Pet Levelling Discussion

Grim Dawn Gameplay Discussion
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Pets stronger than ever

“Why’d you nerf pets?”

Yup…sounds like another update.

This is extremely dismissive and not representative of folks experiences. It’s against your own community standards of the rule “don’t be an asshole”. This isn’t constructive or supportive. Could they have been more specific? Absolutely. Does a representative of the company have a bigger obligation to be a decent human being? Absolutely.

A petmaster is my prefered playstyle. My only lvl 100 character is a conjurer. I just love creating and playing with new characters in ARPGs, but I am so done by the 80s because the content is over in most games. That’s how much I enjoyed the experience of playing this game, as a petmaster, when it released. I’ve continued to enjoy this game, through it’s changes, over the years. I will rarely ever play a class that doesn’t have a pet, past level 30 in any ARPG, and I will not play them where they aren’t a fun challenge.

Creating a brand new set of characters from the currently available options, with low level characters, and nothing in a shared stash to power level or buff the pets, it takes forever to kill anything. Putting every point I have available into pets, except the bleed debuff I cant recall the name off off hand, and it can take minutes to kill the boss in the first mission, because they do no appreciable damage, even with me actively swinging at it. These pets had zero survivability on their own and die constantly, leaving me to wait several seconds for that cool down to pop because I already rezzed them once this fight. At level 20, a raven, a hellhound and a briarthorn and none of them can take a hit or do much of anything, without a totem out to constantly life tap. This isn’t a fun experience. Maybe they are more powerful at higher levels. But we have to get there, and it shouldn’t be a massive chore to do so, when you have no active skills to use, because you WANT to be a pet master.

These types of changes should have gone into a new class, with new type/types of pets. Instead, I’ve got ~1k hours in this game, and I was looking forward to the expansion, even knowing it’s not a pet focused thing. Now the only thing I’m looking forward to is either a mod or never considering Grim Dawn 2, if folks that enjoy playing pets keep getting dismissed by staff members for giving the very appropriate feedback that these completely unnecessary changes were unfun and should be revisited to allow for multiple playstyles.

There might not be a problem with overall pet power. I don’t know. I haven’t gotten that far. But there is absolutely a problem with low level pets power, and if I can’t have fun getting to where that flips, I’m never going to get there, because I’ll be playing something else, and other folks will too.

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when and where/what are you doing or trying to fight that takes minutes?
pets got levelled during and after playtest and this is/was most definitely not the shared experience, so it’s highly curious :thinking:

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Not being rude, just clarifying: As stated above, pets are sent to attack, and I am attacking. This is on simple veterans difficulty, no mods, basic install. After getting to the first dungeon to stop the undead attack, and bringing my pet with me, first trying necro, then shaman, then occultist. In each scenario, I put only a single point into passive buffs as they are unlocked. depending on class, I will unlock a debuff, when available, everything else goes into pets, with the bigger ones getting two to three points before moving anything else forward. Going in, sending the pets to attack, and attacking myself, this is a very consistent experience with Kyzog. I just had my briarthorn with a raven and a hellhound against good ole money bags and things are still taking forever. I have zero survivability to the pets against bosses without using the shaman lifetap totem, and using blood pox (2pts), curse of frailty, and a point of vulnerability to it. I have only the gear I was able to loot per character. It took multiple minutes to kill him. Same experience with the Warden. I’m seeing similar reports on the steam discussion boards as well, so while you may not, there is a massive thread that says it’s pretty common for folks to be experiencing issues with these pet changes.

