Desecrator destroys my pets (and I didn't notice that pets got any passive reduction bonus against it in the patch notes). Even worse than Desecrator is the fire puddle from the Act 2 burning constructs. That tears through them very quickly.
EDIT
Also Dune Dervishes whirlwind is not effected by the damage cap.
I'm thinking perhaps we need to consolodate this into a single thread - the stuff that our pets are taking absurd amounts of damage from.
PS: Pets are only immortal if they take less damage than their hp regeneration is per second. For example when fighting multiple enemies, it is very likely that some of the pets take 2-3 hits in one second.
Of course.
But there is a theoretical point at which you can reduce your pets incoming damage and increase their regen in such a manner that you're going to approach 100% uptime. Obviously immortality is not theoretically possible since it's possible for 47 mobs to decide to focus on one dog and no amount of force armor or regen is going to fix that. I suppose I phrased that in a poor manner, though.
A lot of this is going to depend on where their base regen is which we likely won't know until the official patch notes.
EDIT
The reason I brought that up in the first place was simply because at some point, unless you're using thorns, you're probably better off not using Fierce Loyalty. The reason being is that their base regen, which is supposedly significant, exists with or without Fierce Loyalty. So you're almost certainly better not taking Fierce Loyalty for the regeneration component alone.
With the video's values:
1) Lets say the monster hits 10 000 normally.
2) Game calculates the damage reduction for pets by using the designated formula (shown in video).
3) The dogs will receive 1140 damage
4) Now you take bad medcine, which reduces monsters' damage by 20%
5) Game calculates the monsters' damage to be 8000 with bad medicine (10 000 * 0.8 = 8 000).
6) Game calculates the damage reduction for pets by using the designated formula (shown in video).
7) The dogs will receive 1140 damage from the monster.
Result: Bad Medicine does nothing for your pets.
To be more precise, bad medicine does nothing for the pets as long as the reduced monster dmg is higher than the dmg cap, and since we can expect that inferno mobs always do higher dmg than the dmg cap , bad medicine is worthles for the pets.
I had put together a spreadsheet broken up across 5k HP intervals (on the WD) and at 25% armor & resistance reduction intervals to show "hits to death" for the zombie dogs.
It's very reasonable to assume that everything except Reflects Damage is going to be hitting for more than the pet Force Armor threshold. For most people with a semi-balanced gearset, the Force Armor threshold is going to be around 15-1600 damage. I can't think of very much in Inferno which hits less than that, and that's taking into account my resists and armor, which does not apply to the pets except in determining said cutoff.
Therefore, it is my suggestion that Bad Medicine is NOT for a pet-centric build.
It is for the very same reason that I must assume that Jungle Fortitude is applied AFTER the cutoff from pet Force Armor, since if it's applied BEFORE then it's just as useless as Bad Medicine.
With the new pets, Jungle Fortitude becomes an exceptional passive as it brings incoming damage 20% closer to the pets base regen. And, theoretically, if you can take incoming damage down as low as base regen then your pets become immortal. And due to how pet Force Armor works, this is probably not possible without some extra life/sec, life/hit, life from damage stats... but with a bit of them it should be possible.
Zombie Handler is also a very strong passive. Assume your Zombie Dogs have x HPs each, or 3x total HPs. Zombie Handler effectively changes this to 4 * (1.2x) or 4.8x. So in addition to getting another dog for more passive biting enemies's asses off damage, but you significantly increase the total HP pool of your dogs.
Does anyone know the scaling on life regen/thorns without Fierce Loyalty? The reason I ask is because at some gear level, unless you're going for a thorns build (which looks like it could be quite legit at this point) it may not be reasonable to take Fierce Loyalty simply for regen - this would be highly dependent on the base regen. The reason I say that is because it's almost always better to spend itemization on better reducing incoming damage as opposed to healing the higher damage.
Does PtV boost pet damage by 20%? I assume it does because it modifies your damage # in the character sheet. That makes PtV a pretty damned good pet passive because pets are, traditionally, significantly less mana-intensive than other abilities such that the 30% mana cost on them is unimportant most of the time.
I have to say that all this discussion about pets has me giddy. Can you tell?
EDIT
It also makes items with +armor quite valuable for pet survivability since most WDs aren't exactly rocking out tons and tons of armor. Furthermore, teaming up with a Barb with War Cry (Impunity) is going to make your pets fuckin AWESOME!
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EDIT
Also Dune Dervishes whirlwind is not effected by the damage cap.
I'm thinking perhaps we need to consolodate this into a single thread - the stuff that our pets are taking absurd amounts of damage from.
Of course.
But there is a theoretical point at which you can reduce your pets incoming damage and increase their regen in such a manner that you're going to approach 100% uptime. Obviously immortality is not theoretically possible since it's possible for 47 mobs to decide to focus on one dog and no amount of force armor or regen is going to fix that. I suppose I phrased that in a poor manner, though.
A lot of this is going to depend on where their base regen is which we likely won't know until the official patch notes.
EDIT
The reason I brought that up in the first place was simply because at some point, unless you're using thorns, you're probably better off not using Fierce Loyalty. The reason being is that their base regen, which is supposedly significant, exists with or without Fierce Loyalty. So you're almost certainly better not taking Fierce Loyalty for the regeneration component alone.
I had put together a spreadsheet broken up across 5k HP intervals (on the WD) and at 25% armor & resistance reduction intervals to show "hits to death" for the zombie dogs.
It's very reasonable to assume that everything except Reflects Damage is going to be hitting for more than the pet Force Armor threshold. For most people with a semi-balanced gearset, the Force Armor threshold is going to be around 15-1600 damage. I can't think of very much in Inferno which hits less than that, and that's taking into account my resists and armor, which does not apply to the pets except in determining said cutoff.
Therefore, it is my suggestion that Bad Medicine is NOT for a pet-centric build.
It is for the very same reason that I must assume that Jungle Fortitude is applied AFTER the cutoff from pet Force Armor, since if it's applied BEFORE then it's just as useless as Bad Medicine.
With the new pets, Jungle Fortitude becomes an exceptional passive as it brings incoming damage 20% closer to the pets base regen. And, theoretically, if you can take incoming damage down as low as base regen then your pets become immortal. And due to how pet Force Armor works, this is probably not possible without some extra life/sec, life/hit, life from damage stats... but with a bit of them it should be possible.
Zombie Handler is also a very strong passive. Assume your Zombie Dogs have x HPs each, or 3x total HPs. Zombie Handler effectively changes this to 4 * (1.2x) or 4.8x. So in addition to getting another dog for more passive biting enemies's asses off damage, but you significantly increase the total HP pool of your dogs.
Does anyone know the scaling on life regen/thorns without Fierce Loyalty? The reason I ask is because at some gear level, unless you're going for a thorns build (which looks like it could be quite legit at this point) it may not be reasonable to take Fierce Loyalty simply for regen - this would be highly dependent on the base regen. The reason I say that is because it's almost always better to spend itemization on better reducing incoming damage as opposed to healing the higher damage.
Does PtV boost pet damage by 20%? I assume it does because it modifies your damage # in the character sheet. That makes PtV a pretty damned good pet passive because pets are, traditionally, significantly less mana-intensive than other abilities such that the 30% mana cost on them is unimportant most of the time.
I have to say that all this discussion about pets has me giddy. Can you tell?
EDIT
It also makes items with +armor quite valuable for pet survivability since most WDs aren't exactly rocking out tons and tons of armor. Furthermore, teaming up with a Barb with War Cry (Impunity) is going to make your pets fuckin AWESOME!