Abyssal Chicken WAI?

sax1993 · October 2020

Is the Abyssal Chicken companion working as intended? Seems to be a little overpowered at the moment. With the introduction of mounts giving combined rating it now allows end gamers to still hit stat caps for trials such as Tower of the Mad Mage and Zariel's Challenge while equipping 2-3 12k armor penetration companion gears, adding armor break as everyone's weapon enhancement, Dread enchantment the chicken can just about meet armor penetration cap for Zariel's. If it's just the meta I may invest into it but I don't want to heavily invest into a build that is overperforming and it end up being nerfed.

In the video I'm going to post below a group had everyone run a chicken in Zariel's making it 10 chicken totals. They smashed the content in under 9 minutes. The hardest content the game has to offer made trivial due to insane companion damage.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3yd6WombOM

regenerde · October 2020

Well, "insane companion damage", that can only be achieved by "end gamers" with extremely good equipment, sounds wai to me. And i guess they could get through this content even faster, if they would use Xunas instead. I'd also like to see the same group going through that content with their Augments active, i doubt that it would take them much longer.

Besides, considering that most normal companions can't deliver decent damage, heal or keep a group of regular enemies "entertained" on their own, i'd say that the Abyssal Chicken and may be even Xuna are the only normal companions left, that are actually working as they should.

Anyway, you said it yourself, Xuna was nerfed over time, and the same might happen to the Abyssal Chicken, so building your character around it might be a bad idea.

merik1999 · October 2020

anytime you mention end-gamers, then you should never compare anything to do with Companions nor damage output. Like the above poster mentioned, it would be nice to show a comparison with the same group. I ran Zariel with my Abyssal chicken and without it. The only thing that was a major suffer to me was HP. I wound up dying more and doing less damage with my Abyssal Chicken. Even though my AP, ACC, CS and CA were at the minimum with or without The chicken. I ran as a Rogue.

So as a single user of the chicken I see no advantages on end game use. However, if We had 9 Chickens and we all were at minimum stats...well, to be honest, at that point we would not have needed the Chickens anyway so where is the complaint?

plasticbat · October 2020

Anything can be nerf'ed or changed with minimum notice even if it was WAI (and minimum includes zero).

rikitaki · October 2020

OP: If that run is with 10 chickens, all that happened is that tanks and heals were going dps instead of fully focusing on tanking/healing. That is the only difference. With 4 bonus damage dealers (=+2/3 of original dps) the run went faster, OK. I do not see anything strange here.
The position of tanks is no longer on the edge even for Zariel - that means, it does not take only the best possible tank to do its job, so if you have a high-end tank, you can sacrifice part of your tankiness to do some dps. That is common development. (and augment gives you only 30k HP, that is nothing for the total tank HP requirements)
Heals were nerfed so much that no one can even spot if they sacrifice another 1/3 of their heals to do damage. That is new, but that... is.
I can already hear now the objections that tanks and heals should not deal damage, but honestly, try to do daily stuff in Wandering Emporium on 27k pally without AbyChick/Xuna - even with 27k IL it takes forever. Tanks and heals need to be able to do damage, and those two companions are the only way to achieve it now.

All in all, your question should be probably translated: Is it fine that heals and tanks have resources to do something else than tanking and healing? And for that the answer is: well, it is. Even tanks and heals, as they improve, try to multi-task.

Next we should probably talk about the companions in general.
There are 2 non-augments that have more utility than a vanity pet. Abyssal Chicken - which excels against the bosses, and Xuna - she is better on mob packs. Two out of two hundred - that is wrong.
For them to be good, you need to adjust insignia bonuses and belt items - which sounds appropriate.
If you want them to do damage, you have to dump a ridiculous ArPen on them... and after that the attacks are deflected. Your char has screwed stat distribution and now IS dependent on the pet to do all the stuff. Binding character stats with pet gear is unfortunate.
Companions have critical multiplier of 1, which is funny.
Companions tend to attack objects that need to stay untouched (like ice, jelly cubes in the middle of lift, moody Nostura...), which is a deal-breaker.

