I am trying out Scorpion and only level 9 but it is a very slow moving pet. I am going for the Poison damage route and I HATE Acid Lob skill node.
Why? Scorpion is already so slow. The last thing I want it to do is to spend extra 1-2s to throw a Lob and lag behind me. The Lob’s damage is painful low at the moment. AoE coverage is small too.
I love the animation of Acid Nova where whole bunch for “Poison Spikes” come out of it. Can we have a skill node that improve the Poison Spikes? Make it spin out more Waves? That’s more useful than throwing a Lob that slows it down even more.
I find that if the enemy is even moving at all, Scorpion misses often. Maybe we can speed up its animation or coverage? Acid Nova doesn’t interrupt its movement so I like it. I would even have a skill node that reduces cool-down for Poison route.
PS: I also find Acid Nova’s spikes missing a lot. Not sure if it’s just animation. Do you guys see it the same way? Needs bigger hit box?
Pus Sacks 20% retaliation acid pool seems way less than 20% chance. I would look into it. I would let my pet get hit for a while and nothing happens. I really feel this skill node is not working well.
A typical aggro scenario is Scorpion sees a target, monster moving towards me or it and Acid Lob misses… painful. Low damage.
I am higher level now and I think Acid Nova needs to be changed. Scorpion is too slow to do a good PbAoE. The Nova’s radius is just too small. By the time I engage in battle, the pet is already lagging behind and Nova just doesn’t seem to hit enough enemies. I know there is a skill node that increase radius but it costs 5 skill points and no damage increase. Unless this node can also increase the size of Poison Pool? For a 10 second cool-down skill, Nova is very underwhelming at the moment.
If I run a full pet build, Scorpion is definitely the last in battle (especially when it takes 1s to throw the Lob!!). It won’t take aggro as much as Wolves/Sabertooth so the Nova won’t hit as much and its Pus Sack won’t be effective (I still think this is bugged).
We have a Ranged build for Bear. Can we have a Range build for Scorpion? The Poison route could be a good one for throwing Lobs and Poison Pool to benefit the party. The Retaliation style just doesn’t work well for a pet that is Slow, always the last one to arrive at battle, less aggro range than Wolf/Sabertooth (they aggro very aggressively).
PS: I am specifically talking about the Poison route. I have not tried Lightning/Cold/Fire route yet.
This time I took Acid Lob out and I find my Scorpion performs better as a tank/retaliation because it doesn’t have that huge delay with that Lob activation. My pet is always lagging behind and worse with Lob. A tanking pet can’t tank well if it’s always the last one in battle.
Seriously, it should just be throwing a Poison Pool if the goal is to buff party members. Or make it a more Range path like you did with Bear Thorn range.
I am trying out the Frost route. Can we change it so Poison chance isn’t converted all to Frostbite chance or all to Shock chance if you are on the Lightning route? I can’t tell if my pet gets both Shock / Frostbite chance. I feel the design here should be a bit better because Shock benefits elemental damage.
And also, any chance you can change to Frost Nova for cold Scorpion path??
I was playing with Lightning path. Damage seems okay but Lightning Nova is a joke without skill node. For a 10s cool-down skill, the Nova has very pitiful aoe and damage. Lightning Nova doesn’t shoot out the “spikes” either so it is a rather boring skill.
Comparing to Skeletons, I just feel most of Primalist’s pets are inferior. Their cool-down skills are not impressive except for Wolves.
Scorpion is a higher level pet and yet I feel the Wolves are doing better job at most things. Wolves run so much faster to take aggro. Wolves can deal good Lightning damage with retaliation. And you can have 2-3 Wolves and their cool-down skill buff each other.
A larger size Scorpion seems to walk even slower to find targets when other pets are blocking its path. Have you guys noticed that? It’s like the Scorpion “slows down” to find a target. It is a VERY slow pet…
I’m using a poison beastmaster build and the scorpion with 3 mini scorpions is a lovely addition: they are fast movers and add a noticable amount of poison damage.
I don’t think it’s likely to go deep into monolith or arena, but the premise is in place for scorpion to help a variety of build types. Just need some balance changes or items to make the class viable.
