This one build aside, rest of my stuff is apparently same as before. Either the pets have trouble staying alive or it is the player who repeatedly dies.
And yes, this is in relation to superbosses. Plenty of theoretical damage, but not able to actually make use of it.
In terms off SR and Crucible, things are vastly different.
Just to confirm I got this right: You mean, the situation pós reversed-nerfs remains fairly similar to the pre reversed-nerfs?
Again, just so I understand: Whatever changes were made to theoretically boost their DPS can’t reach full potential because their survivability falls flat before it happens?
Correct.
Against Superbosses, that is correct for most pet builds, save for a rare few that can stack enough pet resistances to tank through the damage.
In Crucible and SR however, Pets rarely struggle. So, they got a massive buff there. For example a 3:30 min 150-170 Crucible run with Skeletons.
Pets got a lot of their Physical Resistance options nerfed or outright removed.
In return, they got Pet armor sprinkled here and there, which does practically nothing for their survivability.
The latest change mostly focused on pet Health, which makes very little difference when Resistances are the issue.
A player with 60K HP, but only 40% resistances for example is not going to be “tanky”, despite the massive HP.
Pet Resistance options are already few and far inbetween or rather awkward to get on certain builds.
Unlike player builds, they cannot rely on massive Life Leech or Health Regen to stay alive. In an environment where even Player builds go for as much Physical resistance as they can, to survive, having it at the lowest point for Pets since Forgotten Gods release, does not help.
Gotcha. Would it then be a fair assessment to say that these changes affected pets negatively only against superbosses, whilst affecting them positively in every other situation?
EDIT: Sorry, I didn’t see the last part of your post, I imagine you edited after I had already written my response.
It is a little bit more complicated that that, since builds vary massively in terms of damage, survivability, ease of playing, etc.
Better to think of it like a “win more” situation. Any pet build that did pretty good previously vs a specific content (like SR for example), became even better now.
But things like budget builds, or endgame setups that used to work somewhat decently, but not well enough, became worse.
yeah 
To post a non superboss example -
Petwalker - Walking Simulator Budget Pet Conjurer used to work well enough as a budget setup for farming SR in 9.8.
The build relied on having your pets tank for you while minimizing the aggro generated by the player.
In the current SR, pets still take more damage then before, so with that build, you are going to find your pets dying too much to actually tank for you and keep you alive, making it impossible to achieve anything remotely close to pre 1.2 performance.
Just to be clear, you’re not talking about outright healing, such as Mend Flesh, right? Or are you saying that healing in general is not worth since it doesn’t keep up with the negative effects of lower resistance? I’m asking this because I’m getting a bit confused on whether you and the other players agree that focusing on pet healing as a way to make up for the lost survivability is even worth or viable.
So, in layman’s terms, we will have to create specialized pet builds for each “type” of endgame content if we want achieve the same level of survivability and efficiency as pre 1.2 patch?
Before, let’s say, your Squishy build naturally excelled in some regards but not in others, however, it was still able to beat every endgame content with wide margins of survivability and efficiency; now, that won’t be the case anymore, it will excel even more in its strongest points but fall flat in content that the build is naturally weak to.
Life Leech is Attack Damage Converted to Health.
Health Regen is stuff like the passive regen you get from Modrogen’s Pact.
Neither of which are useful for Pets because of how massive their Health pool is while Life Leech and Health regen are balanced around the comparatively tiny Player’s Health.
Healing such as Mend Flesh is different since they mostly tend to heal a Percentage of Health instead of only a flat amount.
Mend Flesh however, is 
The heal is inconsistent and Familiars don’t have the survivability to actually stay long enough to heal you in situations where you are actually going to need the healing.
But, Blood of Dreeg is pretty good and Wendigo Totem is great.
Issue however is that not all builds can afford to invest into them. You need Shaman and spare skill points for Wendigo Totem and pet builds tend to be Skill point starved most of the time. Blood of Dreeg without massive Cooldown reduction is not capable of keeping pets alive on its own.
Not exactly…
It is more like you now have a grand total of one option if you wish to tackle superbosses without frustration and constant resummoning - BeastCaller Briarthorn with as much pet physical resistance as you can afford.
For the rest of the content, you can make do with any well optimized endgame build.
Pet builds are insanely easy to play right now, if you want to kill superbosses then make a custom build for it like everyone else has to.
And, as much as I like D4 now in s2, GD is a very different game with a very different vibe. We were supposed to stop getting new major updates several years ago, and FG was definitely the last expansion…yet here we are. I, for one, am very pleased with Crate’s continued support of GD. Comparing some minor pet nerfs that you’ve not played yourself but rather just read updates about from one of hardest of our hardcore build testers to the incredible catastrophe that was d4 s1 is ridiculous.
Every time something gets nerfed there is crying, usually before any serious testing in fact. I remember the retaliation nerfs years ago, the crying and wailing in the forums was so intense. Today, it’s pets. Tomorrow it will be something else. If people don’t like changes, play the game offline and don’t update it, keep playing your immortal and insanely OP pet build forever in 1.98.
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).
Build: Conjurer, Level 100 (GD 1.1.9.8) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator
2 min Ravager kill(lucky): https://youtu.be/3nu6vKcLoLs
3:30 min Callagadra kill: https://youtu.be/WhJUWRozXQ4
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 to play than non pet builds.
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.
no pet builds in here 
⭐ Top 20 Softcore builds in Grim Dawn (An Opinion)
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.
Let me help you with that reading part with some handy underlining of the important parts -
Perhaps it is time to look at the Flat numbers instead of the %Values.
Number of Pet builds that have it easy vs Number of non-Pet builds that have it easy.
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.
There’s not 9 pet masteries in this game though.
