The Winter King has a neat description of the lore surrounding him: “Crown of King Hrothnar, ruler of the northern reaches and son of the great white wolf.” It’s neat to think of a snowy king on top of a mountain with his trusty wolf beside him, and it’s neat to see his gear associated with Pet Bonuses, but it’s tough to see what the devs had in mind when creating this psuedo-set. Heart of the Mountain also provides Nightblade and Shaman bonuses, giving the impression that Crate wanted to design around a Trickster pet set (though last I heard, a Chillmane Yeti is not a Wolf), but the Nightblade class is utterly devoid of buffs that pets could use, and anything associated with a weapon is instantly outclassed by a typical Shadow Strike build.
The most immediate thing coming out of the Nightblade class is unlike the Occultist’s Blood of Dreeg, Pneumatic Burst does not have a radius of effect, and thus pets cannot be healed by using it. The skill modifiers on the Winter King “set” give the impression that the build is supposed to make heavy use of Veil of Shadow, which makes sense considering it’s the only skill on the Nightblade line that pets can really take advantage of. Additionally, considering that many pet bonuses can go over 200% damage for one item, the “15% for 250% Cold Damage” is pathetic.
If that wasn’t enough, while Fire Damage has Wyrmclaw and the Covenant Set and Lightning Damage has multiple items supporting it (such as the 400+% Stormbringer of Malmouth), outside of the Winter King, there’s not a single item in the game that provides Pet Cold Damage. In fact, there’s only one item in the game that can provide useful cold damage to pets and that’s the Frostdread Cuirass, yet there isn’t a single skill bonus that would be any useful for a Trickster pet build.
Is anybody going to look at these items and ask themselves why bother giving the Winter King pet bonuses and a permanent pet if nobody is going to provide any good bonuses for Cold Damage? The fact that Nightblade skills have no pet support at all makes it especially critical that pet gear is in place that can make use of Cold Damage. As such, I would consider the following:
Take the Heart of the Winter King buff for all pets and increase the damage so it’s similar to the Voidmancer’s Belt “15% for 1800% Lightning Damage”. I understand if you don’t want the player to have those damage spikes, but at least it will give an incentive for players to use Pets with this set-up.
Take the Winter King’s Might skill granted from the headpiece and give it 100% Weapon Damage to give Summoners a way to make use of mechanics that require full Weapon Damage such as Viper’s 20% Elemental Resist Reduction. Summoners aren’t going to use their LB weapon attack ever, so there’s no reason to further hamstring them by giving them skills that operate at minimum efficiency.
Provide a skill modifier that adds a significant amount of Cold Damage to Conjure Primal Spirit. It’s the closest thing to a Wolf that we have in the game and it’ll add to the role-playing of a Winter Ruler with a trusty animal sidekick. It’ll also give the Shaman class a little more flavor distinct from the Necromancer’s Reap Spirit, which also uses Cold Damage.
Better itemize equipment so that pets can benefit from Cold Damage - again, since you have decided to give multiple items pet Fire and Lightning Damage, there’s no reason not to make a few items that help with Cold Damage. This is especially pertinent as neither the Shaman nor the Nightblade have auras that improve Pet Cold Damage like Fire Damage does with the Occultist’s Hellhound’s Hellfire.
Give people a reason to use a Trickster instead of any other class that has far better pet bonuses: The only skills I see that would be remotely useful are Pneumatic Burst, Veil of Shadow, Blade Barrier, Phantasmal Armor, and Blade Trap. Blade Trap would be interesting since it gives a nice mental image of a hunter laying out a trap to ensnare charging enemies while the hunter’s hounds go for the kill, but its uselessness on bosses means that Nightblade does not have a single skill that grants any bonuses pets can use.
Considering you’re giving substantial item support to legends in your lore like Markovian, Zolhan, and Belgothian, it’d be a shame to see the Winter King as a laughingstock because he has nothing that can support him. If you wanted the Winter King as a strong two-handed warrior with massive Cold damage strikes, why add Pet stats at all?
This isn’t necessary. You can easily get Viper’s resist reduction from any skill with over 100% weapon damage. If you’re looking at Trickster’s in particular, Shadow Strike for mobility or Blade Burst for a devotion proccer (or Lethal Assault) will easily cover that role as well. I’de rather builds that focus on using the granted skill (and ignore the Pet aspect of the items) don’t get even more powerful than they are now when the skill that requires no skill investment is already capable of competing with builds that do invest into skills.
