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Options for the 5 legendary pets for Mod 12
defiantone99
Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 6,634 Arc User
I am still debating with myself about what pets to upgrade to legendary. Any ideas for both DPS and Support classes? Right now, for DPS, I would say Sellsword, Fire Archon, Air Archon, Erinyes and Dancing Blade. Is Siege Master worth swapping out Dancing Blade for when you are using a non-crit sev enchantment? Earth Archon seems quite useless in a zone where you are always being attacked.
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I don't think it would ever beat out the siege master's 4% flat damage bonus then, unless you didn't have any other sources of crit severity.
You can actually solve to see how much crit severity needed before siege master outpaces Dancing Blade.
let's say you have x base crit severity (including combat advantage if you're good about having that up too)
So the incremental dps increase of adding 5% crit severity is (we can factor out all the other components of the damage formula, since the crit severity component is multiplicative with all other components)
((x+0.05)-x)/x
And the incremental dps increase of adding 4% damage buff is always 4%
((x+0.05)-x)/x = 0.04
Solving for x yields 1.25, meaning if you have more than 25% crit severity+CA combined, then the 4% damage bonus will be better.
I hope I did that math right XD
This kind of passes the gut check for me, since if you have a crit severity + CA of close to 100% that means that a crit deals roughly "double damage" (put another way, your crit severity component is ~2 or 200% multiplier to base damage). At that point any additional crit severity's impact to dps is close to half of the % crit severity increase.
((2+0.05) - 2)/2 = 0.025 ~2.5% damage increase
Those 5% crit severity companions are almost never worth it compared to just damage buffer actives now... at least until they rework the way buffs work
Probably not ideal for solo content or for lower geared characters, but in a group with a tank and healer-ish (DC buffer lol) or with enough self-healing, the earth archon bonus has acceptable uptime. I run it on my PVE GWF, and it seems to perform well enough...
And with the archon bonus allegedly being fixed (
although I heard whispers that the fire archon isn't actually helping the bonus along), earth archon synergies with air archon a tiny bitOne other thought RE: Sellsword as summon.
With the uncapped debuffs being rolled in under the new cap, and with the diminishing returns being applied too... it might make sense to swap out of sellsword for main damage dealers. Assuming that you have solid debuffs, it would be giving you a much smaller increase in effectiveness than it used to
(If you already have debuffers in party, the diminished returns will probably mean that Consumed by Battle gives you <5% increase in effectiveness, which if you already have a lot of debuffs applied would be an incremental damage increase of less than half that. That means something like 2-3% incremental damage increase compared to 10% or nearly 10% now on live, depending on how many uncapped debuffs you have)
By dropping sellsword at the very least you get another useful active bonus (instead of +300 power lol), possibly for the 3rd archon... You can also swap in something like a Dread Warrior summoned pet, which features a nice little heal/siphon (helps with Earth Archon) and gives you a 10% damage buff for a little while. (the increased threat active is silly, but ultimately not too bad if you have a good tank)
Admittedly the sword trio debuff helps party dps, currently still stacks, and is probably better if you are not usually the main damage dealer (since debuffs will be helping boost your primary damage dealer). But if you are close to BiS and are usually delivering the biggest hits, then Dread Warrior or a different summoned companion might be a good call. Support classes would still probably be best served with a sword trio comp, though.
Finally, changing companions is expensive, and all of these represent small fractional increases in outgoing damage. Probably nothing worth losing sleep over if you're just looking to be good enough
Edit: Tested, all Archons appear to be WAI according to tooltips
For example, say a pet gets a 2% bonus to some stat for green, 3% for uncommon, and 5% for epic. Typically when upgraded to legendary that bonus would just stay at 5% because of the 15% stat bonus you gain. Now that each new legendary grants more to this stat bonus gain does the active bonus just stay the same as the epic level, as it currently does?
ty in advance
The heal is quite strong. I didn't test super thoroughly, but the 10% damage buff is about 4 seconds long and the cooldown on the siphon strike is 8 seconds. So you get roughly 50% uptime and it triggers pretty reliably at the start of battle.
1 defense slot is not the end of the world (about 3,000 power), you'll feel the loss a little bit when soloing, but not if you're with any kind of power-sharing OP or DC. But for the sake of argument, let's say you have 40,000 power normally, 3,000 is worth 3.754% incremental damage increase. An end-game DPS probably has a bit more power than that, so the 3,000 would be worth even less.
http://janne.coreside.com/mechanics/power
(as an aside, having 1 defense bonding slot + the siphon for self-heals makes it easier to stack radiants in your own defense slots instead of stat enchants. That lets you inch up Aura of Courage damage when running with OPs, which can be a significant damage bump especially for certain fast-proccing dps classes) Also haven't tested, but I think it's just expanding the legendary active ability to a higher %. I would expect it would be just more of the summoned companion's (buffed) stats.
