Would be nice having more of a ‘pet builds’, instead of required hybrids. Like more than one hellhound, familar after so many levels. at least some spells that doesn’t force the aggro of enemies to you. Most (if not all) aggro of the enemies toward the pets and not you.
But that does exist, Briar and hound have taunt mechanic. Wait for them to use it and then cast CoF etc.
You don’t need any specific taunt mechanics. Just set the tank pets to aggressive and let them attack around and you have your aggro.
Well…that’s the problem. their ‘taunt’ is pathetically weak. And if I cast ANYTHING on the enemy while fighting the ‘pets’ there’s a very good chance I will get the aggro instead of the pets. And no matter how many times the pets attack them after that, THEY NEVER AGGRO BACK TO THE PETS…NEVER. In the other games, once an aggro is set to a ‘pet’ if never changes until that ‘pet’ is dead. After that, it’s the next closest target (aka another pet). In this game, it doesn’t work that way, instead there’s a good chance the enemy will IGNORE the pet beside them and come after me instead.
That’s no problem.
First, if you play a real (understand “fully dedicated”) pet build:
- you will have more or less enough pets to wall-in most groups of enemies, playing with the tight paths like doors, messy places etc to kind of lead the mobs where you want and find a safe place.
- you won’t have any skill points available for direct attacks: first because you are focused on +to all pets bonuses and therefore have very little bonuses left for yourself, and second because maxing the shaman+occultist skill trees + pets related skills requires way too many skill points to let one have anything left for anything else. You will also be very limited on your shortcut/hotkeys bars as well. My pure summoner has no direct attack, has his 2 hotkeys bars full of summonings+bonuses/auras+healing abilities, stands right in the middle of the battle and is seldomly attacked, and he is regenerating way too fast anyway to really bother with the most common monsters.
- If some enemies are focused on you and won’t unstick from you, this means that your pets are more or less free to attack it, which means that all you have to do is running around your pack of pets in circles and letting your army attack it. Keep in mind that this is Grim Dawn, and that if you don’t play the toughest of the tank build, you will have to run anyway soon or later. Mobility is a part of the game.
- A full pet build has no real attribute requirement, he doesn’t need offense, he doesn’t need +physical bonuses, he doesn’t need +magical bonuses, he doesn’t need anything, all he needs is to meet the requirements for his gear, which should already be at least 50% fulfilled thanks to the masteries maxing, which means that you are free to put all your remaining attributes into physical, and therefore building up your health points and defense, which means that you should be able to withstand a couple of hits without a problem.
So, again, if you are doing it right with the management of your army and your own defense, aggro and getting chased a couple of times is no problem.
- Imho there shouldnt be something “you should hide” “find a door” or anything something like that to play a pet class, even if its a totaly passive build
- Id love to have a more pet based class setup, but that would require a complete rebuild of these classes from dev side.
One example: The dog explosion for AOE. God, this is an amazing skill. Why not more of this, why not adding a lot pet based buffs that dont force you to cast fire spells (maybe you want a pet class bc you want a pet focused build, not some hybrid something whatsoever). But maybe you want your pets to cast that nasty fire spell if you click that one button. - If some boss is chasing you and you have to keep running, the pet-ai is not smart enough to deal any good damage!
If i hear the word “aggro-management” or something like that. For me its another name for dev-could-improve-this-management. Sorry 
Running management, door-management, stuck-boss-on environment-management. Its not really needed to have fun with a pet class, should not!
The OP is right.
That was not my experience with pets. Once an enemy/ boss w/e is taunted you can cast stuff on them. Ember Claw received a buff in this regard too. Havce you tried investing at least 6 pints in it?
Nah. There are plenty of enemies that ignore pets entirely, no matter what you do. But if you’ve got enough pets, you can wall yourself off, which actually works in your favor in some cases – particularly against hard-hitting bosses, since they’ll spend a lot of time trying to reach you instead of wailing away on your pets.
-edit-
Still, I wish GD hadn’t gone down the pet-stats rabbit hole. They’re all supernatural extensions of my character. My stats should be their stats.
I’m playing as an Arcanist/Demolitionist (PRM/Devastation) and teaming with a friend who is running the pure Summoner character.
