REALLY trying to understand pets, slotting and buffs (Dark/Dark)

[Story Archer]

(EDIT: I'm including my full build below - I'd REALLY appreciate any advice on how I might improve it, separate from the discussion taking place below)

Mistress of Chains.mbd

 

 

I'm trying to understand how all of these different pets work and how the pet enhancements work with them. This is my rough understanding of them:

 

Haunt: So the two Haunts are summoned like an attack, directing them at a particular target whom they attack until it is defeated, then they follow you around for a little while, attacking additional targets as they appear. Even though they are summoned in a non-traditional manner, they take both types of pet enhancements. They can be attacked and killed, but don't draw any more aggro than any other character normally would, and in much the same way (be being near, by attacking, etc.)

 

Umbra Beast: This guy gets summoned to a particular place and then decides who he's going to attack, spamming some kind of controls and regular melee attacks? The Beast also accepts both types of enhancements and draws aggro in the same, usual way.

 

Dark Servant: A little different here. Functionally the same as the Umbra Beast, though with a different power set. Does NOT accept either type of pet enhancements. I assume draws aggro in the same way.

 

Some questions:

 

How do these creatures decide who to attack (closest first?) and which powers to use (is it random?)?

 

How do the four Defense/Resistance enhancements work? Does the Dark servant benefit from the auras even though it can't take them?

• Call to Arms (Defense Aura for pets) - what is the benefit and how big is the aura?
• Expedient Reinforcement (Resistance aura for pets) - what is the benefit and how big is the aura?
• Edict of the Master (Defense bonus) - what is the benefit and does this only apply to the creature it is on?
• Sovereign Right (Resistance bonus) - what is the benefit and does this only apply to the creature it is on?

 

Do they all benefit from Leadership powers?

 

Do they benefit from area buffs and boosts like Shadow Fall, Fade and Soul Absorption?

 

Is there any way at all to interact with these pets or control or direct them once you've summoned them? It seems like they're just something you summon and they float around in the background randomly making life harder for your foes, but if there is something more that I'm missing out on I'd like to know.

 

Is there a link somewhere that shows the actual powers these guys have, their accuracy, duration, etc?

 

Thanks in advance to anyone willing to take a stab at this stuff. It might seem like common sense to the old-timers, but it's all pretty vague in descriptions and wiki entries and we never know what's been updated or changed. I tried searching through the forums but kept finding incomplete, inaccurate or contradicting discussions. I'd really appreciate whatever information you can offer, and if there are any rules that apply to these specific pets (and can't be assumed to apply to other controller pets), please make a note of it.

 

 

 

 

Edited February 9 by Story Archer

[Carnifax]

All 4 of the unique pet IOs give a Def or Resist bonus to all your pets. Great on masterminds and useful on you depending on your secondary. For Dark/Dark you get Fade so I'd aim for the Def ones if you have the slots.

 

Typical pet slotting is 4 or 6 Expediant Reinforcements for the set bonuses, a proc if it'll go off a lot and maybe one of the uniques.

 

Knowing which damage procs will go off means checking the powers they have and seeing what'll trigger. You can check Barkleys powers here for example. https://cod.uberguy.net/html/entity.html?entity=pets_umbra_beast

 

Your slotting for fluffy looks good, I usually go 4 dark watchers and the cloud senses proc. The proc does most of his damage, because all his attacks do -tohit. It's not a LOT of damage but fluffy isn't for that. 

 

The soulbound proc is good for giving your most damaging pet build ups. I'd assume that'll be Barkley. 

 

I'd suggesting uploading your mids file totally so others can open it in mids and have a look. 

Edited February 8 by Carnifax

[ZorkNemesis]

3 hours ago, Story Archer said:

Is there a link somewhere that shows the actual powers these guys have, their accuracy, duration, etc?

 

City of Data has detailed breakdowns of each pet and what they're capable of.  You can also review the power in-game with a right click and the Detailed Info tab will have a lot of information.

