Have you guys tried the new stun rune"black blood" of Sacrifice? It is a great remote CC,12 yard stun, 3sec for trash mobs and ~1.5 sec for elites and even boss!
I tried it with a 4sec Homunculus and 4 dog passive "Zombie Handler" (without TTMF ring). By summoning 4 dogs twice + 1 dogs/4secs from Humunculus, I can easily chain stun GR boss with sacrificed dogs for ~15 sec at least, let alone normal elites pack.
O/C you will lose some dps by replacing Gargantuan with Sacrifice and TTMF with SoJ, but now your pets will hardly die like trash in front of elites or even trash mobs
The 4 dog passive is not a must if your pets have enough dps, you can still chaining stun elites for > 10 secs with 3 dogs.
Do you guys think this is a solution for our pets?
Did you expected to beat GR 100 with unkillable pets ?
Holy hyperbole, Batman!
I think most WDs expected that their pets wouldn't start to suffer pretty severe survivability issues starting in GR27, or so.
The issue, quite simply, is that there is a lot of AVOIDABLE damage that players AVOID by using their brains that the AI does NOT AVOID. Mallet Lord smashes come to mind. I have lost all 15 fetishes to a single non-elite mallet lord attack. The issue is not that pets need to be immortal or unkillable. The issue is that, provided the ridiculous damage scaling in GRifts, there needs to be further compensation for the fact that they just stand in shit.
Electrified is another example. Every attack makes a cluster of lightning. When you have 15 fetishes, a zombie dog, a gargantuan, and yourself all attacking that's a LOT of lightning bits flying around that NONE of your pets are dodging. They're just soaking up the damage. Morlu Incinerator meteors. Death Maiden and Dune Dervish spin attacks. Exarch lightning fields. Barbed Lurker poison attacks. The list is fairly lengthy at this point and even includes most Rift Guardian abilities. I just entered a GR28 fight with Blighter and had 15 fetishes. His first five-point poison attack killed ALL 15 of them. Don't you think that's just a bit ridiculous considering the pets don't even try to avoid it?
The basic reality is that the AI doesn't dodge damage; therefore, the things controlled by the AI shouldn't be getting one-shotted and otherwise owned by said damage. While that is the case it relegates anything controlled by the AI to near useless due to the huge damage scaling in GRifts. That's why Jay gave pets their own Force Armor so long ago.... because the pets can't dodge shit. And then Josh scaled damage up so high that Jay's Pet Force Armor isn't even sufficient anymore.
Furthermore, specifically in the case of fetishes, they are a primarily-offensive ability. Yes they distract monsters, as expected, but people are taking them to deal damage. It doesn't make a damned bit of sense to be losing out on damage like that. I kill most T6 elite packs in under 10 seconds. If I get Mallet Lords or Morlu Incinerators it can take me 2+ minutes. Why? Because my offensive output is severely gimped. How could you argue that is a good system? I have a ~10m GR27 personal best clear time. I have failed GR25s because they're full of Morlu Incinerators and Mallet Lords.
Having such a massive, chasmic, disparity between practical monster difficulty just doesn't make sense in Greater Rifts. I understand that's why we have individual leaderboards, but no monsters should be powerful enough to hold a class back 2+ GR levels. That means the real meta game is "I hope I don't get the wrong monsters" and not "I hope I become a better player."
What's sad is that a blue acknowledged that there were pet survivability issues during the beta. They pushed it live anyway.
It does need to scale with GR difficulty, and it will. And scaling =/= invincible pets that witch doctors can just set and forget like in T6. They talked about it on the livestream, they want pets to be alive most of the time but die sometimes in greater rifts when the combat gets too crazy. They plan to do this down the line for all pets, not just witch doctor pets.
I'm not even near that level where my WD has all the required items for a T6 pet build and reading this makes me leary about doing so...and iv already spent a good deal of time ony WD already (which still isn't complete lol)
I tried it with a 4sec Homunculus and 4 dog passive "Zombie Handler" (without TTMF ring). By summoning 4 dogs twice + 1 dogs/4secs from Humunculus, I can easily chain stun GR boss with sacrificed dogs for ~15 sec at least, let alone normal elites pack.
O/C you will lose some dps by replacing Gargantuan with Sacrifice and TTMF with SoJ, but now your pets will hardly die like trash in front of elites or even trash mobs
The 4 dog passive is not a must if your pets have enough dps, you can still chaining stun elites for > 10 secs with 3 dogs.
Do you guys think this is a solution for our pets?
I think most WDs expected that their pets wouldn't start to suffer pretty severe survivability issues starting in GR27, or so.
The issue, quite simply, is that there is a lot of AVOIDABLE damage that players AVOID by using their brains that the AI does NOT AVOID. Mallet Lord smashes come to mind. I have lost all 15 fetishes to a single non-elite mallet lord attack. The issue is not that pets need to be immortal or unkillable. The issue is that, provided the ridiculous damage scaling in GRifts, there needs to be further compensation for the fact that they just stand in shit.
Electrified is another example. Every attack makes a cluster of lightning. When you have 15 fetishes, a zombie dog, a gargantuan, and yourself all attacking that's a LOT of lightning bits flying around that NONE of your pets are dodging. They're just soaking up the damage. Morlu Incinerator meteors. Death Maiden and Dune Dervish spin attacks. Exarch lightning fields. Barbed Lurker poison attacks. The list is fairly lengthy at this point and even includes most Rift Guardian abilities. I just entered a GR28 fight with Blighter and had 15 fetishes. His first five-point poison attack killed ALL 15 of them. Don't you think that's just a bit ridiculous considering the pets don't even try to avoid it?
The basic reality is that the AI doesn't dodge damage; therefore, the things controlled by the AI shouldn't be getting one-shotted and otherwise owned by said damage. While that is the case it relegates anything controlled by the AI to near useless due to the huge damage scaling in GRifts. That's why Jay gave pets their own Force Armor so long ago.... because the pets can't dodge shit. And then Josh scaled damage up so high that Jay's Pet Force Armor isn't even sufficient anymore.
Furthermore, specifically in the case of fetishes, they are a primarily-offensive ability. Yes they distract monsters, as expected, but people are taking them to deal damage. It doesn't make a damned bit of sense to be losing out on damage like that. I kill most T6 elite packs in under 10 seconds. If I get Mallet Lords or Morlu Incinerators it can take me 2+ minutes. Why? Because my offensive output is severely gimped. How could you argue that is a good system? I have a ~10m GR27 personal best clear time. I have failed GR25s because they're full of Morlu Incinerators and Mallet Lords.
Having such a massive, chasmic, disparity between practical monster difficulty just doesn't make sense in Greater Rifts. I understand that's why we have individual leaderboards, but no monsters should be powerful enough to hold a class back 2+ GR levels. That means the real meta game is "I hope I don't get the wrong monsters" and not "I hope I become a better player."
What's sad is that a blue acknowledged that there were pet survivability issues during the beta. They pushed it live anyway.
This is also related to the discussion.