Discounting mechanics due to an overall poor execution of a collection of various other mechanics seems like a particularly terrible way of looking at game design.
Diablo as a series does many things poorly. Does that mean that no mechanic that features in it should be utilised at all ever?
D3 has awful set design due to everything needing stupid modifiers like “+20,000% damage” to even be considered base level.
Does that mean that Grim Dawn should remove all the sets it has been using to great effect just because D3 did them poorly?
The fact is, Blizzard have made and utilised a mechanic that specifically mitigates the issue of pets in the form of “Avoidance” which provides them with a global damage reduction to specifically AoE attacks.
This mechanic directly targets the point of frustration of pets, which is the inability to properly maneuver them around the many AoE skills that bosses use to force player movement.
In lieu of turning the game into an outright RTS with much more control over pet actions, this suffices to patch the problem of pets being slaughtered by AoE’s.
In addition, such a mechanic can be tuned with the amount of damage reduction allowing a good balance to be attained where pets don’t get completely obliterated, but they don’t shrug off AoE’s like they’re nothing.
Further, such things can be tuned more individually towards specific pets. So that Skelly Bois get a larger benefit due to their susceptibility to such things, while things like Briarspawn and Blight Fiend would need less due to their individually higher health pools.
Okay. So lets never use any mechanic that has ever been even remotely involved in a “Bad” game.
So lets delete Grim Dawn as a whole then?
Diablo featured Sets, random loot, bosses, stats, gear, enemies, levels etc… Thus, we should never ever include any of those mechanics in any game ever.
Are you starting to see why such a thought process is stupid yet?
You can already heal pets and you can move pets. Perhaps the pet command key is kinda bad, because the Pet AI is so weird. A separate pet move and pet attack would be far superior.
Actual control groups that could be used for different pets, would also be very helpful.
I can speak about pet survivability in ascendant mode, once I have found a pet build that looks fun to play in 1.3. But I can imagine that the crazy dmg that the altar and ambushes offer can be a problem for some pet builds.
It is clear to me that a build that doesn’t press any buttons and doesn’t put the character in any danger shall never ever be on the same level as a build that is in the middle over everything, putting the character at risk. The pet mechanic itself is simply broken, because the enemies in GD are not smart enough and don’t have the tools to explicitly punish pet builds. The lack of gameplay mechanics for pet players on the other hand mean that it’s just a numbers game, where the line of “good balance” is slim and underpowered and overpowered can happen very easily. If pets never die, they are probably overpowered in GD.
The risk is pretty much the same atm due to AoEs. You are not any more safe in Crucible 180-200 for example with a pet build compared to a non pet.
If that was true, this thread wouldn’t exist .
Reap Spirits never die, they are among the weakest pets…
Ravens were immortal once upon a time, it did not break the game.
Blightfiend bomb builds effectively can ignore their defense because you can summon them at a rather low cooldown.
You can get pretty much 0 cooldown Hellhound…
Things which non pet builds don’t have to worry about and yet can output better dps and have better survivability.
If going that route, Pet builds would need a massive buff to make them an attractive choice too actually play since you are talking RTS mechanic as a crutch to be used in an ARPG.
some are eldritch, some are magic, and beast, undead, insect and more races. All pets are different.
I dont feel pet builds get into trouble when faced with super bosses. My pet conjurer easliy defeated the uber one when I first met him. It really surprised me that his ice cracks could kill briarthorns with 120k+ health and 60% phys res. But I still only spent about 2 minutes ending the battle.
curious it only applies against some pets tho then
*and i’m assuming magical doesn’t apply to player at all then/we have a different category for our own char?
The pets do have a dodge function (?) but no clue what that actually does. The aggressive mode heals the Leader at 85% compared to 95% in defense mode, but that’s probably even more effective since what are you doing healing somebody when they’re at 95% health in the first place?
If it weren’t for Berserker having a Wereraven form, I’d be in favor of having Raven being immune to all ground effects like Beronath’s puddles. It’s flying above the ground, why is it being hit with ground seals?
If you discount mechanics just because “Some other game also included them and was bad” then you will have nothing left to use for your game.
Grim Dawn shares many mechanics with Diablo, especially as an isometric ARPG.
