Pet master viable?

[Stormtrooper]

I'm thinking about creating a new char that relies heavily on the use of pets. My idea is a summoner with "call of the wild" (wolves), "Sylvan Nymph" and "Core Dweller". But I'm not sure if the pets will be strong enough to carry my char through legendary difficulty. So my question: Can a pet master make through the entire game on the highest difficulty? And ist it fun to play? I'd be pleased if you would share your experiences/opinions.

[rulikstanislav]

absolutely, pets are strong.

[Robert Zerker]

It's viable. Leveling might not be the funniest thing sadly, unless you already have plenty of items to gear your summoner on his/her journey.

Pets may struggle a bit by the end of each difficulty, if you don't have good items to boost them.

-Core Dweller is quite good and it will hold the aggro as long as it has hp.

-Wolves are strong. The more, the better. I think you can have 3 of them at once, but this requires 16+ pts in the base skill (so either +skill gear is needed, or a shrine of mastery)

-Nymph has huge damage potential, but the AI is weird. You'll need to micro-manage her a bit. She'll tend to stay way out of range of the battle (and buffs) but that's what makes her a good anti-boss pet, she's generally out of range of the enemy's AoE. Also, sometimes, she'll teleport to you if she's too far behind, which can be bad or good, depending on where you are at this moment.

[Necanthrope]

I ran a Soothsayer (Nature/Spirit) through to the end of Legendary earlier last year. It was a zero death run and only used self found equipment. I also more or less stopped attacking myself some way into Normal. Instead I concentrated on buffing the pets, debuffing the enemies and generally staying out of trouble.

So over all I'd say pets are very viable. However this assumes you make the necessary skill point investment and ensure you have the best pet boosting jewelry etc for your level. Its worth noting though that even doing this your killing speed will not be as fast as some other builds.

My tips for Nature / Earth is to 1 point Heart of Oak for the speed boost then max Call of the Wild. The wolves will then annihilate everything for quite a while. Get your Core Dweller (Earth Enchantment, Brimstone, Heat Shield & Stoneform if you want) with 1 point. Now work up to Strength of the Pack and max it (Nymph, Briar Ward and the rest of the Heart of Oak tree are nice 1 pointers). Finally max Survival Instinct.

What this does is maximises the potential of your wolves as early as possible. They are you main DPS pets. The base skill is initially enough to make them very effective. Strength of the Pack is the next massive damage boost. Finally Survival Instinct gives them another damage boost and some survivability.

For yourself Briar Ward and Earthbind are excellent skills to keep things away. Plague will be needed in Epic but its useful anytime. You can go all in on health and just command the pets. Alternatively go Intelligence and boost the Earth Enchantment line and Eruption (you might struggle to use the more skill point intensive Volcanic Orb). You also have a third hybrid option of going Strength. Earth Spells scale with STR and INT so this is possible but much harder to do without a clear plan on how to gear it.

You'll want to keep scouring the shops for pet boosting jewelry and staff. If you can keep upgrading to the next tier as soon as your level allows it will make a big difference. You'll also want to try and find at least +2 over all to Nature skills. if you can get Call of the Wild to 18 (max via skill point investment is 16) you can summon 3 wolves. This is huge considering the massive investment you will have made in them.

[chris.ferrantegerard]

Originally posted by Stormtrooper:

I'm thinking about creating a new char that relies heavily on the use of pets. My idea is a summoner with "call of the wild" (wolves), "Sylvan Nymph" and "Core Dweller". But I'm not sure if the pets will be strong enough to carry my char through legendary difficulty. So my question: Can a pet master make through the entire game on the highest difficulty?

Pet builds are very viable in Titan Quest Anniversary Edition. I've cleared legendary with several pet oriented builds (pure support caster, reflection, offensive melee / pet hybrid, etc.) Late game normal is most probably the most difficult part as pets can take a beating there. The 100% health buff for killing Yeti boss in Act 3 in AE helps with the health pool through (console version is original version and doesn't have the health buff)

Pets actually scale much better in epic / legendary than in normal. Pets get additional stat buffs on the higher difficulties and enemy strength doesn't scale as much.

You'll be needing to use some slots (mostly rings) to equip items that buff damage your pets do through. Pet builds tend to be fairly gear independent through imo. When you have pets that tank for you then you can get away with pretty garbage gear. You'll need a min of +2 to nature to get 18/16 wolves which lets you summon a third wolf and should get at least +4 skill to all to get reach ultimate levels.

FYI, pet AI is reasonable but can get messed up at times. Sometimes they won't attack enemies probably and some enemies may ignore them and run up and smack you instead.

And is it fun to play?

Fun is subjective. Some players don't care for it, some enjoy it. So I'm not sure if you'll enjoy the playstyle or not. Some don't like having AI pets do stuff for them, or prefer more hands on builds.


As you were talking about using wolves and core dweller then you're thinking of going nature / earth. Dweller makes for a decent tank but dies a little too fast to my liking (it has a nice health pool and armour if I recall but these aren't as good as other pets mitigation / avoidance abilities). You'll be able to heal it with nature through and wolves will provide you multiple DPS / tankers.

