Yea, there seems to be a serious bias against summoners in their design. To be honest packs with 3 or more elites are the only thing that gives me trouble. I do clear slow by comparison, but have not died to a boss more than once. I’ve supplemented with pulverize and seem to be doing fairly well. I still running all 3 companions into the mid 60’s on WT3 and they hang in there just fine, except for poison. I can work around it in fights, but sometimes I am waiting 5-6 seconds for it to go away after the enemy is dead when I want to get the gear that was dropped. I think the poison AOE need to have its time reduced. Poison clouds persist on the floor for way too long and wolves have a habit of standing in it until they are dead.

My only real issue is per AI and their ability to net get out of stupid. It’s not near as fast at killing or flashy as Stormwolf, Trampleslide or Pulverize. The build ends up doing many things well, but it never truly excels at anything. That doesn’t mean that they aren’t viable. That’s due in large part to the companion aspects having virtually no synergy that adds or changes damage types to boost them with your key passives or spirit boons. What happens is you slot all these affixes to boost your pet damage and you have no room to buff your supplemental damage to a significant level. You need to supplement your build with another source of damage. The reason why you don’t hear about companion builds is because their damage output is way behind other builds. Overall i like the dogs, they do a good job for me, even if they die once a while.Īlso dogs do fight off screen as well, if a mob is shooting from off screen they go for it, so it seems their dead but they are actually fighting a mob you missed. But when there are big aoe skills and explosions happening then yeah dogs die to quick. But that can be due to the aoe skills that i use at the start so most mobs agro me instead of them, and to be fair when i rush into a group most/half the mobs die in like a second or 2. I do agree, they could use 80% more HP so they don’t die as much, but to be honest they really don’t die that much for me. Same counts for ingame, they are great distractors(agro grabbers), a tool that can be really helpful at some scenarios(active bite skill). See them like a tool, like a cop dog handler does, the cop dog is not the main source of damage, it’s a tool that helps distracting them or even hold them in place.

Don’t see the dogs as a means of winning a fight, don’t do that.

Pet damage diablo 3