So yeah….
Greetings Fellow Vault Hunters!
I’ve been meaning to get around to this for a while, but it’s been a rocky road with FL4K’s pets. For a long time they were probably the most half-baked additions to a character’s kit in the franchise. There’s no need to rehash all the low points again, but it was rough. However, after the Phase 2 scaling patch in June, and more importantly the July 23 patch which further buffed pet damage and the following hotfixes addressing FL4K’s bugs, the pets are in a really good spot now. We actually have viable paths for pet damage builds now, which means there is finally a use for this kind of thread!
The goal of this pet compendium is to take a deep dive into all of the damage mechanics involving pets: damage formulas, beneficial stats for them, mayhem modifiers, skill synergies, and play style tips to get the most damage out of your companions. By the end of this thread, you should have all the knowledge you need to deal the highest possible damage with your killer critters.
Recommended Resources
Fl4k Critter Lab
FL4K Pet Guide
FL4K’s Damage Formula by @Ratore
FL4K’s Pet Damage Boosts video by @DemoniteBL
Fl4k Skills, Augments and Pets - Rating and Analysis by @darreltan2004
Table of Contents
- Pet Damage Formula
- Level 72 Pet Damage Values
- Building for Pet Damage
- Pet Specific Mechanics
- Modifiers for Pets
- Miscellaneous Info for Pets
- Closing
Pet Damage Formula
FL4K’s pet damage formula is as follows :
Final Damage Output = Base Damage x Mayhem Scaling x Pet Damage(V1) x Sic’ Em x V2 x Crit x Splash x Roid/Amp x Elemental Multiplier/Gotta Go Fast x Harmageddon
- Note that FL4K’s pet has a separate damage formula from FL4K. Damage bonuses such as URad and Guardian Angel will not apply to the pet’s attacks, but can effect sources of damage the pet spawns like Hollowpoints, ele-crit novas, electric Banjo procs, and melee artifacts procced from a pet’s stinger shield.
Base Damage = (BaseHit + 75%GammaBurstRad/ 200%TerrorFire/22.5%HiveMindKinetic)
*Same as bonus elements on guns, Terror and Gamma Burst don’t scale with splash. Unlike guns however, bonus elements on pets do NOT scale with crit damage!
- Note that Hive Mind is capable of critting independently of the attack that procced it, even without Throatripper.
Pet Damage(V1) = (1 + FuriousAttack + LickTheWounds + Furryous + PowerInside + Ferocity + Frenzy + PsychoHead + Endurance + PackTactics + IntStalker + DangerousGame + GrimHarvest + Friendbot)
- Pet Damage(V1) present in Hunter Skills Furious Attack and Most Dangerous Game does not get boosted by Big Game/Hunt Power sources.
Sic’ Em = (1 + SicEm). (1 + 0.30) at 3/3, up to (1 + 0.60) at 6/3
- Sic’ Em applies to Attack Commands only.
V2 = (1 + DE4DEYE + On Grenade Throw anointment). The 35% damage bonus against targets above 75% health. So, (1 + 0.35)
Crit = [2 x [(1 + Monkey Do) ] + (Go for the Eyes)
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Go For The Eyes doesn’t apply to the extra Radiation Damage from Gamma Burst, the fire damage from terror, or the kinetic damage from Hive Mind
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Throatripper and Monkey Do can stack on top of Go for the Eyes crits, but the reverse cannot happen. Think of these skills like Megavor (Throatripper) and Fade Away (Go for the Eyes). You can Megavor crit on a Fade Away body shot, but you cannot ever get Fade Away damage on a megavor crit outside of Fade Away.
Splash = (1 + ClassModSplashDmg + ArtifactAreaDmg + SplashDamageAnoint)
Splash is a multiplier that applies to a variety of pet attacks. It is most easily accessible to several pets on their attack commands only. Those pets are: Spiderant Countess, Eridian Skag, Gunslinger Jabber, and War Loader. Melee pets with ranged attacks, such as the acid ball of spiderants and skags, will also scale with splash damage. Other attacks that scale with this stat are Atomic Aroma, nova shields when using Take This, the stomp attack Spiderant Scorcher does as part of her lava pool attack.