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you’re not, atleast not if i think it’s the thread you’re referring to
then you’re reading “misunderstood complaints” or the type of "i read patch notes, don’t understand them, so i immediately post"complaint that you lamented being dismissed here/earlier in this forum too
it’s sorta a running joke that people will see/read “minus X” in patch/every patch release, then complaint about nerfs; missing the forest for trees of buffs, buffs that vastly outdoes the “nerfs” in most patches, (including this) - possibly also why you saw the dev so “callously” dismiss it here, since that type of initial/immediate responses are the norm that they are predictable, regardless of the months of test results that indicate the contrary before release - test phases said people had all the chances to participate in and come with their own results showing the patch notes to indeed be as bad/nerfed as perceived
anyways, that’s just every patch cycle/react :smile:

your personal experience is then the interesting thing, so appreciate the elaboration. Can give it a whirl and see if i get the same experience

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And how many points in your pets? All of those with just the base skill maxed can handle anything in Act 1 without any help from you.

My bird alone maxed took out Kyzog with about 2 hits. I think Viloth took 3.

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Just for clarity, it wasn’t my post that was being dismissed.
Having worked in software myself, I very much understand that a lot of folks misread/ignore patch notes. I understand your point of view and very much appreciate your methodical approach to your response.

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I don’t have the numbers in front of me, but I know I had a least 3 points into briarthorn and 2 in hellhounds base skills. I thought 2 into rave and 2 into the raven’s heal skill. Prior to this patch, and at the start of the patch, I had invested more into buffs than pets, but reversing it did not help.

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quick run so far; bird 2 shot Barog and 3-4 shot Kyzog

no sry didn’t mean dev dismissed you, was referring to the general post/dismissal you commented on

same char, rank 5 briar (mastery bar expensive), 18 hits to kill kyzogg for 24sec kill, obviously slower than bird but has always been the case (not same pet rank at this stage)

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Nowhere near enough so yes, don’t expect them to kill quickly in that case.

It sounds like you want to also do damage alongside your pets, but that doesn’t really work that well. Max base skill of hound and briar, raven’s not so important early on and then just let them do their thing. With the latest patches they’re aggressive by default so will go after anything that gets in their aggro range.

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I’m sorry if that was considered rude to you, but I would highlight the part of your statement: human being. We are in fact people too and not obligated to put up with every bit of bullshit slung our way time and time again just because we are the developers.

Someone dismissing the second longest changelog in the game’s history, a significant portion of which was dedicated to making the pet playstyle better than ever (something we even called out at the beginning of the patch notes in order to mitigate these knee-jerk responses), with a flippant “why did you nerf pets” is not going to receive a robotic PR response around here. If that is the kind of lifeless developer communications you are accustomed to, that’s fine and I understand how the alternative could be jarring, but at no point would I consider anything I’ve posted to be not a “decent human being”.

These changes were vetted by some of the most dedicated pet players in the community during playtesting, ones that also write beginner guides. If there was suddenly an issue in leveling this playstyle, I have no doubt they would have let us know in the most sassy way possible, cause few of our endgame builders mince words when it comes to giving feedback on our mistakes.

This public playtest ran for many months and was thoroughly tested. These changes did not come out of the blue.

I’m very familiar with that thread, its author, and that even they changed their mind as they actually played with the changes, even if their metrics are…how should we put it…personalized.

I hope the others responding to you has offered some clarity on where you could improve your build, because pets are an incredibly strong leveling playstyle. The changes in this update did nothing to hinder this. If anything, it made them easier to level with than ever.

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You should be maxing out your pets. Example at level 20 - Conjurer, Level 20 (GD 1.2.1.2) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator

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I understand and appreciate the effort you put into your very rational response. I also understand that the responses I’m getting from people that are telling me that pets are still okay, are doing so with saying you basically maximize the pet, or don’t run with hordes of pets, and there is no alternative. The video posted by @Gnomish_Inquisition and the words stated by @medea_fleecestealer support my interpretation of this approach. I apologise for my initial skepticism and lack of understanding of the context with which some of the responses I read were made.

I want to be very clear that I am trying to state that this is my interpretation and I am very open to the idea that I could be mistaken in my interpretation. I am not intending to be demeaning or dismissive. Y’all have been great with the direct responses to me,and I appreciate it.

