Poor Summoner Diversity

Grim Dawn Ideas and Feedback
1

Almost every mastery combination has a melee build.
Almost every mastery combination has a ranged build.
Almost every mastery combination has a caster build.

Only 7 of the 15 of the mastery combinations get summons at all.

We really need a couple more summon options. Itemization would be the simplest solution. The ideal solution is adding a summon to one of the masteries that doesn’t currently have one.

I know I keep harping on this, but I love playing summoners but I really want to play something other than Conjurer or Warlock. (Druid functions as a summoner, but doesn’t really have a summoner feel to it but still fun.)

As for itemization, I love what you did with the Winter King legendaries. Gives us a slightly non-standard summoning route. Do more of this. :slight_smile:

2

There is already allot of items that gives pets without you having to be a summoner. I got 2 blue items that gives summon able pet, 1 green items that gives a pet for 30 sec with a 105 sec cooldown and 1 blue that gives me pet when I get hit. On another char I got a purple that gives pet when I hit or get hit can’t remember. And many devotions that can give you pets too. All of that can be use on all classes.

So I’m not sure what you are missing?

3

One of the Masteries that is almost certain for the expansion is a necro type summoner, so this will help fill the lack of a solid summoner mastery.

I’d guess it’s because these are random items and require specific level to use, as opposed to a mastery that gives a good base as a permanent summoner with constant summons not random, hope you have the item and hope it spawns type summons

4

I hate pet based builds, and even I, with my hate for pet builds, could easily make a pure summoner build that uses at least 7 different pets, so I really don’t get how many pets do you guys really need for a summoner build…

5

My issue isn’t with the number of pets, its with the variety. I’m certain your summoner build will contain Shaman or Occultist… and most likely both.

Try making a Battlemage summoner. It’s pretty rough. The pets don’t scale well at all and its so gear dependent that it’s mind numbing.

Right now… all summoners are pretty much the same.

6

While I understand what you’re trying to get at, it’s a bit of a slippery slope. Battlemages make poor summoners. Battlemages also make poor poison builds. Should Battlemages now get a poison skill to increase their diversity? One might complain as well that all poison builds look the same, they all take Occultist and/or Nightblade.

The best solution would have been to just make all pets work like Mortar Trap/Blade Spirit etc. work now and scale with player stats so that summoners do not scale so wildly different from every other build, but it’s a bit late for that now.

7

No they’re not. I have a lot of summoner characters and each uses different damage types/approaches to survivability. Some rely on massive regen, some rely on massive resists, some can stack CCs like mad, most deal damage along with their pets and one or two basically just stand there while the pets do everything.

That said, Occultist and Shaman are ideal for a summoner class because both feature buffs/debuffs that significantly improve both caster and minion abilities.
Creating a summoner without these masteries is like trying to create a chaos build without Occultist or a fire build without Demolitionist. Difficult, but not impossible.
You are wrong to equate summoning with melee/caster/ranged combat. While summoning does count as a playstyle, in the end minions are also basically a damage type. You go out of your way to stack mods for it like any other damage type.
ALL summoners are gear dependent, that’s why there’s also a lot of yellow/green affix support for them.

8

I like this idea. Modding tools may be able to play with this. It’d be a tough job to rebalance gear however.

I don’t think Summoner is a standard enough archetype to warrant viability for any class combination. It falls along the same lines as builds focused on healing, retaliation/reflection, etc.

9

Not exactly. The thing about the summoner archetype is that it’s not a general archetype like caster/ranged/melee (ie, you can create caster/ranged/melee summoners) and yet it is a step above specific builds, since you can incorporate elements of specific builds to create hybrid summoners. Based on experience, in fact, to create a pure summoner you have to pick a specific combination (Conjurer). Everything else is better as a hybrid, even pure Occultist.

10

nah, that means you get really strong pets without focusing on them and remaining equally strong as a non-pet build as a char, there literally is no downside / balance to strike.