The trash just evaporate so let’s go directly to Heroes and Boss
Most (all even maybe) of his pets are set to aggressive and he is opening the way (man I’m level 80 and have less than 6k HP I’m not the one opening the way that’s for sure!) so his pets open the fight. PRM is usually not enough to fully catch the aggro from an Heroes so the white disapear and then his Pets catch the aggro. He drop CoF (his pets still got the Aggro) and I drop Devastation + TSS + Haunt + well everything I have and than I spam PRM. Usually the ennemy start to move toward me (guess Devastation hurt) when I drop the 2nd TSS and well honestly with the amount of damage even Ultimate Hulk Heroes are death when that 2nd drop.
If you are playing solo and leave your pet take the first batch of aggro I don’t expect you to actually be able to get that aggro on yourself in a way that is half as problematic as you seems to imply. If not I guess your pet never actually correctly catch aggro before either you taking it or having one of your game partner generate too much threat to change it back to them.
On my warlock i made the experience even if not casting anything, no buffs on my pets, no cof, nothing, I could take the inital aggro on MAX distance, and keep it long enough it annoys. As soon I cast cof, Alkamos jumps me, sometimes not. Its like russian roulette. That was the reason I despecced CoF on my conjurer btw.
The last pet build was a pure shaman I played to lev 65 with 0 deaths, just for the adrenaline. Completely self found. When I met Loxmere my pets couldnt take aggro at all. He followed me all the time. And I think - didnt try - Alkamos would show nearly the same behaviour. And that happened even with taunt skill on max!
I dont know, maybe I will touch a pet character again when things are changing. I simply find it unenjoyable to aggro-dance-kite some boss when I can kill the same with most of my chars without that break dance.
The aggro is frustrating. In the different games and this one, I always send in the pets first. The familiar can’t path well, it’s pretty sad. Try my best to try to get them to aggro to the pets first, then cast. In NON-BOSS that somewhat works, with the occasional enemy ignoring the pet and after me. The bosses, however gets different. you basically need a HYBRID. Something that can take hits (it’s not really a pet build anymore), and cause damage.
I’m pretty worried about the necro they will be adding. The skeletons are LIMITED, how many you can cast at a time, WAIT A LONG TIME, then cast again. And they only temps (so many seconds). Sure the time extends the higher it does, but not by much. a few seconds more. By that time the first group died waiting to cast more, now you have the aggro. Now you have to spend all your time running. again no longer a true pet build. POE necro is a lot of fun. You get over 3 times more ‘pets’ and the enemy ALWAYS aggros to the nearest ally (you or a pet whoever is closest). You basically have a wall of pets. Some people don’t like that play style but a nice bit loves it. I"ve played it in 2 different styles, pets to the damage, or I am the main damage and they are a shield. In grim, however, pets are NOT really a shield.
EDIT: WOW…installed DAIL MOD, tried the Spirit/nature combo, I get 8 pets so far, and it plays EXACTLY like it’s suppose to. The pets engage the enemy far more then they try to attack me. So the problem is probably the number of pets. 2 (3 if you count the bird), is NOT even close to enough.
With Coronus and spirit (from using dail) I now have a proper army that can fight. Most of the aggro is on them, but some of the monsters seems to be designed / coded to ignore pets and attack the user instead. Thankfully it’s a small group coded that way. If i group my pets correctly, the monsters get stuck trying to get to me and my pets kill it.
I wish the creators of grim dawn would scale the number of pets per level, like the person did in the titan quest mod with spirit and nature. If they keep the necro skeletons as temps, it will be useless for pet builds and requires mods instead. that’s pathetically sad when modders do far better than the makers of the game (not putting down the great modders)
Been leveling a pet build and pretty sure some enemies outright ignore the pets and go straight for you.
I also can count the amount of times i specifically let my pets attack the enemy first, let them fight for a couple seconds, but i soon as i started to drop Cof and BWC they would suddenly forget that the pets were attacking them and suddenly target you.
You are right. All enemies have a “chance to ignore pets” stat. For weaker enemies, like the walking dead, it is frequently 0%. Most bosses and heroes have a 35% chance to ignore pets.
