DBNO doesn’t affect Demons or Undead.
Undead offset this by being able to be taken in parties of 3 or 4.
Demons offset this…by…what?
Buff the summoned circle demons please.
And for the nth time: Buff the Demon-Lord perk and figure out the remaining corrupted attributes.
PLEASE.
I mean, even just from the lore alone a summoned demon should be way stronger than your average human guard / soldier (thrall). Killable yes, but still way stronger than what we have in game. I do however like that you CAN lose control of them though.
When demons could be summoned in addition to regular followers, they were a questionable, but somewhat fun gimmick.
Now… I just don’t understand what they’re for. It#s just stupid to use them instead of some random human fighter.
In my opinion, things just should be reverted to how they were. One might instead make them super powerful, so that they’d be a temporary, but in that timeframe superior follower to a plain old human fighter. Buuuut that would cause balancing issues in PvP, I think. So, having them be a bit lackluster, but non-exclusive is the safer option.
Perhaps, but at the same time running a corrupted build in PvP is well… 
So I guess there should be some perk to doing it? Even if it is a temporary follower with all of the … faults of follower AI.
How about linking your summoned creatures to the circle and it is a normal follower. Any damage done to the summoned creature is directed at the circle. Once the circle is destroyed, the summoned is hostile towards the player.
Demons are literally the strongest non-thrall follower in the game and rivals even that of equipped thralls. They probably don’t need a buff. Besides demons are expendable, you don’t want to keep them around as they will eventually try to kill you.
I assume that demons likely fall under the “pet” banner and likely haven’t been addressed due to that. They may revisit demons along with pets… whenever that will be.
I personally don’t like the fact that there are no indication when they will rip tender. And that sucks. Stoped to use abbysal horses after they become wild in the middle of the road.
Armour at least has indication in their description. Zombies, abbysal followers and mounts don’t. Zombies at least decay for few days.
P.S. I miss my Legion skeleton followers. Still don’t understand why they were removed 
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Maybe T1/T2 Thralls. Not once have any of my lvl 20 summons ever matched the durability of a T4 with good equipment. And this is with me electing to keep Well-Trained over investing in the nigh-useless Demon-Lord.
I will concede that if I’m wearing proper gear with buffs and giving them food they can hit like a truck (when they actually hit, I hate their movesets), but they take hits like a chump. Some supernatural durability would be nice.
I don’t mind the chance they’ll turn on me, it’s the risk I take for bringing them.
I wouldn’t say no to their perks getting a bit of a buff and maybe even set instead of random (like the named dogs).
But the investment of a level 20 T4 thrall with good equipment should be better than the relatively cheap demon. Demons gain a level per kill (though I think they should come out at 20) even if the encounters are trivial.
But what would one use Demons for? PvP? At least in PvE, I just don’t see any use case.
A well-equipped thrall is just plain better, and equipment is very easy to come by even without any crafting. Demons level quickly, yes, but are temporary. With the new down-but-not-dead-system, even the risk to lose a thrall is not really an issue anymore.
Back when the volcano used to kill thralls via falling and lava, it might have been viable to bring a demon there. That would have been difficult due to the long travel time to the volcano, but I’d have seen a viable use case for that. But now? Why ever use them?
Exactly. This contributes to their weakness: Even though they speed level who wants to sit there and wait for them to heal up before getting into combat? It’s an unnecessary step that would help alleviate my concerns.
I’m an RP idiot who intentionally plays the most difficult and frustrating playstyle because: reasons.
I dunno, I just wanted to feel like I’m some fel-tainted master of the dark arts who kites around and orders his minion to do his bidding. But the Abyssal call is weak, the Demon-Lord perk is weaker, and despite the deflection perk and sharing damage with my follower I feel weaker overall, but I digress.
I like what @Taemien suggested: Baseline and buff their perks and bring them out at level 20. I’d personally go a little further and make all their food heal at 20hp/s.
