Hi all. I’ve posted here quite a few times regarding the inefficiency of pet builds, ideas on how to improve said builds, and overall just enjoyed my time with the community and the game despite my frustration towards Fl4k’s inability to be the pet class I and many others hoped he would be.
That being said, I’ve put a hell of a lot of time into “perfecting” a pet build based on the current game build (patch).
The Gamma God, or GG (see what I did there) for short, is hands down the best pet build I’ve come up with, even after testing against multiple pet builds out there, including the more popular ones. This is going to be a bit unconventional. It might even be a little scary because some of my decisions are definitely not orthodox or following a more “obvious path.” I will link the build below, provide explanations for my decisions, and try to go as deep as possible, but feel free to just TL;DR your way to victory, hit the link, and try it. You won’t be disappointed. It’s good. It’s really damn good.
Build
Major Differentiators
The Skag is dead to me. Approximately 90% of the builds that rely heavily on pets are going to tell you to use the Skag. Even the Master tree is pretty damn suggestive that Skags and Gamma go together like peanut butter and jelly, or whiskey and steak if you’re a champion like me.
This build uses the Spiderant Scorcher.
First of all, the Spiderant Scorcher does something unique; a ground pound AOE that leaves a pool of lava, and it does it constantly. Despite it’s occasional misplaced fireball attack, the AOE lava pool stacks with the gamma radiation. That means that anything close to the scorcher is going to be taking both fire and radiation damage. This turns your pet into a ball of pure hate and murders everything around it. It also provides buffed elemental damage, despite everyone saying it’s elemental resistance. The tooltip says, verbatim, “While accompanied by the Scorcher, Fl4k constantly regenerates health and deals increased Elemental Damage” with the line “Elemental Damage: +10%” underneath. Even if I was wrong, the 1.0% max health regen is vital as well, because that contributes to the regen pool that is shared with the pet via All My BFFs (including your friends, if that matters).
Second, you’re going to be spreading points a little thin between the three trees and this build does not use capstones. Some of you are probably rolling your eyes. I don’t blame you. It honestly hurts that I can’t have The Power Inside because for 15 seconds at full health your pet is doing +50% more damage. 15 seconds is nothing to scoff at. However, hear me out, because you’re not going for burst, you’re going for two things; survivability and consistency. If you can let go of not having a capstone, read on.
You and your pet are absolute tanks. Unlike most pet builds in other games, you aren’t going to get your balls rocked because your pet isn’t around to save your brittle nuts. The regen of this build is madness, and in the event that you do go down, your pet should have no problem getting you back up. In the reversed situation, the Gamma cooldown is so minimal you can throw your pet right back into the battle in a few seconds. We aren’t peasants, we don’t manually res our pets. With one point in Mutated Defenses, your pet will literally respawn with gamma active, then heal up to full almost immediately. By the time it’s a problem again, it’ll trigger Mutated Defenses again. You also have two points in Who Rescued Who? so feel free to use that fast-fire gun to get your pet’s health up even faster.
Lastly, also unlike a lot of builds, gear reliance is minimal. I created this whole build with a heavy focus on just that; don’t tell people how to make a kick-ass Fl4k then follow it up with “this guild is absolute garbage unless the RNG gods bless you with the perfect roll.” The only item you even remotely “need” to be effective is the mod that turns your pet into an aggro tank which I have found several of and doesn’t seem to be all that rare. Skill bonuses are pretty arbitrary but they do help. You’re just looking for “pet will aggro while gamma is active.”
Key Skills by Category
Regeneration:
As I said, you’re both going to be very tanky. Surprisingly so. Your max health will be relatively beefy due to both Self-Repairing System and Pack Tactics. Your regen, well, let’s take a look at the skills facilitating this: Self-Repairing System (also regens), All My BFFs, Turn Tail and Run, Spiderant Scorcher, Who Rescued Who?, and Lick the Wounds if you count a free and reliable revive as regen. That doesn’t even include Mutated Defenses, which makes the pet a hell of a lot harder to take down (but has nothing to do with your regen).
Pet Damage:
This is secondary to health regen, but competitively important. As I mentioned in other posts, pet classes should be slow waves of reliable kills, not bursty, risky, or overly complicated. Regardless, pet damage is supported by: Ferocity, He Bites!, Frenzy, Psycho Head on a Stick, Pack Tactics, Gamma Burst, and Scorcher Fire.
Gamma Cooldown/Extension:
My third focus was making sure I got just about every skill I could to make sure Gamma was up and rolling significantly more often than not. It will be. Your pet will rarely be off the Gamma clock, and here’s why: Persistence Hunter, Endurance, Head Count, Eager to Impress. I believe that is every skill available to help out with Gamma and it’s plenty.
