I think it would be quite good, and enrich the game, if many of the high end sets had their ‘good’ (usually 4-piece) bonuses partly shifted to only require two pieces, and/or add in additional pieces to allow set mixing to be more viable.
As an example: The bonuses to the summon limit on summon briarthorn and summon hellhound are effectively mutually exclusive, as you cannot equip four pieces of both respective sets simultaneously. But it would be nice to have the option of trading off the other bonuses from the set to experiment with whether simply having extra pets is worth losing them.
The reason why the “good” stuff is usually on the 4p set bonus is balance.
Regarding your example, every additional pet is a huge damage boost, having those on the 2p set bonus would be totally imba. It would create a situation where it’s almost mandatory to combine sets like that because everything else is gonna suck in comparison.
sees the tag and reads through the thread half asleep
sees pets being mentioned and brain suddenly wakes up
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Regarding the thread’s topic, while I am a fan of the idea to shift power away from sets, I don’t think this is the way to go about it. The pets themselves will end up requiring nerfs to balance it out and that will make gameplay without these set items that much worse.
I would rather prefer if the number of pets was instead tied to skill points invested. So, for example, say a 2nd Briarthorn at 26/16 rather than tied to any item or set.
But, convincing Zantai won’t be easy since he is the one who will then have to balance everything for that
I am taking this out of context a bit, but you can combine Diviner’s Vision with Bysmiel’s Trinkets for one of the worst pet builds atm
While I do find this to be a much better alternative to just giving everyone a free second pet, this too would result in everyone just getting a free extra pet.
It’s fairly easy to get 26/16 in 2 pets, though almost impossible to get it for 3. I’ve got a Ritualist with 26/16 on both Blight Fiend and Briarthorn and a Cabalist with 26/16 on both Skeletons and Hellhound.
There’s also the issue of how do you balance Skeletons here? A whole extra Briarthorn is quite a power boost. One extra skeleton is… not.
I personally think pets are in a really good place right now, and are fairly balanced up to about SR90-100, which is as far as I’ve been with mine and farther than I really intend to go (not a fan of SR).
Unlikely to be implemented, but…you never know with the new expansion coming out.
Extra pets could be done as an Exclusive Skill.
This way the number can be limited by Mastery. For example if you took the Exclusive in Shaman, you would get +1 Briar, but not use the Occultist bonus pet exclusive.
etc.
And then the extra pet set bonuses could be eliminated.
