I see the skeleton nerf, and they’re already a joke on ultimate so not the best news, but i’ll wait and try it out.
But here’s the thing- unlike every other game i’ve ever played with pets in it, in the game of Grim Dawn the caster AUTOMATICALLY has aggro in any situation where the mob is more powerful than a common trash mob. Any boss in the game will ignore your pets (unless it gets stuck and has to fight them) and chase you.
Pets are so weak they generally get randomly vaporized by boss AOE anyway, so it’s not like they miss their opportunity to die.
So if you want to continue to make sure summoners aren’t allowed to sit back, cast buffs, and watch their pets fight, fine. that’s a valid design choice (you can’t stand that style of gameplay we get it) but we will need very solid pet DPS (ON ULTIMATE) to compensate.
the Mad Queen is a gimmick, if she can’t reach your character she’s the weakest boss in the game, her extreme dps is short range retaliation aura triggered by projectiles. And she won’t fight your pets she’ll ignore them trying to reach you -> see above
for general gameplay on ultimate i’m summon skellies on cooldown, and their damage is less than the bugs from Primal relic.
Specious. That’s one build, using an overlooked item, which Zantai has already said is also going to be nerfed. Skeletons do crumble regularly in ultimate, however you gear for them.
Pets can also have 95% resistance to everything and over 100k HP, which is 5 times more than the “tankiest” tank you can build (i.e. warder). They also get ZERO penalty to their resistances once you hit ultimate. The only thing they can’t have is life leech resistance, but I believe this will be addressed in 1.0.0.3. by either making LL resistance an intrinsic property of the pets or by buffing them through the nodes in Ulo and Vulture.
Yes, most people will agree with you that pets will indeed be vaporized by: a) aether patches; b) blood pools; and c) acid pools IF you don’t play a Cabalist. BoD/AotG + “of Caged Souls” affix solves the blood + acid pool problem.
The pets, on the other hand, are a motley crew (pun intended). This is the only instance in the game where stacking generic +%damage counters every problem the game throws at you, viz. 1) enemy immunity to one specific damage type; 2) need to focus on a specific damage type in order to do damage. It is like playing a Phantasmal Blade character where every PB-related item gives +% total damage instead of buffing just a specific component such as vitality, cold or pierce. You also have a devotion (Dying God) that buffs the pets TWICE !
The reason why ppl can’t maintain aggro on their pets is simple: they are too greedy and rush the debuffs. Debuffs such as CoF + DS are designed in such a way to aggro the target because they tick fast. If you put a zero cooldown devotion or a low cooldown one (Dreeg’s Guardian Gaze) on a pet, however, it will maintain aggro much better. More ticks -> more aggro. If you want to test this, put Guardian’s Gaze on the Blight Fiend and enjoy the show.
I don’t know about Skeletons but Blight Fiend gets and holds aggro pretty well with Blight Burst/Rotting Fumes, even with Curse of Frailty/Dreeg’s Evil Eye ticks going off. I only see certain enemies (i.e. Dranghouls/Flesh Hulks) ignore aggro which makes sense as it’s theorised that some enemies have differing amounts of anger/are harder to take aggro. Once you know which enemies are harder to deal with though, you know to deal with them sooner than later.
The item isn’t responsible for the power of that build, the skeletons are. And it’s not the only one skeleton build, I’ve seen several more defeating Gladiator Crucible with not much issue.
Partially true, because 26/16 skeletons have around 70% the damage output of the Blight Fiend. Another thing people tend to ignore is the fact that those big revenants will shotgun. Even if you have only 5 of those, you will start the fight with 15 chaos orbs that will shotgun because pet OA is absurdly high !
I said “partially true” because their shotgun is chaos - i.e. a damage type that is notoriously difficult to debuff. The Master’s blade allows you not only to debuff that reliably, but it also saves you the points that would otherwise go into Manticore in order to go for a 2nd T3. That is the real strength of the item - not the big debuff - but the fact that it nullifies opportunity costs.
Cause defeating Gladiator Crucible should be near impossible with a pet build /s.
Warders, Tacticians, Commando’s, BWC Sorcerers and DEE Witchblades/Witch Hunters are still better for Gladiator Crucible farming.
Just because pet builds have become closer in power to such builds doesn’t mean that the pet builds should be nerfed. Its like there are separate balance rules for different type of builds.
Its fine if soldier melee and caster DoT builds are OP, but god forbid if other builds even near their bootstraps.
Don’t know where the hell did you get from my post but whatever. Just responding to the OP, who was greatly over exaggerating about Skeletons being jokes in Ultimate.
skeletons can have 100k hp? did you mean 30k? and if you invest in 90% resist all for pets their damage is like getting a back rub :rolleyes:
As for getting aggro, you know better if you play a pet class. You can literally stand there, do NOTHING, not click a single button, and on any boss mob you will have aggro. See for example running in circles from all the roguelike bosses, nemesis, mad queen, most oranges, and all purple named bosses. not to mention all the adds for Loghorrean…
It’s a hard coded design choice. Trash mobs will engage your pets, boss mobs will try to reach you through your pets.
And blight fiend dies almost as fast as skeletons lol. Also, again, you’re just reinforcing my point. On TRASH MOBS pets can hold aggro. That’s always been true.
