My favorite pets in the game are the harbingers. They are temporary though, which kinda sucks. And they are VERY slow. I wasn’t going to suggest the improvements in the title… but then I checked Grimtools and… there are SO MANY legendary items which are vastly better in raw stats and power - EVEN if the harbingers were buffed… that they still probably wouldn’t be an end game choice.
Please at the very, very least… improve their speed
Also the Chthonic devourers from black hand… maybe a CD reduction of proccing every 2 seconds (down from 5). They are already fairly weak imo.
I’m not a game designer so no clue how balanced this would be. Maybe a slight nerf to enable this I have no idea. Or add a possible suffix “of Binding” to the pool of suffixes that enables them to be permanent. This would mean that a variant of the blade could drop for them if people insist on farming and using them endgame.
The Harbingers are the coolest pets in the game imo. Please at least consider a movement speed buff.
A permanent Chthonian Harbinger would actually be pretty sweet and probably make Salazar’s dagger be considered for endgame (specially because of the debuff it has).
Some pet builds, Chaos ones primarily, do consider/use the Harbinger. The amount of base damage it has especially with the Physical converted (which pet builds can often do at end game) is enormous, and that’s on top of the buff/debuff auras you mentioned.
I’d honestly argue for it being the single strongest pet that comes from an item as it’s practically Primal Spirit-tier in damage potential hence the uptime/downtime not being permanent.
Honestly if I do builds with it I always reserve it for boss/big bad fights and just summon them right on top of them. I wouldn’t be against a speed buff for 'em I suppose but quite honestly it really doesn’t matter that much unless they were to make them permanent.
I’m using them with time dilation and some 20% cdr like : https://www.grimtools.com/calc/xZyG0bb2
Its pretty good uptime and also applies to Voidfiends and skellies (which don’t die too fast anymore so not too necessary for them).
Alright, time to say something completely out of character.
I am against buffing Salazar’s Harbinger.
That thing is insane for something that only requires 1 item slot and no skill point investment.
Yes, it is slow. But then the Dirge of Arkovia Pet is also slow while being weaker as well.
Yes, it is temporary. But so is Primal Spirit and Primal Spirit was Nerfed recently regarding its uptime because it was considered too strong.
And since Harbinger is pretty much a slower Primal Spirit, buffing it doesn’t make any sense imo.
Infact I would argue that it is BiS for any Chaos Pet build with weapon slot available for use.
While theorycrafting pet builds for hours on end and googling stuff about pets in GD, your name came up like… all over the internet I also read your guide. IMO… if you of all people think it is strong enough as is - then I concede.
Don’t get me wrong. I am always up for more pet buffs in general. But Harbinger is pretty strong even compared to mastery based Pets.
Their actual strength and CD : Duration ratio can be a bit underpowered depending on the level of the MI as you can see here >> GT LINK <<, but the lvl 94 versions are strong enough to make this happen: Fwuffy's Harbinger - Pet Dervish
I’m actually making a chaos pet cabalist as my first HC character. Just started in elite and I’m still steamrolling with pretty crap gear. Playing around with solael’s witch blade on skeleton, max hound aura and consecrated blade to try and get chaos as high as possible. No master of death as I feel I’ll need possession for survival because of HC
Yeah, the 20% cdr does nothing for Voidfiends and Harbinger but TD is kinda enough for those two. I just bind it to CoF cos can’t be bothered to time it.
Here’s a link of it in action vs Lokarr(excuse my bad play, I’m bad at recording) : https://streamable.com/nm5538
You can notice the cooldown comes off before it dies for harby but there’s a few sec delay btwn harby and voidfiends.
I used to have the myth circlet serpent which allowed to have 4 transmuted blight fiends up reliably but that became too inconsistent after 1.8. something when the 4 sec cdr was removed.
