I get that pet build aren’t optimal for boss runs, but come on. Jack may be the best pet class (considering both his abilities and his pet’s) in BL. Gaige was crazy powerful too, but people still built around DT, even in OP levels. So why are Jack’s pets, who don’t suffer from derpy AI, subject to neglect?
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I my Darth timothy is based around the pets
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I mean to do damage, not as kill skill engines.
Although now that I think about it, I guess all the novas are probably what you mean. I was thinking more along the lines of suped up Jackasses, kinda like DT with MiS and a roid shield.
I see that people are discouraged from going deep into the HoTS tree, and that doesn’t make sense to me since you can still get all 3 capstones in TPS. Leadership and Sponsored By are awesome no doubt, but PtR is an amazing captone on its own. It allows you to have a pet that can actually stand on its own w/out doing stupid s**t like DT was prone to do, or require a bunch of maintenance (Rolling Thunder makes it really difficult to keep painting targets to keep Wolf out) to function optimally.
It certainly shouldn’t be entirely discarded because there are better alternatves.
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If gbx made a good COM that boosted Delegation, or a non “tank Jack” Hero COM, it could’ve been done.
But as it stands a reliable pet build doesn’t have a good enough COM to support it, and GG specs blow Hero specs out of the water on every front.
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By how much though? Its not as if this is a Siren build based around Cloud Kill on OP8. The Jackasses do absurd amounts of damage, and there are still more than enough skill points for Jack to clean house as well.
If managed decently, any mod that boosts Collaborate, in conjunction with Bolster, could make for a good pet Jack. The health buffer Jackasses get (along with the health regen of TTF) would give them more wiggle room for Delegation to activate without killing them. They draw aggro so Jack can build up Accountability and Lean on Me. All the while still having more than enough points to get AA and Sponsored By.
High power, low fire rate weapons like old hyperions get a much needed boosts. Before you know it, you’ve got a “B***h and the Beast” set up for Jack, or you can use the Protagonist mod to push the Jackasses damage through the roof. There are options to support it.
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Colleaborate ONLY works when Digi-Jacks die so it’s basically useless if you’re not popping Jacks, and if you’re popping jacks Bolster is basically useless because your BFF won’t be able to sustain your Jacks for very long.
IMO they needed a COM that boosted TTF, Delegation, and either Bolster or Lean on Me (Really it could boost inspire for all I care so at the very least the Blue COM would have Delegation and either Bolster or TtF) and some kind of Offensive Stat. That way he could actually keep his health high enough to sustain lean on Me and Accountability and have his lackeys soak all the damage. Instead he has the VIP and Protagonists COMs which are BASICALLY THE SAME COM (They Both boost Bolster, TtF, Max Health, Regen, and a third skill that boosts a Shield Stat). Jack didn’t need two Tank COMs, Then there’s Role Model and Paragon which are basically MORE tank COMs with even stupider skills.
It’s not a thing for a reason. but it CAN be fixed with a good Delegation COM.
Thats why I said if you manage Collaborate, it could be useful. Unboosted, it takes Bolster 5 seconds to reach the maximum damage bonus that Collaborate gives, but you still have the freedom to move around and not be glued to the same spot.
If you boost Collaborate to 10/5 then you get a damage bonus that would take Bolster 9 seconds to reach unboosted, but you also have a personal damage boost. Seems like a good deal to me.
And while I do agree with you about the need for a good delegation COM (I would prefer Resolute, Delegation, and one other skill), I don’t think its impossible to do with the COMs he has now.
Take the antagonist for instance. It boosts delegation, Collaborate, and Winning while giving increased cooldown rate. The Cooldown is useful for pet builds because it does take a little longer to kill things, since Jackasses seem to have better burst damage than DPS. The bonus to Delegation gives you damge reduction and redistributes it to your Jacks, while Bolster and TTF give them the health they need to stay alive through that punishment. Collaborate would give you and the Jacks a 100% damage boost for the entirety of their duration, and the Jacks’ damage can go even higher thanks to Bolster. Then you have Winning, which is icing on the cake. All these skills work together to keep you healthy while keeping the Jacks alive (after the max Collaborate stacks have been reached), and all of it fuels the kill skill engine that makes Jack who he is.