To be frank it it's the other option (8% of one companion, 4% of another, etc.) that would be pretty awful. And it would be confusing (which companion is "first", which "second" etc.). But again, I don't think that the tooltip reads that way
> I actually like earth archon a lot, depending on the class.
>
> Probably not ideal for solo content or for lower geared characters, but in a group with a tank and healer-ish (DC buffer lol) or with enough self-healing, the earth archon bonus has acceptable uptime. I run it on my PVE GWF, and it seems to perform well enough...
>
> And with the archon bonus allegedly being fixed (although I heard whispers that the fire archon isn't actually helping the bonus along), earth archon synergies with air archon a tiny bit
>
> One other thought RE: Sellsword as summon.
>
> With the uncapped debuffs being rolled in under the new cap, and with the diminishing returns being applied too... it might make sense to swap out of sellsword for main damage dealers. Assuming that you have solid buffs, it would be giving you a much smaller increase in effectiveness than it used to
>
> (If you already have debuffers in party, the diminished returns will probably mean that Consumed by Battle gives you <5% increase in effectiveness, which if you already have a lot of debuffs applied would be an incremental damage increase of less than half that. That means something like 2-3% incremental damage increase compared to 10% or nearly 10% now on live, depending on how many uncapped debuffs you have)
>
> By dropping sellsword at the very least you get another useful active bonus (instead of +300 power lol), possibly for the 3rd archon... You can also swap in something like a Dread Warrior summoned pet, which features a nice little heal/siphon (helps with Earth Archon) and gives you a 10% damage buff for a little while. (the increased threat active is silly, but ultimately not too bad if you have a good tank)
>
> Admittedly the sword trio debuff helps party dps, currently still stacks, and is probably better if you are not usually the main damage dealer (since debuffs will be helping boost your primary damage dealer). But if you are close to BiS and are usually delivering the biggest hits, then Dread Warrior or a different summoned companion might be a good call. Support classes would still probably be best served with a sword trio comp, though.
>
> Finally, changing companions is expensive, and all of these represent small fractional increases in outgoing damage. Probably nothing worth losing sleep over if you're just looking to be good enough
(although I heard whispers that the fire archon isn't actually helping the bonus along) care to tell us more on this please?
He's right lol. At epic the death slaad gets an explosion added to their active ability, which causes the poison stacks to be removed. Even though it's a better level bonus, the net effect is a significant reduction in the damage (because after the explosion you have to rebuild stacks, and the explosion damage is tickle-worthy).
Might be ok for boss fights but still have to rearrange stats for lost arp etc.
@reefriednunt#3177 is correct the fire archon doesn't have a +0.5% in their active, but it does count as +0.5% for the air and earth archons (didn't test water because I don't have and wouldn't recommend)
So the unsubstantiated rumors from before were wrong. Fire archon does count as an archon for the other bonuses, it's just that it does not have +0.5% additions to it's own bonus (and it doesn't have on live either).
In my opinion finding a way to slot all 3 archons that are viable (again, water is not really) seems like a good plan. For convenience's sake, you can un-shelf your fire archon as your summon (remember it's not terrible at dying and builds stacks of protector's quickly right at the start of combat) and switch to Air Archon for #EvilSpellPlagueFrog and other fights where ranged companions go kaput.
Of course would be interested in seeing what the mad scientists come up with.
(Dread warrior is slow for sure, but for instance for anyone who also enjoys soloing it can really help with survivability and damage. Or maybe shadow demon would be an interesting choice, even after it's damage was toned down it still can still hit for something.)
I feel that the debuff changes have once again leveled the playing field a little, with no clear "too good to pass up" like the uncapped debuffs used to be. It's a nerf to Sword Trio + Dancing Shield for sure, but a healthy one in my opinion
That said, Sword trio + Dancing Shield still do provide (now capped, and diminished) debuffs, so they aren't useless by any stretch of the word. I'll probably keep them on my support classes because other pets increase only personal dps, instead of supporting another main damage dealer.
With 1 legendary pet active, you get 16% of your summoned companions's stats
With 2 legendary pets active, you get 24% of your summoned companion's stats (16+8=24)
With 3 legendary pets active, you get 28% of your summoned companion's stats (16+8+4=28)
With 4 legendary pets active, you get 30% of your summoned companion's stats (16+8+4+2=30)
With 5 legendary pets active, you get 31% of your summoned companion's stats (16+8+4+2+1=31)
And then you stare at the roster full of orange and feel filthy. The opulence is disgusting, even though the upgrade tokens were cloned... I don't know how many legendary pets people will slot, but rollin' orange is sure to be a symbol of impractical wealth and questionable taste...