Roid/Amp = [(1 + Roid/Amp bonus)]
- Usual amp mechanics apply. A one shotter shield/Madcap with 3 amp parts will increase the damage of all pellets in a multi-projectile weapon, while legendary amp shields like Rerouter and 0.M will only boost one pellet.
Elemental Multiplier = [ElementalDamageMultiplier x (1 + Old God + Gotta Go Fast)]
- Gotta Go Fast, like Amara’s skill Burn Both Ends, is an elemental damage increase that applies to non-elemental damage as well.
Harmageddon = [(1 + 0.05)], up to [(1 + 0.20)]
Each unique status instance is an additional + 0.05, which goes up to 0.20 for a x1.20 multiplier.
Atomic Aroma
Final Damage Output = Base Damage x Mayhem Scaling x Pet Damage(V1) x V2 x Crit x Splash x Elemental Multiplier/ Gotta Go Fast x Harmageddon
Base Damage = (BaseHit + 75%GammaBurstRad/ 200%TerrorFire/22.5%HiveMindKinetic)
- Atomic Aroma does damage in ticks of 2 per second. To calculate it’s DPS, simply do the above formula and multiply the result by 2.
- Atomic Aroma receives the 75% radiation bonus element from Gamma Burst.
Level 72 Pet Damage Values
Basic melee - 9943
Sidekick Jabber shot - 4987
Beefcake Jabber shot - 15k
Gunslinger Jabber shot - 1176 per bullet, seems to do a burst of 40 over 2 seconds before it needs to reload.
Attack Command Damage (not accounting for elemental multipliers)
Skags
Guard Skag - 9943 for 4 ticks
Horned Skag - 39736
Eridian Skag - 9943 melee + 27819 splash attack
Spiderants
Centurion - 23843
Scorcher - 23843
Countess - 59607
Jabbers
Sidekick Jabber - 39736
Beefcake Jabber - 39736
Gunslinger Jabber - 77489 per rocket
To calculate the mayhem scaled damage of your pet, take the increased enemy health and multiply it by .5 (as of July 23). That is the multiplier your pets will receive to their damage.
Building for Pet Damage
Now that the formulas have been laid out and we know the numbers we’re working with, the next step is to leverage that knowledge to put together builds. From this point on, I’m going to assume you have the Trapper skill tree from DLC 5 because it so drastically changes how you build pets from the base game and is pretty much the only reason why pet builds can clear high level content now.
In general, there are two build paths for pets. The first is what I refer to as Gamma Melee, which just relies on the pet’s melee attacks boosted by Gamma Burst to do damage. A subset of this play style is Splash Command, which focuses on utilizing attack commands that scale with splash damage. The other is to build around shield damage effects using Take This and Fuzzy Math to rapidly deploy novas, drones, and other attacks.
I will further expand upon the different considerations for min-maxing each setup in a later section.
Pet Bonus Elements and Their Interactions With Other Skills
As was mentioned earlier, both of these function similarly to bonus elements on weapons. There are some caveats as to how pet bonus elements scale compared to normal ones.
- Pet bonus elements do not receive crit damage from Throatripper, Monkey Do, or Go for the Eyes.
- They do not scale with splash damage.
- Loaders are the only pets that do not resort to full melee while in Gamma Burst. They continue to use their guns, which receive the full 75% bonus radiation damage that melee gets.
I’ve retested how bonus pet elements interact with other pet multipliers, and found that the only issue was them not scaling with Go for the Eyes. While there may occasionally be inconsistency in bonus elements spawning from attack commands in Sanctuary, there is rarely an issue in actual combat. There is no perceivable issue with Sic Em’ not scaling with bonus elements.
