Test Discussion GU103: Source Shard Artifact

Any though to having artifact buff support pets wit support stats

Did some parsers with Sorcery Prec:

Artifacts: VWD, Godwave, Grim - all 200
Artifacts: Trans Card, Godwave, Grim - all 200
Artifacts: VWD, Trans Card, Strat Card - all 200

Everytime i was around 29-42k/sec averaging at About 36k/sec

Was basically using only Offering, Godwave and Weapon buff.
Plays very nicely even tho its not clippable - at least for Prec.

There is no need to add the cooldown reset chance to weapon attacks. Rather double the Duration once every time Godwave got activated with a chance of 25% or so. Since the Energy abilities for pets would be still on Cooldown its only the minor Damage that gets icreased wich would barely add 1k dmg/sec.

Not adding any bonusses to Rank 160 feels wrong if you are a Prec Player.

In conclusion - well balanced and nicely done Artifact for Sorcery Prec so far.

Did some parsers with Earth Prec:



Artifacts: VWD, Godwave, Grim - all 200 - average 33k/sec

Artifacts: Trans Card, Godwave, Grim - all 200 - average 33k/sec

Artifacts: VWD, Trans Card, Strat Card - all 200 - average 38k/sec



Was basically using only Fortify Golem, Godwave and Weapon buff.

Plays very nicely even tho its not clippable - at least for Prec.



For Earth there is a Major Drawback in the way Crystal applies Damage / make use of the Power bar.

Fury uses the Powerbar once for a massive hit (around 60k at CR253 with Godwave)
Crystal uses 50% of the Power bar for a strong hit (around 45k at CR253 with Godwave)


Since Godwave has a Long Cooldown and no way of reducing/resetting it for Prec Players, you lose quite some Damage while using Godwave with Earth Prec opposed to Sorcery Prec.

One way to adress this would be with the recommendation i posted Prior, regarding the increase of the buff Duration.


In Theory, the Source shard would be stronger for Earth than for Sorcery - when the cooldown gets reset frequently by playing Might.
For Prec, its the other way around unless the attack pattern for Crystal gets changed or the Buff Duration of Godwave gets increased.

Thanks for the graphs. During the Grand Summoning tests, did you have 2 Furies out or just 1? It seemed like Guardian wasn't seeing much if any of a buff from the artifact during those tests.

If you aren't going to power Crystal up, why not just use RSK then? Batuba said that:

If you apply just PI’s:

1. Suppressor Turret (when applying both PIs it benefits from)
2. Robot Sidekick
3. Sorcery/Earth DPS pets (Fury, Crystal) – Closely behind Robot sidekick
4. Sorcery/Earth Tank pets (Guardian, Brick)

For Earth, players will need to be thoughtful on their loadouts. People are basically left with two damage abilities if they want to keep Entomb. If they are a might build they will likely need Upheaval/Jackhammer (combos don't reset Godwave for those wondering). If they are running a range ST loadout, Pebble Blast will be a must due to short CD if they would get knocked out of Upheaval. If they are melee, choices will need to be made because if one keeps JH and Unstoppable and gets interrupted, they may have a few seconds that everything is on cooldown.

That's kinda what I was getting at. Prec can get away with powering them but Might can't swing Offering/Fury -and- Godwave without a hefty loss on their actual rotation, and the strongest Might rotations already don't benefit from Fortify/Offering as is, so unpowered Crystal/Fury underperforming vs. RS means they'll become DOA for non-Prec in general, which feels wrong to me.

Ok, I like/love the idea behind this artifact but from testing this artifact, Prec dps will benefit more from this than might dps in a MAJOR way.
With sorcery I can put up a higher 10sec dmg pars without pet than with this artifact "why" because if I run this artifact, it means I will have to run a pet loadout along with the powers that powers my pet, example "offering, and grandsummoning" as a dps devs you have to run a supercharge for maximum damage output so the ability tray is pet, offering, grandsummoning, and godwave strength, only have room for two powers which one of the slots has to be for a 1sec cooldown power so the player can spam it to have a higher chance to reset the long cooldown of the artifact power which only leaves you with one slot. AND BEFORE ANYONE ASK/ASSUME I HAVE TRIED DIFFERENT LOADOUT VARIATIONS
I haven't tested with earth yet but will have feedback on it soon

Hello I don't have access to the test server, I'm concern about the boo-utility belt. Went you activate 1 boo all 4 come out as 1 pet.
I believe that can get glitchy with the artifact. Can someone test this.