 

https://cod.uberguy.net/html/entity.html?entity=pets_v_darkservant

 

https://cod.uberguy.net/html/entity.html?entity=pets_shade

 

https://cod.uberguy.net/html/entity.html?entity=pets_umbra_beast

 

[tidge]

I have my Dark/Dark pets slotted as follows:

 

Spoiler

Level 18:              Haunt   

 (A) Expedient Reinforcement - Accuracy/Recharge

 (*) Expedient Reinforcement - Accuracy/Damage/Recharge

 (*) Expedient Reinforcement - Endurance/Damage/Recharge

 (*) Expedient Reinforcement - Accuracy/Damage

 (*) Soulbound Allegiance - Accuracy/Recharge: Level 50+5

 (*) Soulbound Allegiance - Chance for Build Up: Level 50

 

Level 26:              Umbra Beast     

 (A) Soulbound Allegiance - Accuracy/Damage/Recharge: Level 50+5

 (*) Soulbound Allegiance - Damage/Endurance: Level 50+5

 (*) Overwhelming Force - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance

 (*) Overwhelming Force - Damage/Chance for Knockdown/Knockback to Knockdown

 (*) Hami-O Lysosome (Accuracy/-Defense/-ToHit): Level 53

 (*) Cloud Senses - Chance of Damage (Negative)

 

Level 30:              Dark Servant     

 (A) Cloud Senses - Accuracy/ToHitDebuff

 (*) Cloud Senses - Accuracy/Recharge: Level 30

 (*) Cloud Senses - Accuracy/Endurance/Recharge

 (*) Cloud Senses - Chance of Damage (Negative)

 (*) Gladiator's Net - Chance of Damage (Lethal)

 (*) Hami-O Endoplasm (Accuracy/Mezz): Level 53

 

With the Controller's powers, they don't need any of the Defense/Resistance pieces at +1x8. At higher difficulties, they do tend to get crushed.

 

Keep in mind that these are pets not henchmen, so not only are they bad at staying near you... you can't direct them either. I don't know that slotting those pieces would help them very much.

 

some rando notes:

 

In my (no Hasten)  build, the Haunts are about 13 seconds off of "perma". The %Build Up is frequently being triggered.

 

The Umbra Beast's Overwhelming Force Damage/KB->KD is hard to notice working (because of Dark Control), but when I don't have mobiles controlled, I see it doing what I want, plus damage!

 

The Gladiator's Net %Lethal only triggers from one power, but it is a high-damage %proc. I'd swap it for %+2 Mag hold just because I like the visuals. I thought that %damage was a better choice for when I have the spawn down to just a few hard targets, as Dark Fluffy doesn't otherwise do much damage.

 

Cloud Senses is a set that caps at level 30, and since I want some Control duration from Dark Fluffy I felt the Hami-O was warranted.

 

The Umbra Beast's Hami-O is just me being selfish. I wanted MOAR Accuracy in both the Umbra Beast and Dark Servant.

 

If I really wanted those Pet survival uniques slotted... I would probably just try to work in a Patron pet and use that power as a mule for the Pet survival uniques. As things stand, I only have 1 Epic power (The resistance toggle) so I would have to make some sacrifices.

 

 

[Doomguide2005]

A few random thoughts.  As mentioned or suggested by others you have no real direct control of who they attack and where they move but you can influence things.  But it seems likely that threat and aggro (and the rest) work similarly but the pets have their own list.  Summon them in close proximity to whom you wish them to aggro and whom you wish to aggro them on.  Haunt has, for example, an 80ft range.    If you are stealthed use Teleport to move near you target.  They'll either run to you drawing aggro as they do so.  Similarly I've found Fold Space useful for keeping the short attention span Fire Imps close ... as the Shiney things will be close.  Just a few thoughts for now have to head to bed.

[Story Archer]

18 hours ago, Carnifax said:

All 4 of the unique pet IOs give a Def or Resist bonus to all your pets. Great on masterminds and useful on you depending on your secondary. For Dark/Dark you get Fade so I'd aim for the Def ones if you have the slots.

