This isn't my info, but I've seen many, many people ask "how does pet scaling work for the WD?", so I wanted to give you the answer that I found after searching for a bit. I can attest that it does work and makes a summoner build viable and fun.
Updates 28/05/2012: Just tested dodge, it does benefit pets! Results below. 28/05/2012: Tested block partially, doesn't benefit pets. 28/05/2012: Did further testing with vitality, compared dog survivability to statless gear. Vitality definitely doesn't help pets. 28/05/2012: Tested thorns, it will only activate if your pet takes damage. Dodging won't activate it. Also, can't seem to increase thorn damage in any way. 28/05/2012: Tested some stats to heal pets. Only Life Regeneration Stat heals pets.
1. Introduction Hey all,
I've done some research on which stats scale with pets. Please share your findings as well, to support or contradict my results. Please feel free to critique my testing if you feel it is not accurate enough and I will try to do further testing once I have enough gold to spend.
I am testing my pets against a Walking Corpse (fat zombie) in nightmare mode, Act 1. I try to use gear that has only one stat, strength/dexterity/vitality/Intelligence. So if I test Strength, it will be the only stat that has a high value, and the rest of the stats will be at base values unless otherwise specified.
Acronyms DR = The percentage of damage reduction from either armor or physical reduction.
2 Pet Survivability Test Results 2.1 No gear
Result: Gargantuan dies in 4 hits.
2.2 Strength Test (Strength increases armor) Lvl: ~33 | Str: 545 | Dex: base | Int: base | Vit: base | Armor: 1729 (51.17% DR) | Physical Resistance: 11 (6.03% DR)
Result: Gargantuan dies in 10 hits.
2.3 Dexterity Test Lvl: ~33 | Str: base | Dex: 535 | Int: base | Vit: base | Armor: 1134 (40.75% DR) | Physical Resistance: 11 (6.03% DR)
Result: Gargantuan dies in 8 hits.
2.4.1 Vitality Test Lvl: ~33 | Str: base | Dex: base | Int: base | Vit: 574 | Armor: ? (39.78% DR) | Physical Resistance: 11 (6.03% DR)
Result: Gargantuan dies in 8 hits.
2.4.2 Vitality Test v2.0 Instead of the gargantuan, my dog is used, now that it has more health at level 48. Dog was put through 6 deaths.
Same armor value as Dodge Test 2.7. Tested myself getting hit by the zombie with nothing on but my shield (571 Armor). It was already possible for me to fully negate the damage (with one exception where blocking still gave me 77 damage). So it is safe to assume that with 1376 armor, a block will always negate all damage and the pet will receive no damage if it could block (no white flash indicating damage received).
Dog was put through 104 hits.
Result: Dog "did not receive damage" 3 times.
Comparing it with Dodge Test 2.7 shows that the 3 times where it did not receive damage is most likely from dodge, despite an extra 21% block chance. For the dodge test, no shield was used.
The dog also dies in around 15 hits, similar to the dodge test, showing that there are no partial blocks, or it would survive more hits.
3. Fierce Loyalty Skill Benefits 3.1 Pet Healing - Do these things heal pets? Stats Life Regeneration - Yes Life Steal - No Life On hit - No Life Per kill - No
Spells Firebats + Vampire Bats Rune (gain 2.5% damage as life) - No Haunt + Consuming Spirit (79 Life per Second) - No Spirit Barrage + Phlebotomize (gain 3% damage as life) - No
Passive Skills Blood Ritual (1% of Max Health as Life Regen) - Yes (because it is added as a Life Regeneration value)
Literally only the Life Regeneration Stat on your Character Sheet heals pets once you have taken Fierce Loyalty passive skill.
3.2 Thorns Activation: How does it activate? If you dodge: No If you block (either partially or full): Yes If your pet dodges: No
Thorns will only activate if your pet receives damage. That means if your pet dodges, thorns won't activate. Consider this if you plan to stack dexterity for dodge.
3.3 Thorns Damage: What increases it? Strength: No Dexterity: No Intelligence: No Vitality: No Pierce the Veil Skill: No
Nothing seems to increase Thorns damage. What you see on the Character Sheet is what you get. So far it always deals the full damage to the Zombie.