Maximizing Hollowpoint
Hollowpoint is a Guardian Rank perk that causes enemies killed by critical hits to explode, dealing overkill damage to nearby enemies. This perk gains x34 mayhem scaling on Mayhem 10/11 when procced by pets and scales with your damage formula. The damage formula for this perk is
Hollowpoint = Base Damage (excess damage that killed the enemy) x Mayhem Scaling(x34) x V1 x V2 x Splash x Elemental Multiplier x Harmageddon x Gear Debuff
Base Damage = (excess damage+75%TerrorCryo/200%Revolter/100%Urad) exclude splash from the bonus elements
Pets can proc hollowpoint through Go for the Eyes on the first melee hit, and through any critical kill through Throatripper. Hollowpoint is a tremendous boon to clear speed on any pet spec, and I would recommended always taking at least an AOE damage roll to buff the damage and radius of this perk.
The AOE for Hollowpoint varies depending on how much splash radius/Area of Effect you have. The screenshot below shows Hollowpoint with 33% splash radius and 43% Area of Effect.
Anointments for pet builds
There are 5 anointments that work for pet builds.
- Terror Anointment – This anointment is the only one in the game that effects the normal attacks of pets, and after the buff it is a very powerful bonus. The strength of this bonus will depend on the health type of the enemy you’re facing. It will be a 100% bonus vs shields and armor, and 350% vs flesh. Since Gamma builds typically don’t have as much use for the shield and grenade ASE slots, you can use the shield for the Attack Command terror anointment and a facepuncher with generate terror on melee.
However, be aware that the value of this bonus diminishes with splash or crit damage since it doesn’t scale with those. For example, Atomic Aroma + Throatripper doesn’t gain a lot from this anoint. Depending on what shield you use, this bonus can only contribute between 14-55% additional damage, which may not be worth the anointment slot. - 25% On Grenade Throw - this anoint was changed to effect pet damage, so this is now a pet V2 bonus additive with the Deadeye class mod’s red text effect. The V2 bonus is double dipped in hollowpoints spawned by the pet.
- Ele-crit-nova - pets can proc this anoint through Throatripper and Go for the Eyes, although the damage is insignificant unless they detonate an Unleash the Dragon DOT. Best used with the Ember’s Blaze shield. The nova scales off of your damage formula, not the pet’s.
- ASE Splash - as mentioned above, some pet attacks scale off of your splash damage. This bonus will be double dipped by your pet’s hollowpoint.
- Kill Skill anoint - This anoint doesn’t effect pet damage, but pets can activate it AND it is a buff to the character and not the gun, so it persists through weapon swap. All around a nice utility anoint that pets can help you maintain.
How to Build Gamma
Due to changes to the pet damage formula with DLC 5, and the removal of Jabber pet’s mayhem scaling guns, the distinction between Gamma melee builds and splash commands has diminished greatly. Whereas before it was more beneficial to run splash command or Gamma melee exclusively, it’s now more beneficial to combine them together.
You want as much raw pet damage as you can muster to scale all the different bonus elements. Purple tree doesn’t have any boosts in the pet damage category, so getting those from the other trees (blue tree has the highest amount and almost all are passive) is an easy way to bump up damage.
Red Fang COM is the BIS COM not only for its boosts Ferocity and Eager to Impress, but because the taunt effect guarantees your pet’s shield is always depleted. Because the pets have very little aggro generation without Red Fang, they cannot keep on-depletion effects active consistently without this COM(you will notice there are periods where your pet is dealing noticeably less damage simply because enemies aren’t attacking it enough to keep it’s shield stripped). Since only amp shields and Infernal Wish benefit from being full, the best shields for pet damage will be those whose effects are active when taking damage or upon breaking.
With Take This and the centrality of roid in Gamma Melee builds, many non-melee attacks are relegated to utility for those specs. Note that they can still do decent damage when critting via Take This and Monkey Do.