Fl4k’s Contribution:
This was my last focus, but still a vital element so you don’t feel absolutely helpless without your pet doing all the work. This also correlated with obtaining the Scorcher since you have to reach the third tier in order to unlock it in the Hunter tree. You’re going to get a baseline 27% damage increase for Fl4k without doing anything due to a few passives, but the active skills that give you the ability to burn down mobs are in the hunter tree: Interplanetary Stalker, Leave No Trace (less reload DPS drop off). These may not seem like much, but they’re all you’ve got for actual crit/kill skills which again, doesn’t include the 27% baseline dps increase, and skills like Frenzy where your pet’s performance improves your own.
One of the major variants that I would totally support is taking a few points out of Eager to Impress and dumping them into Two F4ng. The beauty of this build is that you can make two major decisions to shift the damage focus to Fl4k without a lot of critical analysis. Either shift those points, and/or replace Endurance with Empathic Rage, but that’s not my thing, cause I want my pet to do the work for me most of the time.
Things That Make Me S4d
This build is not perfect. Honestly, no build is “perfect” but this is about as close as you’re going to get to a Diablo 2 necromancer or WoW beastmaster (vanilla) hunter. With that, keep in mind there are some skills I had to scrap and kind of pissed me off, but it was for the greater good, or whatever.
Let me be real clear; my opinions are my own but Domination is an atrocity, and Megavore is way too reliant on lackluster aim and RNG to be all that amazing. However, The Power Inside is stupid powerful, and a burst capstone that would have complimented my build nicely. When this game gets a raised level cap, I know exactly where my points are going, and that’s rare in a BL game for me. Both Hidden Machine and The Fast and the Furryous (ugh) are good skills, depending on your playstyle, and you can skip Rage and Recover (you have plenty of regen, I promise) and dump that sweet point into Stalker. Just not yet. That one hurt.
You have to choose, as I said earlier, between Two F4ng and Eager to Impress. It’s a hard choice. I say switch around and see what feels good, but Two F4ng is a fan favorite for a good reason.
That’s it. That’s literally the only part of this build that annoyed me and made me rethink my decisions.
Things That Make Me H4ppy
Stop putting points into Go for the Eyes! Not having to put a single point in there to get my build where I wanted it to be really worked well. That skill is crap. The point investment for what it does is ludicrous, and the DPS drop off is insane on a boss fight, unless your pet weirdly glitches and it keeps resetting the “timer” which I still don’t know how it does that. There’s no timer reset in the skill itself so it’s pretty much one and done, for 5 points. Nope. Most of the anointed in Mayhem do not mess around and the more bullet sponge an enemy is, the less Go for the Eyes! is viable in a longer fight. So Go for Something Else! is what I’m saying.
I spent approximately 3 points between the trees for three massive improvements to the build:
Lick the Wounds is absolutely mandatory if you’re soloing, and although it can’t res your allies (as many have suggested), having it res you in essence, is still incredibly helpful to your allies that don’t have to res you. It’s also very reliable. Your pet will almost always stop what it’s doing and come charging back to you. You become priority one across the board and with the pet’s inherent tankiness I’d say the success rate is around 95%.
Psycho Head on a Stick doesn’t stack, let’s be real clear about that. It does, from what I’ve seen, refresh. For one point, if you decide to help your pet take down a stronger enemy (or weak one because why not), your pet will haul ass and kill a little faster on the next mob. It’s not absolutely mandatory, but for one point, your minimal contribution will keep your pet 10% stronger and 12% faster most of the time.
Lastly, Mutated Defenses, but I’ve said enough about that, is also a requirement. When your pet is radiating and fireblasting everything around it while taunting it’s going to get a few damage spikes. Mutated Defenses will be there to keep it alive, and in tandem with Lick the Wounds, make sure it doesn’t die trying to turn its back on enemies and revive you. Those two work very, very well together.
In Summation
This build is really not that reliant on gear. Find that mod I spoke of to really tie the room together (like a nice rug), then go with your gut. Although I highly recommend a fast firing weapon and the legendary MIRV Hex grenade. It’s ridiculous(ly effective and lazy).
Well, I’ve written more than I intended as usual, but this should cover a lot. The proof is in the pudding, or whatever, so just go try the build and let me know how it feels. So far it’s been the closest I’ve felt to an actual pet class. Thanks for reading, and I hope it’s as fun for you as it is for me.
Oh, and a final note that I should mention so you don’t waste your time. If you want to go back to Skaglife and get to that Stalker capstone with my build, you uh, can’t. Regardless of the sacrifice you’ll be making to action cooldown and Fl4k’s damage output, I only spent 10 points in the Hunter tree. You need exactly 11 in the Stalker tree, which means you’ll have to sacrifice an additional point in the Master tree to pull it off. Could be viable, I’m sure, but just a fair warning before you think you can easily shift like that (I tried, obviously).
Brew