Bump, confirming that companions do a fraction of a fraction of tooltip damage and kudos to Fenris for narrowing down the cause.
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It’s definitely not working like it should.
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Can confirm! Please fix. I really want this build to be viable!
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Even at lower level before getting paragon, I have a tool tip passive of 264-323 [16%] damage from wolve’s passive.
They melee for 80 damage each on world tier 2. Thats less than half of the tooltip amount.
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It’s especially lame because one of our malignant thingies is wolf-based. Because of the companion damage bug it’s basically a blank malignant heart.
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Bumping for visibility.
bumpity bumpity bump
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Considering minions have been bugged since launch, and blizzard has made zero comment or changes to them, im gonna say that they DONT read anything. An entire section of a class tree simply doesn’t work.
Just to note the extreme nature of this problem: on my normal shred build w/shepherd’s aspect, companions are dealing 7.5% of the tooltip damage. It really does make them worthless aside from the aspect boost.
If you could answer Blizzard, so we know you’re looking into it, it would be much appreciated. Thanks.
So after my final testing tonight you are right.
Got Wild’s Glyph too rank 15 so 109% companion damage. 80x% passive multiplicative
Alpha 143% on Ammy
Companion +3 wolves heart.
Stampede +1 companion and 26% bonus damage.
With this many modifiers they should be ripping. They hit for a couple 100 dmg.
Nothing works, think I’ll uninstall this bugged game.
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It’s very disappointing that Blizzard won’t even acknowledge the core problem. It seems they will keep ineffectually buffing our broken companions and wonder why we’re not using them.
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After further testing I have changed my conclusion and updated the initial post. There’s clearly a bug, but it’s unclear whether it is a tooltip or damage bug. It may also be a legacy issue with code/developers from Diablo 3 calculating companion damage in the same way within a game with different mechanics and those who choose the passive companion skill damage% being unaware of how damage is calculated.
As an example of how rough this is for companion damage - 3 skill points in ‘call of the wild’ will only increase passive wolf damage by 2.4% at level 1 (not accounting for other multipliers/factors). ‘+companion damage’ is not affected by this double multiplier.
Sorry for previous incorrect information. It was very difficult to catch when dealing with very small numbers (more ranks/gear make it more obvious but add significant noise to the testing).
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How does this all sit with the current patch notes and the bug fixes to Call of the wild passive and Aspect of the stampede? Could all of the missing damage be down to just those 2 things or are they refusing to acknowledge a deeper rooted issue?
My gut feeling with the bugged damage for wolves passive and active and the ravens passive, was that the stated damage was being shared by the number of companions, so that if you had 3 wolves and the tooltip said for example 3k passive damage, 15k active, then each wolf would deal 1k passive and 5k active, obviously also reduced by the above two confirmed bugs (totaling up to 56% less damage than stated) and enemy resistances (up to 50%?, not sure), leaving passive damage at around 200-250 and active at about 1.2k, both per wolf.
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I just went through the patch notes and did a little more testing (haven’t played my immortal character so it’s less costly to test still). The answer is no, but it definitely helps (and is a VERY good sign), and I don’t think the developers classify it as a bug.
Aspect of the Stampede and Call of the Wild were the two multipliers I tested most recently to confirm whether multipliers were being double-multiplied. I was confused when I found that they were being double multiplied as I had tested them previously (without understanding the issue) and didn’t notice the problem, but I also noticed that when applying either of these effects the tooltip was immediately changed (which I don’t think was the case at launch); this isn’t normal for effects. After testing just now, I realized that the tooltip no longer changes when adding these effects, so there was a quiet change (or maybe I missed it in earlier patch notes), showing that the original change was likely a mistake.
I previously didn’t test the ‘Wilds’ glyph thoroughly because it has an additional factor (large companion damage boost) which would skew the numbers. That said, I tested it just now and it seems to be working without the double skill multiplier (as far as I can tell), so I guess it was just those two multipliers that were broken. I’m guessing Blizzard could have fixed this immediately (as they changed the tooltip) but chose to put it in the major patch so everyone was aware.
BUT that doesn’t change the ‘damage bucket’ or ‘skill (wisdom) bucket’ being double-multiplied. These multipliers may be the result of legacy (D3) code which the developers either can’t change or have chosen to keep. The upgrade on passive wolf and passive raven damage will help as the base skill multiplier isn’t going up by just 7% for ravens and 3.2% for wolves, but is also going up by those same amounts for the damage and willpower buckets. So it’s ‘like’ a triple damage boost (as compared to normal damage boosts) - check my previous posts if you want to understand it more precisely.
The number of companions isn’t what’s affecting the damage. You can test this yourself very quickly by adding ‘brutal ravens’. If what you’re suggesting was the case then your single-target raven damage would drop by 50%. Also, if you add aspect of stampede to a ring or gloves your damage should go down slightly (Damage * 1.26 * 2/3), but it goes up. From my tests (check the link for more thorough info) the math also doesn’t work.
