New Class Suggestion: Beastmaster

so i was trying to think of a way for grinding gear to incorperate battling pets without making the game pay to win.

eventually i arrive at the concept of a beast master class.

give the class spells and skills that summon beasts like pets or something(kinda like the raise zombies or summon skeletons spells). and other spells that then buff those beasts (like frenzying them increasing their attack speed, or giving them more health or damage. their class weapon could be something like a command whip (which would be a 2 handed weapon) and they would wear light armors since they will stay behind their animal companions.


again this all just stemmed from me wanting battling pets, but respecting grinding gears desire to not become pay to win.

I would love, absolutely love, to play a character with a permanent combat pet. Not the undead stuff, but animals.

A tame Rhoa would be awesome!

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Mivo wrote:

I would love, absolutely love, to play a character with a permanent combat pet. Not the undead stuff, but animals.

A tame Rhoa would be awesome!

So basically a Druid from D2?

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Mivo wrote:

I would love, absolutely love, to play a character with a permanent combat pet. Not the undead stuff, but animals.

A tame Rhoa would be awesome!

So basically a Druid from D2?

I feel like most of Diablo 2's abilities are represented -- except the Druid's.

I'd be okay with the addition of carrion creepers, twisters, shapeshifting (!!!), and animal companions.

In fact, now that I think of it, there is an almost purposeful lack of Druid representation; as if it's been purposely overlooked so as to be included all at once in an "expansion" or what.

OR, it has been overlooked because Chris/GGG really doesn't/don't think any of the Druid's abilities fit the theme of Wraeclast. Which I would grudgingly call fair.

Not to mention that in order to fit a new class starting position in the tree it would need to be COMPLETELY scrapped, because as of now there are 3 attributes, one char for each and one hybrid of each pair, and one equally specialized in all 3. Where should the Druid fit in?

Just make it a series of skills, like summoner skills.

It doesn't need to be a class, just a new skill(s). "Call Animal" or something, and maybe a a microtransaction where you can make the animal summoned by your skill look like one of the microtransaction pets.

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m1lfr3d wrote:

eventually i arrive at the concept of a beast master class.

This is not how classes work in PoE.

As for permanent animal companions, what would they bring to the game that Zombies and Spectres do not? Ditto various special buffs for them instead of Flesh/Bone Offering.

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Incompetent wrote:

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m1lfr3d wrote:

eventually i arrive at the concept of a beast master class.

This is not how classes work in PoE.

As for permanent animal companions, what would they bring to the game that Zombies and Spectres do not? Ditto various special buffs for them instead of Flesh/Bone Offering.

i think it be great but to set them apart you would only ever be able to summon 1 animal

each animal would come with a set of skills so they would have different purposes.

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agbudar wrote:

i think it be great but to set them apart you would only ever be able to summon 1 animal

each animal would come with a set of skills so they would have different purposes.

I love the idea of broader/better "companion" skills, but I don't think it needs to be its own class. I have one reason for this.

Animated Guardian.

Animated Guardian actually represents a "genre" of summoning skills that people quite like, but are poorly represented in PoE - long term pals to kill shit with. They're not a screen-crashing horde, or exploitable specters, they're just there for you.

I also do thing they have a really viable place in the game when compared to conventional summons - Animated Guardian can be worked into builds that need a little extra survivability, maybe a tiny bit of extra DPS, but can't heavily commit to minion passives. There's no reason a limited selection of long-term summons couldn't be introduced to broaden build variety.

The biggest barrier I currently see is moderately poor passive support for anything that isn't a zombie/skeleton, and mediocre gem support. Since they'll likely be significantly re-structuring the witch half of the tree, I don't see incorporating some "companion" specific nodes as much of an issue - you could even incorporate a keystone that prevents the summoning of skeles/spectres/zombies, but boosts your long-term summons.

As far as gems go, yes summons can benefit from a lot of standard gems, but I'd like to see long-term summons be able to use trigger gems, since it would make long-term summon both more functional, and more unique/fun. Additionally, I'd like to see them counted as "Party Members", specifically so the conduit passive can apply to them (but not zombies/skeles/spectres). Either that, or change how conduit works - again for the purposes of unique function/build variety/balance.

Basically/TL;DR: No to making a whole new class for it, yes to making more long-term summons, and improving passive/gem support for those summons. May need to make a new skill gem tag to properly implement the changes I'd like, but that'd be significantly easier than making an entire new class.