- Atomic Aroma – Adds extra chances for Throatripper crits for Leave No Trace, Monkey Do, and Fuzzy Math. Can also do good sustained DPS given investment in splash damage and Monkey Do.
- He Bites – This skill isn’t as great for damage against trash mobs since mayhem enemy damage was fixed. However, this skill is central to dealing with several raid bosses and adds extra chances for Throatripper crits for Leave No Trace, Monkey Do, and Fuzzy Math.
- Lava Pool – this attack is exclusive to Spiderant Scorcher, but like Atomic Aroma it adds extra chances for Throatripper crits for Leave No Trace, Monkey Do, and Fuzzy Math. Can also proc the Ele-crit-nova anointment.
These attacks make looping amp bonuses with Fuzzy Math pretty easy. In particular, the Infernal Wish’s DOT effect can be nullified completely by having Atomic Aroma active, and you can maintain the amp bonus on your weapons consistently as well.
BIS Shields for Gamma Melee
The only shield requirement for this build is a roid shield. Roid is the most consistent and high value damage bonus that you can get for any pet. Two roid parts is more than adequate in every area of the game.
For this build, you’ll want roid shields with high roid values AND extra utility to get the most value out of your own damage as well as the pets. The top 3 shields I suggest are:
- Brawler Ward - this shield has the absolute highest roid bonus in the game. It also has a 25% gun damage bonus when depleted, which is nice if you catch a few stray bullets in Gamma Burst. Lastly, the 2% health regen (4% while depleted) completely takes care of the pet’s health regen, so you don’t even need a point in Who Rescued Who or All My BFFs.
- Brawler Big Boom Blaster - while the Madcap sports 2 offensive bonuses, for FL4K and the pet, the Big Boom Blaster offers more subtle utility. This shield’s boosters provide grenades, rocket ammo, and restore shields. With this COM, you can keep a constant supply of grenades, allowing you to spam them for the On Grenade Throw anoint without needing the More than OK Boomer mayhem modifier. It can also roll with roid and amp parts. The combination of utility and damage that this shield provides makes it a strong choice for pet melee builds.
- Red Suit - This shield has several features that make it an amazing pick you and your pets. The first is the radiation aura it provides to the pet. With Atomic Aroma active, it will provide a aura of damage that can kill even TMTD mobs just by being in the vicinity. Secondly, being a Pangolin shield, this can roll with roid (or amp) parts. Lastly, this shield grants immunity to radiation damage for you and your pet. That means no more self damage and insta deaths due to Success Imminent or Atomic Aroma on mayhem water, and you can spam radiation Fishslaps and Hives to your heart’s content.
- Nova Berner - The most powerful nova shield in the game that can roll roid parts, the Nova Berner can be helpful in boss fights where you need a powerful and immediate burst of damage.
- Infernal Wish - This is the most powerful gun damage boosting shield you can get that also rolls with roid parts. If Brawler Ward is the most powerful melee shield for the pet, this is without a doubt the most powerful for FL4K.
- Rico - This shield provides the highest passive non-melee DPS for melee pet builds against gun-toting enemies. While the Beskar sports a 100% reflect damage effect, this shield’s saving grace is that it’s effect persists through shield depletion. The Rico actually boasts a higher reflect chance while depleted (80%) than while the shield is active (50%), making it a perfect fit for this build type.
- During leveling, if you can’t find any of these specific shields, keep an eye out for Pangolin or Anshin Shields. They are the ones that roll with roid parts.
- Power charge is a good augment to pair with 2 roid parts, since the Red Fang will ensure your pet drops the boosters often.
- The Revengenader is a tempting pick for a shield since it can roll with roid and drop grenades on depletion. However, from my testing this effect never procced once for me. I can only assume that, because no other pets besides War Loader can through grenades, they don’t have an ammo pool to draw from to throw them.
