Pet Attack damage to 11%

  • Lightning Strike: increased Radius to 3.5 and increased % Pet Attack damage scaling with rank to
    100% by rank 12, 125% by max ultimate rank

Conjure Primal Spirit: increased Cooldown to 45s - this is in combination with removal of duration modifier on Mythical Beastcaller set is basically means the pet is now avaiilable for the half of the time.

I appreciate Crate added Zaria pendant with 30% total damage modifier for Hellhound and Briarthon, as well as Bloodsworn Codex with another 35% total damage modifier.

However it is worth noting that all high end pet builds are focused around the sets adding second pet (Briarthon, Blight Fiend, Familiar. Hellhound - less likely as it is paired with Skeletons on Lost Souls set) and i of course may be wrong and more experienced pet players should correct me but in my humble opinion nobody is going to break the set (Ghol, Bysmiel Trinkets, Beastcaller, Lost Souls) in order to get modifiers to Primal Spirit and/or other second pets.

The combination of Zaria Pendant + Bloodsworn Codex is arguably best possible for pets conjurers, as even the Yeti from Mythical Heart of the Mountain is worse comparing to it + you sacrifice +1 to Shaman / +1 to Occultist (which is massive amount of skill points) to equip the Bloodsworn Codex and going for Bound’s Wraith is not worth it (mythical WIll of Bysmiel is pretty useless).

basically uptime on Primal SPirit is 10 sec less now (5 sec more base duration and removed 5 sec duriaton modifier).

Pls consider resettling one of these changes.

i am not even talking about the removal of damage/crit damage/oa, don’t understand why it was deemed necessary as pet builds are not overperforming anywhere (they did not, and certainly will not ever if it stays like this).

We all understand the game is close to end of its lifecycle and no major updates will follow, so it is really disappointing to face such massive changes in the rather niche build types.

Would like to have community’s thoughts/ideas/comments on this one.

on the side note
Mogdrogen the Wolf: added 6% Attack damage Converted to Health - maybe it’s worth adding similar to pets to increase survivability?

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This was already in previous patch, same with bloodsworn codes, I use these on my currently only pet build.

Has anyone of you guys played your builds yet? From what I see, it is just theoretical stuff you are “complaining about”

I am planning on playing my only active pet build tomorrow and during the weekend to give some actual feedback about performance and not just number crunching via patch notes.

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Hello.Has anyone ever used “corruptor of soul”,“desecrator covenant““,”mogdrogen’s pease”,and the “winter king”?They both have summons set but are not very good.

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Can say only for myself: never used these sets/items and i am not intending to.

By the way, i overlooked this small gem:

Mythical Veilpiercer: added 6% Physical Resist for pets and increased % Attack Speed for pets to 16%

At least pets live a little bit longer before they die. Oh well.

Still hoping for reconsideration of changes to Conjure Primal Spirit.

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You have provided nothing to base this request on besides “I don’t like it” so far.

Standard procedure, guys…if a change in a patch had a negative impact on your build…we need to see why. Show us builds, changes in build performance, actual evidence of why a change was bad, not “serious concerns”.

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I have noticed a considerable drop in stability in completing Crucible 170 with both the Beastcaller’s Pet Druid & Beastcaller’s Pet Elementalist. The drop in DPS between having the Primal Spirit and not having the Primal Spirit is very noticeable in both builds, and when you have 2-4 Nemeses charging at you, that has been the difference between having the DPS to kill off one of the bad guys and not being able to kill them and the cumulative damage killing off 1 or both of my Briarthorns, causing a chain reaction leading to my death.

Ritualists (including both Ghol’s Acid and Skeleton Vitality) are unaffected because they have numerous other sources of DPS that could ride out the longer wait time. The biggest nerf was to those who relied on both Briars and Primal Spirits simultaneously.

How to change this without making Lightning Conjurers busted again I don’t have a clear answer. That has more to do with the Bloodsworn Codex and Zaria Amulet having perfect synergy with the Kelphat rings than anything else, so if anything I would nerf the MI’s and at the very least return the 5 second duration modifier to the Beastcaller’s Completion set.

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https://www.grimtools.com/calc/b28GgzzN

this is the bleeding build i am using.