Its not perfect, and I wish there was a better way to do it, but I think there are at least a few ways to make pet builds approach GG specs.
Well what Im saying Is that you need to kill your Jacks 10 times to get Collaborate Stacks, which then will last for basically zero seconds because you generally won’t have a COM boosted BFF and your AS will basically run out as soon as you get it to a respectable amount of stacks, and then you lose all your stacks. Also by the time you get your Collaborate Stacks you then have to stop and wait for your bolster to stack up and have your jacks actually kill things.
Not neccessarily. It doesn’t take much added damage for the Jacks to kill things.
Take Rolling Thunder for instance. It adds 10% to wolf’s damage every 5 seconds, yet it doesn’t take that many stacks for wolf to kill things faster than Wilhelm.
The Jacks work similarily. At +50% damage, they are wrecking mobs on their own, and thats only with 5 seconds. With only 5 seconds (only Bolster), they can keep BFF and TTF going pretty well by themselves. Once you start to factor in other damage boosts, like Collaborate, then it becomes even easier for them to sustain themselves.
I mean When GG builds take 1 pop to start wrecking mobs and Hero Builds 5 seconds of surviving or basically half of your duration to stack collaborate. It’s not even close to comparable. The jacks damage is good with mobs and basically nothing vs bosses.
Depends on which bosses. I used the Jackasses in the Sentinel fight (coop, so more health) and they wrecked him pretty bad. They didn’t obliterate him, but they did noticable damage to his shields.
And its not like this is BL2 OP8. THoTS isn’t a tree full of horribly scaled rank skills. It has some great defensive buffs in there, and when you compare the skills in it to their counterparts in GG, they either compliment each other very well (hero pose and winning, Lean on Me and Accountability) or have similar effectiveness in different situtations (TTF and Teamwork, Bolster and Collaborate, Resolute and Delegation).
And how much of a difference is 1 second versus 5? All you need to wreck stuff with Jack is 1 kill. Whether that kill comes from Leadership, grenades, guns or what have you, you still only need 1. If al you need is 1 kill, then they should stand on their own merits once kill skills are taken into consideration anyway.
So the difference between GG and HoTS is Collaborate, accountability, Teamwork, and commitment. Considering how they work, Lean on Me and Accountability are kind of interchangeable. So that leaves Collaborate, teamwork, and commitment. Even of those 3, only Collaborate and commitment have no comparable skill in HoTS.
So what you’re missing HoTS is the damage, fire rate, and reload speed from Collaborate and Commitment. They are sizeable bounses no doubt, and they most certinly would make the difference in raid situations (mainly Eclipse and the mutator arena). But would they really make enough of a difference while mobbing to discard the playstyle entirely? I’m not sure if they would
You’re missing AA (One of the biggest reasons GG >> Hero). and the Kill Skills you’re talking about are nowhere near as good when you’re not abusing them with constant popping.
And sure w/e if you’re saying Hero Builds are Good for mobbing, sure w/e they are I’m not going to argue that, but so is Melee Wilhelm, Elemental Claptrap and Literally Every Build ever because mobbing is laughable.
The deal is there’s no Hero builds based on having your jacks survive that can flat out outperform Jack popping builds in any way, i mean even your best idea involves popping them anyway, and even then you’re not doing anything spectacular with them for very long, because your AS is going to run out by the time you get anything close to comparable.
A small unrelated point, Accountability isn’t as good as Lean on Me because you’re going to take damage and lose all of your stacks.
This seems to be where we disagree. In my experience, Jackasses get kills fast enough for you to still abuse your kill skills. There may be a second or 2 sometimes when they aren’t active, but for the most part they are always on.
Also, there are more than enough skill points to get AA. Heck, you can get every capstone if you skip Integrity.
