So yeah…trying a caster gathering storm build with 3 crows atm. But those stupid birds are dead 90% of the time…every aoe kills them. Their only job is to buff me and give me stacks thanks to their chaining attack. Which works. As long as they live…I don’t want to have to spec into minion items (revive speed etc.) on a non minion focused build.
How do you guys keep them allive?
It’s as bad as you think it is. It’s an outdated mechanic that doesn’t belong on a support minion. My suggestion would be to add a node in the crow tree that makes them untargetable/immortal, but do 50% less damage.
There’s two things at work here but let me say what is the primary culprit in all caps to fully express my frustration at having to destroy this whole HC build:
THEY DON’T GO TO WHERE YOU PRESS “A”
As soon as they get within range of an enemy (which is always, since they aren’t melee) they stop to attack. AND DIE.
I’m willing to micromanage them with repeated A presses, but we can’t manage them at all. We can only tell them who to target, not where to go. (Not meaningfully. It’s more like a suggestion that works 100% of the time out of combat and 0% of the time in combat.)
The other issue, obviously, is their survivability.
If the movement/pathing AI could simply be changed to a “Force Move and don’t stop no matter what” then that might make them usable.
I’m currently in HC doing zones 4-5 levels lower than me and they are just constantly dead. And I mean CONSTANTLY.
It’s too bad, I had a really cool build where they could cap Armor Shred with the right items. They don’t do anything else, but that was enough. [The Shred does work…but not with dead crows.]
It was a neat build I’d never seen anywhere else, but perhaps this is why no else has posted it.
From a game design perspective this fails in a couple very important ways:
It’s not fun.
We either have to stop to wait, or keep moving but wait for the bar icon to clear so they can be re-summoned.
Risk v reward.
It’s not like these Crows are giving us massive cannon capabilities in exchange for the glass. They’re arguably not even that great to begin with, but they certainly aren’t S-tier to go along with their fragility.
If they died in the middle of every combat but could be re-summoned immediately upon death (for mana), I could probably live with that. That’s wonky, I’m not saying that’s ideal, but it would be 5x more tolerable than a pile of dead birds.
I will add a couple things:
https://www.lastepochtools.com/db/items/UAzAcCYGZyA
A) Hakar’s Phoenix might have been an option but it can only do one Crow every 10 seconds.
Still, it might work to reduce the pain.
B) I have played “full” Beastmaster builds and haven’t had the same problem with the crows when there are Bears roaring and/or 4 Wolves running around drawing aggro.
Or whatever the situation was. I think one of those builds also used a TON of Eterra’s Blessing to heal companions etc.
But even so, this current build has Roar for Stun and a Helmet for Taunt and I still can’t keep them alive.
And I hit A a thousand times desperately trying to get them to go to the other side of the combat, but they refuse.
crows dying and them NEVER resurrecting by themselfes is so bad as a pure crow build.
there need to be done some rebalance or something. it might be good with endgame gear, i dont know that. but some zones while leveling is just awefull.
Nothing revives by itself though?
An extremely low-level but simple solution for crows could be adding “Can revive other Crows” to Goodberries.
I don’t love that, but it would be a minor benefit.
As someone mentioned above, the ideal solution would be simply having them work like the Falcon.
As I mentioned, the risk-reward just isn’t balanced as they are now, something needs to be done. In general LE allows you to play any build, but there are a few exceptions, and this is one. That’s unfortunate.
Yep, as a Shaman I am totally agreed, I realy just use them for their spell. It’s a fun spell and thematic with my lgihtning Shaman spellcaster. Their dps didn’t justify all this restrictions. Level 71 and yep since I remove the eterra blessing they die constantly. It’s a shame It 's more like I have throwing dead crow abillity than a storm crows ability. I start to hit a wall with my concept of Shaman and the boss start to be anoying. They are totally useless against them.
For map they don’t bother me so much because map are pretty easy till now, but I try to replace them time to time with a basic bear, and basicly cannot tell the difference between my stock bear and my 19/20 points crows. It’s very sad… Clearly they don’t bring enought on the table to justify to invest on a blessing skill and to annoy ourself to try to micro-manage them during boss fight.
Need a rework for me!!!