This artifact is clearly not intended for precision DPS since the frequency of the cooldown being reset has a huge impact on it’s effectiveness.

May be to late for this and the concept may have to be another artifact but is there anyway this “pet artifact” could be more useful for all pets? Like how eye of the Gemini applies different benefits in different roles. It would great if in tank role it helped brick survivability or in healer role it boosted watcher healing.

Well, the describtion says clearly: Recommended for DPS
Not: Recommended for Damage (Superpowers) - like for Tetrahedron of Urgrund for example

After tests with different pets trinket (Shadow Bat, See horse, and different seasonal pets, Sidekick and the backup), you can see that despite the fact that the artifact is positioned as an artifact for playing with pets, a larger number of pets than the possible Buff at a particular rank is not effective compared to alternatives, this also at low ranks (80) makes the combination of the artifacts "Suorce Shard" and the "Grimorium verum" not effective (other combinations of artifacts are more effective) ...

Backup ... the usefulness of this trinket has always been doubtful ... and when using the "suorce shard" ... this is the worst Trinkets possible, which greatly reduces the usefulness of the artifact ...


Recommendations: 1. Increase the buff at rank 80 from 1 to 2 (namely at 80, adding, for example, additional buff at rank 160 does not make sense because it is at level 80 no synergy), and generally from 3 to 4.
2. Make the backup trinket in the list of those that are not subject to buff(like Turret Pets).

How about we test it first and then make a judgement with proof instead of a theory?

Because what you're asking is effectively more extreme than asking to bring back OG Phase Dodge CD from 2012, and that's just a clip and not a clip that also doubles your pet damage. This can proc a lot. It would be a waste of dev time to make that adjustment. It's hardly "theory" when we've already had things in the game like what you're asking them to make this and they had to be taken out because they were deemed broken.

Personally I feel like this artifact is very weird. The ability takes up a tray slot which means might dps are more limited in rotations. Prec dps generally tend to have more space in the loadout but the cooldown reset is affected by might more. In general the artifact falls into a very weird limbo state. Not saying it’s unusable, just that it requires more work

Does it still proc constantly even if only using 1-3 tray powers every 12-15 seconds?

Yeah. It procs frequently enough, even if just doing a normal (even channeled) power rotation or prec clips that, if we could clip it, it would likely upend the meta. Right now it's fairly close to other artis while proper use means replacing another move in your rotation with Godwave that cycle. If we got our normal rotations -and- Godwave -and- clip, it'd be nuts.

Fortify Golem and Offering will Proc the reset for Godwave so in the case of a Sorcery user keeping Grand Summoning SC with Fury and Offering, it works out to four total powers that can potentially reset Godwave. Earth would be down to 3 powers, assuming they keep Entomb as their SC. And of course, I would assume casting the SC could also reset too (harder to test and confirm).

Sorry I should have specified that's only with Might. Fortify/Offering can be paired with Godwave on Prec without taking a hit. On Might though, you have to either sacrifice your SC to be able to maintain a normal rotation or use a spammable power (major DPS loss) and sacrifice either HV or finisher (or both but that would be worse).

Basically, minimum three slots are required to maintain a competent Might rotation and three slots are required to do pet + pet buff + Godwave, so in order for Might to try to pull off pet buff + Offering they have to make a major sacrifice elsewhere.

Edit: Also, sacrificing stat-based DPS for pet DPS in those cases is an even bigger loss than it seems since pets don't Crit and aren't effected by any stat/damage buffs but Godwave, so as soon as SC and Supply Drops come into play, they'll lag behind.

If a pet vendor gets added it'll be easier to see if the 3-pet buff can compensate