Since M16 the companions are in shambles. I do not want to pass judgement if AbyChick/Xuna have or do not have excessive damage output, but that 10 chicken run... I think if it would be 4 chicken run (only support classes), it would give the same result. Which means, no, I think they do not over-perform on dps classes. And tanks and heals need to have access to dps builds, so from my perspective it is fine.

sax1993 · October 2020

Fair points everyone. I get that we're comparing end gamers running a companion will skew results. But as far as the counterpoint of this run would take the same amount of time if the DPS were to take off their chickens or be very close is false. I have ran with most of these people in this run on my Arbiter. I have consistently beat them by 100-150+ million damage on numerous occasions. The run would be over 14-15 minutes easily. They're shaving 7 minutes off just by using this companion.

With the rise of the chicken meta on Xbox this has changed and they can now beat me consistently by quite a lot (I may beat them 1 out of 5 runs). I've reviewed ACT logs of someone on PC that has started to using the chicken build, theirs is not as optimized as the people on console yet due to not everyone using armor break on their companion enhancement and other factors that will benefit the chicken's damage. But the companion is doing 45% of this person's total damage in Zariel's and they're not even fully optimizing it, that isn't alarming?

reg1981 · October 2020

Not hard to tell this is xbox. Anymore than a few chickens on PC and it crashes everyone in the group. Can't seem to run any content with more than 2-3 at a time without the client closing.

So using 10 of them to knock out big bosses, not really an option for us.

merik1999 · October 2020

sax1993 said:
yada yada yada... that isn't alarming?

It's not alarming at all.
Here is why. You are suggesting a companion is possibly OP because END game players are doing better with Much better equipment and enchantments. So you would think the best way to solve this is to make that companion nerfed for EVERYONE because an endgame player, who doesn't need the companion anyway to do more damage than anyone else even with that companion, is doing slightly better than another end game player who doesn't use that particular companion?

How does that even make any sense all? I have tested the chicken and Mine Abysal chicken does pretty well but I do more damage and last longer with out it than I do with it. Maybe if I changed some stats reworked my Chicken and added more enchantments and powers to make the abysal chicken hit harder..But then that take the entire complaint of the Abyssal chicken being OP and makes it irreleveant because I am using endgame gear and powers to Modify my playstyle to do better....

sax1993 · October 2020

How isn’t beating the hardest content content in the game in 8 minutes making it almost trivial not alarming? They’re skipping more than half the mechanics in the fight.

Phase one they phased him right at the beginning during parallel portals. Most groups don’t phase until after the second white noise of this phase and that’s with all end game capped, max power DPS.

They killed both demons almost simultaneously completely ignoring the purple balls to center mechanic.

Phase 3 they phased her in one full boss rotation during her last white noise. Not only that they have plenty room for error during hypo/clusters because the chickens are making the hypo hit A LOT softer by halving it’s damage. Hypo/Clusters can murder people if a couple extra people move out of the way thinking they have clusters, this isn’t an issue with 10 chickens.

Phase 4, same thing as phase 2 killing angels a lot quicker.

Final phase then boss doesn’t even come close to getting to it’s spinning cleave/hypo mechanic.

I mean if you’ve never done hard mode Zariel I guess you can’t really see that this is causing an issue as you don’t know that they’re skipping a lot of mechanics to this fight.

This group can shave off even more time to this fight if they have a ranger using the Wyvern set with distracting shot as they can pop off around 6 dailies a minute giving the wyvern set 50+% upkeep time. Adding in wyvern set they’re giving all their chickens and themselves 5% damage, 5k armor pen and 5k power (players will get an additional 10K more power thanks to bondings) That 5k armor pen to the chicken is huge as their chickens are still short of the armor pen cap on Zariel.

sandukutupu · October 2020

I haven't used any Chicken companions but I am giving them away as prizes at the Barovian Bash! October 21st. Click on my signature to read more.

The Chicken makes a clone upon the death of an enemy, maybe the PC math is bad or the PC cannot handle the iteration that well? I hope they don't have to nerf these chickens just to fix them.

