Pet Builds are at a Disadvantage During Stat Clamp

Pretty much what I already said before.

"If person A has 50% of their damage coming from pets, 50% coming from themselves. And person B has 95% of their damage coming from themselves. It is pretty obvious that some sort of buff that is only increasing damage from ourselves will benefit person B significantly more than person A."

Initially, this would be simply in reference to a buff troll or tetrahedron/cog. But in clamped content, once we have Source Shard maxed out and Emperor Aquaman at affinity level 10, there is nothing to increase the pet damage, no buff and no stat from SP, whereas someone with a normal build will not have this limitation on them. The stat bleed is much more impactful to non pet builds.

The pet builds do have their advantages, yes. But they are clearly not offsetting the disadvantages, otherwise they'd be me common and would prevail over the boring meta builds in terms of damage effectiveness. The only people I'm usually losing to on the scorecard are the typical "sweaty dps" using the meta powers and artifacts, and leaguemates using AV's might guide.

I know the blame is on me. I'm not as flexible as you are with available playstyles. My only plan B is trolling instead or switching to a tank character, since I do not have the extra artifacts to switch away from a pet build. Now that I think about it, I do not have a single character using a dps build that is considered meta...

Sure, I understand, I wasn't really discounting the theory behind what you were saying I guess all I was suggesting is that it's possibly (certainly not as of yet) not a big deal in terms of causing a practical issue. I am also open to any ideas that make it a bit more optimal, so don't get me wrong I wasn't suggesting do nothing, when pets can be improved

I also derive success in a build through whether or not it can successfully beat the content without issue, the less issue and the more ease with which it does so, the greater the success.

A pet build is certainly the more robust build in my view when it comes to overall advantages over and above a more stereotypical glass cannon meta build, the glass cannon builds are more prone to death for example but do more damage.

For me completing the content is more important than whether I did or didn't win on the scoreboard, or even whether I used my preferred build, especially in omnibus.

That's why a tonne of the time I'll be using exactly that, my pet battle tank build, because it is super effective at just dragging a group through an instance no matter how bad they are. I've also given it forethought and is why I have 13 rank 200 artifacts available to me along with every DLC augment in the game available to me (might, precision, dominance) so that I can swap and change when the need arises - I can swap between tank, battle tank precision might builds or pet builds if I really wanted (although the biggest weakness is actually only having 4 armories available at once)

I was always under the impression that pets didn't amount for a whole lot of their damage. It was just enough to make up for the loss of trans/strat and maybe a little more. They're still mostly just a precision dps. They just have some OP moving DoTs that are unaffected by buffs which balances then out.

The base damage of pets depends on the CR, and the buff depend directly on the effects of artifacts, allies or skills, but do not depend on the character’s statistics or external buff (troll, cola ...) .... at base values, the difference between pet builds and "meta" builds is negligible.

With each new DLC, we have a uniform increase in both CR and additional statistics (SP, generator mods, augmentations ...) .... and the difference in build efficiency is really noticeable only with a large number of external enhancements (troll, cola, cakes,eog spam...)....

But in the case of clamped content, the CR becomes a constant value while the statistics continue to grow ... which means that with each new DLC, the effectiveness of the pet build compared to meta builds will decrease, at the moment this difference is little noticeable, but for a year or two, it may well grow to the difference that we see in the presence of troll and cola, .... well, then it will only get worse ...

Pets amount to probably more than half our damage with a pet build. Hard to test on sparring targets still but if my fury is hitting a little under 200k every 6 to 10, then if he goes away or starts doing less, I’m in trouble. Let alone quislet and grim doing less than they already do. But I’m might based so can’t speak for prec. But again with pets, cr is all that matters. So like Rejchadar said, they will be at a larger disadvantage as time goes on. So either the game can lock the stats where they’re at right now for clamped content and stop the ever increasing bleed or whatever or they’ll need to adjust pets on occasion. Other choices are a bit extreme.

I agree. I've suggested some other ways for pet builds to keep up-- a pet buff soda, Claw buffing pets. Hope we see some word on this either way soon.

My pet build is precision based, my personal feeling is that godwave works way way better with precision than it does with might.

With might based rotations the 18s default cooldown on godwave makes it clunky for rotations and then the primary point of farming its reset, which is the point of a high source shard becomes even clumsier when hitting godwave after a reset then also throws out your rotation.

In my opinion and as always you're welcome to disagree, pet builds are far better suited for precision builds where your focus can be on feeding your pets and more actively weapons between a deliberate farming of the godwave reset.

It is my view that a might based pet build because of this clumsiness can quite easily result in an actual damage loss rather than a gain and is probably a reason why a number of you feel like you're struggling even in omnibus.

The mere fact I'm often top dps in omnibus content or close to it while in tank role using pets is evidence that the situation with pets is not as significant as portrayed, especially with precision.

I'm never going to tell anyone how to create a build but with all things in this game different limitations exist with different things and if you're struggling with a might based pet build I'd recommend giving precision a go.

The other thing also is I personally wouldn't be running a pet build without quislet, grim, source shard and aquaman being at max, the difference between max and anything else is not to be understated.

