[Feedback] Why are Pet skills so point hungry?

I am neither a great builder nor much of a pet player, but if Crate reduced the skill point investment as suggested by you, it would be a huge buff for pure pet builds.

Some dev feedback on the topic of hybrid builds from last November:

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Nothing says you need to max both pets or every skill on both lines in every Occultist pet build. Some Occultists just use the Bird, some use the Hound, some might take 1 with minimal investment in the other etc. Any build that wants to take both with significant investment like you describe should be prepared to invest little in their second mastery unless going solo Occultist.

This would be monstrously overpowered, even as an exclusive.

Speaking entirely on the number of skill points this needs and ignoring it’s viability. It would be possible if the gear was there but it just isn’t. Builds that replace the Briarthorn with a 3 node skill like Savagery are doable because there are sets and lots of supporting gear built around it to compare.

One word of advice I can give for you though regarding some successful hybrids I’ve seen is to find your player damage skills from minimal investment skills (typically 30 skill points max) like Doom Bolt, Reap Spirit or Bone Harvest or to look at item granted skills like Oblivion or Winter King’s Might.

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Alright. I wasn’t really expecting this to be even taken into consideration since it’s a little bit too late for such massive changes but i wanted to leave my opinion in case they could take it into consideration for a future game.

I started the game with a Pet Cabalist. Since i knew very little about how to make a decent build i just threw points into what i thought was good. I started in Occultist and invested pretty much every point i had in bird and hound with some points going into skeletons in the necromancer mastery. Things got really rough once i got to the Ashes of Malmouth content. I barely had any support skills, no RR, no heal, nothing. Just a useless bird, a dog that would blow up super fast and some skeletons that did pretty much nothing. At that point i grew frustrated and stopped playing for a while. Only after i got back and started to look for information that i figured everything that was wrong. I already adjusted that character by removing every point from bird and hound and moving to skeletons and blight fiend. It is playable now but not really interesting so i don’t really feel like finishing it. The heavy point requirement of those skills feel like a noob trap, to be honest.

I’m going to try to make a hybrid build that doesn’t require too many points into an offensive skill. Maybe Pyromancer with Conflagration Relic?

Grim Dawn is not a game that holds your hand.

Yeah noobs thinks either that they can just go all in damage, or just put one point into every skill there is. One needs to tune the amount of offense with proper defense too you know. I have seen many pet builds maxing some of the birb and dog skills, but not all at once simply because you can never afford that - you have to make choices in this game.

This isn’t just restricted to pets. All to often I see new players invest too many points in their offensive skills and either neglect their mastery bar (leaving them will below average health/core stats) or they neglect core mastery defensive and utility skills that they need to minimise damage later on.

Don’t feel bad about doing it, I and plenty of people here will have made similar mistakes and struggled on their first characters as well.

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I think you need to define what “interesting” is to you. Most builds are going to be pretty lazy, i.e. the pets do all the work while you stand around and watch, maybe casting the occasionally debuff like Curse of Frailty. Some are at the other extreme and are piano builds where you’re constantly hitting buttons all the time.

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When I see a 4-node skill I expect it to be one hell of an amazing and fun skill to play with, because it has to make up for all the missed opportunities. Last time I tried Occultist pets that was not it. Admittingly it was years ago, but I doubt much changed about the fact that it’s basically watching how a single expensive pet plays the game instead of you, even if it were blowing up things with a single hit. Same goes for Shaman pets. Necromancer is the only pet class that feels good out of the box.

Anything that i consider cool is interesting to me. Sitting around just casting Curse of Frailty while a bunch of Skeletons shoot stuff is super boring but shooting Devouring Swarms while a super aggressive Primal Spirit teleports around murdering everything is cool. The difference is the feel, i believe. Swarm doesn’t really deal any damage but the fact that i need to aim makes me feel like i’m actually participating in the fight. I think i prefer a more proactive style of play and that’s the reason why i’m interested in hybrid builds where i can fight alongside my pets and not just be a heal/debuff bot.

Pet builds are considered lazy but they demand way too many buttons. It’s not a big deal early on as pets rarely die (when built properly with good equipment) but it can be pretty overwhelming in the late game because you have to pay attention to re-summon the pets when they die while not forgetting your debuffs/heals/auras and so on.

You have listened too much to Maya :wink:

I recently made SSF cheap pet build (WIP) [1.1.9.0] SSF Budget Bleed & Chaos Pet Conjurer (SR 65-66) and it was a blast! The pets VERY seldom died, not even against the act bosses in ultimate. I lost one birb to Gargabol. The hardest thing in main campaign was Morgoneth. It was a very easy to make and play build!

I think i prefer a more proactive style of play and that’s the reason why i’m interested in hybrid builds where i can fight alongside my pets and not just be a heal/debuff bot.

You should perhaps look up pseudo pet builds, like those that uses blade spirit and/or guardians of empyrion then

Gargabol nearly destroyed me when i fought him in Ultimate with my Pet Ritualist. Only Archmage Aleksander got close to that level of danger.

I already play a Player Scaled Pet build. It’s a lightning Vindicator with Storm Totems and Wind Devils. It’s okay but the fact that enemies don’t get distracted by them makes a pretty big difference. It doesn’t produce the same feel as having actual Pets.

But if you wanna fight alongside with your pets, why does it matter if your pets aggro or not? :thinking:

To be honest, i don’t have a good reason. I just want them to act as tanks/distractions while i sneak in and backstab my weakened foes. I guess i’m pretty evil. :wink:

It’s not just pet builds that are skill point hungry, several other build archetypes also have the same thing with being skill point hungry.

It’s a deliberate design choice to force the player to make decisions. Or else we end up like in Titan Quest where you can pretty much max out every skill from the two masteries because there are so many skill points.

I do have Titan Quest but i barely played it. I only finished Act 1. I found the game to be pretty boring for the most part. It is very slow and there aren’t any exciting skills to work with early on (unlike GD which is full of fun stuff to play with early on). The loot was also really uninteresting. I couldn’t bring myself to play it anymore since i already owned Grim Dawn at that point. It’s pretty much the same reason why i’m not particularly excited for the remaster of D2. The game is really outdated in terms of mechanics and QoL.

It’s a deliberate design choice to force the player to make decisions. Or else we end up like in Titan Quest where you can pretty much max out every skill from the two masteries because there are so many skill points.

Deliberate design choice when the game came out. If they could remove skill points in patches I’m sure they would alter the amount of investment you need to put into skills.

Pets do all the work for you, of course they’d be hungry all the time!

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Not sure why you think that. :thinking:

Because they are your partner, your weapon and your armor.
What’s more, skills can be balanced. I think, if it’s better to have more pet mutation branch skills than to occupy skill points, such as choosing between better quality and more quantity. Of course, it’s going to be a big job.

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