I’d use one as extra damage when farming bosses if I don’t have the relative build that would keep thralls up and alive. If the demon dies, its no issue.
I didn’t want to question your desire to use demons - I agree with that. Variety is good.
My question was if there’s any “objective”, pragmatic, stat-based reason to use them, as that is probably Funcom’s metric for the issue of how powerful they should be.
And in that regard, a buff to their stats or some other bonus seems to be in order. It’s similar to animals and golems in my opinion.
Yeah, that would be a possible use case. I can’t think of any boss or levelling situation where that would be the case, though. Possibly the PvE raid due to its either buggy or ill-fated design, but else? I can hardly imagine a situation where one would be able to summon a demon, but not capture and equip a capable thrall. At least in PvE, most players will have better thralls ready in their base.
I’ve levelled several (4? 5?) characters with harsh, self-imposed restrictions such as a 90% XP penalty. But I never felt that using a demon was superior or even equivalent to what I had access to thrall-wise. And all of that was before the down-but-not-out-system. If I understand you correctly, you don’t actually use them, either.
Disagree.
Demons are demons. Humans are fragile creatures, even in a shell of iron.
Even when Conan himself defeated a demon in melee, he fought with everything he had and still barely won, very nearly dying in the process, and probably would have too if not provided with a healing potion afterwards.
Every corrupted perk should be better than a non-corrupted perk of equal level, since all corrupted perks come at the cost of losing health and stamina.
Temporary followers can be stronger than ones that require a time-investment because they are temporary. Even if you level up a demon to 20, you don’t get to keep it.
It depends on the build, so I don’t use demons all the time. They are a tool for a specific job, like many things in the game. I will admit there are too many tools for too many jobs, thought that is a subject for another thread.
What you describe is thematics. And thematics plays a very important part in this game. But there’s also risk versus reward and the investment thereof.
A T4 thrall takes time to find, takes effort to bring down, and then time to train up. Even at a fast paced 1.0x exp rate, it can take significant effort to get them to level 20. It also takes material cost and farming to get the equipment needed.
For a demon its literally a few mats in the chalk circle, sacrifice a few low level thralls, and you can pretty much produce these on demand. Getting them to level 20 takes maybe 5-10 minutes killing trash that poses no threat to it.
Fully Leveled and Equiped thrall effort > Fully Leveled Demon effort
Stronger > Weaker
Now one thing they could consider doing is if the Demon breaks free, its stats significantly increase and it effectively becomes a boss on the loose. Then that would satisfy the thematic argument. That would be a sufficient risk added to the aforementioned coming out at level 20 reward mentioned earlier.
Just because the demon is temporary doesn’t mean its cost and investment warrant it to be stronger. Currently its one of the strongest pets in the game that takes very little effort for a player to produce.
I can produce a fully leveled demon within 5 minutes of logging in. Even if you have a T4 thrall in storage, how far can you get them in the same time frame? Maybe level 2 if you’re spicy enough?
I totally understand the frustration with the system. If you wanted to main a demonologist, it does feel like you’re second fiddle to someone using thralls. But buffing demons to replace thralls isn’t the way to go right now, and buffs to their durability would squarely put them in that territory.
The system needs another overhaul to ensure these razor edge underpowered vs overpowered situations don’t happen. But it in the current state I’m always going to favor time and resource investment to determine the strength of something.
You may be able to make a fully-leveled demon in five minutes when you log in, but you have to do that every time you log in. Once a thrall is level 20, you never need to train them again, especially now that DBNO makes them highly resistant to death.
Demons do not benefit from DBNO. You lose them, and you need to spend the time getting another one yet again.
Yes, temporary status actually does matter.
The more I think this through, I’m seeing your point more and I feel that I should clarify that I want demons strengthened in direct relation to corrupted builds. IMO, thematically a non-corrupted build should get a weak, baseline demon that acts just as the ones now do. But somebody who’s invested their health and stamina should see better relative benefits than what’s available. I guess that warrants a different conversation around enhancing the viability of corrupted build overall though.