Primal Spirit used to be off-line around 6-7 sec and i could survive in SR 75-75 with two bosses on me while waiting for it to recharge, now it is impossible as it is off-line almost half the time and pets die during this time.

Not even talking about Crucible where build is being shredded now (ok i am bad pilot, but i used to finish 150-170 at least in 9-10 minutes, now it is almost impossible itself).

I understand the idea to revise the stats on lvl 94 sets and probably it can be actually off-set by increasing the base % damage of pets and adding some minor phys/ele/vit damage to pets across the sets, but right now Primal Spirit is simply out of use with such long cooldown.

I did not play Lightning Conjurer and i am against nerfs, but if the build overperforms due to rings, and GD stashed MI amulet and off-hand, maybe the issue is with the rings and GD-stashed items, not with the skill?

Please revise the changes to Primal Spirit (5 sec duration and 40 sec base cooldown).

Again, this is not broken build like Witching Hour of the past which cleared Crucible under 5 minutes.

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They suffer from not providing extra pets and Pets, even those that go for quality over quantity, still rely on numbers.

Of those, Winter King has potential to be great, but has no set bonuses and is hybrid based. Due to that, non pet builds tend to see more success with those items than pets.

Another issue with item based pets like the Heart of the Mountain Yeti is that you cannot reduce their CD unlike with mastery based pets.

So, it is favourable to have say, additional Briarthorn and buffing both with Zaria’s than go for Winter King items with Chillmane pet.

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Thank you. About the Winter King, I tried to balance characters and pets with Goyle’s, but the result of the actual combat disappointed me.Might the guardain of death’s gates be a little better positioned than the winter king…

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I would suggest to revert two things (all of them are primal spirit related):

1.) revert the 45 sec cooldown of primal spirit back to 40 - for this is completely unnessessary punch under the belt for pet build lovers (like me). I really can’t see any other reason for implementing this besides just to upset people. It is already a temporary pet for god’s sake!
2.) I noticed the primal spirit is now dieing when the duration runs out instead of being unsummoned. I think it was changed in 1.1.8.0 but not sure for I was away from GD for a few months. Please change it back to being unsummoned for it is MOST FRUSTRATING leaving dead bodies behind when out of combat. It feels so out of place.

Regarding the other changes I tested my pet builds, but seen no big difference. OK, the all damage bonuses are gone from the sets, but flat damage added so it’s OK for me. I don’t play mutch SR or Crucible it can make difference there I don’t know.

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Can’t say anything about Crucible but I farmed the new sets with my bleed/phys Beastcaller Conjurer on SR76 for a dozen consecutive runs last night and it was still doing just fine, regardless of mutators. Not much of a difference to before, if anything it did better since I made a few adjustments after the patch. Did a Deathly run as well, but only up to SR82 before I got bored and went back to farming. Sometimes I even forgot to summon Primal Spirit (it was getting quite late lol) and it still did well. The only danger to my Briarthorns is Aleks since I haven’t capped aether res yet (still farming for better rolls on the pants) but nothing a quick resummon can’t solve.

I didn’t even notice that the cat is dying until someone mentioned it in another thread yesterday. I have set corpse persistence to a very low value, just enough for allowing diseases like Bloody Pox to spread. If it really irks you that much, I suggest you do the same, that way the dead body will be quickly out of sight and out of mind. Also helps the FPS little a bit :smile:

As for the Primal Spirit cooldown nerf, I think of the cat as some kind of nuke, something you use when the going gets tough. So I don’t really need it up 90% of the time.
On the other hand, I really like the idea of having it up 100% of the time, but that should come with a damage reduction to compensate. Like for example reduce cooldown to 20s or increase lifetime to 40s but modify damage by -10% or something like that. Maybe there’s room for such a mechanic on some item that’s already in the game, as I doubt (but hope otherwise) that Crate will introduce even more new items now that the end of development is nigh.

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TBH I don’t want to get used to it.:roll_eyes: The whole concept with primal spirit: you summon it when needed -> it kills everything on sight -> after there is nothing else to kill it is unsummoned. That darn cat is so powerful I’ve never seen it die before! Not until now. This concept was working fine until recently. I am sure this is an oversight from the devs, I’m even considering raising a poll about it.

