Summoner / pet-builds in this game?

[Swatti]

I had a max-pet WD in Diablo 3 and loved it, tried "Grim Dawn" recently and the summoner/pet setups are too tedious.

I dont know why, but i always end up playing the pet-classes in games like these.

I've been lurking and following this game and it seems its going to places...

Now, how are the pet-setups in this game?

[Tyyne]

Most of the classes have some kind of pets and there are quite a few good pet builds in the official forums, check them out there.

[Goose Whimsey, PhD]

Why do people want to make characters who just passively run around and let their AI controlled, dumb-dumb pets play the game for them? There just seems to be so little action, reaction, or strategy involved, outside of min/maxing, but whatever. to each their own.

id rather this game stay as far away from being a clone of others in it's genre as possible.

[kekkuli]

Originally posted by Goose Whimsey, PhD:

Why do people want to make characters who just passively run around and let their AI controlled, dumb-dumb pets play the game for them? There just seems to be so little action, reaction, or strategy involved, outside of min/maxing, but whatever. to each their own.

id rather this game stay as far away from being a clone of others in it's genre as possible.

You're wrong about that, most pet builds in GD are pretty active because you are proccing buffs and using skills to buff your minions all the time. I've had pet builds with like 6+ active skills to use.

Same goes for LE, you can't really play passive pet builds, or they are not that effective at least.

[Fargol]

In LE the Primalist critters are pretty strong, even un-beefed, and the only real challenge is when you're fighting a boss who has a powerful attack that you've learned to stay away from, but your pets will continue to attack even when bathed in fire that kills them.

You spend a good deal of the fight running from the fire whilst spamming the "pet attack" key near you so they avoid the fire. Let up for a second, and they'll go right back into the fire.

This is why I'd love to have a way to toggle the pets behavior; i.e. Passive / Normal / Aggressive where if Defensive will only attack if I direct them to. I don't believe Passive is possible in GD, but you can better control what they do and when.

[Swatti]

I dont know why but i love playing summoners in ARPGs and MMOs. You know the ones that send their NPC minions at you running away spamming "l33t sk1llz" macros? Jeah, thats me.
It can get boring but LE and Diablo does have you do things and not just watch, while for example Grim Dawn really doesnt have much to do other than watch and wait.

Diablo did it "quite nicely" so the pets just have massive AOE-avoidance. No need for them to be "smart" and no need to micro-manage where to go and when. Easy to implement and balance.

Best setup would be that pets only "get downed" and not killed. Heavy AOE-avoidance but normal'ish direct-damage so they do go down when they get hit hard, and recover faster based on player action like player dealing damage or taking damage. Kinda like what D3 did with followers, but with a bit of player action involved.

I tried necro in LE and its quite nice, BUT the pets feel too passive. In D3 the pets actively seek out targets, in LE they take a moment to start attacking and by then the enemies are already attacking you. Minor issue and avoidable but it could also be fixed easily.
More pet-speed out of combat and longer target-range, aka: if there is an enemy somewhere in view, anywhere, attack it.
Stances, passive, defensive, aggro would be nice. Could do without em too if the need for them were reduced. AOE-avoidance, only "downed" and not killed, no need for stances.

Wraiths are flawed. No matter where or when you summon them, they always run to you first, then pick a target and attack. For a timed pet that is not ok. Overall not very powerful and short duration. Wish there was an option to make a limited amount as permanent pets.

Skeleton mages seem not very mage'ish. One spell, not very strong, thats it. I was expecting more. Feels like a skelly-archer with different skin. Hoping the AOE spell can spice things up a bit.

Overall the management is quite easy. Mana-regen is fast and the summons have no CD so its not a chore to do in a fight. In comparison Grim Dawn has you wait for long CDs to re-summon pets.
Would be awasum to have a late-tier passive that auto-summons any pet when there is room. Maybe only out-of-combat.

[andrew.thiele]

It depends on the pet build you make, but in Grim Dawn there are certainly a lot of active pet builds available. I generally had 10-16 skills on my pet builds to cycle through, making them my most active builds played in that game.

Though, I also mostly played high level Shattered Realm (SR75+) or Celestial bosses where it required a bit more work on the users end to succeed. In single player, sure it was a lot easier to get by without much work with most pet builds, but they could still be very active if you wanted them to.

[Violesta]

Also there are peeps like me who are older or whatever, who have lost their fast twitch ability. Im looking at this game. I love grim dawn and their pet builds. love the mods too. Allowing even more pet builds. So thanks for this thread. This is on my wishlist waiting for a sale.

[LupisVolk]

Primalist and Acolyte are the two who get pets from the base class. Sentinel's forge Guard sub class has a summon or two.

[MeGa]

Originally posted by LupisVolk:

Primalist and Acolyte are the two who get pets from the base class. Sentinel's forge Guard sub class has a summon or two.