Block: No (but you want to use shield anyway for the extra armor that pets do benefit from) Dodge: Yes Armor: Yes Physical Resistance: Yes Cold Resistance: Unknown Fire Resistance: Unknown Lightning Resistance: Unknown Poison Resistance: Unknown Arcane/Holy Resistance: Unknown Missile Damage Reduction: Unknown Melee Damage Reduction: Unknown
4.2 Fierce Loyalty Skill Benefits Only the Life Regeneration Stat heals pets. Thorns only activates if your pet takes damage from melee. If your pet dodges, it won't activate. Thorns damage cannot be increased at the moment.
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TLDR version; Str - increases armor for you and your minions, Int - increases for dmg and resists for you and your minions, & Vit - increases life for you and your minions.
Also, it's conclusion that pet build work is far-fetched. Pets 'kinda' stay alive longer in content that you overgear by miles. None of people make it working in Inferno act II and beyond.
Also, it's conclusion that pet build work is far-fetched. Pets 'kinda' stay alive longer in content that you overgear by miles. None of people make it working in Inferno act II and beyond.
It's worked for others and myself so it's not 'far-fetched', and as far as inferno act 2 goes; he and few others state that they've only done up to inferno act I.
if you don't want your pets getting obliterated by every other mob pack you need extremely high armor and resists along with regen. you need int also if you want to kill a mob in less than 20 minutes. you can't completely ignore vitality either or you'll be running around with 4k hp. almost every piece of gear needs 5 specific stats. even then the dps is kinda low, so you still need some dps stats here and there. i don't think any other class or spec is confined to such a degree.
no matter how high your armor and resists get, those dogs (and sometimes garg) are gonna get 1 shot by things that are meant to be avoided. they're going to stand in fire and poison. it's like the templar. if a big group of monsters come they'll probably die anyways.
they need to let pet health scale with gear in some way. dogs need to have a shared health pool. they need to further reduce the damage followers and pets take from shit that players are suppose to avoid (plagued, desecrate, etc...)
Yeah, I agree. Pets are vulnerable to things on the ground that should be avoided. And there are tons of those things in the game.
Also, you say that "when gearing you want to focus on Int/Str/Vit." Not sure that's true.
Armor + Resists will be higher on items than Strength + Intellect. It may be necessary to stack just Intellect + Armor, or even leave Intellect out altogether if the bulk of your damage comes from Thorns.
But most likely you would try to find items that have both Intellect and Resists.
If you're trying to make a true summon build, where your minions are the ones actually doing the damage, you'd stack these stats:
Thorns
Life Per Sec
Armor
Resists
Intellect as well, though I'd like to learn more about how much intellect affects the pets' melee damage.
I guess it's unknown at this point how proc abilities work with pets, because if they do it could be one of the greatest strengths of this build. For example, if bleeds / stuns worked with pet attacks.
Ultimately, this build is really gear dependent. You have to find gear with specific stats for it to be effective. And once you have the right gear, chances are you'll be really durable, but will kill things slowly. Which could make it a preferred build for HC.
You're spot on about the armor instead of str. For some reason I thought str/armor ratio was more than 1:1, but I was wrong about that. So, I'll be going back to redo my gear and looking for Int & + Armor items.
I'll probably look for thorns and life regen as well.
Also, it's conclusion that pet build work is far-fetched. Pets 'kinda' stay alive longer in content that you overgear by miles. None of people make it working in Inferno act II and beyond.
Farm the content is not "overgear" it's the way the game is balanced. Pet WD works more or less like melee builds (most barbs, some wizards). It has very low risk but it's very gear dependent.
Vitality not scaling on PET is an giant bad news through... I don't think it's possible to mitigate enough damage to make a constant HP bar work... It seens stacking armor and +all resists is the only way to make pets tankier.
Farm the content is not "overgear" it's the way the game is balanced. Pet WD works more or less like melee builds (most barbs, some wizards). It has very low risk but it's very gear dependent.
Vitality not scaling on PET is an giant bad news through... I don't think it's possible to mitigate enough damage to make a constant HP bar work...
There should be... though it is weird that you can't increase the pets health pool. It makes me think that pets have more HP than you do at level 60, but I haven't looked into this.