Have fun!

micheal1979 · October 2020

I do hope they scale the chicken/xuna to be appropriate soon. Always makes me chuckle when my very strong barbarian gets out dpsed by KFC in a dungeon. Shouldn't realistically be possible for a 22k il with a greasy 18 piece bucket of chicken to out dps a 35k barb in +% damage gear. Just saying, now if we have some kind of tamer class I would understand. Otherwise just silly lol.

vaultingfrog · October 2020

Thanks for getting these things nerfed...

This is why we can't have nice things

reg1981 · October 2020

I LOVE the chicken pet. The animation makes me laugh/smile EVERYTIME I see it. Not much in this game has that effect! It's powerful in it's stock form, but I'm stronger with Augment. I've not fully tricked one out yet with all mount bonuses and indominble runestones, but I'm picking away at that setup on my tank. I use the chicken or Xuna for most solo play, I also use it in TiC. It's fun, not for the damage.

It's a GREAT option for some with lesser DPS. Anyone can have a built toon in this game, not everyone can use them to their full extent. What's wrong with using a pet to help make up some of that difference?

End gamers have the option of investing heavily in it and getting the most out of it, but most I know don't. Many love to play with the idea and mess with the chicken build, very few actually use it in end game trials. It's a toy, nothing more for us on PC.

merik1999 · October 2020

micheal1979 said:
I do hope they scale the chicken/xuna to be appropriate soon. Always makes me chuckle when my very strong barbarian gets out dpsed by KFC in a dungeon. Shouldn't realistically be possible for a 22k il with a greasy 18 piece bucket of chicken to out dps a 35k barb in +% damage gear. Just saying, now if we have some kind of tamer class I would understand. Otherwise just silly lol.

That has nothing to do with the Chicken. You are Way over the IL for the dungeon if that happened.

The way the scaling system works in dungeons, is that the lower your IL, the better your stats and damage is. the closer to the MaX IL level, the better you are. There are also things as %dmg bonus that factor in, but basically YOUR 35k IL is no match for the 22K IL. Chicken or no Chicken.

froger · October 2020

I hope they make the hundreds of other companions useful. I want healers to heal, controllers to control, defenders to defend, strikers to strike, etc. Running Xuna and pouring tons resources into making her perform, while still being able to do my job as a healer, is rewarding, the same cannot be said for other companions (except the abysmal chicken). I see tons of players running her since she dropped from the pack, but most haven't invested the resources and it shows.

zimxero · October 2020

Right now, I have two mount insignia bonuses on warlords (+20% companion damage). The three I have not converted are:

* Gladiator's Guile
* Barbarian's Revelry
* Artificer's Persuasion

As an upgraded DPS, its about the only thing I have left that can increase my damage more than a couple percent. I hate the idea of dropping these three, but since I am most often the top DPS, it is probably the best thing I can do to help the team at this point. Lose a constant heal over time, lose 3.33% encounter speed, loose 10% move speed - - - Gain about 10% damage.

If I do, I wont be selling off my old Insignias. There is no way to know what changes Cryptic will make in the future. In the past I went "All In" on 15x r15 Black Ice Enchantments for my character. One mod later... Black Ice Enchantment value dropped from 3 million each to 450,000 each. I couldn't afford to re-equip myself with Radiant Enchantments for a long time afterward.

My hope is that we soon see Mythic Companions, and with this change that they drop Xuna & Abyssal Chicken base damage (or attack speed) by about 20%, and raise the others by about 10%.

sandukutupu · October 2020

Well, all day long in Protector's Enclave I hear how great Xuna is at this or how wonderful Xuna did that! Xuna, Xuna, Xuna!

Xuna isn't the best tool in the shed. I have a Xuna and she is hyped up by players selling her in the AH. Players that don't own Xuna are green with envy and just want to hurt players that do. I ran some tests, simple but effective, I took Xuna (rank 40) to the Stronghold. She did 33% of my total damage that is ⅓ of my total damage. Then I ran my Zhentarim Warlock (Rank 35) she did 25% of my total damage. I then ran my Renegade Illusionist (Rank 35) he did 21% of my total damage. Something tells me, if I upgrade my warlock, she can do as well as Xuna.

