Pet builds and walking simulators

Grim Dawn General Discussion
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This might look like a complaint, but it isn’t one.
I just had some thoughts and wanted to share them.
I enjoy pet builds in GD.
Having said that… What the fuck is a walking simulator?

I mean, I know the term.
I’ve played pet / summoner builds in PoE and LE, where there was a possibility to actually play with a “move to” command and the horde of fanboys eliminated everything in sight.
That was a walking simulator.

Then I tried pet builds in GD and what the fuck are those people talking about?!?
Pet builds are the most piano I ever played in this game.

Let’s establish the baseline: auto-attack builds are the most braindead this game has to offer.
Regardless if it’s melee, ranged, 1h + shield, 2h, dw.
Any 6 possible combinations of these are borderline passive gameplay to the point that you just hold down your DAR on left click, regularly spamming auxiliary skills like ring of steel, movement skills, debuffs with shout or curse, etc.
And of course occasionally press buttons for vibes (pneumatic, blood of dreeg, seal, ascension etc) and spacebar for dodging if you really feel like it.

Spam casters play quite similar to that, with just a bit more nuance (sometimes).
Do I even need to mention retal builds?

Now, what do we have with pets?
On paper we just summon the bois and start walking.

In practice, the walk is slow and can be dramatically improved with pressing buttons.
And if Occultist side of this feels quite manageable — we just spam blood on cd and throw curse on every hero we see once; the moment we add either shaman or god forbid the necromancer to the mix — we’re fucked, big time.

With Shaman we get to use Wendigo Totem which has to be strategically placed, not just randomly thrown anywhere on the screen. And we have to recast it, minding the positioning, throughout every meaningful fight.

Then Devouring Swarm provides additional debuff (if we benefit from the damage type). At least this is applied in general direction of the enemy, which is nice. But it’s another button.
Then we maybe want to use Primal Spirit, and considering <100% uptime we, once again, have to consider when to use it. Well, at least it’s not positional.

But if we’re looking at Necromancer… God I hate this mastery for how many buttons it provides (TBF this is relevant for any playstyle involving Necro, but is especially painful for me in pet builds), even more so because those buttons are fucking great.

So, Bone Harvest (Soul Harvest) isn’t optional.
Then there is reap spirit as a “spammy” cd cast.
Call of the Grave isn’t optional.
Ill omen, which I don’t understand.
And finally Mark of Torment, which looks like a skill from a melee kit to me but is somehow taken in both pet builds that are currently in top 20, and it has to be used strategically.

So that’s at least 4 buttons from a single mastery of necro. 5 if you feel fancy.
3 from Shaman.
2 From occultist.

Then there is almost mandatory “pet attack” command which is very helpful for positioning, moving the bois from the puddles, focus fire. Extra good in Bysmiel Occultist because Raven projs shotgun (or do they?).
Then there is, of course, a movement skill.
And an Aether Cluster if we’re playing HC, but I’ll keep that out because HC is a challenge we’re taking willingly, it’s not forced on us.

So 2 buttons for pet attack and movement skill, and about 4-6 more buttons depending on the mastery combination. That’s upwards of E I G H T buttons for fuck’s sake!
Oh and don’t forget that as a decent cuck you’d probably want to have a left mouse bound to move only, which leaves you with one less option.

All of that — and people on Reddit keep talking about pet builds being walking simulators like it’s 2020 and we’re playing Summon Zombies in PoE.

And I’m looking at my Belgo Blademaster with a DAR on left click, SS on right click, and RoS and PB on whatever because it gets spammed off CD with Z E R O consideration.
Meanwhile both the Conjurer and the Cabalist (pets ofc) I’ve played made me F E E L the meaning of the word “piloting”.

Thanks for coming to my ted talk.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m cool with this stuff (well maybe except Necromancer).
But I would be eager to bite the face off of anybody who tells me GD pets builds are walking simulators.

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A walking simulator, shortened walking sim, is an adventure game that consists primarily of movement and environmental interaction. Walking sims sometimes include puzzle elements, and generally do not have combat mechanics or traditional win/lose scenarios. While these video game elements originated in the 1980s, the term began to be used pejoratively to refer to new games as walking simulators in the late 2000s, notably with Dear Esther. The term was eventually used less pejoratively and adopted by gamers, while still being negatively perceived by some game developers and retaining negative gameplay connotation. Other descriptors have been commonly used for games of such style, including empathy, narrative, and exploration game. Such games are often a hallmark of art games, but some mainstream games have been described as having walking simulator elements.

The central elements of walking simulators are controversial due to purported lack of challenge, and discontent of such games became common in the mid-to-late 2010s among “hardcore” gamers. However, the artistic aspects and emphasis on decision-making and morality are appreciated and remain popular across other video games.

That is per Wiki. (copy and paste)

I guess the issue with most pet builds is standing behind a wall of pets that do everything for you, healing and/or resummoning low hp or dead pets. Run to next group of mobs (or champ, hero, elite, boss, etc.). Rinse. Repeat.

I’ll be honest, I have stayed away from pet builds ever since I played D2. I don’t count WoW because the Hunter or Warlock only had 1 pet, not a team. However, I decided to give the Conjurer a try, and it was some of the most fun I have ever had playing this game. It was one build that I had almost no items in my vault or on my mules, so it was nearly a fresh build to play from the very beginning. Of course, it also helped that I had a little fun with the devotions. I only used animal devotions. I have played GD off and on since the start of Covid and only played a pet build once. That was a month or so ago. Next time I play a pet build, I will take it more seriously with the correct devotion set up and gear for ultimate mob pwnage.

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You’re simply doing too much. This is a walking simulator build.

And it works. It’s my first L100 character with no deaths. Despite what Maya says about Fluffy being more lazy that one isn’t as there are 3 buttons to push with that one. Mnemosyne is literally just pushing Blood of Dreeg and that’s it.

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They say that bc 95% of the campaign can be completed literally by walking with pets. All of those skills you mentioned are to buff and augment the pets already good damage. Pets draw agro away from you so bosses almost never come your direction.

Your logic is also flawed bc almost all AA builds also have plenty of skills they have to rotate through. Calling AA builds brain dead is a stretch too. Managing your health, position, skill rotation etc. all while being assailed by all sides is anything but brain dead.

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You can make a melee build that works with 1 button total. You can do the same with pet builds. You can also make a pet build that uses every button, and you can do the same with melee builds.

If you prefer one playstyle over the other, great, go play it! Shitting on one or the other because they’re “brain dead” is ignorant though.

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pets can be passively made so strong they don’t need anything
When people refer to pets being walking sims, not maya builds included, this usually seem to be about campaign, where levelling Briar/Blightfiend and possibly even Hellhound+Birb can be done without support skills or resummons. In part because pets are strong/well scaled, and ofc because early campaign is easy.

Sure blood of Dreeg, Cof, Soul harvest, Totem makes your pet /RR buffs and debuffs makes your pets stronger, but they’re not always “necessary”

(side note, now that Bird heal got changed they’re actually even easier to make passive while levelling, even if BoD is still a better heal skill)

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Allow me to introduce myself.

I am pretty much the reason for why pet builds are considered as walking simulators. The reason for that has to do with how I build them - facetanking and facerolling while being lazy enough to play half asleep.

Medea already posted my Mnemosyne pet Conjurer and you can check out my up-to-date heavy hitter builds here, tuned for deep SR and superbosses - The Carnival - A Guide to Pets

You don’t need to use wendigo totem at all and can do just fine. Placement is essentially plop it infront of you and stand in it, not that different from seals.

Devouring swarm is only needed for vitality/bleed pet builds, otherwise ignore.

Primal spirit is not necessary at all.

Call of the grave, bone harvest, ill omen, mark of torment are all optional.

Reap spirit can be bound to left click.

Pet attack command is not necessary at all. if anything, using it makes my setups worse to play…

My tankiest setup - The Fluffy Squishy - Pet Conjurer :3 essentially plays like this;

  1. summon pets
  2. summon superboss
  3. put totem infront
  4. cast blood of dreeg and curse of frailty
  5. repeat 1,3,4 as needed.
  6. collect loot.

for anything that is not even nemesis tier, you just walk around and collect loot.

now, why do pet builds get the “lazy” tag when melee setups can have even less buttons or just hold down attack?

the answer is essentially that with pets, if you build them for defense, they can be extremely forgiving to mistakes at endgame without loosing too much damage compared to non pet setups where it is easier to die since you do not have meatshields tanking for you.

a good example of this is deep SR runs being dominated by pet builds since you can throw bodies at your enemies while just chilling half a screen away. case in point, iirc, my fluffy squishy still holds the record for deepest SR run solo without the perma freeze trick -

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(this was before shard levels were consolidated)

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I would say the key factor is how often your pets die, if you have 6 pet buttons and they all die quickly, then you have more work to do then a build without pets.

During the process of leveling there can be moments with bad gear, so you could run into trouble even if your final build works like a walking simulator.

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True.
I’m not claiming scientific accuracy here ofc, just going off my personal experience (which is limited and very anecdotal of course).

It just so happened that those builds that I played (Belgo Blademaster, 2h ranged FS purifier, SnB Oppressor to name a few) felt very streamlined. Sustain is high as long as I keep attacking even while standing in puddles. I only had to dodge sunders. When it came to skills — just spam everything there is off CD, so not a lot of thought process was involved there.

Then I played Conjurer and while it’s true that pets draw aggro, I still had to position myself correctly, spam Blood and Curse (the same mindless way I’d do on AA) but also sometimes moving pets with pet attack and placing wendigo totem, which is very positional.
With the hectic nature of fights in SR with a lot on monsters and especailly heroes on the screen, the two latter commands (+ my own repositioning) were taking much more of my mental RAM than said Belgo gameplay.

Then I started playing Cabalist and the amount of buttons that necro provides is nuts.
Now I actually have to move my left hand to cast all the stuff :smiley:

I’m not shitting on anything. Perhaps the choice of words wasn’t the best though.
Didn’t mean “brain dead” as an insult, it’s just a reflection of my experience. Particularly with, again, Belgo Blademaster.
That was super fun and cool. I didn’t have to think about which button goes at which time, hance the term. At the same time, playing pet builds (those two in my experience) required “situational awareness” and judgement for button pressing to a much higher degree than the AA builds.
I play and enjoy all kinds of builds, I don’t think any better than the other.

The only point I was trying to make is that in my epxerience AA builds require much less “conscious action” in daily operations than the pet builds.

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Well I guess we’re free to exercise free will and take and not take skills we want, but at the same time it’s hard for me to agree on Bone Harvest and Call of the Grave being optional, for how much juice they provide.

Thought granted, they’re not strictly “necessary”.
I guess that just shows the cool design choices Crate made with these things.
There are possibilities for one button builds, but then you can turn it into piano and would be playing the same build (in identity).

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It was more a general statement than one aimed at you specifically. I see a lot of people who don’t like pets (this is fine) basically shitting on anyone who plays them (this is not).

I would generally agree, but I also don’t think the difference is that much. As you say, a lot of AA builds simply require holding left-click (both move and attack!) and then pushing one or two other buttons as needed. It’s all down to how you build them though. You don’t have to play them like that.

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