FL4K's pets seem to be very imbalanced with eachother

Borderlands 3 FL4K the Beastmaster
#1

So after playing through this game 3-4 times across all characters, I started to notice this more and more as enemies and myself started doing more damage.

The Jabber is without a doubt the only pet that substantially has an effect on the PVE in this game.

With it’s base damage type being ranged with weapons, it eliminates all of this time these other 2 animals take to walk up to enemies to do significantly less amounts of damage to them with hit-to-hit types of DPS. These other abilities feel lackluster and above all with ALL pet abilities and forms you can’t mix them and experiment with them because their variations are pushed down their respective skill trees. The idea of letting us pick any pet with any action skill kind of doesn’t work when the abilities that determine how effective they’re going to be in the end game are locked down skill trees.

You can’t even tell which one is best because the best one could be down the least-used tree.

My friend who decided to go with the green tree was showing me how the jabber can mutilate air targets with aimbot-levels of ranged accuracy, hit them with rockets, destroy single targets with the level 2 skill, and in general do a lot of entertaining things. When I went into the class, I picked the Orange tree due to myself having pretty good aim in FPS games.

I liked the crits-for-accuracy appeal, but what I DON’T like is my spiderant doing pathetic amounts of damage, and having some super long cool-down burrow ability as its FINAL skill in its most point-required form.

His theme of “Beastmaster” should be consistent with what he is in the end game, the companion should serve much more than a random entity that does either an absurd amount of explosion damage ( with elemental radiation procs starting at base level ) or just a distraction you bring along in the game with passive buffs to your character.

When amara’s theme is elemental damage, she DESTROYS with it. When Zane’s titles relate to trickery and kill skills, he flies around the battlefield or confuses enemies with ease. When FL4K’s theme is beastmaster, he shouldn’t just be seen as some megavore abuser and that’s it.

7 Likes
#2

Are you talking about m4? if so I think the problem is that action skill and pets dont scale with mayhem.They should have a mayhem modifier increasing their damage, like pets do base damage in normal and x times more damage in mayhem

4 Likes
#3

I just mean in general. The spiderant and the Skag do not compare to the jabber.

#4

also I don t know if you read Fl4k bugs section but pets are plagued with bugs crippling their damage ( pets having bugs how ironic is that lol)

3 Likes
#5

So we’ve actually just recently uncovered a lot of things about pets that address what you are saying. As was just said, pets do suffer from a multitude of crippling bugs, but non melee pets such as the Jabber are the least effected. While it doesn’t address your point of the pets being imbalanced against each other, I can give you a general breakdown of each pet’s strength’s and weaknesses.

Scorcher- Best melee damage against flesh, can reach 12k DPS if you have the right build. Also has the best/second best passives. If GB every gets around to fixing cryo this girl will definitely be a solid choice if you want a pet that does damage.

Countess- her attack command scales off of splash damage and AoE on gear. With just the splash damage anointment and a few skills, she can hit 50k on an attack command easily. With full investment she can hit 150k. Being corrosive, her melee against flesh isn’t impressive, and her passives aren’t amazing. But if you want a pet for damage she is an excellent choice as long as you build around her.

Gunslinger- he also scales of of splash and AOE. Unlike Countess though, since he is ranged, he doesn’t have to juggle melee only bonuses like Go for the Eyes. His damage is all easily maintained, so if you have all your skills up and activate the splash anointment, Jabber hits close to 200k easily. The passive crit damage is kind of eh, just because you already get a bunch from the Hunter tree and 5% isn’t a lot. If you were doing Blue/Green and got BY, then 15% isn’t too bad for the damage it gives.

Beefcake- the max health bonus is bugged and only gives 5% instead of 10%. He is cool in that he can get Go for the Eyes on every attack command, which will make it do 40k consistently. For M3 that’s pretty good, but not for M4. He also attacks the slowest and seems to die a bit more. Could use some help.

