I’ve been thinking about this alot recently, and while the Blue Tree capstone, which lets you mind control enemies up to Badass rank and have them fight alongside you, will be nice for general questing and mobbing, it’s going to be nearly useless for boss fights since the only thing you will be able to mind control are the weak adds that periodically appear during the boss fight, which will barely increase your DPS output.
However, if the blue tree capstone allowed you to have a 2nd pet he would be so much better, as that would be useful both for mobbing/questing and boss fights. Such a capstone would synergize extremely well with most of his skills in the blue tree and several in other trees as well, whereas the current capstone doesn’t really synergize with anything. Barbaric Yawp would actually be useful, because instead of doubling one pet’s measly pet bonuses, you would be doubling 2 pets’ bonuses. I’m really kind of disappointed that Gearbox didn’t think of doing this for the capstone.
Personally I dont think adding a 2nd pet will make much of a difference outside of quality of life… but I like the idea of having another pet. Just not the ones he already has.
So after thinking about how to make it really compete with the other Capstones. I thought about my other favorite Game franchise Path of Exile.
In Path of Exile there a skill called Harold of Agony that has an invulnerable scorpion pet that deals poison damage based on stacks. The higher the stacks the more damage it inflicts…and its AOE splash damage…not melee to aid in clear speed.
So here’s my idea and combining it with the OP.
New Capstone.
Whenever Flak or His pets deal damages a new pet emerges. You have no control over it, it doesnt die, and gains power the more Fl4k and his pets attack. Stacks decay after ________ seconds of not dealing damage. At 0 stacks the pet disappears.
So this pet will have a snowball effect, the longer the fight the more powerful the pet becomes making it a great boss killer over time.
I honestly don’t think their pets are going to be that useful in the endgame though. I mean, the pets are kinda bullet sponges, but they can still be downed and even outright killed. Having to worry about two pets at once… not to mention that some things can give you points in capstone skills. If they could have additional pets on the field then they’d have upwards of maybe 4 pets on the ground at any given time…
While I agree that I find FL4K’s Dominace skill a tad underwhelming, I think it works much better than spending all their time getting their pets out of FfyL when the pets take a few bullets.
Agreed on this point. I believe one of the skill trees allows FL4K to deploy the Spider Ant (or another ground-based pet) AND rakks to attack from above, but I’d prefer to just have the ability to choose 2 pets that I can deploy simultaneously, or the way we could deploy Axton’s Turrets (i.e. deploy one, then a moment later, deploy the other.) That would be more useful, in my opinion.
I don’t know, I think it could make a pretty big difference. Each pet would benefit from skills like Frenzy and Ferocity, not to mention you could double 2 pet’s bonuses with Barabaric Yawp.
Here are some skill bonuses that each pet would be able to benefit from:
Ferocity- Each pet gets +50% damage
Frenzy- Each pet gets +40% damage pretty much all of the time during combat
Go For the Eyes- Each melee pet does +75% damage on the first hit on each enemy they attack.
Who Rescued Who- 5% of FL4K’s damage output heals each pet
Psycho Head on a Stick- 12% movement speed and 10% damage for each pet for 8 seconds after a kill
Hive Mind- 30% of damage taken by FL4K is shared to 2 pets and 45% is shared to 3 pets, 15% to each pet
He Bites- 15% of damage taken by each pet reflected to enemies
Mutated Defenses- Each pet can instantly regain 40% health and gain 30% damage reduction every 15 seconds
Pack Tactics- Each pet gains +15% damage and +15% max health
Eager to Impress- Each pet can take 2.5 seconds off of action skill cooldowns by getting a kill
Lick the Wounds- Each pet can revive FL4K during fight for your life
Barbaric Yawp- Pet bonuses doubled for each pet, allowing FL4K to for instance have +10% movement speed and +10% crit damage from the SMG Jabber, +10% all damage and +20% gun damage from the Great Horned Skag, and 2% health regen a second from the centurion spiderant all at once.
Sic’Em- Each pet has +30% attack command damage and -30% attack command cooldown
All my BFF’s- All pets share FL4K’s constant steady health regen from skills like Self Repairing System and Turn Tail and Run.
Endurance- Up to +50% damage per pet
All of the above would already be pretty impressive with 2 pets. But we know that legendary class mods can give 2 points to capstones. So imagine all of the above affecting all 3 pets? It might actually be too powerful. Maybe that is why Gearbox didn’t do it, but I kind of wish they did, would be cool to have all 3 pets like in the FL4K trailer.
I don’t know, the footage I saw of the SMG Jabber seemed to have comparable damage output to Zane’s drone without any augments or skills that improve the drone and Zane’s clone without any augments or skills that improve Zane’s clone, except all of the time, and that was without any pet damage buffs from skills like Ferocity and Frenzy.The other 2 pets aren’t quite as good on DPS since they have to get into melee range, and can miss their melee attacks if the enemy moves right as they start their melee animation, but still they do decent damage. Now imagine all 3 at once, boosted by all of the pet boosting skills. That could be viable at endgame, hard to say. But it’s not like the current dominance capstone will be viable at endgame either, at least for boss fights, dominating some weak adds will do nothing worthwhile for you during a boss fight, I honestly think that having extra pets would do alot more, especially if you take pet damage boosting skills.