Do all the pets get the bonus even if they aren't all out? Like if I took Summon Tarantula and slotted it with Edict of the Master +DEF but never summoned it, would the other pets still get the benefit?

 

Also, Soulbound Allegiance procs for the pet on the pet's attacks - it doesn't proc on me when I summon the pet?

 

 

Edited February 9 by Story Archer

[Story Archer]

18 hours ago, Carnifax said:

Your slotting for fluffy looks good, I usually go 4 dark watchers and the cloud senses proc. The proc does most of his damage, because all his attacks do -tohit. It's not a LOT of damage but fluffy isn't for that. 

 

I'm still trying to understand a few things - wouldn't that floor Fluffy's accuracy, with no accuracy enhancements whatsoever?

[Carnifax]

7 minutes ago, Story Archer said:

 

I'm still trying to understand a few things - wouldn't that floor Fluffy's accuracy, with no accuracy enhancements whatsoever?

Sorry, I've actually got 4 Cloud Senses including the Proc, plus the +ToHit from Dark Watchers slotted for them in Carni. 

 

17 minutes ago, Story Archer said:

Also, Soulbound Allegiance procs for the pet on the pet's attacks - it doesn't proc on me when I summon the pet?

 

It has a chance to proc every time the pet where it is slotted (or pets for things like MM tier 1 & 2 pets, imps or Phantom Army decoys) attacks. It will never affect you. 

 

19 minutes ago, Story Archer said:

Do all the pets get the bonus even if they aren't all out? Like if I took Summon Tarantula and slotted it with Edict of the Master +DEF but never summoned it, would the other pets still get the benefit?

Pretty sure yes but not sure why you'd never summon the Tarantula, it's a decent enough pet. 

[Story Archer]

16 minutes ago, Carnifax said:

Sorry, I've actually got 4 Cloud Senses including the Proc, plus the +ToHit from Dark Watchers slotted for them in Carni. 

 

 

Getting back to this, does Fluffy have a massive base accuracy, meaning that we don't need to slot it for that? Looking at Mids it seems to start at 96%, but then it also has Fluffy benefitting from Focused Accuracy, which it shouldn't - is that base Accuracy applicable to something other than its attacks?

 

16 minutes ago, Carnifax said:

Pretty sure yes but not sure why you'd never summon the Tarantula, it's a decent enough pet. 

 

It's not so much about NOT summoning the Tarantuala, it's that it wouldn't be out all the time anyway, and I may only have enough slots available for it to mule effectively, if what it's muling helps everyone else then it seems worth it to me, otherwise I might select something else with that power slot.

 

If one had to go and one could be fully slotted, would you go with the Tarantula or the Haunts?

[Carnifax]

10 minutes ago, Story Archer said:

 

Getting back to this, does Fluffy have a massive base accuracy, meaning that we don't need to slot it for that? Looking at Mids it seems to start at 96%, but then it also has Fluffy benefitting from Focused Accuracy, which it shouldn't - is that base Accuracy applicable to something other than its attacks?

 

 

It's not so much about NOT summoning the Tarantuala, it's that it wouldn't be out all the time anyway, and I may only have enough slots available for it to mule effectively, if what it's muling helps everyone else then it seems worth it to me, otherwise I might select something else with that power slot.

 

If one had to go and one could be fully slotted, would you go with the Tarantula or the Haunts?

I'd definitely lean towards Haunts over it.

 

Carni does have the Tarantula out all the time, but that's a side effect of massive recharge bonuses to get the PAs perma. Tarantula as a mule depends on the rest of your build really, like I said on my first post upload your mids file here and folk can give it a look over

[Story Archer]

27 minutes ago, Carnifax said:

I'd definitely lean towards Haunts over it.

