While looking through a thread about how necromancers appear in D3 and GD (http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/showthread.php?t=52450), I noticed a discussion about how pets are used in ARPGs. Or at least, how players typically seek to use them. Apparently, a large number of players, when looking to use pets, want to use them as THE main damage vector, and other considerations on how to use pets don’t get much screen time. This translates to what is expected of ARPG developers in what to make pets capable of being rather narrowed. Perhaps a bit better, itemization for pets gets narrowed, so that a player has to choose between strengthening theirself or strengthening the pets.
I’m not sure this is ideal pet usage, though. An example of something that gets left out is what I call the artillerist’s strategy–send out a durable pet to keep goons distracted while you snipe them silly from a distance. They do the tanking, you do the damage. This was how hunters–druids armed with pets and a bow, maybe some elemental skills, no shapeshifting–did things in D2. I have some hope that this can be replicated in GD when the expansion comes out (think Inquisitor/Shaman), but from what I’ve been told about itemization and threat, and the limits of even a Briarthorn with maximized Ground Slam, I have my reservations. (I wonder if D2 had a drastically different aggro allocation system compared to GD; at the very least, how did an Oak Sage, which does nothing but boost life totals, get a monster’s attention? Was it all proximity-based?) I suppose my point is, how to make it so pets can be designed with something more than damage delivery as a primary role? As I noted before, this problem plagues ARPGs in general. I’m not sure the answer is the full RTS methodology that Ceno alluded to, but pets deserve better than to just be attack drones.
(Now that I think of it, I notice that the game’s pure damage pets are all temporary. The only permanent pets are the threat-grabbing Briarthorn and the buffing Familiar. I wonder if there’s anything we can learn from this…?)
While I agree that most pet builds emphasise pets doing the damage it doesn’t have to be that way. Pets in GD and TQ can be either left at their default Normal setting or set to Defensive where they will support your toon by staying close and protecting them if foes get too close. On Aggressive yes, they’ll go after anything within range.
You could choose to have the Raven and Hellhound on Normal/Defensive mod and Briarthorn on Aggressive which would send him out to tackle foes while you attack from afar. Or simply leave him set as Normal too, select his icon and then send him off to attack.
It works exactly the same in TQ except there’s no easy way to see what your pets are set for. But the options are the same.
And again it depends on how you personally play. When I play as a petmancer, and I do that a lot lately having discovered how much fun they are, I don’t just stand back and let them get on with it a lot of the time. I’m joining in - whether it’s with attacks from afar or wading into the melee.
Aggro in GD doesn’t really support that. Perhaps a Mythical with something like “X% extra taunt generated by Ground Slam and Ember Claw”. That’d be the only " fix" I see to get this in the game.
I would like to add that there are other abilities in the game (Such as from items) that increase threat generated by that specific ability.
However, Grim Dawn currently does not have the necessary tech required to modify skills in-game. What I mean by that is, you cannot have an item that says “Your <insert mastery skill here> now generates more threat.” or “Your Curse of Frailty now also reduces Chaos Resistances by 15%.”
I mentioned the latter one in specific, because, with the upcoming expansion pack, Crate is adding the tech required to make this a possibility. The Curse of Frailty thing was specifically shown by Crate as well as other skills suddenly getting something extra as well (Such as “Your X now also causes 600 vitality damage”)
So, while it is not possible in the current Grim Dawn, the expansion will have that new tech that will provide that. There are some caveats that I’d love to see a dev answer. For example, while the expansion shows its ability for items to give existing skills extra’s, it has yet to show items that can give pets extra abilities, or have pet abilities (Other than the mastery skills!) gain new features as well.
Some pets from items for example have 4 or 5 different skills they can use, it would be glorious if there were items that could compliment the skillset those pets have. This would be (In my opinion) an excellent idea for sets and their bonusses.