Splash Commands: General Overview
Splash Command is a play style that relies on spamming attack commands for pet damage. By building up pet damage to the point where they can consistently 1 hit kill enemies, you can frequently reset the attack command cool down with Eager to Impress. When you manage to string kills back to back, you can get much higher consistent damage than basic attacks alone in Gamma Melee. The pets best suited to this are Spiderant Countess, WAR Loader, and Gunslinger Jabber because their attack commands have a better damage formula due to scaling with splash.
While bonus elements don’t scale off of splash, they apply to non-melee damage sources. This means that War Loader and Gunslinger Jabber attack commands will benefit from Gamma Burst. Although Gunslinger puts his gun away, being able to melee with Roid damage means he will actually deal more DPS in Gamma Burst than outside of it. Every pet now benefits more from going Gamma than using the 200% ASE Splash anoint.
All you need to run splash command are splash and AOE rolls on COM and artifact, 3/3 in Sic Em’, 1 point in Eager to Impress, and a pet whose attack command scales with splash (Countess, Gunslinger, War Loader)
The Math Behind Attack Commands vs Basic Attacks
All pets do the same base melee damage. Generally speaking, attack commands are based off some multiple of the basic melee damage pets deal.
The following pets follow what I call the Standard Configuration. Their attack command damage is set to x4 the basic melee attack damage, which is the same across all of FL4K’s pets. This group includes;
- All Skags (for Eridian, the combo of his suction attack and explosion on the attack command about equals x4 his melee damage).
- Beefcake and Sidekick Jabber (Sidekick’s gun just deals melee damage / 2 and shoots twice per second. Beefcake deals melee damage * 1.5)
- Ion Loader (attack command is 4 ticks of melee damage)
The rest of the pets have their own ratios for attack command to basic attack damage.
- Spiderants Centurion and Scorcher deal x2.2 melee damage on attack commands instead of x4.
- Spiderant Countess deals 5.5x damage on attack command and scales with splash
- Gunslinger Jabber’s SMG has completely different damage ratios to other pets. It deals 2.3x more damage than basic pet melee, and his attack command deals about 10x the DPS of the SMG and scales with splash.
- War Loader deals 3.5x more damage on the attack command than basics. Assuming every pellet crits, he will deal 36k on a basic attack and 126k on an attack command (assuming no throatripper crits). War Loader AC scales with splash.
This information can be helpful when choosing a pet for attack command spamming, or if you want to make a cmdlet build. Generally speaking, pets that have the Standard Configuration tend to be weaker damage dealers overall.
Comparing Pets
Each pet comes with their own strengths and weaknesses for attack command spamming.
Gunslinger Jabber
Strengths
- Has the highest raw attack command damage in the game. Can easily hit 300mil
- Does not need to spec into purple or use Gamma Burst for max DPS with attack command (non-DLC 5 friendly)
- Has utility as well as damage (best frenzy stacker, great with throatripper)
- Neutral damage vs almost all factions
Weaknesses
- Puts his gun away during Gamma Burst, trading his utility for more damage
- Attack command does lose some potency with Gamma, works best with ASE splash
- His position in skill tree makes it difficult to build optimally if you take him (can’t go deep green without giving up deep blue or red).
- Deals self damage frequently, can kill you as well
Countess
Strengths
- Very scalable attack command, benefits from many skills and gear rolls
- On demand hollowpoint activations
- Attack command doubles as a movement skill
- almost all attacks are melee, all scale with roid
Weaknesses
- Corrosive locked (can be mitigated with bonus elements)
- Spiderant, so the AI can be difficult to work with
- Requires purple tree investment to be viable in all content
- has worst synergy with throatripper due to low attack speed
- Bugged with Not My Circus (gets stuck underground)
War Loader
Strengths
- Throws a copy of your grenade, deals very high damage
- does not put away gun during Gamma Burst, keeps utility and damage
- good with throatripper due to shotgun pellets and fire DOTs
Weaknesses
- Bad AI
- Fire/ Rad locked (can be mitigated with bonus elements)
- attack command misses frequently if not in the correct range
- no on demand access to hollowpoint
- lowest attack command damage out of the three when fully built out
- Bugged with Barbaric Yawp and Not My Circus (does not activate the taunt)
BIS Shields for Shield Damage
Shields (and other non-melee damage sources) were granted the ability to gain Gamma Burst’s rad damage. Shield damage builds have tons of choices that are all serviceable, but the best of the best can be boiled down to 5 shields (note that shield damage effects DO NOT stack Frenzy):
- Messy Breakup - this shield has the most natural synergy with the purple tree. It crits frequently for Fuzzy Math and Monkey Do procs, which creates a feedback loop of more drones and more crits to continue the cycle. The high amount of crits also makes hollowpoints very common for clearing, which is appreciated because this shield is heavily single target oriented. Few shields will kill a single enemy faster, but it can feel somewhat slow in a crowded area.