But yeah, I think once you get gear, this build will be very safe but will kill things relatively slowly. Which might make people not like it so much. Even with max thorns damage, your damage will be probably a lot lower than someone who has stacked a lot of damage affixes. But on the other hand, your chance of dying will be really low because you won't have to put yourself in dangerous situation to do damage to the enemy, your pets will just do it for you.
Question about '+ life on hit'. Does it work with let's say poison dart/splinters? Will it heal me for each time the dart hits, just the initial hit, or not at all?
Farm the content is not "overgear" it's the way the game is balanced. Pet WD works more or less like melee builds (most barbs, some wizards). It has very low risk but it's very gear dependent.
I say it's broken balance, even more that gear you need to do is completely different/more specific than what is needed for splinter spam, and then you can use it only for overgeared content that doesn't drop anything that has value. Current design is, if you can kill things in later acts, you do it, otherwise you won't see upgrades. At least Barb that goes ape with 2h gets massive dps boost compared with s&b, while we are dropping our damage.
Pet build atm would need, armor, resist all, thorns, life regen. Now, thorns will never kill elites, and especially bosses, and pets melee scales with your damage, so add Intellect. That is very specific gear just for worthless (relatively) content. Given that WD itself seems more durable than dogs in Inferno, might as well just add vitality and tank yourself.
Well, 5 pets are going to be able to tank better than 1 WD because the monster damage is spread out. But you're basically right... this isn't an optimal build because your pets do so little melee damage. Everyone pretty much knew that before the game came out though.
Thorns is the only legitimate way to do damage with pets, although the Gargantuan is alright I guess.
A pretty big issue in this game is that if you're able to avoid damage, you can stack offensive stats to a level that other classes/specs can't. They gave monks and barbs the 30% decrease of course, but ideally you just want to avoid being touched.
I really think this is something that'll be better in HC where it's too risky to go with a build that relies on almost never getting hit. You're instantly gimping yourself in terms of damage output because you have to stack defensive stats. Which in SC is probably not worth it when you compare this type of build to something that has much weaker defense but kills things faster.
Then again, I'd like to think that you could be really lazy if you play this build with the right gear. You might kill things slower, but you'd have a much easier time doing it.
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Enjoy.
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Updates
28/05/2012: Just tested dodge, it does benefit pets! Results below.
28/05/2012: Tested block partially, doesn't benefit pets.
28/05/2012: Did further testing with vitality, compared dog survivability to statless gear. Vitality definitely doesn't help pets.
28/05/2012: Tested thorns, it will only activate if your pet takes damage. Dodging won't activate it. Also, can't seem to increase thorn damage in any way.
28/05/2012: Tested some stats to heal pets. Only Life Regeneration Stat heals pets.
1. Introduction
Hey all,
I've done some research on which stats scale with pets. Please share your findings as well, to support or contradict my results. Please feel free to critique my testing if you feel it is not accurate enough and I will try to do further testing once I have enough gold to spend.
I am testing my pets against a Walking Corpse (fat zombie) in nightmare mode, Act 1.
I try to use gear that has only one stat, strength/dexterity/vitality/Intelligence. So if I test Strength, it will be the only stat that has a high value, and the rest of the stats will be at base values unless otherwise specified.
Acronyms
DR = The percentage of damage reduction from either armor or physical reduction.
2 Pet Survivability Test Results
2.1 No gear
Result: Gargantuan dies in 4 hits.
2.2 Strength Test (Strength increases armor)
Lvl: ~33 | Str: 545 | Dex: base | Int: base | Vit: base | Armor: 1729 (51.17% DR) | Physical Resistance: 11 (6.03% DR)
Result: Gargantuan dies in 10 hits.
2.3 Dexterity Test
Lvl: ~33 | Str: base | Dex: 535 | Int: base | Vit: base | Armor: 1134 (40.75% DR) | Physical Resistance: 11 (6.03% DR)
Result: Gargantuan dies in 8 hits.
2.4.1 Vitality Test
Lvl: ~33 | Str: base | Dex: base | Int: base | Vit: 574 | Armor: ? (39.78% DR) | Physical Resistance: 11 (6.03% DR)
Result: Gargantuan dies in 8 hits.
