So I made a Hardcore pet user just for fun, fully expecting it to suck and die, but I’m actually enjoying it quite a bit. The one thing that I really don’t like, aside from the aggro system, are pets that you can only summon with a trigger.
Attack triggers are the worst, as these pets force you into being a hybrid summoner which, more often than not, weakens your own pets to a large degree. All of these pets become totally useless simply because you can’t control when you summon them and, on top of that, your own pets can’t trigger the effects. I have no problem with temporary summons themselves, as you can reduce the cool-down for most pets to the point where you can keep them up permanently (or just summon “at need”), but when the majority (or all) of your damage is coming exclusively from your pets this entire mechanic seems broken.
Reckless Guardian, for example, is a 5% chance to summon on attack. This is ridiculous for a pet that is, quite honestly, absolutely terrible. Many of the other “triggered” pets aren’t much better.
Please remove this mechanic and make all “triggered” pets temporary summons similar to Primal Spirit, Chillmane, etc.
My friend, you are very wrong on this issue and your suggestions would lead to a very imbalanced state of the game. Let me offer a deconstruction of your argument(s) and show you why this is so:
Recently I have posted a Summoner Warlock build on this forum that is far from being a hybrid pet character. I am able to proc all “on kill” summons from the Black Scourge and Necromancer’s Deathgrips without doing massive damage. The dev’s decision to make some pets non-permanent is a sign of good design because it forces you to actually min-max your character and plan it carefully.
I am not talking here from my ass…I am talking from experience. Some bosses, such as the Mad Queen, Alkamos or Shar’Zul are designed in such a was as to not be completely trivial to a summoner. 1 out of 100 cases, however, I can cheese the game and get 15 pets before a Mad Queen run…and guess what ? I can kill her in 7-8 seconds that way. If summons such as the Swarmlings would be permanent, a summoner warlock or conjurer would be the most powerful character in the game (not counting the Crucible, ofc). This is because each pet acts as a separate nuke that can crit. If you have 15 nukes, you will basically deal 2-3x the damage of a DoT cycle build while suffering 0 risks. This situation is, for balance reasons, unacceptable.
Both the Occultist and the Shaman are proc-machine characters. They have multiple intrinsic ways to proc on attack summons (Bloody pox, devouring swarm, CoF, etc.). Even without the mentioned abilities, you still have components that can easily trigger on attack procs.
So no…“on kill” summons should stay. Otherwise, this game will became even more easy for a summoner build and it is pretty trivial already.
I don’t understand the “hybrid characters are weak” argument. You don’t need every piece of your equipment to go towards your pets in order for them to be amazing. Even the awful storm hound summon from the relic is strong on Ultimate without focusing every item you have on pets. Oh no, he might die once every 20 minutes.
If you go Occultist/Shaman you’ll have tons of skill based pet buffs, heals, etc. If you ignore Occultist and only go Shaman, you’ve got everything you need for a pet build right there. Lightning and Bleed are very viable pet damage types, as is acid/poison, vitality, and fire.
I think the problem many have here is they want to min/max when they don’t need to. My occultist/shaman only has the base pet summons full (minus crow, I have one point there, one point in heal, and a few in his lightning resistance spell) and the rest is devoted to keeping pets alive, buffing them, the timed summon, and focusing everything I have to proccing Rend and making it awesome.
Depending on the amulet I use I can have 12 pets out at a time (this could be higher).
You don’t need a ton of % damage to kill stuff in this game if you have pets. They scale insanely well.
As I recall, this was done for gameplay reasons - if your Pets could summon Pets, then these are called would be considered their Pets, not the Pets character. For this reason, the devil’s wind you can’t put elemental seeker.
What about the usefulness of interim pet - any good master of pets knows how deadly swarming.
Temporary Primal Spirit = easy way to break the game, it’s too strong.
The developers had a good reason to make the mechanics of the Primal Spirit of what it is now, and I understand them.
I never said it wouldn’t require some re-balancing of pets. I just don’t like the mechanic used to summon them.
I don’t want pets to trigger pet summons (or other skills).
Primal Spirit is already a temporary summon? I’m not sure where you are going with that Primal Spirit argument when I was suggesting make “trigger” pets similar to how Primal Spirit is summoned.