But people don't want to hear this, because they want to sell you a Xuna. Now here come some people who will insist I am wrong... just buy the warlock and upgrade her.

arheliya · October 2020

regenerde · October 2020

Well, looks like you're going to get your wish... rumors going around in game that companions and mounts are getting another swing from the nerf hammer within the next patch.

Which is interesting, since the problem itself seem to be player stats and not just the companion itself - so, i suggest to have guild boons only active in the Stronghold area itself, that should solve the problem. And if not, then lets reduce the stats of all the legendary enchantments. If that's still not enough, lets take a closer look at regular boons and see what we can nerf in there too.

Hell, if they keep up with all the nerfing of this and that, they might even have to get rid of the scaling HAMSTER, since there would be nothing left to scale anymore.

Anyway, it was fun while it last - now let's see how much longer we have to wait until healing and tanking companions get some work done, i mean the Devs are still "looking into it" right?

motu999 · October 2020

sandukutupu said:
I ran some tests, simple but effective, I took Xuna (rank 40) to the Stronghold. She did 33% of my total damage that is ⅓ of my total damage. Then I ran my Zhentarim Warlock (Rank 35) she did 25% of my total damage. I then ran my Renegade Illusionist (Rank 35) he did 21% of my total damage. Something tells me, if I upgrade my warlock, she can do as well as Xuna.

I tend to agree. Xuna, Chicken etc. only tend to be overpowered, if the player itself is underpowered.
I regularly run my main through Avernus. She has 29k IL, so not really strong or end-game ready.
- When I run with Xuna, I kill the *normal* mobs ~20% faster, partly because of Combat Advantage due to Xuna being on the other side
- I kill the elite mobs ~10% faster with Xuna, but often die to the mini bosses (Mog, Dock Master Aza) because of non-maxed stats
- when I run with my augment, I am more survivable (close to stat caps), but lack Combat Advantage. Compared to Xuna my augment slows me down by 10% to 20%, when I solo. When I kill stuff with other players, my augment is generally far better than Xuna (or Chicken)

I sometimes forget to resummon Xuna after a tougher fight with my augment - and barely notice the difference.
Xuna and Chicken help a bit, but not much. Yes, if you nerf your own character, Chicken or Xuna can do up to 50% of the damage. But why should I do this? Xuna does not kill faster when I nerf my toon: I will kill stuff slower and Xuna can contribute 50% *only because* I have nerfed myself.

hotfrostworm · October 2020

motu999#9953 said:

sandukutupu said:
I ran some tests, simple but effective, I took Xuna (rank 40) to the Stronghold. She did 33% of my total damage that is ⅓ of my total damage. Then I ran my Zhentarim Warlock (Rank 35) she did 25% of my total damage. I then ran my Renegade Illusionist (Rank 35) he did 21% of my total damage. Something tells me, if I upgrade my warlock, she can do as well as Xuna.
I tend to agree. Xuna, Chicken etc. only tend to be overpowered, if the player itself is underpowered.
I regularly run my main through Avernus. She has 29k IL, so not really strong or end-game ready.
- When I run with Xuna, I kill the *normal* mobs ~20% faster, partly because of Combat Advantage due to Xuna being on the other side
- I kill the elite mobs ~10% faster with Xuna, but often die to the mini bosses (Mog, Dock Master Aza) because of non-maxed stats
- when I run with my augment, I am more survivable (close to stat caps), but lack Combat Advantage. Compared to Xuna my augment slows me down by 10% to 20%, when I solo. When I kill stuff with other players, my augment is generally far better than Xuna (or Chicken)

I sometimes forget to resummon Xuna after a tougher fight with my augment - and barely notice the difference.
Xuna and Chicken help a bit, but not much. Yes, if you nerf your own character, Chicken or Xuna can do up to 50% of the damage. But why should I do this? Xuna does not kill faster when I nerf my toon: I will kill stuff slower and Xuna can contribute 50% *only because* I have nerfed myself.

