The Pet Closet Cleaning thread

Grim Dawn Public Test Discussion
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This should be @Maya but here we are, two patches in a row thinking about pets and not pew pew guns

Pet gear is in a boring state. So this thread is to flag what does and doesn’t get used in slots so maybe Z can make them more appealing and provide more choice

Upfront gaps: CC res other than stun and both player and pets, aether res, chaos res, sometimes poison res if not occultist

Heads: tl;dr helms are in a good spot but you almost always have the one you need, no real choice

Offhands: MIs are default fit for hellhound, briar, primal spirit focus
Stormbringer of malmouth - Elemental necro sounds dire to me but helps familiar now if going lightning focus bird, big damage rolls
Gate to Many Worlds - pet isn’t absolute trash now but Arcanist doesn’t work for pets, they are both soft and low damage. Bysmiel is probably better off going primal spirit offhand every time
Reaper of the Accursed - nice bonuses but no pet mods so rarely gets used, offhand is too packed with build definers

Shoulders: Set shoulders or fiendflesh. MI shoulders typically non-starters and don’t have magic affixes

Gloves: Overlord or Everliving Grove is your choice if you aren’t using set gloves or vit conversion gloves. Another green slot that would need double rare for pet focus

Boots: Fieldflesh all day long. Deathwalker give up too much and more niche skills support to get some slow res for pets

Medal: Actually some fun options here but every time you’d want to try one it’s blocked by a set. Beastcaller blocks Overseer or Mark of Bloody Ends, Mark of Unlife blocked by Bysmiel (but also lol Arcanist pet support), Rotdrinker blocked by Ghol (although could just be bomber focus). So basically a bunch of fun option that never see the light of day due to strength of pet sets

Belt: All pet belts seem usable. Occultist has choice, rest are single option

Pants: Wildshorn almost every time. Better bonuses, rare freeze res

Chest: Sets or Vit choice, Chaos choice, no good choice

Rings: Do you need conversion still? Pick your conversion ring, otherwise pick green

Amulet: Another interesting slot for pets. Sucks if blocked by set, otherwise Yeti is great, passthrough bird is great, bleed necklace is nice for Beastcaller. Still generally a single right choice and then everything else

So overall, pet builds take about 10 seconds to do gear. Are you using a set? Do you have a clear reason why you wouldn’t? Then fit set and default other items. Slots that have choice are really only one choice. Medal wins the VIP award for having fun stuff that never gets used.

We could use some new clothes, and some CC/res/non subjugator affixes on gear slots missing them to open up more green options. Blues look extra sparse on stats, so maybe they get love in FoA but other than chaos set don’t get used

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Agree. I’m hoping that in the next expansion or in subsequent patches like this one, they can focus more on them overall. The loot I find is like 25% pet gear while the other 75% of it is other classes. I think there should be a 50-50 depending on whether or not the berserker class also has pet options

Right now as it is, it’s limiting for me at the moment

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Pretty much agree with everything Eardianm said. I’d love to use other items but every time I try to I just feel like I’m shooting myself in the foot to look cool.

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Disclaimer: Not a true veteran, please enlighten me if I missed things :slight_smile:

I think the source of this might very well be that each pet has a single dedicated set, in rare cases shared.
Hellhound: Shepherd of Lost Souls
Familiar: Bysmiels Trinkets
Briarthorn: Nature’s Call Regalia
Skeletons: Shepherd of Lost Souls (again)
Blight Fiend: Ghol’s Malice

Primal Spirit is SoL and Reap Spirit gets two (sort of). But most other skills that people make builds around have more than one set, depending on secondary class/skills and damage type. With the power of the sets and their mutual exclusivity, it is not that surprising to me that the number of difference achievable in items is not that high for pet builds, which in turn leads to less build diversity outside of hybrid or meme builds.

The lower number of sets is not altogether surprising either, since it feels (at least to me) there are only three real pet classes: Conjurer, Ritualist and Cabalist. I have seen some with Demo mixed in to some degree of success, but other than juicy damage aura abilities (which are nerfed in the current playtest with shift away from massed pets with %total speed, and towards %total damage, with stronger mastery pets), there is just not that much interesting stuff for pure pet builds to go for in the other masteries, since pets have their own damage support.