- Faulty Star - this shield has a similar strength to the Messy Breakup: having a large number of procs. A benefit this shield has over the Messy Breakup is that it deals splash damage and can hit multiple enemies. It has a bit more elemental variety than Messy Breakup, making it a decent sidegrade to the shield.
- Void Rift - the most powerful nova shield for the pet, this combines the singularity effect of the black hole with the homing spikes of the impaler. Both facets of this shield do great damage, although if you are using Red Fang the nova will not go off very often.
- Revolter - this shield can add another bonus element to the pets, with the added benefit of scaling with crit damage unlike the others. This shield is more useful for gun toting pets who don’t have a large damage increasing shield like Roid to use on their own attacks. War Loader can use this to great effect, buffing his thrown grenade.
- Stinger - while this shield is not as powerful on pets as it is on FL4K due to the lack of melee specific bonuses, it does interesting properties. The melee damage from the stinger counts as FL4K’s melee damage, and thus can expend your groundbreaker and return ammo through Cutpurse. It can also proc melee artifacts such as static charge, white elephant, and Unleash the Dragon. The nova does not go off very often and the damage you can squeeze out of this shield is not on the same level as other shields in this list, but it is fun to play with nonetheless and has potential to do interesting things.
- Ember’s Blaze - this shield can be used to detonate the ele-crit-nova anointment. When combined with an Unleash the Dragon artifact, this combo produces 10s of billions of damage easily.
- Version 0.m - Aside from being the strongest base game amp shield, the 0.m spawns circles on the ground when the shield is depleted. Combined with Red Fang and Fuzzy Math, these circles will be littered over the battlefield, providing you an additional fully multiplicative 50% damage for you and your pet (this will also apply to Hollowpoints spawned by the pet so long as you are standing in a circle).
Which pet to choose for Shield Damage
With the level 72 patch, you have access to nearly all of FL4K’s pets. Any of them can act as a vehicle for shield damage. To optimize the effectiveness of your build, you should consider three things: the AI of the pet, the passives it provides, and the damage it can deal on its own.
There are 3 pets that are particularly attractive: Spiderant Scorcher, Great Horned Skag, and War Loader. To quickly summarize the merits of each…
Scorcher buffs your damage the most, but has poor AI and damage.
War Loader deals the most damage, but has poor AI and buffs.
Horned Skag has good AI, provides a middle ground in damage and buffs.
Pick your pet according to which you value most.
Pet Specific Mechanics
This section will go over the mechanics specific pets possess that drastically effect their damage output.
As a general rule of thumb, skags will attack about once per/second and spiderants every 1.5 seconds. Jabbers vary a bit. Loaders shoot about as often as Beefcake Jabber.
Spiderant Countess
Base Melee Damage = 7.5 x (1.105)^level
Base Attack Command Damage = 45 x (1.105)^level
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Spiderant Countess deals corrosive damage on all her attacks. She can proc acid DOTs on her attacks. These DOTs stack CH and Pearl and can crit with Throatripper, but they are not viable as a damage source.
