Growl Replacement Ideas

[ironjacket]

Typed up something more detailed, wasn't logged in. Heres the tl;dr

Various suggestions

Easiest quickest change - Just tweak the numbers. A 50% chance to reduce the damage taken by 40% is the same as a 20% chance to reduce the damage taken by 100% while removing the frustration of growl + miss + parry/kite stopping several attacks in a row.

Bad idea but trying to open the floor for a creative discussion - A skill that provides pets with x% baseline vamp could give bms an equal (or higher) amount of sustain as growl during a fight but would make bursting them out in pvp/killing them in general easier. Overlaps with stalkers, but those are possibly too popular anyway.

Be creative (another bad idea) - People complain about koks being strong. Could implement a skill with some effect that scales inversely with current pet delay (easy to overbuff cows). Synergizes with stalking and gets worse with koks equipped. No direct ideas, but we have all the freedom in the world.


Growl is possibly the strongest skill in the game outside of affinitae, so theres a lot of room to put in an overpowered skill. Honestly, if growl is replaced with something mediocre then bms are going to be left in a pretty bad spot, so it needs to be pretty strong. Glitch is giving us all the freedom in the world to suggest a replacement to one of the most universally hated things in the game. The sooner we can come up with a decent idea the sooner he can fix it and give us something else.

[Tsutsu]

Originally Posted by ironjacket

Typed up something more detailed, wasn't logged in. Heres the tl;dr

Various suggestions

Easiest quickest change - Just tweak the numbers. A 50% chance to reduce the damage taken by 40% is the same as a 20% chance to reduce the damage taken by 100% while removing the frustration of growl + miss + parry/kite stopping several attacks in a row.

Bad idea but trying to open the floor for a creative discussion - A skill that provides pets with x% baseline vamp could give bms an equal (or higher) amount of sustain as growl during a fight but would make bursting them out in pvp/killing them in general easier. Overlaps with stalkers, but those are possibly too popular anyway.

Be creative (another bad idea) - People complain about koks being strong. Could implement a skill with some effect that scales inversely with current pet delay (easy to overbuff cows). Synergizes with stalking and gets worse with koks equipped. No direct ideas, but we have all the freedom in the world.


Growl is possibly the strongest skill in the game outside of affinitae, so theres a lot of room to put in an overpowered skill. Honestly, if growl is replaced with something mediocre then bms are going to be left in a pretty bad spot, so it needs to be pretty strong. Glitch is giving us all the freedom in the world to suggest a replacement to one of the most universally hated things in the game. The sooner we can come up with a decent idea the sooner he can fix it and give us something else.

BM's wont be in a bad spot if it is replaced with something mediocre... they would STILL have more avoidance than any other build. That's the core issue here... they can avoid more than any other build in the game with the skills they have at their disposal. I do however like your idea of the mitigation. perhaps something like a 10% chance per whip/pet equipped to mitigate 10-15% of the damage they would have received.

Or another idea, a 10% chance per pet/whip to ignore stun/daze/mes/blind.

or a chance on hit to decrese the time on a bleed tick?

[ironjacket]

Bestial Sacrifice - While this skill provides an interesting newish mechanic, I have a few questions. Is it at one point in this skill that my pets will become maimed and deal less damage? Does the damage reduction they receive increase as the skill gains levels or is it a static amount when you're sub 50% provided you have at least one level?

Pretty big nerf to survivability compared to growl, but thats not necessarily a bad thing.

Bear Hide - Fantastic solution to an increasing problem.

Blood for Blood - Interesting, will definitely help offset the fairly significant survivability change of growl -> Bestial Sacrifice.

Safe to say PVE-wise its a net nerf, and probably a nerf in pvp (except dotters) as well. 21% hp just isn't much in comparison to a flat 19% damage reduction from growl (albeit random procs) not even counting the downside for maim.

[Barsoom]

So... We go from a skill that helps non-BMs, to three skills that help BMs more than non-BMs. I didn't know BMs needed a buff. I appreciate the desire not to do RNG-based prevent effects - good call on that one. That said, the patch reinforces the idea that you want a BM to tank for you and that developing a non-tank team is untenable for high zones. Growl had a place for PvE. For non-BMs, this patch is definitely a major nerf.