The best news from all of this is that Blizzard may be listening to us as they fixed both of the multipliers I tested and referenced in my testing, then again it may be just a coincidence. I’m assuming they don’t want to change the double-multipliers for passive damage as that could create VERY strong companion builds which would ruin the game. All other skills in the skill-tree multiply differently than companions so it’s possible they can’t fix the tooltip without causing many other issues (or it would take an exorbitant amount of time). If Blizzard is listening, PLEASE add the below line (or something similar) at the end of the ‘passive damage’ description within the companion skills. It would help alleviate significant confusion - thanks!
‘This multiplier additionally applies to primary damage and statistical increases’
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So even after the fix Wolves are only going to get 11% of what your core damage should add and 11% of what your willpower should add, and ravens 20%.
It looks like from your other thread that that percentage rises with more points into the skill, I currently have wolves at rank 9, doing 25% and it seems quite easy to get 9+ ranks in wolves. So i’m starting to see their logic when they say they dont want companions to trample all over minions who get 30% of the players base stats.
But im still confused as I’ve just loaded up my druid, tooltips for passive and active do not currently include %'s from call of the wild or stampede as you say, nor does it include the percentage from aspect of the alpha, that I have equipped with a 90% damage buff, but does include the percentages from wild glyph I have equipped.
So, my passive tooltip for wolves says that they should deal 3k damage, ignoring stampede and call of the wild (as they aren’t accounted for in the tooltip anyway), that should still be 5.7k when including aspect of the alpha’s 90% increase (which is not accounted for in the tooltips either) but my werewolves are hitting for 2k each, and for context im lvl71 and doing lvl21 Nightmare dungeons, so lvl 75 enemies.
So is aspect of the alpha bugged in the same way that stampede and call of the wild are? If not then is the ~60% difference in expected damage and actual damage all down to the multiplier being used in the 2nd and 3rd bracket and a difference of 4 levels between player and enemy? seems excessive if so.
EDIT:
Just realised my maths is way off and I shouldnt have added alpha’s 90% to the 3K passive as that already included the 80% from wilds, it would be more like 4.7k, but still to only get 2k when the tooltip says 3k and doesnt include the “90% increase” from aspect of the alpha just seems way off.
I haven’t thoroughly tested Alpha, but as far as I can tell all ‘+companion damage’ is both working as you would expect and reflecting correctly on the tooltip.
So yes, that seems about right given the double multipliers on willpower and the primary damage bucket. Consider if you have 800 willpower and +400% damage, those should multiply your damage output by 1.8 and 5 respectively. So 1,000 damage would become 9,000 damage (on the tooltip), but given the 25% multipliers, you would actually get 2,400 damage - it’s a huge difference.
In theory if you could level up your skill multiplier over 100%, the damage would benefit from this and become insane, but i don’t think there’s anyway you can get close as of now. Crit damage seems unaffected from what i could tell, and I’m not sure how crit rate is calculated (may be the same as usual), so that’s one avenue you could try.
In general, i think the devs want us to get most of the companion damage out of the active skills.
Yeah I don’t think it really matters what they “want” when they are unable to even convey how much damage a skill should actually be doing. Is it that hard to have the tooltips show the ACTUAL damage the skill should be doing to an average enemy of your level?
So currently, all druid companion percentage buffs AND your primary damage stat (willpower) only give 7.8-25% (lvl1-9 of the skill) of the buff they actually say they do on your screen, but its ok cos they’re raising that by a couple of percent…Feels like they literally don’t get the actual issue considering we’re missing 75%-92.2% of two entire damage buckets and all the aspects/buffs show completely false numbers.
The tooltip seems like a simple fix, but it could be that all skills are calculated in the same way and there’s no way to individual calculate each skill. If that’s the case, they may have to re-make the entire tooltip calculation system in order to fix this issue. Just a theory, but as they fixed the [x] modifier issue, it’s hard to imagine they didn’t notice that 2 other buckets also aren’t calculating correctly.
And yeah, the buffs are lipstick on a pig, but at least they buffed the base skill damage of ravens and wolves, which is the most potent way to buff given the double-multipliers; another sign they understand the issue.
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i mean i’m very pessimistic. given the stuff i see i feel like the vast majority of dev testing and dev experience with abilities is on WT1-2 with mid-level characters, where the double multiplier penalty is not nearly as noticeable (i don’t know about anyone else but neither my eternal or seasonal characters accumulate much e.g. willpower until paragon levels). i could easily see them bandaging aspect of the stampede and call of the wild without knowing about/worrying about a more fundamental passive skill damage issue.
if they are aware, it’s true that suddenly removing the second multiplier could be disruptive… but to be clear we’re talking about going up to like ~5k damage/hit per passive wolf hit (after enemy DR) for an all-in companion build like my level 92 eternal server druid. that’s peanuts compared to the literally hundreds of thousands of damage i can do in an AREA with one cast of my landslide in that same build. it’s not going to completely overturn the meta, and it seems more like a bare minimum payoff for all the stuff i’ve invested in companions with that build (incl maxed out wilds glyph, +companion damage gear, and +3 to companion skills amulet… all of which basically doesn’t matter because the baseline [due to double-multiplication of willpower, etc] is so low)
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