And yeah, the Winter King items have always been a mess really. The weapon and headgear have pretty much never been used outside of a caster build (usually Cold but there are variants like Lightning). I’de be all for making them actually usable to some degree, especially as Shaman got a buff recently.
They really should make the items a set (Crown of the Winter King, Bane of the Winter King, Heart of the Mountain). That would encourage their use together for their intended purpose, and they could give some pet bonuses for the set to make it more viable.
Yeah totally. I’ve attempted to do a pet build with witch hunter, and then I realized “oh wait, the nightblade side doesn’t contribute anything”. And they’re the only class with nothing to add to pets. I’ve found bane of the winter king and want to level a trickster some day to try it, but now that you point this out, I’m getting the impression it’ll go even worse than the witch hunter.
Maybe a skill modifier to add a radius to Pneumatic Burst. If everything on Pnuematic burst were added to pets, it’d be a pretty sizeable pet buff indeed.
But then, the pneumatic burst is supposed to be a self taught technique of the nightblade, not some magic he can cast to others.
There was a few new stuff for cold damage in the expansion (even some cold/vitality which I really enjoy ~~), but it’s clearly not on par with the other damages. Hence why people put on the table the idea of a new zone around Asterkarn and north of Valbury, in the mountains.
Right, but in the GD universe I don’t see why properly oxygenating one’s blood can’t grant a magical aura in a 15 meter radius if you have the proper magic accoutrements. Since, you know, nightblades can also do stuff like freeze the air and make blades float magically, out of the box. It wouldn’t conflict with my conception of the game lore, at least.
This would be neat. Give the pets a substantial amount of cold damage (through conversion, flat bonuses or percantage based… perhaps all of them). 3P set could, perhaps, make Pneumatic Burst an aura.
I hate the fact that hybrid pet builds are so damn hard to make. They could use some help through items. Making a build around the raven is my constant struggle.
I’de give this guide by Ryzel on a hybrid Lightning/Pet Druid a lookover, you’ll obviously have to tweak it for Occultist and another mastery but it should hopefully give you some ideas. And it is just from just before the expansion so there’s much more gear support for Lightning Pets now than there was then.
Cheers lads, appreciate it. The plan is to make a hybrid Deceiver, not a big fan of Shaman’s casting skills: http://www.grimtools.com/calc/DV9nd5aZ
Inquisitor will provide the birds with some additional OA as well as well as giving my autoattacks some oomph with Storm Spread. Devotions are kind of all over the place, but I can’t seem to squeeze in Ultos and Dying God any other way.
Going to try it out first thing once I’ve gathered the gear. I imagine my two flappy friends will be dealing out some pretty intense damage with Lightning Strike.
They gave Cold damage to the Winter King helmet and they secured the 250% cold damage for the Winter King sword, but it’s not at the point of viability just yet. Usually you’ll want to have around 2,500% of your given damage type with a good amount of flat damage thrown in in order to be Ultimate viable, but Cold Pets will struggle to get over 1,500%. There’s simply not enough gearing / skill options to make Cold pets work that won’t immediately be obsolete by something like Lightning pets.
That being said, Crate has done a wonderful job in guiding different pet types toward viability. Cold pets was essentially dumpster fodder before the expansion, but with all the new buffs to items and classes, it’s close to being Ultimate viable. Not quite there, mind you, but close.
Since the patch said “Manifestation: now also grants an Elemental damage bonus for pets” can Arcanist (+Shaman) hybrid summoner work?
Pets available for that: Dirge + Yeti + Briathorn + (temp) primal spirit + Eldritch Hound (temp) on Devotion. This is the maximum number of summons I can think of (using Bane 2h wep).
Active skill Olexra FF. Mythical Bonescavenger’s Deathgrips has cold/frost dmg also now.
It sounds a bit bad on paper, right? :eek: (i play HC).
You get the cold pet from Nemesis relic also.
Also, you can have (2 ravens and) 2 briathorns nowadays also at the same time.
Are there any smart 1 handed / off hand combos for a cold based pet master? Could this be an improvement in upcoming patches? I would like to build a viable cold pet summoner, a 2handed build makes it too squishy.