I’ve been playing a lot of arbites and I gotta say, I’m sad to see the state of dog in havocs, Perhaps its just power creep but it feels like you’re essentially pigeon holed into some very specific roles if you want to run dog - worse than that, aiming dog is much more difficult than aiming a grenade because it isn’t an instant gratification situation and you have to monitor to make sure the dog is in position for it to work correctly.
Unlike shockmine / arbites grenade where the effect is near instant, it is entirely possible to have the dog tagged to a mob, allow for travel time and for remote detonation to be a very bad call on timing to use.
Mobs like Crushers, reapers, daemon hosts and the Ogryn pack master cannot be latched onto by the dog - so timing requires you to be perfect - as once the dog does an attack it is bounced back and begins to circle the mob for its next pounce.
Mobs like Plague Ogryns, Beasts of Nurgle and Chaos Spawns can be latched onto - but the dog does not stay latched - this means you have a slightly larger window for when you can get a successful detonation off.
When you compare that and travel time to the point and click ease of voltiac shock mine/arbites grenade it just ends up leaving a bad taste in your mouth.
proposed solutions:
for monsters that can be latched onto - the dog shouldn’t let go. Pack master ogryn should likely be added to the list of monsters that the dog can latch onto in the name of consistency.
For mobs that the dog cannot latch onto the dog should definitely circle close - it might be worth adding some sort of leg biting animation - it would be cool to see that even if they cannot be fully stopped they could be slowed. That feels like a pipe dream though (with what budget?).
I think the dog should latch and stay on monsters, constantly applying stacks of bleed/brittleness per the talent descriptions though. right now the time between pounces is so long that they fall off on monstrosities.
It’s definitely kind of annoying to use the dog bomb against enemies it won’t tackle or latch to. But you’re way underselling the blitz specifically and the dog generally. The dog can put out comparable amounts of damage to the skitarii servo skull when speced correctly and you don’t sit on explosion charges. Just take the dog bleed & electrocute talents.
I like dog blitz the most in Havoc. You can tag a single gunner in the backline and press G to disrupt the entire pack when it pounces them. The explosion also stuns bosses which is very valuable, since if you’re playing with a few good people on the team you can chain CC to stunlock the boss to dish out free damage. It also kills disablers almost as fast as a player with a good aim, without requiring any ammo.
The talent that makes the dog target mostly ranged enemies increases dog’s detection radius dramatically. It’s good because you can’t tag normal shooters and they can be a menace in Havoc, especially with buffs from stimms. This dog keystone is very underrated, because it helps clearing out shooters BEFORE they start pressuring the team.
I don’t mind them improving the dog experience somehow, my least favorite blitz on Arby is Shock Mines though. Long arm time + the cooldown time nerfs has done their job. Arby has enough crowd control at base on many weapons, I don’t need blitz that only stuns enemies.
My biggest problem with the dog is that there’s just a few variations of the same build. The dog’s talents are underwhelming in terms of gameplay variety and some of them are not worth taking over generally useful buffs (15% damage after dodge is infinitely better than 15% damage after killing a POUNCED elite or special etc etc). The dog is the main attraction of Arby, but there’s a clear lack of talents that change the dog somehow.
I also still hate the middle keystone. I personally see no adequate builds for it.
I dislike that if you want the dog to do anything other than disabling one enemy at a time and knocking down chaff, you have to take bleed talent and electrocution (stuns ogryns, must have talent). If you go left tree the britleness one is good as well.
What is really bad is Mastiff damage talents for active abilities… Like extra damage during Castigator Stance? Who cares? The dog is going to spend more time running around, being recoiled back from attacks and missing pounces than dealing any meaningful damage. IMO these should be either removed and baked in the ability or have some other effects, like faster shock collar regen during Castigator stance, etc.
I also agree with OP that there should be a way to make Mastiff stay on the boss instead of being dropped off after a couple of seconds.
Yeah, shock mines fell off a lot since Rotten Armour has disappeared from the game. Also I rather have a blitz which helps me push and stagger bosses. Holding a position at all costs ends up badly in Havoc.
I’ve been pondering this a lot lately in regards to how much you have to take to make lone wolf viable versus making the dog viable. It’s an interesting dichotomy. The recharge feature is built into remote detonation, compared to the recharge built into lone wolf the difference seems fairly meaningless in a way save for that you get to recharge your resource with grenade packs.
I usually try to target the other specials to splash damage the Ogryns.
I think the point was that it would recharge on its own and thusly be stronger for it, AND you have the dog.
There could perhaps be some better way to target enemies, since some times you even want the dog to target normal enemies that are annoying. What the dog does to Ogryns could perhaps vary as well - strong attack: kicks away, weaker more cc attack that pairs well with explosion: bites and shakes.
I think the whole point of the Pack Master was that it knows how to deal with dogs, so letting the mastiff latch onto it seems like missing the point entirely.
I wouldn’t even be surprised if the Pack master could capture your dog so you had to help it for once.
The dog suffers from the same issue as the psyker’s head pop skill - your team attacks the shiny enemies you ping. So target switching could perhaps be improved so that you see who the dog is about to attack when it switches.
Yeah, I get it from a fantasy perspective but mechanically it’s an issue.
Man. Man you are so right. I don’t know why the dog target tag needs to be highlighted for everyone else but it sucks from the perspective that it makes my kill target into everyone else’s.
Don’t target those enemies and the dog will wander under their feet unless you run that wasted keystone that increases its linger range. You can also prime the dog explosion, but you can’t hold it very long. Even if they added more frames to that hold ability it’d be too incompatible with havoc pacing.
But sanctioned cheating with the dog is allowed, there’s an ‘auto target’ mod which should have been removed eons ago that makes the dog trigger the explosion by itself. In general though I find the dog is insane value for the CC, basically projecting control over 2 zones at once. It colliding with hit mass like a pox hound is the most useful attribute to me, being able to put out Noosphere esque damage with the blitz function if you pay very good attention to it is just a bonus.
I don’t know. I feel like it should be different. But you can probably just send your dog on other enemies and alleviate it a little. It doesn’t solve the issue of course, but I usually just magdump my bolter into the Pack Master anyway.
It could be a different color I guess. Something to show that doggo is on the job.
I didn’t even know this happened.
I figured it would just be colors changing with the ping priority being “last” or possibly vet being higher as it actually signals that it does something.
Does it break both the dog targeting and the damage boost?
Arby REALLY does not need more free damage, please. I think it should at least require you to do something extra.
Why is it an issue? The mastiff doesn’t deal damage against a pack master but is still beneficial as their pounces interrupt the pack master’s actions, it’s different but still valuable.
This would either be detrimental or potentially too strong depending on if it uses charges or not. It seems odd to me to suggest.
? Yea that’s what video game talent trees are good for. For when you want to improve the effectiveness of a given thing. Would you suggest it to be a problem that you have to spend talent points to strengthen the dog’s effectiveness? What would it ideally look like to you?
The dog damage bonuses are unfortunately pretty worthless since majority of the damage comes from the electrocute & bleed, if those bonuses worked on the electrocute & bleed inflicted by the dog itself that would make them much stronger and actually worth using, potentially too much so with execution order alone giving a nearly constant 150% but those numbers could be tweaked of course.