The style i’m playing, I’m only casting pets nothing else. no curses at all… ZERO. Because casting anything on the enemy, including damage spells, have a good chance of having the monsters come after you.
Would be nice if the monsters aggro against the nearest thing (usually a pet) and not to just me.
While I do share your sentiment on annoying aggro, without it the conjurer pet build would be without any challenging gameplay whatsoever. If your pets can reliably hold off any and all enemies from you, they need to be so fragile that you have to resummon them frequently.
Or you’d have to manually manage all their abilities to deal sufficient damage.
Pet builds are always difficult to implement, I guess. If pet aggro and kill all by themselves the player falls asleep. So it actually makes sense to have the player character as fragile as a Homestead farmer for the player to pay attention.
That doesn’t change the fact that it can be frustrating, though
What if… People play pet builds when they don’t WANT challenging gameplay? Sometimes, a chill, relaxed farming session is all I’m aiming for. I don’t fall asleep, I loot and watch as my minions do my bidding… I might cackle occasionally as well.
Pet builds in many games are easy farm builds… By design. They usually aren’t the fastest way to farm, and if you’re too inattentive, you are squishy and get killed. But the only challenge they usually have is crafting the build and gearing it, not playing it. And I’m okay with that, I see no cause to fix what isn’t broken, like Crate has tried to in GD. If I wanted more active, I’d try for a Hybrid pet build, or use a Player Bonus Pet, maybe Unknown Soldier. I’ve certainly got “active” options, with and without pets. I don’t need pure pets to BE active.
You could do wonderful things as summoner instead of that aggro breakdance.
We could get rid of the Occultist`s raven and dog mods. Since the ai of this game is what it is, it would be maybe better to
- send the raven into melee.
This is the first change that could lead into complete different abilties the raven has. In additon there should be NO AUTOATTACK by pets which keeps the summoner busy commanding his pets. Here is just what it could be as an example:
-
“Raven”
You call a raven to aid you on your way through Cairn. While bringing certain buffs to you there is more the raven can do. Raven melee range “Lightning” and “Lightning Storm” are abilities which you may put on your skill bar. -
“Sacrifice”
Sacrifes the raven in a dark ritual in which the summoner becomes a raven himself! Runspeed increases for a short amount of time, high chance to dogde any attacks. -
“Swarm”
Multiple raven swarms appear for a certain amount of time, they brings fear and chaos to the victims they choose. Effect: Enemy flees in terror. -
“Raven Lord”
Impersonating the Raven Lord himself, you fall into a stance of calling Ravens from all over Cairn to protect you, attacking everyone around you. While casting this mighty spell you are not able to move, or cast anything else.
^ Or, instead of all that… You could be able to bind Pet Devotions to pets, or at least bind multiple devotions to one skill, and then NOT do the aggro breakdance, but ALSO remain a summoner. IE, a squishy dude, who does nothing but summon minions and cackle as they do his presumably-evil-to-somebody bidding. It’s kind of how summoning goes, you summon things, they kill things as you watch… You move on.
Also, pretty sure Crate said no Shapeshifting, so that instantly kills Sacrifice. Melee range skills for a BIRD makes no sense, because any wild bird with a lick of sense wouldn’t get in arms reach of a glowing, steaming, green corpse, no matter WHO told it to. And Raven Lord? Is that specifically different from, say… a Lightning Storm ability? Which we already have? Standing still to channel a beam is one thing. Channeling an AOE… Eh. Not so fun. Also hard to balance, because if the AOE is too big, the ability is too good. If the AOE is too small though, then things will get to you, and thus hit and kill you, just shortly after entering the AOE, and thus too soon for the actually scary enemies to have died. At best, it’d be a trash clearing skill that looked cool… But we already have a LOT of those, another is not really of great use.
The idea is to keep the summoner busy while it can be very boring to just move the mousecursor as it is now. The skills I listed are placeholder for whatever they could do instead.
Lightning and Lightning Storm from raven melee range since the Raven slacks because of the range and this ai from the beginning to now. I see him stuck on environmet and until he decides to move the boss is somewhere else.
Instead of passive abilities the mods could be active, thats the idea, and if no autoattack you will be pretty busy. Not just moving the mousecursor