I am a pet class lover, playing summoners back in the time of Everquest, Diablo 1 etc

LE has amazing pet possibilities. Also, not only acolyte / necro and primalist / beastmaster have minions, but also Forge Guard (a permanent Living Armor pet, but also can easily summon a dozen of temporary living swords and axes) and Rogue with her Ballistas and Decoy minions.

Plus like in other games, some weapons or equip can summon bees, fire skeletons and other stuff.

Very recommended game for pet lovers!

[RodHull]

Originally posted by MeGa:

Very recommended game for pet lovers!

Presuming work is done

I have played 1000s of hours of GD and POE and the pets here in LE are nowhere near up to scratch in terms of behaviour (not power thats mostly fine) the AI is atrocious and not just the AI but also the tethering and weird way they constantly ping back to you and get stuck moving to and from targets. Coming from games like POE and GD (even D3) which nail pet play so well it feels really poorly implemented at the moment and on higher difficulties just feels frustrating to play.

An example, as an acolyte in high level MOF there are multiple (most actually) enemies that have charge/rush/leap attacks, they will engage you as soon as you even click them, by the time your braindead pets react the enemies have already closed distance with their leaps/rush attacks (which often have immunity frames in them) now these are easy to dodge so they wont kill you but now your pets are on their way to location the mobs were, not where they are now, so then they tether back to you and by the time they engage the mobs and kill them its like a wasted 10 to 15 seconds which over the course of play session really starts to grate on your nerves.

[LupisVolk]

Originally posted by MeGa:

I am a pet class lover, playing summoners back in the time of Everquest, Diablo 1 etc

LE has amazing pet possibilities. Also, not only acolyte / necro and primalist / beastmaster have minions, but also Forge Guard (a permanent Living Armor pet, but also can easily summon a dozen of temporary living swords and axes) and Rogue with her Ballistas and Decoy minions.

Plus like in other games, some weapons or equip can summon bees, fire skeletons and other stuff.

Very recommended game for pet lovers!

True however the two classes/sub classes i mentioned are pet's primary, anything else secondary.

[Swatti]

Grim Dawn "would be" awasum with mods increasing spawn, BUT for some reason about ~50% of mobs cause some form of AOE under the player or the mob, so pets become completely useless. Since the cooldowns are so long its mostly downtime re-summoning things, or with no spawn-mods its ~5secs of fighting, then 15-30sec of looking for the next one.

LE pets have slow reaction times and need larger target/attack range.

Path of Exile i havent played far enough to understand most of the mechanics but it also seems to suffer from slow reacting pets.

Sadly it seems Diablo 3 is still the king when it comes to this stuff... Then again, biggest budget and its been around for loooong time. At some point tho, the progression just stops as i have nearly the best gear one can have.

[MeGa]

Originally posted by Swatti:

Grim Dawn "would be" awasum with mods increasing spawn, BUT for some reason about ~50% of mobs cause some form of AOE under the player or the mob, so pets become completely useless. Since the cooldowns are so long its mostly downtime re-summoning things, or with no spawn-mods its ~5secs of fighting, then 15-30sec of looking for the next one.

LE pets have slow reaction times and need larger target/attack range.

Path of Exile i havent played far enough to understand most of the mechanics but it also seems to suffer from slow reacting pets.

Sadly it seems Diablo 3 is still the king when it comes to this stuff... Then again, biggest budget and its been around for loooong time. At some point tho, the progression just stops as i have nearly the best gear one can have.

Well you asked about pet set ups, and its what my reply is about ;)

If the question would have been about pet AI, range or reaction time, I would have answered sth like that pet AI has been commented on being improved during ea and even talked about the possibility of adding pet stances, etc (citation needed XD)

[Swatti]

The LE pet AI is not bad, and there seems to be room for improvement. I just picked up the game so i dont know how it was before. I doubt its very high on developement priorities.

To be honest the stances are not really needed. It would be nice if a "pet focused" setup would have massive AOE-avoidance in some skill "one would pick for such setup" anyways so the pets will last under fire. That would be a nice, and D3 proven way to compromise since we cant control where they go and when.

I'm still torn which of the three i should devote my time to. Last Epoch, Path Of Exile or Grim Dawn... LE seems to have to least tedious pets from the three and its other qualities and options seem better from the others.

[Violesta]

gd is a finished game but very good modding community. poe is free so try it out & they just released their big patch. Last epoch is brand new and far from finished. I just bought it. One of the reasons why is apparently devs are listening to the players about stuff like this and theres a good chance they will fix or adjust the pet complaints. I just started. but I immediately did the pet ones. But it will take time, its obvious they havent even put all the classes in yet. One thing I wish is I could choose male or female for each class.