I’m just wondering what the rationale behind having separate pet stats is. It was on my mind while playing all through this game’s development and I never asked. When some skills, such as thermite mines, were changed to scale with the player when the shaman was introduced, I wondered why the change wasn’t made for everything.
I often find myself wanting to produce some type of hybrid build wherein I use a pet, but it seems like it ends up intentionally hamstringing my character.
If you like having separate pet stats, what is your reasoning? I’ve thought about it for a long time, but it just feels like it limits build diversity to me.
I won’t buy that it is a “balance” issue because skills that were previously scaled with pet bonuses have been changed, and why it would be any harder to balance a pet versus some other skill doesn’t seem like a feasible argument.
At this point it is too drastic of a change imo. But also, I think some people just like to have it separate. Can’t please everyone with the change. I’m indifferent about it, but I think I lean more towards making pets scale with the player in all cases.
They would be far too powerful. If they scaled off your stats then any character would benefit massively from pets. As they are you need to specialise into them in some way to make them useful, thereby making it a conscious decision you have to make rather than ‘put this relic on because the pet will basically be another you’
Why would they be any more powerful than any other skill? There would always be a cost-benefit trade-off, why would a pet innately be more powerful than something else? I don’t understand this line of reasoning at all.
The game tends to focus on dealing one kind of damage, and it treats pets as a kind of damage. That said, the expansion seems to be pushing us toward vitality + pets.
Not so. If you could have a pet that would be just as powerful as you, why would anyone make a pet build when they could have a fully powered-up Trickster plus an identical twin (stat wise, not appearance) assisting?
When you intentionally make a pet class, you put everything into it, sacrificing your own capabilities to do so. You pass on a nice +300 health item because it has no pet stats. You go with the +60% fire to pets that has barely anything good for your character.
Because your character’s direct power would still be lower than a character not using a pet? The damage would simply be coming from a different source, but wouldn’t prevent you from having synergy with another ability.
I still don’t understand this argument, I guess I’m thick.
Anything can be done with the appropriate scaling. Which is why I’m with Asumpossum on this one. The argument of having a twin that’s just as powerful as you is just a matter of applying a scaling factor for balance so that said twin is within the realm of the damage output you’d get by spending points in skills with the appropriate gearing.
The problem with pets in Vanilla is that they’re pretty binary. Either you go all the way with them or you don’t. There’s no in between and the only way I’ve seen it done/solved (and it can be done) is in Cornucopia. It’s been long enough I can’t recall all the details on how they did it but if you want an example of modifications that make hybrid pet builds feasible, that would be the mod to check out.
There’s a bunch of mechanics I could get into in why this happens but suffice it to say both systems could work, inherited player stats or direct pet stat bonuses, it just depends entirely on implementation. The current meta implementation and scaling of pet bonus specific gear just favors going “all in” when it comes to pet builds.
If all pets were player scaled you’d be limiting diversity of build and gameplay, not expanding it.
There’d be no need to quarterback anymore. The majority of builds would boil down to some derivative of “what we’ve been doing all along +pets following us around adding DPS and effects”.
I guess I just 100% disagree with this. Right now if you go pets, you go pets. if you don’t, you don’t. If you used pets with other skills, you’d still have to “quarterback” them just like any other skill. There’d still be advantages to sacrificing/resummoning, etc. To me it only serves to expand diversity. Why would allowing the player to also have an ability primarily deriving from their character suddenly make them completely ignore their pet? There also seems to be an assumption that suddenly EVERY build would use a pet, but that also isn’t the case. The pet would still come at the cost of some other ability’s synergy. It’s not like suddenly you have an infinite number of points to just throw into a pet so you can have a robot following you around.
Because you don’t have unlimited skillpoints to work with.
Is that really an esoteric concept?
As ASYLUM said, I think it’s too late to change now. That being said, if GD2 ever comes around, you’ll find me being a staunch defender of the concept of making everything player-scaling and enabling summons to have better integration of weapon-damage related effects (assuming the % WD system were to remain as well, which I frankly hope it doesn’t without major reworks).
I’d love to have one or two pets by my side in some of my builds. But I don’t, because that’s not the way scaling works. And because of this, we run this odd dichotomy where skills, trees, items, devotions, etc. are utter garbage unless you’re playing a pet build, or vice versa.
But you don’t need to spend skill points to get a pet, that is where I’m coming from. Relics and items give pets too. If they scaled with player bonuses a pet would most likely be a lot better than what a single item gives you.
Then you’re giving up a pretty significant part of your build regardless just to get a pet.
If you want a pet in GD and you’re presently not a pet build, you need to sacrifice something. The only difference is right now performing that sacrifice gives you literally no gains, resulting in minimal build diversity.
Their abilities would still suck if you had no investment in them. Only certain abilities have good returns for minimal investment and most of those are CC or debuffs in some capacity. This argument just isn’t a good one.
These are the types of items that are being referred to… if pets simply all scaled off of player stats rather than having separate stats these would be quite powerful additions to builds that could use them.
The other question becomes all of the pet scaling skills/devotions and what to do with them? If pets scale off of player stats these would at best have to be re-balanced completely. Not to mention that relative player power would go up on pet builds (currently the pure pet builds have low player power). There’s an infinite amount of variables to worry about at this point and a ton of balancing.
I’d be all for this change in a grim dawn 2 type of circumstance or a reboot of all balancing for the game, but given the size of the team and the scope of the content they’ve been adding I think it’s an unreasonable expectation for the current game.
The way you say “sacrificing/resummoning”, “The pet would still come at the cost of some other ability’s synergy” and “deriving from their character” makes me think of exactly the game as is. You invest in pets, you get better pets. Investing into pets means you sacrifice taking as good a front seat role.
When did infinite points even come into player scaled vs pet scaled bonuses?
Isn’t there already a variety of player scaled pets? So we have both, yes? That seems awfully diverse to me.
Basically scaling all pets to player stats kills off summoner builds. Now, there is a way around that, but it has to be done from the ground up. You could make pets scale with BOTH player and pet stats. That would make adding a pet into a non-pet centric build workable and let the pet contribute without but it’d never overtake your damage or tanking abilities without specific constellations/gear/stats.
But making them scale directly with player stats is a sure fire way to kill the summoner builds.
Would be nice to have a few more options for true player scaled pets ala Nemesis relic though, for those that want such things.
