If your tanky pets die and the boss switches aggro to you, you are forced to reposition against more than just sunder, because pets are also the “defensive skills” in a pet build.
Anyone who takes the word of someone else blindly without never having tried it out for themselves have only themselves to blame if they end up regretting missing out on it later.
So, that is certainly a double edged sword. A person might spend the time and effort on the particular something only to come to the same conclusion and feel like they wasted time, or they might be pleasantly surprised.
Only way to be sure is to experience it for themselves.
I can safely say that anyone who share the same thoughts will only find Pet builds to be stronger than ever, even overpowered in 1.2
The higher the ranking, the higher the ‘Target Area’ is, but not the ‘Meter Radius’.
Does this mean that… if the projectile heals within a 1 meter radius, but it can land anywhere within the target area, then the higher the ranking, the less accurate the heal becomes (because it can land anywhere in a wider area)?
@Zantai Is it intentional that the heal becomes less accurate the higher ranking it gets?
I’ve played 4500 hours, and I’d bet that you’ve played a lot more than that. Reading through my replies, they come across as disrespectful and I apologize for the tone. I still think that pets are in a very strong place, but I could have phrased it much differently.
edit: devotions levels:
light of empiryon 6/15
dryad’s blessing 14/25
ulzaad’s decree 10/20
ghoulish hunger 17/25
assassin’s mark 14/25
callblabla, first kill in 1.2, took longer i would say than .98, didn’t know which attack was going to sunder, didn’t try to face tank through sunder, didn’t die, did move/dodge somewhat more than .98
i don’t get why they are treated like the holy grail, i don’t think those super bosses are interesting, just “bullet sponges”.
i get they are optional, which is exactly why i don’t understand what the big deal is. i shouldn’t be able to kill them, i just took someones build to do it… and killed it with ease.
and yes the community shouldn’t use them as build benchmarks, but common, this will always happen… and if you put a big boss in games, ppl will want to kill them, and we all know gamers don’t play games as devs intended them to.
what i’m trying to say is, for grim dawn 2, design bosses that are more interesting than just HP pools as big as “insert something stupid here”
in the end for gd2 i would do different secret stuff than optional super bosses, and make interesting campaign/end game bosses.
did anyone ever made a special build for the D2 cow level?
What about damage over time builds? The ones that stack a ton of different sources to pile on the damage and get an insane amount of duration on top? They could (very inneficiently) just use some skills and simply run around and reposition for ages before having to recast and still deal tons of damage.
If someone can muster a dot build that can wreck a superboss without needing to regularly step into the danger zone to refresh all the dots, then that would be impressive.
Like you said, the result is likely to be very inefficient.
I’m mostly just talking about the whole “non-Pet builds deal 0 damage when repositioning”. In this case, that’s just not true. Of course, to play correctly, you still need to expose yourself on a damage over time build but you can still do significant amounts of damage even when not directly engaging for a few seconds.
If the devs want to give more agency to the player they could do something like giving pets a toggleable “attack” and “defense” stance, each would boost and penalize parameters accordingly and maybe add new functions, such as in defense you could order them to evade.
Arguably this build that can kill crate of E in 2(!) casts of forcewave [1.1.9.6-1.2] Forcewace Trauma Witchblade: All Celestials + SR90 - 1 million damage internal trauma crits
I was gonna say this build is pretty op since that’s what I remember from season 4(1.1.9.6), but honestly after comparing its damage vs ravager to 1.2 pet builds’ damage vs ravager, it’s not even that crazy anymore. The build is only crazy good vs crate since it has insane range on FW’s dot application due to the +4m range on earthsplitter making it hit from an entire screen away combined with the build being more of a tankcannon instead of a glass cannon. It can do super safe kills (only casting FW and CoF) vs ravager and calla in probably around 4 minutes, which obviously is still pretty good considering its safety, but it’s noticeably slower than many pets.
I understand and accept the pet changes, and even agree in that primal instinct should have been nerfed a long ago. Also like the current mogdrogen’s ardor, which is the best pet relic currently IMHO as a level 90 item should be. My problem is with the sunder mechanic against pets which Maya already addressed. After testing I found out that a sundered pet is as good as dead and they don’t have a dodge as the player do. This should be addressed in future patches.
PS: the 2s cooldown nullifying aether traps of the ravager of minds are just mean.
There’s another thing that I would like to mention and I don’t know if it has been adressed already. If this has been tackled already then ignore this. Otherwise, I would like to mention the spawn animations of Pets. Older Pets like Hellhound and Familiar are summoned nigh instantaneously which wastes very little time during a tough fight against Super Bosses and that is pretty useful. However, Pets that came with expansions (Skeletons, Blight Fiend, Dirge of Arkovia Pet, etc) have these fancy animations when spawning which are a great visual touch, but extremely impractical during combat against Super Bosses. These animations can eat up a whole second or more each time you have to resummon and this adds up over time. Considering that Super Bosses are not the kind of enemy you can afford to waste precious time against and the fact that the 1.2 version made Pets die much more frequently, this just makes the expansion Pets far worse against Super Bosses when compared to the older Pets. Isn’t this a bit unfair for builds that rely on those?
In general I love v 1.2 patch, but regarding the already often discussed boss - the Ravager - after the patch my Witch Hunter basically gets her ass kicked in like 1 second because my pets die instantly - and I am talking about Elite difficulty, not Ultimate. Not saying I was doing great against Ravager before, but I was at least able to hurt it pretty bad, now it happily kills me with its stats intact.
Any chance to make Sunder at least little bit less powerful on lower difficulties or make pets resistances against it higher? Of course I could create another tank build just to do the farming, but I enjoy more just playing 1 character and building it up than having multiple builds just to get some items.
I second this. I started a level 1 run on Ultimate with both a Cabalist and a Conjurer, and I have actually died because my Cabalist char had to stop to summon the Reap Spirit. I can’t run and summon seamlessly like a Conjurer can, and on Ultimate, staying still means certain death. Please, let us toggle summoning animations in the options menu.
Also, I’d love if all the difficulties were enabled by default without any prior shenanigans. I had to download the Smash N Grab mod map just so I could start a level 1 char on Ultimate. If someone has the default map as a mod and would be so kind as to throw it my way I’d be very much appreciated.
Now, the evade skill is a game changer and has saved my ass many times. The cooldown is a bit too long though.
