Oh neat a fellow Lightning Conjurer, using Hand of Ultos?
My build leaned a bit more into the electrocute stuff since it feels good with the acid conversion on Voidmancer belt fully converting the Primal Spirits tail sting.
I agree on the Raven part, very squishy especially against phys damage. But imo Calla’s storm is really over the top(esp with new sunder boosting it).
Unfortunately, even in season 2, pure minion builds in D4 are extremely underwhelming and I fear GD might go down the same path. The recent changes do seem to indicate a trend of GD’s trying to copy the more fast-paced action-focused gameplay of D4 and I fear that pets with their inherently “lazyness” might get sidelined more and more. Who knows though, only time will tell.
No more easy than non pet builds in 1.2 maybe, but they’ve been among the strongest, if not the absolutely strongest builds in the entire game for years now. No other build or closely related collection of builds has spent as much time on top as pets in fact. I say that now is a good time to buff some other playstyles. Ranged Aether? Ranged spells like AAR or Flames of Ignaffar? Sure. Maybe some more Mortar Trap, Blade Arc, OFF, Calidors…there are tons of builds that could offer a more active playstyle and have rarely if ever been on top.
I personally love pets, but after years of it any playstyle will get stale. And we should perhaps do more testing before just assuming that it’s the end of the Pets world, anyway, for all we know the new mechanics are even more challenging for long term play (outside of a few edge cases on certain super bosses) than they are for pets.
The d4 devs have stated that they want to encourage a more active playstyle, and they’re actively working to buff other playstyles ahead of minions. I think that part of their issue is that minion builds put a huge strain on their overburdened and over-inclusive servers that combine consoles and PCs into one area, often with crash-y results.
GD, otoh, has always been a primarily single player game, and they don’t have the same concerns about servers, as there aren’t any. They’ve also shown clearly for years that they don’t mind having Pets in a very strong place. So, again, totally different games with totally different concerns.
I have done all the testing I can. Unless someone has made an overpowered pet build which they are keeping a secret instead of sharing with the rest of the community, I don’t think my observations are false.
_
Anyway, if people think pets are overpowered or atleast strong atm and believe that non pet builds are the ones that need buffs (or that non pet builds aren’t stronger or overpowered), then that is fine as well.
I find more and non pet builds that fit my criteria as the days go by, so I am happy with the game overall, even if I have to switch away from pet builds for the lazy, kill everything build style that I have come to prefer.
I have to cringe so hard reading this when this is being posted right below:
This is still an easier and safer kill than 99% of non pet builds and it’s obviously not using beastcaller and he didn’t even bother investing into wendigo totem, which as you said, is one of if not the best healing skill for pets.
I have read that part and still stand by what i said, the Ravager kill had close to 0 resummoning. The Calla kill did have lots of resummoning though, I agree.
It does. Should we have the same amount of retal builds do the same content? The same about of dual wield gun builds? This whole “pets should have the same about of lazy viable celestial boss killers as non pet builds” argument is pretty stupid imo.
If you wish to argue that a small percentage of Retal or Dual Wield Gun builds do a particular content fine, so therefore the build archetype as a whole is doing good, then yes you need to have the same number of builds.
I feel like you and me just have a vastly different difinition of “have it easy” when it comes to pet vs non pet builds. Anything that’s not just literal afk kills is deemed frustrating by you, which imo is beyond ridiculous.
RawrBringer - Witchblade not an afk tank, not even close. I simply wanted to test the new movespeed cap increase on hydra and have never played a ranged player build before. I find it easier to play vs Superbosses compared to my non conjurer pet builds.
What you mean is lazy, fully facetankable and with competitive fast clear times. Can you, just once, be honest with what you prefer instead of these wishy-washy emotional statements that no one can refute?
It’s not your fault that hordes of players cling to your every word about what to do with regards to making a pet build. But I do mind when you use that authority to make definitive statements like “I can’t possibly recommend a pet build in 1.2” and let the horde make the obvious implications that this is the definitive state of pet builds.
I mean, isn’t it obvious that non-pet builds are going to have ways of stacking Physical resistance (which again only really matters against Callagdra) that pet builds don’t have access to? Or that Conjurer (with fully invested Briarthorn) is the only real pet class capable of reaching such high Phys values in the first place? We can ask for buffs until we’re blue in the face, but when reaching such high Physical resistance is 99% irrelevant for most content (and makes such content trivial), Zantai is going to need more convincing arguments.
Besides, that Lost Souls set that you constantly brag about 3:30 Crucible times? The one that lowers cooldown of Hellhounds to 2 seconds and Skeletons to roughly 5 or so? It beats Calla just fine. It just takes 4 minutes to beat instead of 2 minutes. But in your eyes, that’s “slow” or “frustrating” or whatever subjective terminology you want to use to justify your “pet builds are not fine” narrative.
Without being able to watch videos of your kills, I would assume the playstyle and the kill times are very comparable to the pet build by SRKSlash, both of which are totally fine. So I don’t see a problem with pets.
Edit: Keep in mind the patch with the base HP buffs for pets is still not on playtest (or is it now?).
I did see them. The “assume” was only in regards to “playstyle”.
I’m comparing the way SRKSlash killed calla on his pet build to a ranged build:
Let pets attack until they die/are close to death, then resummon them/have them disengage, repeat.
This is actually quite similar to what a ranged build has to do to kill e.g. Calla, attack, run, attack, run. Both builds are kiting.
I’m aware that generally those playstyles are very different, but in this case they are actually quite similar.
