Since I know a dev is watching this thread, I want to take the opportunity to point out what it is about this topic that riles up FL4K players, and why this is a big deal to us (or at least what I personally feel, but I think most people in this thread at least will find it relatable).
When FL4K was first announced, I loved literally everything about them: the hobo-robo look, the deep voice, the chuni/Tokoyami vibes, the way they just calmly walked around a bandit camp poppin heads,etc…However, the thing that absolutely sealed the deal for me were the pets. I had just come off of TPS and had been playing a pet based Badass Digi-Jack build for the better part of 6 months in a row. The thought of the new pet class in Borderlands 3 being a character that I found so interesting was incredibly exciting. I watched all of the streams of people playing FL4K, looking to see how the pets would work: what skills did they have, how much damage did they do, how could you interact with them? None of the streamers actually utilized the pets, so I had to wait until launch to try it out myself. I was so excited when I started my first FL4K playthrough. At first I figured I would go with Beefcake, but I found his goofiness and mannerisms off putting. I tried the skag for a little while but it still didn’t jive with me. When I landed on the spiderant, it was like a match made I heaven. I loved all her mannerisms, her aesthetics, and even just that gait she has is hilarious to me.
But I noticed early on that none of the pets really felt impactful. I knew they were stacking Frenzy, but most of them were pretty bad at building and maintaining it. Even at level 17, the damage and survivability felt lacking. The passive buffs were pretty small. I tried the attack command, but aside from being slow to activate it didn’t do that much more damage than a normal melee. Around this time I saw Demonite’s video on pet bonuses, and learned about the Friendbot not working, Atomic Aroma not stacking Frenzy, and Cryo not boosting pet damage. I felt so disappointed that a lot of the interactions I wanted to try to improve my experience were non-functional. I tried my hardest to make it work though. I respecced my build a dozen times to get my pet’s survivability in a decent spot, I utilized the terror pet damage anointment to buff up my spiderant’s damage as much as possible, and I forewent all capstones to get as much pet damage as possible. I still struggled to get my pet to consistently and easily kill trash mobs.
When pet damage and scaling were buffed in the November 19th patch, I was so excited that this was finally when pets were going to be a viable damage dealing option. Barbaric Yawp had been buffed the previous month which made master builds more appealing, and the only thing missing was having enough pet damage to make a beastmaster play styles feel worthwhile. And as long as I was playing on M3, the buff was perfect. The pets performed exactly like I imagined they would. However, once I turned the difficulty up to Mayhem 4, all of my excitement went out the window. My pets couldn’t do anything. I have several videos of my pet with full bonuses and Gamma Burst attacking enemies for the entire action skill duration before killing basic Maliwan commandos. Pet damage didn’t improve, it got power-creeped and was in an even worse spot. I tried all sorts of gear combos and complicated rotations to get as much damage as I could, but killing even 1 trash mob was an accomplishment, and repeating the process on every enemy I came across proved exceptionally difficult, unrewarding, and tiresome.
I gave up on the game for 2 months until I was urged by a poster to come back and test some new discoveries regarding pet damage. Much to my surprise, there was a lot I hadn’t yet uncovered about pets and there was still some potential to be squeezed out of them. I acquired a full set of splash damage gear and traded for the Deadeye class mod I needed, and lo-and-behold I was able to one shot those same trash mobs in M4 that gave me so much trouble! I felt ecstatic that my pet finally felt like it did something; not just existing and passively giving me a bunch of stats, but working in tandem with me to become even stronger. I saw my pet grow much stronger that day, and I thought I had finally figured out how to make FL4K’s pets fun for me.
But then I tried to take them into Lectra City and ran into 2 anointed enemies at once. My pets dealt little damage to them and were frequently dead, and my excitement quickly died down. I thought to try the Maliwan raid and see how my pet build stacked up. All of my pet investment may as well have been non-existent, as I couldn’t get the pet to kill most of the enemies, and it was often just a hindrance rather than a help. After failing my first 2 runs, I tried again by simply changing my gear and strategy to a meta anointment and weapon, and I made it all the way to Wotan easily. The pet build that I spend months crafting was still effectively useless in a majority of the game’s endgame content.
I thought that maybe new gear in DLC 2 would make a difference. I had heard that the COM would be focused on pets and got excited. What we got continues to be the worst class mod in the game. But the Iron Bear buffs began shortly after, and I was hopeful that FL4K’s pets would finally receive some much needed attention. I had a sinking feeling in my stomach when there were no fixes the week before Mayhem 2.0, and then BAM, it released with no pet changes AND no scaling. So our pets, who were already completely ineffectual for damage and really only had a use for taunting, were further relegated to a utility role only.
I put the game down again until phase 2 was announced. I was practically praying by this point that this would be the moment they got everything right for pets. They would deal good damage, have decent survivability, maybe even get some much needed AI tweaks. Instead what we got was one pet with one bugged attack that did (comparatively) amazing damage without any investment in pet damage, and all the other pets whose damage was STILL tickling enemies even with full pet builds. We finally had the damage we were looking for, but the way we got it was still completely against what we were hoping for.
What we wanted the entire time was for us to feel like WE could get our pets to DO SOMETHING. The entire design of FL4K’s pets currently is extremely passive. The best way to get the pet bonuses is to simply put 1 point in He Bites so pets stack Frenzy and Who Rescued Who when damaged. Red Fang makes your pet taunt all enemies AND makes it immortal so you don’t even need Who Rescued Who or All My BFFs to keep it alive. You get the passives just for the pet existing. All of that, combined with the cumbersome attack command controls and lackluster/non-existent bonuses for using it basically incentivizes FL4K players to ignore our pets. We toss them out, let them do their thing and stack bonuses for us, and avoid anything that actually requires working with our pets because the rewards are not there. If anything, it feels as if the game punishes us for actually trying to work in tandem with our pets.
We play pet builds to feel like we have a friend on the field. We want something to have our back and work with us to take on the biggest challenges the game has to offer. Nothing in this game feels worse than having a coop partner dragging you down. Now just imagine that you can’t get rid of this coop partner, and this partner just won’t listen to anything you try to get them to do. That is what playing pet builds has been like. The disappointment and frustration we’ve felt over and over has been from that feeling of having an inconsiderate coop partner that just rushes ahead and doesn’t work with you at all, and the game rewarding that rather than encouraging teamplay. Do you see why that would upset people after dealing with it all this time? We came to this class for Beastmaster, but the game in many ways pushes us away from playing like one.