It’s like doing great Physical and Chaos damage because what buffs one type buffs the other…

11

I’m an old TQ player, and one of my few disappointments with Grim Dawn has been the narrow range of plausible Pet Master builds. In Titan Quest, I built pet master characters around Monster Lure from Hunting master and Nymph from Nature master (turns out the Lure counted as a pet and had a very fast attack speed with a 0-0 weapon, and could be pretty cool with flat damage affixes from pet jewelry), Dream/Storm with Wisp and Nightmare as the sole damage sources, Nature/Earth using only Core Dweller for damage, Earth/Dream, Warfare builds with CD reduction and Ancestors… there were just a ton of different options, because Nature, Earth, Dream, Spirit, Warfare, Hunting and Storm Masteries all had at least one pet skill.

Dropping down from six masteries with a pet skill to two really does narrow the range. I love the devotion and item pets, but you’re still pretty much locked in to at least one and probably both of the masteries with pet skills if you want to play a pet build.

So a minor nitpick on a what is clearly a carefully crafted game. Hopefully the expansion gives us some more options! What would be particularly cool is if a pet skill were added to one or more existing masteries, such as a storm hound for Arcanist or some sort of fire elemental for Demolitionist. Another idea would be to adjust some skills in masteries that do not have pets to affect minions as well as the master, without buffing other allies (so as to preserve multi-player balance).

12

I’m also an old TQ player and all your builds sound as if they come from a modded game, because in an unmodded game (even with fanpatches) the mere viability of these builds is questionable.

a) Monster Lure doesn’t even have an attack. I should know, I’ve actually played a few ranger builds just to try out Hunting.
b) Both the Wisp and Nightmare only benefit from a very small list of +pet damage bonuses (in particular, they do not benefit from +pet flat damage). They also have mutually exclusive damage types (the Nightmare does vitality damage while the Wisp does elemental damage).
c) The Core Dweller by itself is a very poor damage source because of its extremely slow attack speed.
d) If you can afford to reduce the CD of Ancestors enough to create a build around it, then you can basically beat the game with any other build that relies on a powerful skill with a CD. This is more of an item-dependent build that just happens to also work well as a summoner.
e) In TQ, of the 9 masteries only 1 was a true pet mastery - Nature. The Liche King is a great bosskiller but he doesn’t do well at general mob clearing. The Outsider and the Ancestors are basically on-demand burst damage/meatshields. Traps mostly shine at high levels and you need to devote gear/skills for them. The Core Dweller is designed to be a tank and the Nightmare/Wisp are designed to be supportive.
Bottomline, these pets not supposed to be used as a major DPS source for general combat.

BTW, I should point out that so far there’s already one constellation that features a pet skill that does not lend itself to the classic summoner playstyle (the Revenant). That pet skill also happens to be able to summon 4 pets at max level (more than what Occultist and Shaman have individually).
Now consider that devotions are basically a separate skill tree that ALL characters have access to.

Finally, it seems that some of you are basically arguing that each class combination should feature a passive summoner build. As I already mentioned, that’s like asking that each mastery combination should feature a fire build or a vitality build. As much as I’d like to live in a world where such a summoner-friendly game existed, at this point such a move seems rather indulgent/excessive.
You could just wait for modding and for someone to create a Grim Dawn version of TQ’s Summoner’s Delight Mod.

13

It may also be that the devs simply don’t want to have that many pet options in this game. Did that occur to you?

I agree with Tyr, of all TQ’s masteries Nature is THE one you go for if you want pets and then you add a second mastery which may or may not give you one more.

I expect there will be mods which add more pets and it’s possible another mastery with pets will be added to GD in a later expansion.

For the moment, if you’re feeling a lack of pets then hop back to TQIT and download Bumbleguppy’s Legion of Champions mod (the successor to his Summoner’s Delight mod). EVERY mastery has at least two pets, some more, so plenty of pet options to choose from.

http://www.titanquest.net/tq-forum/threads/53773-Download-Latest-Version-of-Legion-of-Champions-Mod

14

I’m pretty sure we are playing two different games. One of my favorite summoners was a non-melee Battlemage summoner. Core Dweller and Banner with ancestors was so much fun. The liche was a beast and could clear crowds quite well when you get some total speed on him with Dark Covenant.