On anything more powerful, they cannot. Crate’s determination to keep summoner DPS beneath every other build is an odd choice given this fact.
I personally feel certain enemies ignoring pets is completely fair in every way. As a summoner, you generally stand around with your thumb up your ***, and from a development perspective, that’s really too good, boring, and unfair to non-cheese builds.
You should have to dodge attacks at times. You should have to resummon at times. You should have to have a hard time sometimes. This is the ARPG experience, not a casual Farmville simulator.
It’s funny you said that. Guess what…there was a time when I made the fastest pet character that could kill MQ in 10 seconds. And…more interesting it was a Warlock. And guess what…it was before pet aggro was buffed by Crate. Take a look for yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OS1Mnpix3xs
It was actually me who invented the idea of converting all physical pet damage into lightning and amplifying that through the voidmancer’s cord, who stacked pet OA and pet Crit, bla bla. A sufficiently perseverant Chinese player took this idea further and killed Mogdrogen with it back in 1.0.0.5. Lack of vanity is not lack of knowledge.
As for the 100k HP pets - no, the Blight Fiend can reach that. Skeletons will reach a max of 20-30k. There is an overlooked item, however, called the Eye of Dominion that doesn’t even have a mythical version. That item alone will make your pets almost immortal if you invest into their defenses. Also, pet aggro can be maintained…otherwise pls explain to me the video I made in a time when pet aggro was even worse than it is now.
I fought the Mad Queen THIS WEEK i know exactly how her aggro (and every other purple name) works with pets. she chases me until she gets stuck then twitches and rotates until she can get around the pets. Pets kill her pretty well because SHE DOESN’T ATTACK THEM.
You said it yourself that video is so old its irrelevant. Show me a recent clip of ANY purple named mob where pets are holding aggro, hell the summoner doesn’t even have to bait the boss- just stand there doing nothing. You’ll still get aggro.
Says who? If you stand there literally doing nothing it means you’re not even triggering pet buffs, so you are a shit pet class anyway. But if you want to play like a moron shouldn’t you be free to do that? Even if it costs you DPS.
The point isn’t that “some mobs” aggro you through pets, it’s ANY mob that isn’t trash. It’s almost as though your pets TRANSFER aggro to you.
For example- i still farm SoT with a friend of mine, and he does a lot more DPS than my pets; he’s critting for 200k ish, but Allakamos will ALWAYS chase me around the room, ignoring my pets while they try to catch him. Same situation- tried without ANY pets summoned and guess what?
The Mad Queen is a 100% gimmicky boss (i.e. one trick pony). Kill times on her do not represent a measure of viability, ofc… from 1.0.0.6. further - the crucible represents such a measure.
Yes, the video is old as f**k, but I specifically killed all nemeses back then in order to prove a point. With the release of AoM, I haven’t played much with pets, but you are right in that some bosses seem to ignore pet aggro. It would be better to create a full list of them before jumping to conclusions - if it is a design choice, I guess players should ultimately have to adapt. It’s Crate’s game after all and you play it how they want. If it’s down to the player’s error, a more systematic procedure would require pinning down exactly what went wrong in order to prevent pet aggro from taking place.
ok there’s the build. she’s missing two skill points haven’t finished the optionals yet on ultimate.
Currently most resists (on pets) are 80, a few are 25 or 30. Dmg is 1100%, speed 110%
Yeah i’m just saying they can’t squeeze us from both ends. If pets have to chase fast moving bosses to get any DPS in, they will need enough dps to still be viable there. I personally think the player-aggro-always-forever approach is a little simplistic, especially compared to pet builds in any other game you could mention. I swear it feels like on anything purple pet damage transfers 100% aggro to caster, which is just odd.
And it’s not about which bosses do it, it’s about are they any bosses who DON’T auto aggro the player? I still see a few of these guys show up in gladiator, but their pets seem to be getting shredded constantly, and the summoner dies a lot. Make no mistake i wouldn’t even consider trying Gladiator w this character lol. So i’m not looking for godlike buffs or anything, i’m a realist. Other character types are just flat out superior in every way. But pet classes are FUN. That’s why i have one
Well, sure you are free to do so, but your rights to complain about inefficiency are simultaneously revoked.
Active builds will always do more damage, they are always more at risk. Even if every single mob ignored pets (I’m playing a summoner as we speak, this is far from the case), they still block various damage in the form of missiles.
I finished the expansion, and i thought bosses were the easiest part of playing a summoner, by a lot.
I’m running Unstable Anomaly so as long as Fiend A survives long enough for Fiend B to take it’s place/start taking aggro, I couldn’t care less how long Fiend A lasts besides more damage.
Also, again, you’re just reinforcing my point. On TRASH MOBS pets can hold aggro. That’s always been true.
On anything more powerful, they cannot.
Where did I specify or imply that I was only talking about trash monsters? I have no issues with Fiend’s holding aggro for bosses. Maybe they have issues with Dranghoul/Flesh Hulk heroes/bosses but they die quickly enough to Poison ticks anyway
I played a Conjurer pre-expansion and since then, I’ve seen a pretty big difference in pets holding aggro between then and now. I don’t know what to tell you but I haven’t had many issues :undecided:
