As of last night, I've beaten Golem on my new Master run, so I've gotten a pretty good feel for the new Pets Overhaul update. Seems like a good time to discuss it.

One of my biggest issues with the older mod versions is how you can still get Junimo's level buffs just by having the Stardrop in your inventory/Void Bag; I believe it was like...half effectiveness? But you could still have a second "active" pet equipped in your pet slot, and many of the pet perks introduced in the mod are...substantial. Like, build-altering, honestly. I noticed that for quite a few of the pets,they're basically like having a whole second armor set bonus + a few accessories. This is all just assuming you're not playing with mods like Thorium or Calamity and everything that comes with them, too (I'm doing a Master ranger run in Thorium atm). This, alongside the light pet stat rolls and Junimo's 50% "inactive" buffs, led to some serious power creep. I'm actually pretty new to Terraria in general, but quickly got addicted to Master mode due to the challenge and all the Master/Expert exclusive loot, so this power creep did eat into the challenge a lot. 2.3.8's balance changes are definitely a good call in my opinion.

And yeah, I get that I could just play without Pets Overhaul, but I also enjoy seeing how mods complement the vanilla experience in terms of balance, content, and progression. It feels much more balanced now that Junimo's been nerfed.

One of the neat things I noticed is that, even though only vanilla pets have gotten overhauls in the mod (so far), a lot of them actually synergize well with various elements of other mods. For example, the Master-exclusive pet I got from Plantera is, uh...pretty insane for Ranger builds, let's just say. Thorium's Illumite ranger set makes it even more OP; it's basically on the same tier as the vanilla Shroomite set, but favors a much more aggressive playstyle--its set bonus clearly favors weapons with a high rate of fire, as opposed to the stealth/associated bonuses for Shroomite armor that work better for the Sniper Rifle or other weapons that are slow but powerful. I happened to get a Venus Magnum drop from Plantera; with an Unreal Venus Magnum, the Illumite set + overhauled Plantera master pet, it's basically a minigun that just melts everything--even bosses. It's a nice tradeoff in 2.3.8 because I have to forego the Junimo HP/DPS/damage reduction bonuses in exchange.

Needless to say, I still need to go into boss battles with like 20 different buffs, so it's not like Master mode isn't challenging anymore.

Besides the pet synergy stuff, I feel like this mod can make genuine hybrid builds viable--like melee/magic, and so on. Depending on how cross-mod compatibility goes in the future, this might even make something like a bard/summoner build a thing, but I'll have to experiment. Playing around with builds like this would be a lot harder if Junimo were still power-creeping into everything, so yeah, the balancing in this update was definitely the right call.