Tame Beast Feedback Deep Dive

Preface
I am currently creating a beastmaster Merc Tactician. The main focus of the build is creating a hybrid spear/companion build.

The two mains sources of this build are the Tactician Ascendancy Watch How I Do It and the Trusted Kinship keystone.

Feedback - Damage
Very very very poor, even after my heavy investment. To give the full picture:

My companions are given 25% of my weapons damage to their base damage. My current spear is nothing crazy, 112-206 phys, 1-73 lightning, but is performing very well on its own at t5 maps.

I have taken 9 of the 11 total Companion damage nodes on the tree, for 108% increased companion damage.

I have Upwelling active as well, an additional 30% increased damage.

My best beast right now is a Cerberic Bat from Ultimatum, with Haste Aura, Extra Lightning, Extra Chaos. So 2 mods that give between 25-50% extra damage, as well as Haste. I support it with Minion Mastery and Lightning Infusion. Gem level is 15, +1 to 16 with Minion Mastery.

So, with all this, how does it perform?

He is very very slow to clear a pack of white mobs. In T1 maps. The damage is just sad. I don't expect him to solo maps, but with basically half my tree being invested into Companions, I would expect it to perform well above average and able to clear white mobs with ease. Especially with the mods it has.

The Bat also has Periodic Lightning Explosions, which also do almost 0 damage to white T1 mobs.

The Cerberic Bat also seems to have the best damage of the 10+ beasts I've tried, and this is without my superjuiced one.

I was finally able to tame a Crested Behemoth from Ultimatum, and was expecting its slow slams do have high base damage, but its "GigaChaosLaser" tickled an Act 3 Cruel Boss for about 900 damage. My spear basic attack does 4k with no support gems.

TLDR: Damage across the board needs significant improvement.

Feedback - Survivability
The Companions shine in this department.

Once I got 5 of the Companion health nodes, the Keystone that boosts their defenses based on mine, as well as the notable that gives your Strength to your Companion, they rarely die. Bosses or strong rares are the only things that can kill them.

TLDR: With investment, very good, improvements do not seem needed.

Feedback - Utility and Movement
Movement wise, they beast teleport works very well. I have seen some concerns regarding Spectre wisp form bugs, but I'm happy to report after playing 40+ hours with 2 Tame Beasts, they have gotten stuck a total of 1 time outside a boss arena. And they can be easily resummoned!

Utility really speaks for itself, the ability to get all these great rare mods is such an awesome addition to minion play, and general build utility!

TLDR: Beast wisp form is smooth, utility is incredible.

Feedback - Final Notes

First, thank you GGG for adding this skill. For me, this is the best Minion skill in any RPG ever created. Regardless of the ups and downs of future patches, I will be playing PoE 2 for this skill.

That being said, it still needs improvement. I'd guess 95% of people using Tame Beast are using it as an Aura bot, because currently thats its only real use sadly.

There is incredible potential here, and I hope this feedback can help to improve Tame Beast in the future.

I am going to continue to map with 2 Beasts, and will make a second feedback post when I reach t15. Thank you for your time!

Current Beasts as of this post:
Cerberic Bat: Haste Aura, Extra Lightning, Extra Chaos, Lightning Explosions

Riverdrake: Invuln Aura, Extra Lightning

I was wondering about a Tame Beast - focused build where we have them not as a support, but as main damage part as well.

I love the idea that you have to find them and can keep finding new/better ones (GGG please fix the checkpoint respawn beast farm at the camp Act3)

I would love to see a video of you playing, it sounds like you've given this a lot of time and really went for it, trying to make it work.

I hope Companions become more than just a support in further updates :)

It seems like the only thing that maybe affects companion rare modifier damage is companion levels, no supports or even related rare modifiers (like increased aoe) affects them.

Still going to try infernal legion though, since it seems like that's the only thing that can be properly scaled for companions.

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Sargoth_CZ#3391 wrote:

I was wondering about a Tame Beast - focused build where we have them not as a support, but as main damage part as well.

I love the idea that you have to find them and can keep finding new/better ones (GGG please fix the checkpoint respawn beast farm at the camp Act3)

I would love to see a video of you playing, it sounds like you've given this a lot of time and really went for it, trying to make it work.

I hope Companions become more than just a support in further updates :)

I was thinking about making some very basic videos of me mapping to help give feedback, I'll post a link in this post if I do.

Companions have so much potential to be a unique minion archetype, just hopeful GGG is open to improving and iterating upon it.