Depends on the enemy. If it’s a bandit it’ll probably be like having another base Jabber on the field. In addition, if the damage works on the boss then you automatically deal 24% of their max health over 12 seconds. That’s nothing to turn your nose up at. Sure, it’s a 1 off, but you punch the boss once and get a DoT that take the boss down to 75% health. That isn’t even considering a piece of equipment that can give you a +2 in the skill. Punch boss and they go down to 25% health. That is AMAZEBALLS.
I think the skill is fine as is. It isn’t great, but if you use it strategically it should be fine. We also don’t know exactly how useful pets will be in the endgame. If your pet goes down in two shots then it being able to deal decent damage is nigh useless. If you can constantly take aggro off yourself with the add mobs instead of a pet that could be killed for that fight then you never need to worry about running out of other targets for the enemies to target.
Sadly, dominate doesn’t work on bosses, I saw somebody test it in the Gamescom build of the game. Maybe they will change that before release, we’ll have to wait and see.
That would only apply for the boss(es) they tested it on. There could be other bosses that can be dominated.
Also, the thing to recognize about Dominance is that it is precisely because it doesn’t really fit in with FL4K’s kit that it’s awkwardness can be excused. While the other two capstones are just general jelly on top awesome DPS bonuses for things you do anyway (activating action skills and shooting people) Dominance requires a specific change in approach and play style. You won’t just able to wantonly mow through the battlefield, you’ll need to keep an eye out for enemies that can help you mow down their friends. Considering that the last two tiers of the Master skill tree are pretty weak IMO, and you can get just about any relevant pet damage bonus without going down that fat, the only reason I see for going all the way down the tree is if you specifically want to use Dominance. If you’re making that much of an effort to get the capstone, and are aware of the play style change it encourages, I don’t think it’s underwhelming at all.
For anyone who plays warframe, think of a Mind Control Nyx, more specifically one with the Mind Freak augment (which gives mind controlled enemies a scaling damage bonus). If that is your build, you NEED to look for Heavy Gunners, Bombards, Hyeka Masters, and other high damage or AOE enemy units to deal damage to enemies. And that is not even touching on whether enemies in BL3 will be able to give buffs to each other, in case which dominance will be extremely powerful in stealing enemy buffs.
TLDR: If you take Dominance, don’t use it on trash mobs (unless its something like a rabid skag). Save it for badasses and enemies with special abilities that you can use to your advantage.
1 Like
sammantixbb
(I guess no one goes here anymore)
#12
Lol, I just started warframe the other day to practice moving and aiming.
But yeah, I’m one of those people aiming to get the Dominance Capstone, to me, it’s as “omg, this is something else” as Gaige’s Claws. It’s not a skill you get accidentally. It’s not a min-max delight. It’s what I like to call and “RPG Special”. That’s a skill that alters your playstyle almost entirely by throwing in a whole new mechanic that has weird Role Play Synergy.
I get what you saying but if Fk4k had two pets plus an action skill he would be more than op. I’ve seen a little game play of all of the VH and Fl4k seems pretty powerful on his own with only one peta
Pets are not exactly what makes Fl4k so powerful. I think it’s totally reasonable to give them 3 pets
Also we need a permanent Rakk pet… thats like… really important
Thing is, most of the gameplay you saw where FL4K was looking very powerful was probably gameplay in either the red tree or the green tree. Take LazyData’s video where he played all 3 trees for instance. His completion time in the red tree was 6 minutes and 11 seconds. His completion time in the green tree was 9 minutes and 22 seconds (though about 1 minutes of that was time spent backtracking looking for sniper ammo before the boss fight). His completion time in the blue tree was 10 minutes and 38 seconds. Sure he wasn’t trying to speedrun it in any of the 3 trees, but I still find it noteworthy how much slower the blue tree was, especially since that blue tree build has a number of damage boosting skills for both FL4K and the pet. The blue tree just feels kind of underwhelming to me currently, and that’s a shame because it’s the tree I’m most interested in since it’s his pet tree and I was a Gaige pet tree main in BL2.
sammantixbb
(I guess no one goes here anymore)
#17
Might have been the blue tree, don’t remember. Would have only hurt the time by a few seconds though since respawns are fast.
sammantixbb
(I guess no one goes here anymore)
#19
But it also takes you off your game. Gets you out of your head, and makes you take a moment to get back into it. Not saying it was a massive factor, just one to think about.
But also: speed isn’t everything. Which build was the most FUN. What’s most fun for you? I don’t care about how fast I can kill something unless I’m trying to super farm. Even then, I’ve never been much for speed kills. I’m a Claws Gaige main with a Sniper Gaige side and a Boxxy Aurelia build . None of them are gonna speed kill anything. But they’re fun. So. I don’t see times as a good metric
So the difference between the Stalker tree and Master was only a minute? And that is accounting for the time wasted waiting for enemies under dominance to die before proceeding to the next map. And without the augment that boosts pet damage and action skill duration on kill.
. None of them are gonna speed kill anything. But they’re fun. So. I don’t see times as a good metric