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Bonus elements scale off the base damage Countess does, meaning it doesn’t take her elemental strength into its calculation. This works in her favor against all health types. Against flesh when she is dealing 50% damage, Gamma will be dealing full damage. On shields, which also resist corrosion by 50%, Gamma will get a damage boost. Against armor, when Gamma is dealing 50% less damage, she will be dealing full melee damage.
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Countess is the only pet with an attack command that scales off both melee and splash damage bonuses. Her attack command scales off AOE and splash damage radius increases.
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Countess’ attack command is a teleport. This means that she can make exceptional use out of Go for the Eyes since can instantly travel to whichever enemy she is attacking
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She can stack Flesh Melter, Overkill, and Groundbreaker but she doesn’t benefit from it.
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Countess can be instantly killed by Diadems, Anathema, and Scourge in the Guardian Takedown. If you are using her in a build for that content, switch her out when you get these bosses.
Gunslinger Jabber
Base Gun Damage = 1.09 x (1.105)^level
Base Attack Command Damage = 58.5 x (1.105)^level
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Gunslinger deals damage in bursts. He shoots a burst of 12-15-12 before reloading his weapon, which takes about a second. All in all he performs about 40 shots over the course of 2 seconds.
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Gunslinger cannot naturally crit with his SMG
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Gunslinger has excellent aim vs airborne targets, even with his attack command
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Gunslinger’s attack command deals self harm to you and him. To avoid unnecessary deaths, be sure to the best of your ability that he only uses his launcher in clear, open spaces far away from enemies. Otherwise, he will frequently kill himself.
War Loader
Base Shotgun Damage = 2.4 x (1.105)^level
Base Attack Command Damage = 32 x (1.105)^level
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One of War Loader’s attacks allows him to throw your grenade. The grenade War Loader throws can proc the On Grenade Throw anointment, but will not be buffed by any ASE or ASA effects (so no bonus elements or extra grenade damage). The grenade will receive pet damage scaling, meaning it will scale according to formula listed here Pet Damage Formula. The grenade will not receive any additional mayhem scaling aside from pet scaling (x51 on M10/11), so they will not gain the x16 melee damage bonus on Fishslap).
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Some excellent grenades to use on War Loader are Hunter Seeker, Hex, and Triple Sticky grenades (these will double dip the x51 pet scaling on detonation).
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War Loader’s shotgun is capable of hitting critical hits without Throatripper. Each pellet will deal critical hit damage if it hits a crit spot, but not all pellets will hit a crit or even hit the target. Because of this, War Loader’s damage can vary greatly from shot to shot and is difficult to pin down with certainty. Throatripper further compounds this: I’ve seen War Loader’s damage hit from 20k to over 100k.
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War Loader deals incendiary damage on all his attacks. He can proc fire DOTs on his attacks. These DOTs stack CH and Pearl and can crit with Throatripper, but they are not viable as a damage source.
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War Loader’s attack command does not deal self damage even though it receives splash damage buffs.
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War Loader can be instantly killed by Diadems, Anathema, and Scourge in the Guardian Takedown. If you are using War Loader in a build for that content, switch him out when you get these bosses.
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War Loader has a special interaction with the Electric Banjo artifact. He can proc this artifact with his thrown grenade, and the electric chain spawned by war loader’s grenade will receive YOUR damage formula upon it’s creation, essentially being the only known thing in the game at this point that scales off of both FL4K and their pet’s damage formula. @NotQuag has done the testing on this interaction.
Modifiers for Pets
- Mob Mentality
- Not the Face and Holy Crit - Go for the Eyes is a post-add crit like Fade Away, so it comes with the same pitfalls. It doesn’t receive increased critical hit damage from Holy Crit because it isn’t really a crit, but it also doesn’t count towards Not the Face because it isn’t really a crit, so both of these modifiers will tank your pet damage.
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Speed Demon - With set ups relying on Go for the Eyes (mainly splash command set ups with Countess) Speed Demon will make your pet move so fast that it will reach enemies before you can mark them with an attack command. Avoid this if playing melee based splash command builds.