 

Carni does have the Tarantula out all the time, but that's a side effect of massive recharge bonuses to get the PAs perma. Tarantula as a mule depends on the rest of your build really, like I said on my first post upload your mids file here and folk can give it a look over

 

I really want to - especially the updated build, because the advice is so good - but I get some sort of error every time I try to export it. Best I can do is a data chunk, and I don't think anybody really uses those anymore.

[Carnifax]

11 minutes ago, Story Archer said:

 

I really want to - especially the updated build, because the advice is so good - but I get some sort of error every time I try to export it. Best I can do is a data chunk, and I don't think anybody really uses those anymore.

No, just upload the actual file from your hard disk. That's the expected way now cos Import / Export is borked at the mo. Like this

 

Carnifax_tarantula.mbd

[Story Archer]

7 minutes ago, Carnifax said:

No, just upload the actual file from your hard disk. That's the expected way now cos Import / Export is borked at the mo. Like this

 

Carnifax_tarantula.mbd 44.13 kB · 0 downloads

 

Oh, damn - nice. Thanks, I'll do that ASAP.

 

Can you weigh in on the inherent accuracy that MIDS shows for Dark Servant?

[Carnifax]

1 hour ago, Story Archer said:

 

Oh, damn - nice. Thanks, I'll do that ASAP.

 

Can you weigh in on the inherent accuracy that MIDS shows for Dark Servant?

Don't really notice. I'd still assume it needs a standard SOs worth of Acc so I slot one in. Best answer I can give is "run a radio or 2 with logging switched on and no extra Acc slotted then fire it through my parser", you'll see there what the actual hit rate ends up for each of its powers. 

[tidge]

I used a HamiO for Acc/Mezz partially because Dark Fluffy has different types of controls that I wanted to buff.

 

EDIT: IIRC

Edited February 9 by tidge

[Story Archer]

10 hours ago, Carnifax said:

No, just upload the actual file from your hard disk. That's the expected way now cos Import / Export is borked at the mo. 

 

Alright, here it is:

 

Mistress of Chains.mbd

 

 

What I like about the build:

• With Fade up, all my positional defenses are between 42% and 44%, meaning that I'm bumping right up against the soft-cap. I could actually get them all over the cap by going with a full set of Guassian's in Tactics, but with all the ToHit DeBuff flying around, I thought that would be a waste.
• Even before Fade, I'm pretty much soft-capped on Resistance to the three most common damage types (S/L/E).
• My pets (and my team) are very well supported with Shadow Fall, Maneuvers and Tactics running as well as having all of the meaningful pet uniques represented. Ideally I'll catch them with Fade and Soul Absorption as well but I don't feel like I can count on them to always be nearby when those go off.
• Dark Grasp hits like a truck (for a Controller, at least), and Heart of Darkness gives me a nice mini-nuke to combo with Fearsome Stare pretty much every mob. 
• I like that I don't have to lean too heavily into purple sets, with just Coercive Confusion and a handful of L50 procs.

Some considerations:

• I originally wanted to proc out Possess to give me a second single-target mezzing attack power, but I found that the damage rarely made a difference and the set bonuses from Coercive Persuasion were just too nice to pass on.
• Since Heart of Darkness and Fearsome Stare pretty much give me all the crowd control that I need, I dropped all of the procs out of Howling Darkness with the intent that it'll primarily be used for Rezzing, -Regen in Boss Fights and an emergency Mez in case of an ambush or something, rather than a regular part of my attack chain.
• I chose to omit Living Shadows. At later levels I wasn't getting any meaningful damage from it, didn't need the Immobilize and, since almost all of my damage is proc-based or pet attacks, I didn't even really need the containment.

 

Any thoughts?

 

 

Edited February 10 by Story Archer

[tidge]

I agree that Living Shadows is a power that I would give up. I get some damage out of it, but mostly it is a control that lets me know who I have aggroed.

[Carnifax]

18 hours ago, Story Archer said:

Any thoughts?

 

Looks very Tanky. It's a little different to how I like my controllers, I try and avoid proc-bombing core controls and prefer mezzing but that's up to you. Ditto on not taking Shadow Field, I have on Darks I've played but those were Dominators, so if you don't want it fair enough. 