If we discounted every mechanic that Diablo uses because Diablo used them. We wouldn’t have Grim Dawn.
Heck, you wouldn’t have ANYTHING since “Controlling an entity” is a mechanic is Diablo and that even removes the possibility of making a basic game like Pong.
It’s far better for game design to not discount mechanics simply because “Bad game used them” or even “It was not very effective in another game” and simply consider the mechanics themselves and look at what they can do as an individual aspect of design.
This allows you to take a mechanic that may not have be utilised very well and adapt and implement it into your game and make it actually good.
Judging mechanics based off their individual merit means you have plenty of options to consider when designing.
Excluding mechanics based off “A game was bad” leaves you with nothing, not just less, but literally nothing. You don’t get to make a game at all without utilising mechanics that are also in “Bad” games.
Thanks for this Maya. Brave post considering you knew the responses waiting for you from this community.
You make several good points, and I agree with almost everything you outlined as an issue.
My problems with the change come from being a person with a disability - GD design philosophy used to make it a game where most of the work was done in build crafting. If you could solve for oa/da/res/hp etc, you could more or less guarantee a certain ease of play with very little friction.
The builds that facetanked everything would often not be referenced as top builds (other than rata warder). And thats mostly because they are slow and the community prioritizes speed and high damage. It was a good trade off for those of us who have limitations to be able to enjoy the game. The new design is similar to modern arpg which require fast reflexes, precise postitioning, and being able to track enemy attacks “bullet hell” style.
Going from this being one of the few games I can actually play in its entirety, to what it currently is, was a wee bit jarring LOL. And the responses people like me get when they voice these problems, are frankly disgusting.
In the end it is not our game though. The designer can do what he wants, it is his baby, imo he doesnt owe people anything. And honestly most people seem to love the changes! I am just sad to have to stop playing after all these years. Will probably take me a while to get over that as this game is one of the few things I had left from my old pre-disability life.
Anyways. Thanks Maya! Your guides helped me get going in this game. Much love and I hope you continue building in the future!
I think there is a thing which nobody talks there - dps uptime. Minions (including player-scaled) are unique in the sense that they are acting without a player input. This mean minions can very easily keep dealing damage while player loot, click chests, or just dodging whatever bs flying at you. So pets are better at dealing damage mechanically and therefore require some mechanical disadvantage.
No one is talking about that because it is utterly irrelevant.
No one is looting while fighting things in the Crucible, SR or trying to kill Superbosses or even Nemesis and Dungeons.
And anyone can dodge whatever bs flying at them. If anything it is easier on a non pet build because you don’t need to make sure that your pets dodge as well.
And want to keep dealing damage while you do something else? DoT builds let you do exactly that - attack, run away and let the damage over time kill enemies while you just do whatever.
Pets are mechanically worse at dealing damage compared to the other options, not better. Because you don’t suddenly lose half your dps on a non pet build just because one of your dps source died and you now need to wait like 10 seconds to get it back up…
I get that there are some strong feelings about how easy to play pets are, but in terms of raw performance, their damage is not really out of line. Pet durability overall is too high, as evidenced by how many bonus versus pet modifiers we’ve had to add to boss attacks over the years to compensate for that, but pet builds being a safe playstyle is kind of…the entire point of them.
First of all, yes, DoT builds are another high-uptime damage profile builds, where you trade the absence of burst for the high uptime.
At cost of losing DPS. Overall, I feel like you underestimate pet playstyle advantages of being lower on button count and having automatic damage. Mostly because GD already tries to compensate for it making pets surviability a huge question.
Lets imagine pet surviability in boss fights no longer an issue and no other changes. Now typical conjurer build will have 2 button presses (Curse and either Swarm or Vines) each 3 seconds and can ignore damage part of the fight at all. And even if you forgot to press those, you still upkeep dps (compared to dot build). And I ignore pets eating projectiles or just winning aggro, which helps with defense.
And there is me, who intentionally leveled conjurer for faster Ascendant dungeons farm for ashes/souls because looting while killing and autokilling ambushes is a huge boon. Also more accidental kills = more Nemesis and maybe more Dreads (not sure about his exact mechanics).
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shenanigans 