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More than OK Boomer - the live grenade dropped by enemies downs the pet a lot. If using melee pets, be very careful with this modifier.
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Big Kick Energy - This modifier increases the damage Jabbers and Loaders do with their weapons.
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Miscellaneous Info for Pets
- Great Horned Skag’s attack command can knock up the annointed militants in the air to stop their immune phase. Courtesy of @Chaos1091
- Pets can stack Flesh Melter, Pearl, Consecutive Hits, and Overkill, but do not personally benefit from any of those things.
- When you change elevations, most pets will automatically teleport to you. Spiderants will use their attack command and perform Countess’ burrowing attack to teleport to you. This can kill you if you are near barrels and uses up the attack command.
- If a pet is moving too slowly or is attacking enemies you left behind, go into your menu and select another pet. Once it despawns and the time shows up on the bottom of the screen, go into your menu again and select your wanted pet. You can use this to revive a downed pet as well.
- You can’t change pets while their attack commands are on cool down.
- If you enter FFYL or activate Not My Circus while spiderant Countess is performing her attack command, she will get stuck under the map. She can still revive you once, but she will not resurface from this state and cannot change elevations. You will need to select another pet from the menu and then reselect Countess before it spawns in.
- Eridian Skag’s Singularity attack command goes through walls, but the explosion at the end does not.
- Spiderant Centurion and Scorcher had their attack command damage nerfed by 40% in the July 23rd patch. Don’t expect them to do much damage until this is fixed. Horned Skag was bugged like this as well, but was fixed in the level 72 patch.
- Jabbers and Loaders will receive amp damage from Zane’s barrier when shooting through it. This also works with amp shields through Distributed Denial with Gunslinger’s attack command, but only once per activation. Thank you @sammantixbb for the tip.
- Pet melee damage does not scale with cryo or Ice Breaker artifacts, but do scale with roid. Pet Stinger novas however do gain the cryo damage bonus and Icebreaker.
- The pet damage bonus on the Friendbot COM is additive with all other pet damage. You can potentially get 72% pet damage from this COM (2/1 Psycho Head + 3 Big Game and 20% on the COM), but several other COMs give just as much pet damage with more beneficial effects. Since pets rarely die in higher Mayhems, I’d only suggest using this for BY.
- You can occasionally get a second wind for the pet without a Friendbot COM by killing the enemy that downed it. This is inconsistent though.
- The only Hunt skills that do not scale pet damage with Big Game are Furious Attack and Most Dangerous Game.
- As of August 6th hotfix, Interplanetary Stalker’s pet damage does scale with Big Game. However, it does not scale for the full value of the bonus. 5/5 IPS and 3/3 Big Game will give about 10% extra pet damage rather than 15%, and 7/5 IPS with 85% skill effectiveness from a Cosmic Stalker COM will give 54% rather than 72%.
- Fish Slaps thrown by the pets can generate terror for you if you have the anointment “generate terror on melee”. Pet thrown grenades in general proc OGT for you as well.
- Pets appear to have their own kind of melee that is the opposite of post add. Instead of counting as melee for the purposed of gear effects but not scaling with melee bonuses, pet melee scales with roid and other melee bonuses where possible but doesn’t count as melee for effects. This means that pet melee cannot gain increased damage from cryo or icebreaker artifacts, or expend groundbreaker, but a stinger nova from pets can.
Closing
A big shoutout to everyone who’s helped test pets over these past few months! @Ratore @vCarpeDiemv @janejana @plenipotence our lord and savaior @Prismatic since he’s my go to guy for FL4K math when doesn’t even main this class.
This is going to be a living document. If/when 4th skill trees do come, we’re definitely testing the ■■■■ out of whatever new pets we get. And I still have some things to test here (cough cough drone ranger/ buddy system for Hollowpoint cough cough).
As per usual, please feel free to drop any of your findings in this thread as well!
. I think I’ll just community consensus here if anyone else has noticed this.
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