I was wondering if the level of your pets and their synergies are tied to the skill levels at the moment of summoning them, or do the levels shift after casting? I’m an old Titan’s Quest guy and I was wondering if it’s possible to load up on +skill items for summoned pets, summon them, and then change out your gear while maintaining the benefits of the +skills.
Titan’s Quest went so far as to allow you to summon a bunch of pets and then spec out of the skills while keeping your pets (I felt like that was a bit of a cheat).
Also, do you have to resummon your pets when you level in order to increase their stats that are tied to your level?
I can’t say for sure with pets but if they work anything like passives and boost skills with durations (ex: overguard), the engine immediately notices and adjusts (shifts) their power if the skill levels change while on. My bet is that it’s the same for pets, and I’m thinking your pets might even disappear if you specced out of those skills while they are there. That would match what you get, for example, on weapon swap – any passives on immediately go away if they were granted by the former weapon but not the current one.
The engine stays up-to-date and seems more pull-based instead of push-based with these types of states*, so to speak, and shifts things accordingly instead of tying their state to when you casted the spell. It’s a bit less ripe for abuse that way since otherwise I could just put on some equipment and give myself a crapload of auras and stuff and then change to my actual gear while keeping them.
* This part about pull-based is kind of conjecture but based on some tick/interval behavior like the slightly deferred DPS calcs on character sheets that seems like there are periodic pull-type mechanisms in play, though that could just be other threads pushing in a deferred and asynchronous way – feels more like a periodic type of pull thing with a more regular interval though and fewer states being managed, instead being queried and calculated at regular intervals only to be discarded soon after.
That might be kind of a bummer but if it works the way I expect which would be the way passives work, you don’t need to re-summon your pets when you level up and boost their skill points.
I believe they are summoned with stats and aren’t affected by increasing or decreasing the skills after (as long as you still have the skill). This is anecdotal but when levelling a pet summoning at lvl 1 say and then resummoning a couple levels after (at lvl7) there is a huge difference in hp and dmg.
Thanks for the replies. I’ve noticed that my briarthorn won’t use his ground slam ability after I add it. I have to recast him for him to start using it. I’ve gotten into the habit of recasting pets and auras after I add a synergy to them, just to be safe.
Yes tied to the moment they are summoned. You can +skill and remove the eq. NB: If the gear grants you the ability to summon that particular pet, do not remove it, as you would miss that minion as one friend kindly reminded.
Yes as well, please refer to the answer 1, the pets’ stats tied to your level when they are summoned.