2.4.2 Vitality Test v2.0
Instead of the gargantuan, my dog is used, now that it has more health at level 48.
Dog was put through 6 deaths.
Lvl: 48 | Str: 55 | Dex: 55 | Int: 151 | Vit: 103 | Armor: 1376 (36.44% DR) | Dodge: 5.5% | Physical Resistance: 15 (5.92%) | No shield
Result: Dog took 15.33~ hits to die.
Lvl: 48 | Str: 55 | Dex: 55 | Int: 151 | Vit: 840 | Armor: 1368 (36.31% DR) | Dodge: 5.5% | Physical Resistance: 15 (5.92%) | No shield
Result: Dog took 14.16~ hits to die.
2.5 Intelligence Test (Intelligence increases Physical Resistance.)
Lvl: ~33 | Str: base | Dex: base | Int: 566 | Vit: base | Armor: 1164 (41.28% DR) | Physical Resistance: 57 (25.60% DR)
Result: Gargantuan dies in 10 hits.
2.6 Physical Resist Test
Lvl: ~33 | Str: base | Dex: base | Int: 173 | Vit: base | Armor: 1105 (40.11% DR) | Physical Resistance: 141 (46.12% DR)
Result: Gargantuan dies in 17 hits.
2.7 Dodge Test (No shield used)
Lvl: 48 | Str: 55 | Dex: 55 | Int: 151 | Vit: 103 | Armor: 1376 (36.44% DR) | Dodge: 5.5%
Dog and Gargantuan were put through 105 hits.
Result: Dog dodged 3 times.
Result: Gargantuan dodged 6 times.
Lvl: 48 | Str: 116 | Dex: 962 | Int: 264 | Vit: 152 | Armor: 1325 (35.57% DR) | Dodge: 29.2%
Dog and Gargantuan were put through 105 hits.
Result: Dog dodged 28 times.
Result: Gargantuan dodged 42 times.
2.8 Block Test
Lvl: 48 | Str: 55 | Dex: 55 | Int: 151 | Vit: 103 | Armor: 1376 (36.44% DR) | Dodge: 5.5%
Block Chance: 21% | Block Amount: 544-819
Same armor value as Dodge Test 2.7.
Tested myself getting hit by the zombie with nothing on but my shield (571 Armor). It was already possible for me to fully negate the damage (with one exception where blocking still gave me 77 damage).
So it is safe to assume that with 1376 armor, a block will always negate all damage and the pet will receive no damage if it could block (no white flash indicating damage received).
Dog was put through 104 hits.
Result: Dog "did not receive damage" 3 times.
Comparing it with Dodge Test 2.7 shows that the 3 times where it did not receive damage is most likely from dodge, despite an extra 21% block chance. For the dodge test, no shield was used.
The dog also dies in around 15 hits, similar to the dodge test, showing that there are no partial blocks, or it would survive more hits.
3. Fierce Loyalty Skill Benefits
3.1 Pet Healing - Do these things heal pets?
Stats
Life Regeneration - Yes
Life Steal - No
Life On hit - No
Life Per kill - No
Spells
Firebats + Vampire Bats Rune (gain 2.5% damage as life) - No
Haunt + Consuming Spirit (79 Life per Second) - No
Spirit Barrage + Phlebotomize (gain 3% damage as life) - No
Passive Skills
Blood Ritual (1% of Max Health as Life Regen) - Yes (because it is added as a Life Regeneration value)
Literally only the Life Regeneration Stat on your Character Sheet heals pets once you have taken Fierce Loyalty passive skill.
3.2 Thorns Activation: How does it activate?
If you dodge: No
If you block (either partially or full): Yes
If your pet dodges: No
Thorns will only activate if your pet receives damage. That means if your pet dodges, thorns won't activate. Consider this if you plan to stack dexterity for dodge.
3.3 Thorns Damage: What increases it?
Strength: No
Dexterity: No
Intelligence: No
Vitality: No
Pierce the Veil Skill: No
Nothing seems to increase Thorns damage. What you see on the Character Sheet is what you get. So far it always deals the full damage to the Zombie.