Nature was a great core summoner mastery, very true, but I also didn’t HAVE to play with the nature mastery to feel like a summoner.

I really don’t think it’s fair to equate summoners builds to specific damage types. Summoners are a playstyle that I have enjoyed since Diablo 2. Some people just like commanding minions to do their bidding. It would be nice if I didn’t have to have a hellhound or a briarthorn in a build on occasion.

I would only say, what would be wrong with adding a summon into a preexisting class? You don’t need to put points into it.

Crate, my wallet is waiting for some mastery expansions. :slight_smile:
(But do make it sooner than later… wallets can only stand up so long against Steam sales… I’ll hold as long as I can, godspeed.)

15

I used the fan-patch, but otherwise un-modded other than show pet damage, potion stacking, disable Zeus speech, and freeze time of day.

In response to:

a) Monster Lure has a melee attack, but a 0-0 weapon. If you have pet damage jewelry that gives flat damage bonuses, it does indeed do melee damage. More importantly, it benefits from Puppetmaster staves and amulets and can be healed by the regrowth tree, meaning that it can be kept alive through all of normal excepting Typhon. I completed all of normal with no source of damage other than the Nymph and Monster Lure (excepting basic attacks until I got to the Nymph).

b) Fan patch fixes that, and I believe Wisp benefits from melee damage jewelry/staves even in the un-patched game. I’ve taken two passive petmaster prophets through Normal (one going for wisp first, the other for nightmare), and one through Epic. It wasn’t the strongest build, to be sure, but was absolutely viable.

c) Wildfire, with maxed fire damage aura, does excellent AOE damage through normal and decent through Epic, especially with Plague synergy resistance reduction. Maxed inner fire helps a fair bit with attack rate also. I did add wolves past epic, but CD alone is fine up to that point.

d) Granted, but Refresh works particularly well with powerful, long cool-down skills, meaning that 100% up-time is pretty easy to hit even with modest cool down reduction from gear.

e) LK isn’t that bad at general mob clearing. Clear speed isn’t great, but he certainly gets the job done. I don’t believe Traps benefited from pet jewelry, which was why Illusionist wasn’t particularly awesome, but Brigand Trapper and Assassin trapper were (Battle Standard/Piercing Resistance Reduction and Piercing damage buffs).

More broadly, 6/8 of Masteries in TQ had pet skills, and only 2/5 do in Grim Dawn. That’s just worse. I really can’t see much argument against that.

There is inherent tension between the Revenant devotion proc and genuine petmaster builds because of the heavy skill and equipment investment needed to make pets a viable, durable source of DPS and the heavy skill and equipment investment needed to make the player a viable source of DPS. That isn’t to say you can’t add a pet or two to an otherwise standard non-pet build if you like, but the pets aren’t likely to deliver a substantial percentage of your total damage output that way. You’re more likely to use them for their buff abilities than anything else, similar to physical damage Champions or Guardians using wolves for Strength of the Pack in TQ.

Honestly, no - I’d assumed it was more a “can’t do everything we’d like to or the game will never be finished” issue. I’m not quite sure why having intentionally sparse pet options would be desirable game design. Who does that make the game better for? And how?

Thank you for the mod suggestions though - I’ll have to check those out.

16

I’ve no idea of Crate’s future plans of course, but I assume it’s a possibility they don’t see this game as being particularly aimed at pet loving players. Things have changed over the years, the original alpha only had the 3 masteries and the plan at game launch was for 5, but we ended up with 6 - Shaman being the last. So you could say Crate did see a need for a mastery with more pets as without Shaman you’d have only had the Occultist with the Familiar and Hellhound.

I do know there have been a lot of suggetions over the years for a Necromancy mastery so it’s possible that may appear in a future expansion.