Horned Skag- pretty middle of the road damage wise. It deals about the same damage vs everything since it isn’t elemental like the spiderants. It won’t do as much as they do, but it also won’t do as little. It also has the best/second best passives in the game, and since you’re going down the blue tree anyway you’ll pretty much always have BY for him. He’s not great for damage, but as a stat stick he’s great.

So I guess the breakdown would be:
Spiderants: pretty good tanks, good melee damage (circumstantial), decent- great passives
Skags- middle of the road damage, not great tanks, decent-great passives
Jabber- great damage, not good tanks at all because ranged, eh passives

Hope it helps.

7 Likes
#6

The pets are just shockingly bad in general. It’s truly baffling that anyone could program and test these things and think “Yep, this is perfect.” Especially when basically your whole community thinks they’re a problem.

6 Likes
#7

Gotta agree that it would be kind of nice if the pets and their variants were only tied to your overall level and not your investment down a specific tree.

5 Likes
#8

It’s nice to see in the endgame that they have some sort of usage, but like you said, it doesn’t address how they are just by design inferior to eachother.

#9

It’s unfortunate, but the only thing I can say is to use the tool best suited for the job. If your primary concern is buffs, use the Skag or Spiderant. If you want damage or something that will stay alive long enough to revive you, go for the Jabber.

Anything in between, experiment and just take whichever one you can tolerate the most.

3 Likes
#10

I would love to see the top tier pets, Gunslinger, Countess and Eridian Skag gain some form of your gear. Countess would gain a copy of your shield with all of its benefits, including annointment bonuses. The Gunslinger would use the weapon you have in your first weapon slot with all bonuses. Eridian Skag would gain your grenade mod and maybe have a chance to spawn a grenade when damaged?

At this point it seems that shower thoughts of players would have more impact than the shallow efforts of dev’s for Fl4k’s pets. They gave them some buffs back in November I believe? But some don’t even seem to work.

I loved my DT only build in BL2, something satisfying about only having to shoot down airborne enemies and letting your companion do the work. This was my hope for Fl4k, that got crushed real quick when I started playing.

4 Likes
#11

Having that just out of the blue might be a bit too much. I mean, for Zane that’s a cornerstone skill. Plus, it’s tied to his action skill whereas the jabber is out all the time and unlike the Clone it can actually move freely. Having a monkey run around with, say, a Nukem or Scourge and unlimited rocket ammo would be more that just a bit over the top.
I do however agree about the bonuses part, I think whatever gun bonuses Fl4k has should be applied to the Jabbers gun, too.

3 Likes
#12

Yes and no, something like the Lump or Scourge needs to be fired over the top of enemies to make the most of their projectile pattern. The Nukem needs to be fired with an arc, pointing it directly at an enemy and firing will kill you 110% of the time lol

I know it would be pretty dramatic, but with Mayhem 2.0 around the corner it would be a great way to help at least the Gunslinger scale damage with Mayem levels.

#13

Have you ever used them with Double Barrel Zane? It doesn’t matter if the AI can’t fully optimize it, it’s still utterly devastating.

#14

I don’t play Zane, I have too many friends that starting playing him and now literally can’t make it through Athenas on M4 with Fl4k or Moze because they are so spoiled to easy mode Zane.

#15

The bugs need to be fixed with them all, and hopefully Mayhem 2.0 will include better scaling for them against enemies. I think a program into their coding to always deal X% amount of damage against enemy health bars regardless of overall values would be the way to go. Also change up the coding for Attack Commands, they have little to no value as they are.

1 Like
#16

Pets seriously need an overhaul in responsiveness, movement speed, attack, and survivability especially against complex mechanics like Wotan’s shield and Agonizer’s blade. If Gearbox won’t buff them, then they might as well just make them immortal since reviving them is dangerous and pointless. If they are going to need to be revived like a real player, their contribution ought to be equal or at least near enough to make it a fair trade in safety and time to need reviving.

3 Likes