Haven't played this combination yet but it sounds like it would be best played as a pet / pure caster build. Earth for fire based pure casting skills and Dweller as tank. Nature for wolves, health buff, heal, cooldown refresh and Plague dot for resistance reduction (lots of enemies have good elemental resistance in higher difficulties)


Other possible builds include Soothsayer (Spirit / Nature) for support caster with lots of pets or Champion (Warfare / Dream) for an offensive melee hybrid that has great survivability and damage himself while having great synergy with wolves and destroying bosses (actually completed full game 0 death clear with him actually and wrote steam guides to both builds)

[rlee87]

I havent played this game in awhile so forgive me if im not up to date with patches. pet builds are viable however in normal they are not as strong. starting act 3ish you will notice pets are not as effective. In higher difficulties pets get amazing buffs. keep in mind you really need to farm items with pet modifiers to make pets work, having another character run through normal helps alot. as for which pets, core dweller is not that great because its such a skill point hogger and under performs based on the amount of skill points invested. wolf and lich are your best dps permanent pets. summon outsider is powerful but not permanent and long cd. flying eye has an amazing aoe buff (works great with wolves) and fairly tanky because its hard to hit. you can also do a hybrid build using ancestral horn summon, but this build requires rare items (strength items with pet modifiers). another unusual pet build is using lay traps (traps are considered pets). as for the nymph i recall her not worth investing skill points until much later when you got all the important skills.

[Stormtrooper]

Thank you all for your helpful answers. After having read your replies, I'm wondering if I should rather play as a soothsayer. I always liked using the Lich King in other build. He appeared to be a bit more useful than Core Dweller. Also I could use the "Ternion Attack" to improve my attacking potential. I also considered building a ritualist as kind of a hybrid. I could use the wolves and the nymph as pets and use psionic beam/and psionic touch to give my char a powerful tool to dish out lots of damage. Do you think that might work?

[ninetales]

Not as well as you'd think. The main problem with Nature/x pet builds is that they are heavily skill point dependent, which is fine if you pair Nature with masteries like Dream or even Warfare (for powerful yet easily accessible skills like Trance of Empathy/Convalescence and Battle Standard) but not with masteries which require a bit more skill point investment, like Spirit.

A plain Wanderer is downright OP in normal difficulty just because you gain so much from investing your skill points in critical skills like Heart of Oak, Plague, Refresh (always keep at 4 points to remove wolf cooldown) and the wolves' Survival Instinct. Add Regrowth/Dissemination and a decent amount of Defensive Ability/DA to the mix and you basically just stampede through everything.
Killing speed is never an issue thanks to the versatility offered by a full 4-piece set of +pet elemental damage gear (staff/rings/amulet) plus of course a fully maxed Plague tree and scrolls (Stalwart Alliance to quickly clear out anything resistant to elemental damage, Sky's Rage to clear out anything else).
There are very few builds in the game that can kill tanky mobs quite as fast as a Wanderer with maxed plague tree, wolves and Sky's Rage in normal, and none of them are as easy to gear.

Overall your best bet if you want to pair Nature with Spirit is to wait for Epic and then visit a Mystic to refund/respend your skill points. In this way, you also gain a bit of insight into how Nature mastery works and you'll know the bare minimum investment you need to attempt hybrid pet builds, because that's a very different can of worms you'll need to figure out through experience/experimentation more than anything. Feel free to "research" your way through that one if you're willing to scour the internet for long lost pages relating to how mechanics like OA/DA, -resistance and slows enemy attack speed work in-game (among others).

Also, unless you have a magic item stash somewhere that gives you access to any item in the game (including specific completion bonuses from things like relics/artifacts) then there WILL be an element of randomness to each build you make, and that can have a profound effect on characters trying to do multiple things at once. It's just easier to focus on one thing at a time and then, after you reach mid Epic, take a good look at the loot you've accumulated so far and take that into consideration as you decide what your build should ultimately look like.

[Stormtrooper]

I tend to go for a ritualist. The "master mind" ability from the nightmare pet seems rather useful as it gives +40% on pet damage and +135% on health and energy regeneration. Wouldn't that be more helpful than the liche king as an aditional pet?

[Necanthrope]

@Stormtrooper

Spirit has the skill Dark Covenant that with its synergy buffs for +50% physical at max rank (more with plus skills). Its easy enough later on to have this always up with minus recharge equipment which is common for INT based equipment. In addition its also gives you a speed buff and completely solves all energy issues for you and your pets.

If the choice is between Earth and Spirit for a pet build (I assumed you where set on Earth) then go Spirit. Your going to get 5 permanent pets. The wolves although they will die are meat grinders later on. The Lich is incredibly tanky later on with some great abilities. You have the best debuff in the game in Plague and an awesome buff in Dark Covenant.

You should also take into consideration that with enough minus recharge and Refresh you can have the Outsider up at all times late game. Although this is somewhat difficult to achieve. Even before that this guy with just 1 point will make a big difference in boss fights or versus champions.

Spirit also provides the 1 point Circle of Power to help with recharge. Then you have Deathchill Aura and Deathward as an additional layer of defence slowing enemies and reducing their damage. If you decide to do damage yourself these skills will also buff your damage via synergies.

I really enjoyed my Sooth run and imo if you starting out fresh with no stashed equipment its is easily the most powerful and easy to gear pet build. All you need to do to make it viable is go all in on pets and constantly check the shops for pet boosting jewelry and staffs.

[JewelryStar]

/txhuy88:

You can refer these:
- Warlock Pet Build: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbrW_iSBu5k
- Illusionist Pet Build: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwuMnitPHCA
- Ranger Pet Build: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwTCtH8dZXY
- Soothsayer Pet Build: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yq83_RyQgso
- Rituallist Pet Build: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xll_NPedEL0
- Champion Pet Build: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ttt8zzHwj9g