Perhaps their might build isn't centered enough around the reset of godwave. I use a might based pet build, and godwave/offering are the central points of my rotation: which does exceptionally well in my opinion. More often than not, my godwave is reset right around the halfway point. The people saying pets are weak in lower content, may not be focusing enough on godwave, and using powers that have longer cool down timers. I don't see a problem with pet builds at all. And I certainly don't feel at a disadvantage when running omnibus with my pets.

Exactly, if you're running any sort of pet build you have to be farming the godwave reset and running a rotation that allows for godwave to be incorporated and used whenever it comes off cooldown and you have to have moves that can be used quickly enough to actually farm it.

There's no point running a rotation where it becomes clumsy to use godwave if it does reset or creates a delay in using godwave because you're trying to go through more of your rotation, you want to be using godwave as much as possible and as soon as it resets or the preceding one wears off.

You need your pets buffed as much as possible, you also want to ensure you're using all pets possible at all times, as frequently as possible, including trinkets

If Godwave isn't the central focus of your pet build then you're going to struggle, you are exactly right.

Not at all, I've been using powers with 0.5s cooldown. I never said that they are weak, but pointed out their flaws, some of which I don't think are even fair compared to normal builds. Normal builds can fully enjoy the buff of a buff troll, while pet builds get no benefit to their main damage, the same applies to whatever buff we get in clamped content for having high SP; I don't know how you cannot see that as a problem at all.

I don't wanna be that type of person, but if you are mentioning Omnibus, I don't think you are comparing yourself to a good sample of players overall.

Thats not necessarily true at all, if you build properly and use precision then you're getting a buff from the controllers recharge? Then depending on the buff troll, if they're running cog instead of tetra that's a further buff, yes? Even if they are running tetra and claw as well then the might moves you might be hitting to reset godwave are still benefiting.

But again this is why I'm serious when I say, precision based pet builds are significantly better than might ones.

I meant they aren't buffing the pet at all. I get that the might/precision still gets buffed regardless of what build you are, but that is not where the main damage from a pet build is coming.

Actually with a precision build it is, your precision chunk i would assert is a massive chunk of your damage, buffing that damage is just as critical as any focus on your pets, you need both to make a pet build viable.

As noted earlier, I'm not against making pets themselves a bit better, but remember any buffs to pets only stands to make precision pet builds even stronger and that wont change the reasons, I've highlighted already as to why precision pet builds are better than the might based ones.

Your argument about pet builds having a disadvantage with someone of the same max cr and skill points is noted. Each instance will have different outcomes due to someone’s powerset. I’m sure you already know each powerset has both their pros and cons when doing instances. With pets as others stated, you will drop damage if you are picking up a player or doing a mechanic while your pets will still actively attack your enemies. Also, your definition of “disadvantage” is subjective. It’s not a contest you’re not going to win a prize if you do more damage than the other dps player. If the pet build is able to still keep up and finish the content then that is no disadvantage but a win.

Probably going to have to agree to disagree on that one. I’ve absolutely slaughtered prec pet builds. As I’ve said many times before, I get almost no resets off of the .5 cooldowns but at gws 50% mark, any channeled power is a 98% chance of reset. I’d say a solid 90% of the time my rotation is gw offering final ruin 3x vengeance final ruin gw offering. I’ll probably see a non reset 1 out of 10 rotations. We’re all always going to be on top of the board because we know what we’re doing tho. Personally, I think the reset is broken which is why it’s near a 100% reset for well timed channels. But prec may be better at 1st column than 2nd. I only care about 2nd personally.

But anyway, not the point. Op is still the only one really getting the point. If you’re prec based using pets, every dlc you’ll add 10 to your prec stats. Every dlc, that buff troll will add 10 to health. Every dlc, your head augs will improve. Every dlc, your pets will stay the exact same. So 3 dlcs from now, pet builds are garbage in Omni

Ok, so if you need both then, you are still only having 1 them getting buffed. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

There is still no equality between a pet build with a normal build, and now you highlight the precision side of a pet build being better off than the might. So even internally there is disparity. What a mess. (I will still not go precision).

Thankfully it is not, or the toxic part of the community would be even worse. I mean disadvantage in terms of how effective someone can be to the group, so for the dps role, pet builds are at a disadvantage when they are not benefiting from 100% of the troll's contribution to the group, and now in clamped content not getting to benefit from SP as much as other builds are.

Perhaps to avoid being misinterpreted im not saying, in fact ive agreed with opposite, don't do anything with the pets.

I was simply having a wider discussion about pet builds in general because, hey, why not

That's what I feel most people saying everything is fine are not getting. Maybe it won't be in 3 dlcs, but if nothing is done regarding how the clamp affects pets, or how a pet's base stats are only calculated by CR, then this will become much more noticeable in the future, and then I suppose it will finally not be fine anymore.

That's fine, I'm just throwing discussion points out there, you don't have to actually go precision lol

Just in general too you're a troll power, yea? Are you using RSK for a pet build, I'm curious, isn't that weaker than a powered up fury/crystal?

That in itself is probably also hurting your damage.

Again I mean im happy to have a change.

I wonder if even the easiest solution is to create an iconic power that increases each DLC, call it Pied Pipers Pet Control or something and make it apply a %increase to all pet damage and each DLC you could increase the % if the person is prepared to put another skill point in there, that would then penetrate the clamp right and could easily be calculated to compare to more meta build increases.