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Good idea with Bonds of Bysmiel, forgot about that pet and probably it’s worth dropping Oleron constellation and take this one instead.

The whole thing which everybody is freaked out is the Primal Spirit thing.
Yeah, it maybe considered a nuke but unlike Devastation in ARcanist tree it cannot carry the build alone and nobody is going to drop any piece of Beastcaller set in any case as two Briarthorns are basically imperative.

By the way, still no resistance on Beastcaller Helm.

i don’t know if it’s worth making a poll but at least my idea is we can live with nerfed set stats, but pls revise the changes to Primal Spirit (base cooldown to 40 sec and 5 sec duration on completion of mythical Beastcaller set).

Again, now in the Shards you have to pull the bosses 1 by 1, kill one boss, wait for cooldown to reset, summon the pet, go for another one. If 2 or 3 are at you while cooldown is off, you are dead.

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Perhaps not. I made a poll some time ago, devs did not give a sh*t.

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So I just stormed blindly into the SR75 bossroom and pulled them all just to prove you wrong, and what do I get? Ishtal, Moosi, Ilgorr (at least he didnt contribute to my quick demise) and, of course, freaking Aleks :scorv::damage_aether::damage_aether::damage_aether: It comes down to boss combo and piloting, I’m fairly certain that I could have pulled 2 or maybe even all of them except Aleks and survived. Aggro management is key, but without Nature’s Guardian devo it’s hard to pull off.

Why would they? A poll isn’t a gun to their head, it’s just a momentary sentiment of a tiny fraction of the forum regulars.

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:slight_smile: Well, i can understand your pain as i used to meet Iron Maiden and Fabius who teleport to me and they are at my neck and it may take 5-10 deaths to be able to kill one of them.

Conjure Primal Spirit is a must in Conjurer pet builds, leaving it off-line half other time (20 sec onnline, 15 sec off-line in my spec posted in this thread) is not working and hurting performance a lot.

And these are SR where theoretically we have time to wait for cooldown.

We don’t have this luxury in Crucible.

Please revise the changes to Primal Spirit.

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Aggro Quest part 2: Dying on SR75 cost me 6 minutes of the timer but I managed to get it back up to 9 minutes for SR76. Rushed the bossroom like a madman again, this time I got Kuba, Tigan, Valdaran and Alkamos. Had to resummon the Briarthorns a lot, and in the end I got unlucky and was executed by Alkamos while everything was on cooldown :sweat_smile: But still made it in time for the extra loot chest :grin: Well, enough stupid fun for today, back to chillax mode aka the now intended “boss” room 1vs1 approach :wink:

My only other pet build is a double familar lightning Conjurer and doesn’t even use Primal Spirit. It was cabable of SR80+ and killing Crate of Entertainment before the patch, gonna take it for a farming run later tonight and see how it goes. A few items I’m using underwent some changes. Some nerfs, some buffs, but I don’t expect much of a difference tbh.

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+1 It was more reasonable before. Also please change the dieing animation to the unsummon when duration expires.

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Well, then i am obviously a bad pilot if i need Primal Spirit in my Beastcaller build, or Beastcaller bleed setup is inferior comparing to double birds’ lightning way.

Anyway there is enough evidence in the feedback section that Beastcaller conjurers are hit the hardest with this nerf and i sincerely hope it will be reconsidered.

All those items and modifiers for Primal Spirit/Briarthorn are good and helpful during levelling, though when you complete the full set and get two Briarthorns, there is no other way around.

I am sure adding a single item allowing increase in summon limit of Briarthorn/Hellhound/Familiar is a very bad idea, so we are left with what we have.

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My build is still doing fine, does that count as counter-evidence?

Also I really hope you’re not talking about that incredibly ridiculous “feedback” thread from yesterday :smile:

Apart from your post there’s one post in this thread which suggests that Beastcaller Druids/Elementalist were hit. Give them some time to revise and adjust their build. Not saying that they didn’t do that, but it’s something everyone should do before they start calling for reverting the nerfs. And if it’s still too unstable then it might be a sign that the nerfs were too hard for these setups. The patch has been out for 3 days, I suggest gathering evidence after taking all changes into consideration and then giving proper feedback.