You noticed my edit? hurray But it’s sensible to set the threshold early. Hardly ever used those things in TQ, which were triggered on low health.
I personally think one good alternative solution/addition as well would be the pet to use some sort of life leech skill that zaps enemy and it rebounds straight to player to heal the amount of damage dealt over the set period of time. The pet would use that skill if your HP drops under certain percentage.
Another strange experiment would be some sort of area life leech skill. The pet would cast area spell below closest enemy that would look something like that MP-drain area skill in TQ but red of course. It would drain HP of the enemies inside it and convert it into yours if you are also standing in the circle while they are being drained. It would need some balancing done, like it’s healing capabilities should have a little penalty if there’s many enemies inside the circle since you would get insane amounts of HP while in it.
I personally would like the pets to keep on fighting alongside and utilize heals in form of damaging spells. It could dedicate itself in dealing damage while ALSO healing. Of course it’s damage dealing abilities of the skills that convert damage into health shouldn’t be on par with real damaging abilities.
I don’t really like the option of passive regen bonuses while having the pet summoned/near since it really doesn’t give you that dynamic feeling of it actually doing anything.
But I’m certainly ok with regular heals as well, just throwing some ideas on the table here.
In the case that the pet doesn’t just heal, and is thus not set to one mechanic (I.E. healing) I think that it’s okay then.
If the Raven’s only purpose were to heal then I think it should be reliable in doing that, but as you said it has a few other functions, in which case the player should realize that the pet’s reliability on healing is not guaranteed.
I actually like that a lot.
The bird needs to stay BUT the bird needs the ability to become passive so it’ll stay by you and do its job… either use the bird passively so it’ll only give you bonuses or when you tell it to attack like in TQ fir the Function commands to select pets…
keep it, keep the idea and the bird just allow us to set it passive, normal, aggressive… if you do that all issues you have are solved… then mister hardcore is at fault for not keeping the bird alive if its on passive… or not leveling the healing aspect of the bird more or giving it a better dodge ETC…
I do like the idea of a branching skill that makes the pet sort of passive (untargetable by enemies).
I’m not sure if it’d be too OP with that, but it’d be kind of a cool bonus for those that want to spec into the pet more, it goes from being a temporary part of your arsenal in terms of length of time and death, to a more permanent part of your arsenal if you choose.
Maybe you could add a second branching augmentation whereby the raven is still targetable but gains even more awesome mechanics / gets even stronger?
Then you could make one skill lock out the other, not sure if you want to do anything like that though.
In Anarchy Online, the Meta-Physicist class uses pets to attack and heal. It’s kinda cool to have a beast attacking for you and a smaller pet behind you just healing. The beauty of it was though, you could send the pet to heal your other attacking pet, or heal yourself, or heal another party member, or another member’s pet etc etc.
I think for a healer pet to be fair in this sort of game, they have to be able to be targeted. You should fear AOE situations where your pet will take damage. In some cases, if a mob is going for your healer pet, you should employ a knockdown spell or a stun to shut that mob down. If you’re going to have healing pets in the game, I believe you should need to care about losing them. Having them as a passive heal buff is not a good idea IMO. It just screams easy mode.
Having a heal pet that you’re able to command is an idea I’d fully support. I’d like to be able to heal myself with it, or another player, or another pet etc… like my example at the start of this post.
I don’t think we need skill trees for the pet, but you could certainly have a skill for the player to summon better heal pets. Anarchy Online allowed you to buy better skills (spells) which meant you could summon better healing pets (and damage pets).
I use Anarchy Online as an example because I from my experiences, that did healing pets right and I just loved how they worked.
At this stage, I’ll have to vote “meh”. It would depend on more information about how they could work.
This idea is perfectly fine.
And I seriously doubt anyone would rely on this specifically to swoop in and save them.
To me its no different than having a regeneration aura.
So the regen aura is mobile, but more or less where you are… thats cool.
It also reinforces the idea that this class is stronger with their pets alive, and they’re losing more than an extra dmg and some dps when they die.
I think I would look at it like ‘If the pet heal spell is an aura, why bother with the pet? Just have an aura.’ Having the aura only work when in range of the pet could raise all sorts of problems with the pet getting stuck, running away etc. If the pet is only there to ‘look cool’ while otherwise the spells take care of themsleves, is it really necessary?
I personally would like to see a pet that is much more functional in defending the player rather than healing them. I think the raven would be cool if it swooped monsters to cause knockdown, had a screech attack to cause knockback/fear, or could ‘round up’ monsters and lead them away from/to the player.
This is useful especially for a ranged char and makes a purposeful pet, as to use knockdown/fear etc normally the monsters must be attacking the player already.
If the pet has heal effects, maybe it is done by roaming to find unsuspecting monsters, stealthily leeching life from them and returning to the player to deliver the health? If it’s done out of battle, it’s a cool(?) way of regenerating the player health without ‘autorecovery’
If not a raven, a wolf or similar that actually charges the monsters, knocking them down, howls at them and rounds them up/chases them away, runs to your aid to attack monsters when you’re attacked, especially archers, etc
I’d like for once for the pet to not feel like just a buff, aura or shield, but a companion that’s working for me, like a good kelpie on a farm for instance 
I like the idea and support it. It is everyone’s option if the person wants to rely on pet’s healing or will rather think about own health status by self. Especially on hc difficulty, the person would be pretty stupid to rely on anything but self in healing matters…
I am glad, Medierra, you played healer classes and that the inspiration gets projected to this great game. I am always playing healer/support in any game that supports it (heck, I even played spirit healer with some support spells in DA:Origins despite everyone claiming how boring it is…and I loved it!). I will love some sort of hybrid with healing in GD, can’t wait! =)
I do also like the idea. I think it’s good if the pet does not always heal you so that you can’t rely on it. It should just help to get through the game, but not make the game too easy because there is always someone instantly healing you from behind.