What I am hearing/seeing from responses though is that we went from being able to do what I, and likely others, tend to do, in order to establish context and hopefully convey the concerns appropriately of what I am seeing. When we build our characters, we often spread skill points into a few of them as we move forward. We establish a rank or more in a given skill and keep moving forward to unlock other skills/passives/etc and fill in as necessary/able with higher skill ranks. As I understand it, a lot of skills that were viable before the change that did this are still viable to be used as primary methods of damage/defense for the given intended build.

What I am seeing here though is that we basically need to ignore swarm pets, or groups of pets, in order to be required to put as many points as possible into the pet at low level so it’s viable. Maybe 5 points in briar or 14 points in raven was able to take down Kyzog easy. But that’s maxing out a skill instead of what has been common or is still common in other builds, where that’s not necessary in order to progress. So, unless I’m missing something, what sense does it make to basically require that of pets? Every build has its’ own approach. I’m not trying to argue against that. Would I have maxed those skills out later anyway? Most likely, as the character progressed. It’s the curve of power getting there that makes it a very jarring and, to me, a very unpleasant change, as opposed to a more common slow progression of the pet where you don’t feel you absolutely have to put every point into it right now just for it to seem to be worth any points at all.

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Pets have always been like that since they do not scale on the player stats unlike other skills where the points you invest into the mastery bar for example, helps with your damage since it boosts attributes.

This is not a new change. It has been like this since Ashes of Malmouth expansion at the very least. So, been like this for years.

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you’re assuming there is a difference
other skills that did/does allow the 1pt skill ->climb mastery bar has basically the same curve as pets now
if you 1pt primal strike, vs maxing it “immediately” you’re gonna likewise see a massive power difference, just like sparsely pointed pets now
you could say pets are closer to player builds in that regard now too, which might be coincidental (haven’t tried/tested)
it’s actually something i and another player did a bit of forth and back on, because i was a staunch proponent of low rank skill/spread stuff around, both in terms of fun (i like piano) but also i feel mastery rank added a lot of safety
And that might very well have been true at some point, but now, with years of buffs and powercreep, it’s just not “the same”, so even i have gravitated more towards maxing skills directly/fully/early vs climbing mastery bar or spreading points around “superfluously” (unless i’m deliberately going for a meme max piano asap)
pets have long been recommended to max asap, well before this patch, because it made them oodles more efficient, the difference was just we didnt’ recommend to also upgrade/max their separate attack skills early, as prior they weren’t so strong, now however those extra skills are worth maxing too, that’s sorta really the only main change there in terms of recent lvl approach altering

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This has not been my experience at all. Couple of points into each skill as you move forward and buffing with pet items as you go was all I needed before this patch, for everything but forgotten gods, and even that wasn’t as unforgiving as what I’m experiencing in the first act.

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Perhaps you were playing on normal difficulty before and accidentally turned on veteran? :thinking:

Because the leveling part has not been nerfed in any way or form. If anything, it got buffed.

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oh yea forgot to mention something
struggle with human bosses, for bird levelling atleast, can very much be a thing in some encounters, because of wearing armours that grant them resist
since Bird is basically pure elemental/lightning dmg, until you get some sparsely different dmg added later, it means if a humanoid enemy spawns wearing lighting res or ele res armours, they can drastically affect Bird’s dmg
this is easily the case for Moneybags now after he got a row of MIs to equip :sweat_smile:

other pets are affected much less by this, since they do both phys dmg but also usually couple other dmg types/2-3 (assuming not converted ofc)

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I can assure you, other, non-pet builds have to do that as well, especially on Veteran.
Sometimes it is not the main node you max first, because of mana constraints or AoE/damage on 2nd node etc. But you usually focus on one single skill first.

Has been this way for years.

You can get away with more spread out distribution on non-Vet play-throughs, so maybe that is what you are thinking of.

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I have always played on Veteran or higher. I don’t know what the discrepancy is.

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when did you last play? Veteran has been buffed couple times, even Normal too recently, gave enemies bit more “chunk”, enough for couple players to make a note of it after 9.8? 1.2? don’t remember exactly when it was last