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A lot of the itemization issues with pets could be solved by raising the summon limit to 2 on the skill itself (Hellhound, Briarthorn, Familiar, etc…), maybe along with skill level 24. Currently if you want to play a Briarthorn build you HAVE to use the set. You simply cannot pass on the 100% more damage multiplier and the increase in clear speed. This is not the case for non-pets builds, which have a lot of different approaches you can take.

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Would probably be overpowered if they did that, but I do agree that Summon Familiar should have an initial raised summon limit to 2 though since it’s imo the weakest

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Meanwhile, maya watching others do all the work while getting drunk on icecream…

Agree with everything btw. Hoping that FoA brings not just new items, but also endgame pet sets too compete with the currently existing ones.

Atm, you pick a pet to focus on, grab its dedicated set and go for whatever has the damage conversions and what not your build needs, in all other slots.
You can certainly build without sets, don’t get me wrong. But doing so feels like you are gimping yourself unnecessarily just to make a different build from the rest.

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New changelog looks like the continuation of pets stats tweak, I notice that pet epic sets in particular got hit hard, for example the Desecrator Covenant set lose like 20 flat chaos damage plus about 175% pet all damage, and without compensation like the Legendary sets. My guess it is to make epic set stay in line/not as powerful as Legendary one, but isn’t this too harsh?

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and once again; “wait until patch to actually playtest before judging changes based on sheet”

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Think epic items shouldn’t be as powerful as the legendary items to show the power gap

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Outside of pets, I know first hand that epic sets can achieve SR 75+ if you aren’t concerned about clear times, meta, or high dmg numbers. You will still need patience/piloting/knowledge skill and it definitely can clear with a lot of time left on the timer.

As far as pets go, pretty sure it is much of the same on live and likely the same with the PTR if you, again, are not concerned and have what I mentioned above.

It’s PTR, so things can change and the community has very little information as to how FoA will affect gear.

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Pets in general have been getting massive buffs built into the skills along with all the increase in damage% across the board. Their kill/clear times have been better than ever.

Regarding the Epic set, yes, Zantai has explicitly mentioned that he does not want epics to be able to compete with legendaries, so it makes sense that the set is getting hit a bit harder.
I believe @eardianm has been testing that particular set a bit and found it pretty good so far (will need to see how the upcoming changes affect it, but should be ok).

FoA is also supposed to empower epic sets quite a bit, so there is also that to look forwards to.

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I hope you are right. I would like to see some of those epic sets be good to not make me feel bad about using them. They should still be viable, not as strong as legendary sets but not so weak that their existence feels completely pointless.

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The issue imo is that while legendaries are supposed to be a step up from epics, there isn’t actually much of a window where you can actually rely on and make use of said epics.

This is especially true for mythical epic items where you need to be level 94 to equip anyway and you are better off farming legendaries or double rare greens instead, to fill those slots (rare exceptions aside).

So you only really end up using them as a last resort, if you have absolutely nothing else. But, easy to assemble budget builds being a thing and game having been powercrept for so long, you never have a reason to gradually move up the loot ladder.

Maybe if Epics were guaranteed (as an alternative to the rng factor of most legendaries) or if they had lower level requirements and decent chances of being able to put together, they would be more attractive.

The only epic set I see players actually going for, before reaching the final gear for the build, would be the Perdition set, due to the whole retaliation thing.

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I assume blue chaos pet set will get an upgrade option in FoA cause it’s fairly unique

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One slightly very radical change I could see that would increase build diversity a ton, is to make summons that are currently scaling with player damage, scale with the highest of either pet or player damage. This would add quite a few extra damage dealers to focus on for pet builds and would increase the mastery pool substantially.

