Revive mechanic is arguably the worst of all minion skills in this game. Not only that it requires you to stay in one tiny circle FOR EACH downed companions, you also cannot simply resummon them until they are actually dead. It is simply a punishment mechanic for playing companions.
And before you say “oh you just need to invest in minion health/defenses”, I have:
101 Strength scaling base health of companions
All the companion/minion health passives nodes
300 minion armour passive
Minion dodge passives
About 200% Minion Health on items
Companion health refresh on companion ability
Companions share your endurance
and still they die all the time in just 230 corruption. So please don’t tell me I am doing companion defenses wrong, they are simply very squishy.
Please EHG, either let us resummon companions when they are downed (not dead) instead of revive mechanic or buff companion defenses/revive mechanic.
It doesn’t make any sense I have to invest so much in companion defenses and still be worst than all other minions.
The OP is correct about this. We know Shaman needs some serious work but, for me, the second thing that needs almost as much is this mechanic. I like it, don’t get me wrong, but right now there is not enough support to build around it and make it an ACTIVE use of skills and abilities. Like COMPANIONS, to me feel like THEY are the type of minion that is supposed to lend a ‘hybrid’ feel. Unlike pure minions builds of the acolyte. Falcon in Falconer currently is an actual better companion that actual companions.
For example making some nodes in skills and passives. Please note, these are merely examples, I don’t know the actual numbers to set, I’m just trying to toss out more interactions that can make it feel like your companion is your friend.
When a companion is down, for every enemy killed reduce the time to revive by 5%.
Experimental potion affix on belts that do something like when you use a potion the amount of health restored (or some portion of it) is converted to %Decreased Revival Time.
I’ve been trying to do a good Storm Crow build (with using them as support) for a long time as an Odin, One Eye, Huginn and Muninn theme, but they just get to be too much of a liability after about 200 corruption because I have no real active way of reviving them.
I’d actually go as far as having an affix that just revives them on potion use. I don’t think it would be broken. You already have a bunch of ways for them to heal with potions anyway.
The most annoying thing about the revive mechanic is that it takes a long time to revive (when you’re basically fighting for your life with gimped DPS), but it also takes a long time for them to die.
Personally, I’d just change the whole mechanic so they never die, they get downed for a period and you can speed that up (like what happens now). When the period ends, they just get revived, rather than dying and having to resummon.
It would be a simple change that would make them much more viable than they are now.
This is not to say that they shouldn’t get other changes, especially to survivability, but this alone would make them less annoying/more viable.
Yeah, I think this is a step too far in the opposite direction because then it completely trivilizes the mechanic. Based on my xp with EHG over the years, when people talk about hating a mechanic the solution they usually find is a way to better interact with it, not just solve it. Way back when MANA regen was a massive, massive thorn in everyone’s side. Too some extent it still is obviously but they’ve also given a lot of sort of interesting ways to mitigate it for those big mana builds. Like that new Exp Affix. That Exploding Traps Falconer is sooooo much smoother when you have the Exp Affix.
Agreed, which is again why I’d like to see them introduce ways to mitigate it, work with it, keep it within the scope of its theme.
THIS, could definitely be a node, not too easy to reach, in the skill tree. It should also be noted this is ESPECIALLY problematic when you have more than 1 companion of the same type. Like two crows. Because, if memory serves, you can’t actually resummon them until BOTH are dead, the skill still stays on its active skill.
You could do this but either it have to be at the 25 point on the Primalist tree (because technically several companion skills are available to anyone) or you’d have to put it in various places in the three Mastery trees.
Sure, you could put it on the primalist tree, but I think it would make more sense for Beastmaster, thematically. So you could put it on their tree, just before the cutoff, so all classes could have access to it if they spec a little further into it.
It doesn’t help Shaman, but you can buff Shaman in other ways and this is a sort of buff to companions, not a class.
EDIT: edited because I forgot the 3rd mastery was beastmaster and that makes more sense than druid.
Crows would if you could keep them alive long enough, right now you can’t. So I personally think Crows fit in heavily thematic with Shaman. That’s what I’m trying to do my Ol’ One Eye theme around.
But all three masteries don’t necessarily need the same WAYS to keep them alive, so any thing that makes it more interactive for all the masteries and their companions would work in various forms.
Boardman had an ice crows build I saw once. I don’t know how much corruption it can push, but he did showcase Julra (which I assume was T4) and the crows didn’t die. It was a Beastmaster build, though.
Personally, I think companions fit beastmaster and druid better than shaman, thematically speaking. Except for scorpion, which is right up shaman’s alley. But I feel Shaman are more thematic with totems.
True. This was just a way to quickly make companions better for everyone.
I think a nice compromise to @CaiusMartius suggestions and @DJSamhein suggestions may be for healing mechanics to affect the downed state … Any healing skills, potions (affect minions nodes), HOTs, Minion health regen to have some affect on the downed state health bar … Maybe not 1:1 affect, maybe 50% effectiveness on downed companions, so that they aren’t insta-healed which I could see being an issue…
Personally I think
1:Increase the radius of the zone you want to stand on
2:Massively increase the revive speed if you stand in the zone
3:Massively buff the auto-revive timer
4:A skill that calls your minions to you, reviving the companions
5:As the intent is for you to not completely rely on them but to do half your damage off melee and half off certain companions, let certain companions scale off of your stats to some degree(where the bigger ones like the bear have higher scaling ratios, and the stats that scale also vary, for example spell for storm crows)
6:For the love of Eterra, make the other primalist minions USABLE, all we really have that are worthwhile are crows and wolves.
