Familiar mechanics are familiar

General Discussion
1

I have spoken about my distaste for long cooldown skills before. You know the ones, they spend the majority of time NOT doing anything.

I want to point out the Varog active skill Forest’s Wrath. Nowhere does it iindicate how often the skill casts, what its cooldown is, is it AOE, is it insta-hit or can it be deflected

While I’m on the subject, can soneone exlpain to me the edge case function the passive skill Lobber is supposed to fulfill?

I’ll provide the skill text: “familiar damage increases if there is no enemy in range of the player”

LOL WTF :crazy_face:

Just what exactly is this supposed to do? Someone please provide an example that won’t make me SMH

2

I think it meant no enemy close to your character aka melee range or something.

I think it probably work like Bloody Reach legendary gem.

3

I don’t want it to seem like I had this arguement all planned out ahead of time, and it’s natural to feel that way.

But

If the familiar AI attacks the nearest, closest enemy, wouldn’t that instantly negate the damage bonus thereby making the skill utterly useless?

4

Well…

The familiar hits enemies near the selected target, i.e. more than one enemy.
That means it’s a multi-target / area of damage attack.

As for Lobber, it means the familiar’s attacks will do more damage if there are no enemies within 3 metres of the hero. As to how useful (or otherwise) this is will entirely depend on what sort of hero you are. If you’re melee, like a Barb, it’s pretty much useless, but if you’re a ranged class, like a Necro, it’ll be up most of the time.

5

I find the new pet mechanics just confusing. I read a guide on reddit but it is only more confusing. Melding, combining, skills, traits… wtf?
What should we actually do with these pets (as F2P)? And why are Niszas contracts every time “sold out”?

6

I find this highly doubtful since you can’t control the familiar’s targeting, and since familiars use their active skill as soon as it is ready, good luck timing that

For pets to choose a target based on it’s passive skill would be a monumenral leap in AI that these little critters just don’t have

As far as I can tell familiar behavior is identical across all types, only the skins are different. I would love to see your example of a familliar executing this correctly

I reiterate: useless

7

Honestly, everyone, even the deep divers streaming, are still getting their heads around the full mechanics of familiars.
This said, I have managed to mediocrely convert around twenty-one, of which I managed to create six aberrants and then converted twice again. One of them ended up with six yellow skills active (not traits - it got none), the other went back to blue and received two traits. Go figure?

What I have worked out is that the most desirable familiar is one that has mostly legendary and orange skills with as many traits as the game allows. what that is, I have no fricking idea?

Hopefully, Blizzard preferably, will eventually provide some kind of ‘walkthrough guide’ that people can look at to work out how many approximate conversions are needed to achieve blue, yellow, orange and legendary. I won’t hold my breath though.

EDIT - Screenshot so it makes more sense…

https://prnt.sc/65fs4bOClHDH

~AND~

Apparently this is what my screenshot sould eventually be… I have no idea how much converting I have to do to get there. Confused? You are not alone
https://prnt.sc/7bkx08Pw3dpr