I do a lot of game testing for my own purposes. When I nuke a character to make a fresh level 1 "crash test dummy" I will immediately at level 4 grab a high level companion from my account. This makes leveling the new character up a breeze. Running a level 15 or 20 character with a rank 40 companion, items from Stardock, and some cheap rank 9 or 10 bonding stones. The companion is like the Hulk smashing everything in our wake.

Since I own multiple characters at various levels, I can easily toss an epic and needed items into the shared bank account and pick that up as I enter the game. I don't care about game mechanics, as I am only testing for visual and audio quality, everything else is not my problem. Good luck with those nerfs!

krymkac · October 2020

Its not really chicken\xuna that made endgame content trivial though. To make them deal a decent enough dmg to justify the loss of personal stats you need a dedicated build (high armor penetration on a pet, warlord inspiration & alike insignia bonuses, runs that buff companion dmg). Just slotting a chicken & calling it a day wont do much. Now if want to see a real culprit behind the trivializing master zariel challenge. Surprise its mount's re-work. An unbalanced mess. Up to 5.5k combined rating (why just why?!) added to mounts' equipped powers made it way easier to reach the stat caps even without an augment. Or get more power\hp for those who still use them. Then there is tunnel vision & alike single target combat powers that go up to 3k magnitude. Resulting in up to 8-10+ million hits in tomm\zariel when all the buffs are on. 8-10mil that apparently do count for dc arbiters' prophecy of doom. I love how everybody acts like companions & mounts are broken but arbiters are just fine & dandy & absolutely balanced

As a person how did plenty of runs before & after the mount's rework i can state that an average party now feels like the top of the server before. Dps-wise. Oh all that gear with 7.5-10k power bonuses introduced with citadel hunts most likely wont help either. Main problem of this game imho - too much shinny junk & not enough content to actually justify it. At this point they should have introduced hardcore\nightmare zariel mode not the normal mode.

arheliya · October 2020

krymkac said:
Its not really chicken\xuna that made endgame content trivial though. To make them deal a decent enough dmg to justify the loss of personal stats you need a dedicated build (high armor penetration on a pet, warlord inspiration & alike insignia bonuses, runs that buff companion dmg). Just slotting a chicken & calling it a day wont do much. Now if want to see a real culprit behind the trivializing master zariel challenge. Surprise its mount's re-work. An unbalanced mess. Up to 5.5k combined rating (why just why?!) added to mounts' equipped powers made it way easier to reach the stat caps even without an augment. Or get more power\hp for those who still use them. Then there is tunnel vision & alike single target combat powers that go up to 3k magnitude. Resulting in up to 8-10+ million hits in tomm\zariel when all the buffs are on. 8-10mil that apparently do count for dc arbiters' prophecy of doom. I love how everybody acts like companions & mounts are broken but arbiters are just fine & dandy & absolutely balanced As a person how did plenty of runs before & after the mount's rework i can state that an average party now feels like the top of the server before. Dps-wise. Oh all that gear with 7.5-10k power bonuses introduced with citadel hunts most likely wont help either.
Main problem of this game imho - too much shinny junk & not enough content to actually justify it. At this point they should have introduced hardcore\nightmare zariel mode not the normal mode.

And leave the same reward in chest

By the way, pet damage depends on Gear Score.
Gear Score*(Gear Score+100)*...
What also results in such a gap.

tgwolf · October 2020

It isn't, neither is Xuna.

They've addressed it and at some point there will be a rebalance, making them significantly weaker but making other attack companions stronger.

swarthy86 · November 2020

ok, l read all your writings and discussions. But that is an free to play game. If you have money to spend or you want to spend money to the game, it must give you some extras. If xuna or chicken haters cant reach the companions , it's their problem not US! Thats all l want to say. Its my opinion and its my pleasure . Dont cry , respect. if xuna or chicken used in or companions are used in pvp, ok l'll respect what u think but in pve ? cmon , most of the people play this game 2 hours in a week and they said thats unfair :D at first give exertion and than write here what you think. lm playing this game at least 7 years.

Abyssal Chicken WAI?

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