For the past month I’ve been running blue/red tree with the Scorcher and finally enjoying Fl4k as a character. Am I right in hearing the power of that build will be gone now?
The lava pool won’t be busted anymore, but the pets themselves do much more damage now. I would suggest trying it out for yourself, since my run was definitely not representative of the power the build may have.
Also, I’ve been hearing that the skag is performing better than expected? I haven’t tried it yet, but that would be wonderful news if it is.
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I will withhold judgement until I can play properly. The extra projectiles mechanic being gone has given me enough grief already.
Holy crap dude instant difference the jabbers are the true mvps this patch.
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Yea man its ridiculous wish I could see skag or spiderant do the same so far they have not been stepping up.
My Great Horned Skag is still about the same. Does very little actual damage, mainly useful only to draw Aggro. Was hoping for an improvement but no such like.
From what I’ve read here, the Jabber seems to have been helped by the changes. Skag not so much. My Scorcher has suddenly started having survival issues as well.
She is dying in Pool Party fire puddles … go figure 
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The scorcher spiderant got the mayhem scaling multiple times. It’s called double dipping and this was a interaction that was not planned.
Technically the pets aren’t a action skill making them too strong takes out the challenge
Gamma Burst is an action skill and they sill by far the weakest out of all the summon. They need to be somewhat strong at base since Gamma isn’t even a x2 increase. What we have now is that splash (and mayhem scaling guns) are so much better at increasing pet damage than Gamma that you ideally don’t even want to use it for pet builds since it lowers pet damage a lot of the time.
Pet damage is already balanced so that AFK play is a massive nerf to your damage (see my above run where I missing 90% pet damage by not being able to kill anything) and needing an action skill/attack command (many of which are still really weak). This is definitely an improvement, but pet damage still needs tons of work, and still be higher especially in Gamma and AC.
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All pets feel nice atm, blue tree investment feels rewarding cause obviously there are ways to use pet damage. I use mine as a support in a Rakk/Fade Away setup, and it feels amazing. Pet can deal good damage, taking big chunk of life to badasses, and he never dies even though I only invested 1 point into All My BFF.
I don’t understand people saying pets are garbage atm. They rock imo. Just because a pet can’t instakill an add on M10 (without investment cause they definitely can with proper investment) doesn’t mean they’re garbage. I’d rather have good and balanced pets like this, and not dakka bear’s/OP Clone system’s level of stupidity.
@boombumr I was just fooling around with a GB build last night (not my normal playstyle) and I was surprised how well the Great Eridian Skag was performing. Also the overall damage passive on the Eridian Skag is nice. I would say there is a decent reason to try the GES pet now.
This is promising. Gives me hope since i recently got my build tuned in and GBX throws a curve ball. Thanks for the post!
I think this comes from a difference in perspective. Many people who have been fine with pet damage throughout every stage of the game have been using pets as support damage. Those of us who want to focus on the pet more as a primary damage source have a much different metric as to what “good and balanced” is.
Now that we can deal about the same damage as Scorchers pool used to deal on its lowest end with no pet damage, we can see that while over 1mil dps is a good starting point, there is still room for improvement. Splash commands are in a good spot, but some melee AC are almost doing the same damage as basic melee. Atomic Aroma could still use a bit of a buff, and really should trigger Frenzy. Melee still doesn’t work with cryo, friendbot is still bugged, and pet damage skills still don’t scale with Big Game.
The pets are “better”, but they definitely aren’t “balanced” yet. Giant strides have been made compared to where we were prior to phase 2, but pets are still dealing less than a 3rd of the potential damage they could be doing. They definitely aren’t balanced as they are right now, they are still undertuned until those issues are addressed.
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Quite unfortunate that he kills himself
Yeah, areas with a lot of cover are a real pain now. You can control what his positioning will be once he pulls out the launcher, so if he walks behind cover then it’s game over.
What are the best ways to get pet damage up? What stats effect it? Splash damage and AOE?
Depends.
For basic attacks, only pet damage skills and class mod effects from Deadeye (and hopefully Friendbot in the future) affect it. If it’s melee, Go for the Eyes can work if you are close to one-shot territory already (which this patch actually does get pretty close to in all honesty). Otherwise, Gamma Burst is pretty much your biggest damage boost. If you want to go all in, Atomic Aroma with splash damage boosts and the pet terror anointment will really add a lot overall.
Attack commands can utilize Sic Em’ and Splash damage for an extra two multiplier that basic attacks don’t get. Also, if they are melee attacks, they can crit with Go for the Eyes and proc huge Hollowpoint explosions like the one I attached above.
The best way to buff pet damage depends solely on which pets you want to use. Splash is vital for Countess and Gunslinger, but for Beefcake or Scorcher it doesn’t make as big of a difference. For those two you’d just want to get as many pet damage skills as possible and a terror anointment if you can (I know it’s a tall order).
Which pet are you looking to use?
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Sounds good. I think I’m gonna try for 10 in Frenzy with splash/AOE and see how that does with either the skag or scorcher/countess. That being said, I might take some time off the game as I process the loss of extra projectiles.
There actually isn’t much of a difference between a +5 Frenzy Bounty Hunter and +3MDG +2 Frenzy. It’s only 4% pet damage between them (the former is a 52% increase while the latter is 48%) but you’ll get more personal damage out of MDG more than likely.
Never hurts to take breaks from the game when needed.
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A little break from BL never did anyone wrong. If you are not having fun playing, don’t play! We don’t have to be married to a game that we don’t like!