I’m a fairly recent convert to pet playing toons and I must say Bumbleguppy’s Legion of Champions is proving to be great fun. He’s not only changed the masteries quite a bit, but also added a lot of new gear/weapons (wands and throwing knives), relics/charms and also quite a few different foes/heroes too. And all, or nearly all, regular items have pet bonuses too. We’ve even got a few challenges up and running: the usual no deaths, a “no kills, no deaths” where apart from the initial 5 kills in the horse field your toon can’t make any kills, it’s entirely pet kills only after that and a “no pets, no deaths” one - play the pet heavy mod without using pets. :slight_smile:

17

Having played a conjurer/summoner quite a lot, I have som nitpicks with it, even though in general I do enjoy it.

  1. Management. Multiple pets, some with different timers/power costs, all requiring a seperate button to summon. This isn’t a problem if you’ve built your pets up well enough to just about never die, but I foresee it being a nuisance when or if even harder content appears, along with additional pets attached to items. It might eventually reach a point where you could potentially have more pets, than buttons to spare.

  2. Diversity. Aside from just power, one of the most appealing things is having different unique looking/behaving allies in your pets. What somewhat saps the fun from it for me at least, is that many are melee based, and many are bound to items, thus making some items utterly mandatory, and others never or rarely used despite the cool pet attached due to simply inferior or unsuitable stats. There are a lot of pets attached to neck pieces, for example, and all item based temporary pets seem remarkably weak despite low trigger chances and limited durations.

  3. Itemization. There are a handful of summoner builds, though the itemization is lacking in general even when it comes to catering to the small variance in builds. For example, as far as I can tell there are no viable legendary boots, legs, rings, or offhands for a summoner. The issue being, that these items have to be designed, and rely entirely on designers not just remembering that summoners exist, but allocating the stats and pet bonuses in a way that suits a particular type of summoner/pet user. Right now, most of the gear is quite generalist, but people use them all more or less because there are not many options to begin with. This also falls back with the pet diversity issue and pets being bound to items. The Og’Napesh book for example, is an epic/empowered epic that will NEVER be replaced, unless there is a legendary offhand that doubles the attributes of your existing pets, or has a much stronger pet and better summoner bonuses attached.

18

I’m currently building a pet OA/crit focused soldier - occultist, which is working quite well. Haven’t arrived in Ultimate yet, though, and my gear is far from optimal, so I can’t say much about endgame viability right now.

I also have Occultist/Arcanist that goes the route of extra elemental damage, which also works pretty well in Elite at least.

19

I dunno how people could compare TQ and GD in this respect. TQ had at the very least three pet-dedicated combos - Soothsayer, Summoner and Ritualist, and hybrids were relatively common.

In GD Conjurer is the only obvious way to go, I’ve yet to see an effective non-conjurer pet build, as well as an effective hybrid build, even though Crate made a notable step towards them in B31.

20

I’m disagreeing with so many points regarding summoner builds that I don’t think I’ll be ever to cover all of them before the next major meta shift finishes, so I’ll just skip most of that.

a) Monster Lure…

… but Brigand Trapper and Assassin trapper were (Battle Standard/Piercing Resistance Reduction and Piercing damage buffs).

You seem to be using mostly normal and epic as the standard for your builds in TQ. If you’re going to do the same for GD you’ll think anything’s possible too.

On hybrid summoners. I’ve already posted a video of an Occultist-only summoner around here somewhere, tackling ultimate B30 SoT using zero legendaries and various other handicaps. The version of that character in end-game gear basically just runs through ultimate BoC.
He’s a hybrid because only Conjurers make good passive summoners. The potential for hybrid summoner builds has always been there, a lot of people would just rather say “no” than actually do anything productive with what the game gives you.

The simple fact is that it took even the veterans of TQ months to agree on breakpoints/standards for/the viability of different character builds despite the fact that everyone seemed to think that these things should be “completely obvious”. And we only had the equivalent of one skill tree to worry about in TQ - mastery skills. In GD you have to juggle mastery skills with devotion skills/procs and item skills/procs.
It’s the nature of the beast.
What I’m seeing so far is the same thing happening all over again.