Soldier: Nothing here, but that’s ok.
Demolitionist: Thermite Mines and Mortar Trap (!) and nice RR support for elemental and chaos builds.
Occultist: No additions, but already the “best” pet mastery.
Nighblade: Blade Spirits and more bleed support that would pair nicely with Shaman.
Arcanist: As others have mentioned already: Pet arcanist lol.
Shaman: If totems are considered, the mastery becomes super loaded with the addition of Wind Devils (for damage, not just -rr this time) which pairs great with Bysmiel’s Trinkets builds, Storm Totem and Wendigo Totem. Wendigo and Wind Devils are already a part of most pet builds either for -rr or sustain.
Inquisitor: Seals are maybe overkill, but also very cool. Rune of Haggarad and Kalastor expand on elemental pet builds.
Necromancer: No additions.
Oathkeeper: The almighty Guardians for a good selection of -rr.

Unknown Soldier: Living Shadow is probably too hard to fit in devo paths, maaaybe possible together with Mogdrogen the Wolf, but very point starved I think. Regardless, devo does not support pets.
Widow: Arcane Bomb is great for lightning or aether builds, but already is so because they are mostly raken for -rr.
Attak Seru: Arcane Currents sound fun, but same problem with Unknown Soldier; hard to fit in, and devo does not support pets.
Revenant: Raise the Dead gives nice -rr, but also the devo has some pet support already.
Yugol: Black Blood would be a fun addition to acid builds, but runs into the same problems as Unknown Soldier and Attak Seru.

Probably impossible due to engine limits, but imagine all the possibilities! :slight_smile:

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I don’t think it’s feasible since there would be lots of work balancing everything. In my opinion, they would have to make another expansion for your idea, but its a good idea regardless

On the other hand, I do agree that there should be items that give player and pet bonuses at the same time only for hard to find items such as the Deathstalker relic.

While the relic benefits player bonuses only, the relic should also get some pet affixes and benefit both player and pet related bonuses at the same time since it’s the harder ones to find.

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Balance might not be as terrible actually, since pet and player bonuses are pretty mutually exclusive and I don’t see the current sets overperform. It would of course mean a big support gap for the new skills, which leads to a lot of room for additional sets. Then again, most of the skills already have their Legendary sets, so why play a pet Mortar Trap build when you can just play Pyran Sorc. Regardsless, it will be a ton of work. However, adding completely new skills for pet builds is going to be at least as much, if not more work than balancing existing skills around a different scaling. Here’s hoping that Berserker will have a Summon Ice Wolf skill :smiley:

My main reasoning is that the entire pet archetype is currently construed from (basically) the same 5 skills, and each build typically uses at least two of those, in addition to some -rr and debuffs of course. This is a diversity level on par with other sub-archetypes. Compare it to a vitality caster for example, which has access to Sigil, (Doom Bolt), Pox, Wendigo/Storm Totem, Devouring Swarm, Siphon Souls, RE or Bone Harvest. This archetype can choose between Dark One, Valguur, Wildblood and Blightlord sets, so pretty comparable. Out of a 100* legendary sets, it seems limited that 6 give pet bonuses, counting the Beastcaller’s Regalia (the non-mythical one) and the lvl 75 Harbinger set. But then again, this could just be intended design, and I hardly hear people complain about the simplicity of gearing a Vit caster.

[*] Not really 100, not all sets are used in endgame of course.

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Imo biggest drawback to pet+non-pet class is not the absence of pets, but the lacking bonuses. Look at everything Occultist can bring without even using its pets. RR, huge health/regen/speed from Bonds of Bysmiel, and flat acid/oa/more health regen and multiple resistances and a heal from Blood of Dreeg. Using Occultist just for pet support while using Conjurer or Necro pets is totally reasonable (e.g. my vit beastcaller setup https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wF2t9-xnkBY)

Arcanist has elemental flat and elemental damage and dots, OA, some resists and crit damage. But no health, no speed, no heal, no RR. Offensively it’s not super far off, although elemental damage can be tricky to get ranks and converted (otherwise you have the usual tri-elemental RR penalty), but losing 100%+ pet health and regen, 15%+ total speed that’s now very hard to find elsewhere, and the heal is a really hard gap to cover. And the whole lack of RR which would have to be covered by more offensive stats

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This just wraps around back to the set problem. There are some really good items that enable demo and arcanist as decent options for pets, but the mandatory set items block you from using them. Hellhound for example has some insanely good stuff for main hand, helmet and amulet slots, but you cannot use any of them since lost souls blocks the slots.