I don’t really get what you’re saying about mobbing. The majority of the game is mobbing. Even at endgame when you’re farming or killing bosses, there is a lot of mobbing going on while you are trying to reach them. And even on bosses, as long as they are flesh, Jacks can do just fine, and there are only 2 bosses you can farm at endgame that are armored. Admittedly, for EOS, Raid sentinel, and Felicity it won’t be as good. But neither would melee Athena, and she still gets plenty of love even though people know what CS can do.
I know Accountability isn’t good, but it was for comparison’s sake.
Lastly, that exercise was to see how a pet Jack w/out the Tank COMs (just w/out Bolster really) could be done. If the complaint is that building around Jacks deprives Jack of his own damage, thats one way to solve it. It wasn’t about whether pet builds were better. I get that GG builds work better most of the time, but that doesn’t mean Hero builds don’t work at all or should be actively discouraged.
This is similar to how Gaige has her usual anarchy spec, nd then there is the Catalyst DoT spec. Does one work better than the other most of time? Sure, but that doesn’t totally invalidate the other one.
My point on mobbing is that literally any build can mob, so saying that a Hero Build can mob well doesn’t mean much, yes a large part of the game is mobbing, but if your build is bad against bosses you can’t really ignore that.
As I said before, there isn’t a good COM for a meat shield pet jack build to do well. At least gaige had Catalyst COMs and COMs that were good enough for her Pet Builds to cater to these different builds. Jack has tank COMs, and Tank Jack is a pretty bad place to start your Hero build.
That being said I’m going to brew something to see if I can make it work. I have my doubts as I’ve had no success with the hero tree in the past.
Edit: I forgot Eridian Vanquisher, he has 6 tank COMs
To be fair, Gaige had a melee build that could kill Hyperius on OP8 and still mob very well, while Zombie Maya definitely couldn’t mob. So some things we wouldn’t expect to work do, and others are pretty bad outside of specific contexts.
My only gipe here is that a tree with good skills is being ignored. Hero builds may not be as good against some bosses, but then you can just change COMs. Isn’t that what everyone did for BL2 any way? Maya switched to Trickster for Saturn, Axton switched to the Veteran for Hyperius, Sal switched to the MonK. With the amount of points we have in TPS theres no reason why we can’t just have a “master spec” and switch COMs based on the situation.
Afterall, it makes perfect sense. Melee Athenas would switch to the Storm, melee Clappys to anything that boosts OLT, melee Wilhelms to the CE, and hero Jacks to the projection, CEO, CoE, or whatever else. If we already have to switch out Oz kits/relics based on the enviroment and whatever else, class mods shouldn’t be a problem.
EDIT: Off topic, but if the protagonist COM boosted Integrity, that would end end this conversation in a hurry.
The whole tree isn’t being ignored, the other two trees are better going deep into, that’s all.
The later points in FE (Sponsorships AA and Company Man) and getting the other kill skills are better than the tank points or DJ damage points you get from investing in the Hero Tree.
What you’re saying isn’t like switching COMs it’s like going deep in Sal’s Brawn Tree instead of taking more points in his other trees. You can’t fix that with a simple COM switch.
The “Master Spec” for Jack ignores the latter half of the Hero Tree, that’s it.
I mean if the Protagonist Com boosted not hero pose and didn’t give Max Health and Shield Regeneration THEN I wouldn’t have to sit here and continue saying that deep Hero Builds aren’t worth it.
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Fair point, but there is a bit of a difference. The latter half of the Brawn tree was largely invalidated by Moxxi weapons. There isn’t any piece of gear in TPS that could invalidate PtR, Lean on Me, or Resolute (one of his only 2 damage boosting skills that doesn’t require kills).
Jesus what’s the Hero COM were you trying run with that spec, it’s all over the place
???
That was a build to get all the COM boosts from the Projection, CEO, CoE and CD. I’d probably just run with a VIP if I used that spec, but if we’re trying to reach all skills that those COMs boost (or if just don’t care about the chronicler), then just switch it to this http://thepresequel.com/Jack/54515100000010530215004101411415005011
Either way, now you can use either of his boss killing COMs, the CD, or a hero COM.
I’m just thinking of a GG spec that can use a Projection/CEO and not be completely ruined by taking Hero Points, so you can switch to a Hero Com without respec’ing