I’m creating a Occultist/Arcanist summoner (now that the stormhound has been rescaled) and the raven abilities are far too random when applied to my other pets. They seem to work when I start a new play session and then won’t get affected by them until some time has passed.
Is there a sure fire way that at least Storm Spirit gets applied to my pets? I sort of need that elemental base damage. 
The ravan’s AI for recasting storm spirit seems kinda wonky. SOmetimes he’ll recast it before the first one has even timed out, and sometimes he just takes forever to recast it.
Worse thing is its area of effect RANGE is terrible. If he casts it on you (not sure if he’ll ever target a pet with it on purpose), any pet even a small amount of distance from you won’t get it. I wish they’d increase that. Briarthorn’s howl buff has a huge radius of effect 
I think the fact he often recasts it is designed to make up for the fact it has a small aoe. I remember playing with it in a party of 3 people and found the uptime on all of us was usually 75%+ of the time.
Raven tries to cast Storm Spirit as soon as effect fades off. Usually it happens after 1-2 seconds, but sometimes may take longer.
Raven doesnt use Mend Flesh to heal himself. And he doesnt spam Mend Flesh, despite cooldown isnt shown (you may think it’s zero). Overall, i’d suggest using Blood of Dreg and Wendigo Totem to heal pets, and raven with Storm Spirit to buff them with resistance.
I didnt tested that well, though, cause my conjurer is physical/bleed melee, not a summoner.
I ended up just taking all the points out of raven because of this. Storm Spirit really ought to be an aura like Hellfire and if there is/was any way to tell it to just sit back and heal whatever is at the lowest hp, I would love it. In general being able to set pet behaviors in a more robust manner than “go here, attack if it suits you” would be nice.
For over 2 years, this conversation about the lackluster raven has been on the steam and crate forums about it being wonky. Yet Crate hasnt touched it. Me personally I just put 1 point in raven and a few points in heal and then set it to defensive and then watch it do nothing while my health drops lower and lower when it is supposed to heal you when your health drops below 75% per Crate in another forum post. Its broken and yet Crate wont acknowledge the fact of it.