When talking about frustration, in many cases, and in the AI one, I think what we see a lot is players who go “it felt like there was nothing I could do”, or “it felt like something was beyond my control”. You’ve mentioned it yourself… you are okay with players getting mad at other players, because there is something that player could have done… they could have pressed the right button.
In this case, we’re looking at it being impossible to “press the right button”.
As you’ve mentioned, this causes frustration, and that’s bad. There’s also a secondary problem, as it gives no difference between “good” and “bad” players. Neither of them have a button to press, or a skill to use properly… a good player could die, or a bad player could live, merely because that’s how the AI happened to work out.
So what I recommend is giving the player a button. In this case, the idea of a pet healing you is pretty neat… so how do we make that something the player controls?
The stupid obvious solution is that player presses button X, and raven casts a heal. This differs from “player casts a heal” only in graphics, and is thus boring. Not recommended. This also doesn’t give you the functionality it seems you are looking for… a pet that keeps you alive WHILE you are doing other things. Now, we look at a way for the player to press a button, but still be available to do other things…
Thought 1 : Tie Raven-Heal to some other cooldown. Once you hit button X, the game checks to see if your raven is there, and then it starts healing you.
Thought 2 : Make Raven-Heal something like a 10s-spam-healfest, on a 30s-cooldown. Thus, the player is still responsible for hitting the button, but then they have the next 9+ seconds in which to make actions.
Thought 3 : Make the raven spawn, and immediately start healing, the second the player hits (arbitrary number… we’ll go with the example 75%) health. This removes all other potential functionality from the raven, but if you really want a passive raven that the player never has to work with, then this will remove any potential AI frustration.
Thought 4 : You could also have a trigger-button come available once the player hits 75% health, and once the player hits that button, the Raven spawns and heals. That’s maybe the most in-depth solution, and is pretty twitchy in a game genre where health goes up and down very drastically very quickly, but reactive abilities have been fun in games in the past.
Bottom line… if you want to remove frustration from the game engine, find a way to make the player responsible for what happens to them. Since the vast majority of what a player does is press buttons… give 'em a button to push. Then the scenario where the heal fails is 99% of the time the fault of the player for not pushing the button, and they’re much more forgiving of the 1% of the time when the raven got caught behind a stalagmite.
Or:
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You could just wait for alpha/beta to see how it works. =)
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The easiest solution (as someone already suggested in this thread a page back) could be to bond the Raven to its master and give it a life leech to transfer. Something like Blood Golem in D2 or a pet in the great mod of Asylum’s did. =) It would heal you or any other companion under conditions I am too lazy to think about now, heh. But you get the image.
Monster Hunter has cats that you bring with you that heal you whenever they feel like it (if you give them that skill). You can go entire quests without them healing, or get so many heals you never use a pot. Its really convenient at times and I never rely on them because its so random.
Pretty much one pot sized heal at random is actually quite nice to have.
Just a thought…
…it might be good to have the pet cast a healing buff on the player that will automatically give a boost at 25% health, because of some sort of connection between pet and master…a buff which disappears if the pet dies.
That way your pet is still important to you…it could save your life…but you’re not relying on AI at all as the buff would be cast on summon.
Alternatively, have you considered the idea that the pet gives you HIS health (you sort of leech it from him) but that the pet might have a very quick health regen. This way you could trigger the health boost yourself, your pet is technically healing you, but if you over-do it you’ll lose your pet (because you killed it)…
Just my 2p worth 
Yes, it would fit the theme well, right? I like it. Sacrifice! =)
I don’t think the ‘health while pet is alive’ would work well, because if the pet dies while you’re not watching in battle, you die too and that sucks.
Your other ideas of pet sacrifice and sharing/donating health is great and could be very effective
Fanks 
Yeah…I really like the idea that you life-leech from your own pet. The onus is on you then not to over-do it (unless you deem it absolutely necessary) and there are no AI complications.
A fast health regen for the pet would be a must, but not so fast that you can do it endlessly…
I’d see a problem with the pet pulling massive aggro because of this, so it might have to be slightly ethereal…harder to hit perhaps?..something like (for those who remember it, the arcane “blur” spell from D&D…used quite effectively in Baldur’s Gate 2, to reduce the chance of being hit)
i liked the health steal idea or the sarifice your pet for health idea, or how cool would it be if your pets life gets higher and higher the more life it steals and if you are low on health it can be sacrificed to give all its health to you.
Or the other alternative instead of the pet healing you rather let it do something to prevent damage, like every monster it hits has a chance to be weakened (does less damage)/ blinded / converted???
Kamikaze pet (was it a raven?).
When health reaches a particular level the pet will sacrifice itself to replenish the life of its master. Don’t make it need to come back and heal, just let it trigger automatically. Lose a pet, gain some health, decide whether tis better to stay alone, or to run away…
Keep the pet summon on a slow cooldown to not devalue the use of potions. Or maybe it is a skill that costs both health and mana to cast. Makes me me think using that option could open the way for a overheal styled buff for tough fights. I don’t know.
I like the idea. As it has been stated numerous times, it is not something you should depend on but something to help sustain your health in some situations. I can’t recall any game that has implemented things like this 100% perfectly. Besides, it’s up to us players to play it smart, not the devs.