 

Keeping that in one thing I did spot. You're not using Superior Will of the Controller at all. So maybe swap the WotC proc into Fearsome along with the rest of the set for more Recharge AND Defense and move the Cloud Senses proc into HoD.

 

That also gives you 15% accuracy and Weave and Maneuvers look a little overslotted to me, you could drop one of the Def/End/Recharge slots from either or both of them and use the slot to max out -ToHit on Dark Servant and damage on the Haunts (I've dropped the +resist from Haunts too, personally I'd prefer the proc change on every punch they do but haven't run the numbers through my parser).

 

But I'm very impressed with your def numbers overall with those capped Resists backing them up.  

 

Edit : Agreed on your Possess slotting. I NEVER proc it up because you can cast it from outside combat, if you proc it it will start triggering the enemies. As-is it's a useful "softening up" tool. On Carni solo I always use it on those Cairn-dropping Devouring stone lieuts (if I remember rightly doing so disables the Cairn buff but I could be wrong there). 

 

Mistress of Chains_rejigged.mbd

Edited February 10 by Carnifax

[tidge]

20 hours ago, tidge said:

I agree that Living Shadows is a power that I would give up. I get some damage out of it, but mostly it is a control that lets me know who I have aggroed.

 

Quoting myself, as it slipped my mind: Living Shadows (mostly) nullifies Knockback.

 

Personally, I don't get worked up about other players using a lot of knockback... but I won't deny that scattering spawns makes the AoE controls much less effective.

 

There is a flip side of course: Immobilizing enemies in a large spawn makes it that much harder for a Tanker to "gather" them. The now larger Tanker AoE help to mitigate this, but it does sometimes appear that Brutes struggle slightly more.

[Story Archer]

On 2/10/2024 at 6:55 AM, Carnifax said:

Looks very Tanky. It's a little different to how I like my controllers, I try and avoid proc-bombing core controls and prefer mezzing but that's up to you. Ditto on not taking Shadow Field, I have on Darks I've played but those were Dominators, so if you don't want it fair enough. 

 

Keeping that in one thing I did spot. You're not using Superior Will of the Controller at all. So maybe swap the WotC proc into Fearsome along with the rest of the set for more Recharge AND Defense and move the Cloud Senses proc into HoD.

 

That also gives you 15% accuracy and Weave and Maneuvers look a little overslotted to me, you could drop one of the Def/End/Recharge slots from either or both of them and use the slot to max out -ToHit on Dark Servant and damage on the Haunts (I've dropped the +resist from Haunts too, personally I'd prefer the proc change on every punch they do but haven't run the numbers through my parser).

 

But I'm very impressed with your def numbers overall with those capped Resists backing them up.  

 

Edit : Agreed on your Possess slotting. I NEVER proc it up because you can cast it from outside combat, if you proc it it will start triggering the enemies. As-is it's a useful "softening up" tool. On Carni solo I always use it on those Cairn-dropping Devouring stone lieuts (if I remember rightly doing so disables the Cairn buff but I could be wrong there). 

 

Mistress of Chains_rejigged.mbd 42.97 kB · 3 downloads

 

A lot of good advice there. I took some of it into account and played around with the build a bit more. Since I should rarely be in melee ranged of most foes, I felt like I had a little room to play with there - the new build has 38.7% Melee defense but 48%+ vs. Ranged and AoE. My accuracy is still where it needs to be and I reduced the slotting in Maneuvers and Weave and added SWotC into Fearsome Stare as you suggested. I also tweaked the pet slotting a bit, deciding to lean into defense and not chase resistance too hard. I'm also able to turn off Tough and still be right at the S/L Res hard cap, so that saves a little Endurance.

 

Hasten/Fade/Soul Absorption still aren't quite perma, but you have to give up so much chasing it, it's just not worth it imo.

 

Mistress of Chains.mbd