4. Summary
4.1 Do Stats Benefit Pets?
Strength: Yes (through increasing armor)
Dexterity: Yes (through increasing dodge)
Intelligence: Yes (through increasing resistances)
Vitality: No
Block: No (but you want to use shield anyway for the extra armor that pets do benefit from)
Dodge: Yes
Armor: Yes
Physical Resistance: Yes
Cold Resistance: Unknown
Fire Resistance: Unknown
Lightning Resistance: Unknown
Poison Resistance: Unknown
Arcane/Holy Resistance: Unknown
Missile Damage Reduction: Unknown
Melee Damage Reduction: Unknown
4.2 Fierce Loyalty Skill Benefits
Only the Life Regeneration Stat heals pets.
Thorns only activates if your pet takes damage from melee. If your pet dodges, it won't activate.
Thorns damage cannot be increased at the moment.
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TLDR version; Str - increases armor for you and your minions, Int - increases for dmg and resists for you and your minions, & Vit - increases life for you and your minions.
When gearing you want to focus on Int/Str/Vit.
no matter how high your armor and resists get, those dogs (and sometimes garg) are gonna get 1 shot by things that are meant to be avoided. they're going to stand in fire and poison. it's like the templar. if a big group of monsters come they'll probably die anyways.
they need to let pet health scale with gear in some way. dogs need to have a shared health pool. they need to further reduce the damage followers and pets take from shit that players are suppose to avoid (plagued, desecrate, etc...)
Also, you say that "when gearing you want to focus on Int/Str/Vit." Not sure that's true.
Armor + Resists will be higher on items than Strength + Intellect. It may be necessary to stack just Intellect + Armor, or even leave Intellect out altogether if the bulk of your damage comes from Thorns.
But most likely you would try to find items that have both Intellect and Resists.
If you're trying to make a true summon build, where your minions are the ones actually doing the damage, you'd stack these stats:
Thorns
Life Per Sec
Armor
Resists
Intellect as well, though I'd like to learn more about how much intellect affects the pets' melee damage.
I guess it's unknown at this point how proc abilities work with pets, because if they do it could be one of the greatest strengths of this build. For example, if bleeds / stuns worked with pet attacks.
Ultimately, this build is really gear dependent. You have to find gear with specific stats for it to be effective. And once you have the right gear, chances are you'll be really durable, but will kill things slowly. Which could make it a preferred build for HC.
I'll probably look for thorns and life regen as well.
Farm the content is not "overgear" it's the way the game is balanced. Pet WD works more or less like melee builds (most barbs, some wizards). It has very low risk but it's very gear dependent.
Vitality not scaling on PET is an giant bad news through... I don't think it's possible to mitigate enough damage to make a constant HP bar work... It seens stacking armor and +all resists is the only way to make pets tankier.
There should be... though it is weird that you can't increase the pets health pool. It makes me think that pets have more HP than you do at level 60, but I haven't looked into this.
But yeah, I think once you get gear, this build will be very safe but will kill things relatively slowly. Which might make people not like it so much. Even with max thorns damage, your damage will be probably a lot lower than someone who has stacked a lot of damage affixes. But on the other hand, your chance of dying will be really low because you won't have to put yourself in dangerous situation to do damage to the enemy, your pets will just do it for you.
Pet build atm would need, armor, resist all, thorns, life regen. Now, thorns will never kill elites, and especially bosses, and pets melee scales with your damage, so add Intellect. That is very specific gear just for worthless (relatively) content. Given that WD itself seems more durable than dogs in Inferno, might as well just add vitality and tank yourself.
But kudos for people trying to make them work.
Thorns is the only legitimate way to do damage with pets, although the Gargantuan is alright I guess.
A pretty big issue in this game is that if you're able to avoid damage, you can stack offensive stats to a level that other classes/specs can't. They gave monks and barbs the 30% decrease of course, but ideally you just want to avoid being touched.
I really think this is something that'll be better in HC where it's too risky to go with a build that relies on almost never getting hit. You're instantly gimping yourself in terms of damage output because you have to stack defensive stats. Which in SC is probably not worth it when you compare this type of build to something that has much weaker defense but kills things faster.
Then again, I'd like to think that you could be really lazy if you play this build with the right gear. You might kill things slower, but you'd have a much easier time doing it.