Pet options

I'm playing a pet\fire Hybrid on the witch, and having a blast. I saw a dev on this weekend who'd talked about improving the Zombie AI, since they act sort of.. zombieish. Which is awesome, even with them being less then smart I'm loving them.

One of the things I've noticed though, is at level 25 I can have 5 zombies, 3 spectres, and 10 skeles out at any given time. The problem is keeping them sorted. Short of keeping a constant count on my zombies, I can't really tell when I'm short one. Skeles are far worse, since they have such a small life pool. Having either a small buff icon with the number of pets ( One for zombies\skele\specs respectively ) would help out a ton with this. A pet window ( Having it as a second tab to the character window ) would help even more, since I could sort through my pets, and unsummon\resummon low life zombies without having to filter though all five to get rid of the weak link, while also allowing me to dismiss an unwanted spectre to grab a better one, without having to rid myself of the ones I already have.

The second thing that I think would be amazing on a pet window is the ability to tap into my spec skills. Using the Carnal Chieftan as an example, he randomly casts Frenzy Charge on my party, but very unreliably. Sometimes he'll cast it twice in a row, and sometimes he'll go a few minutes without bothering to cast. Being able to click cast it before a large boss would make the spectres much more player friendly, without making the player sit until the pet feels like he wants to cast his spell.

I agree with a lot of what you have to say here, and as a dedicated Minion Master player from all sorts of other games I had a few other things to add.

First and foremost as stated a way to track your minion count is paramount, it saves on a lot of extra mana on the unnecessary recasting.

Minion AI was a BIG problem, the zombies were serviceable in that they were aggressive and quick to come to your aid. My problem with zombies was they'd just sort of...wonder off? I'd have my 5 and if I walked in any direction for long enough I'd notice only 1 or 2 left following me, and it was far worse indoors. Maybe it was because they'd run off and get killed attacking something I didn't see or ran past. The aggression is all well and good, but if I'm moving on I expect my pets to follow me above all things. This same issue goes for specters. Having to summon 5 zombies and 3 specters per room was needlessly mana intensive. One final note on this, I was never able to use my zombies as bombs, if they're supposed to explode when they die and they either wonder off or I can't tell how many I have so I resummon one over another I'm not able to utilize this talent.

Far worse then the zombie AI was the skeleton AI. I don't mind that they only last 20 seconds or that they don't follow you from room to room, they're a cheep short lived distraction while your zombies do the brunt of the work, this is acceptable. What wasn't cool was how devastatingly unhelpful they were, they had absolutely no drive to help me. I can't count the number of times that I'd walk into a room and summon all 10 of my skeletons and have them stand there and do nothing but stare at the floor. They could be TOUCHING what I wanted them to attack and never even so much as lift their sword. They couldn't even serve is a wall because enemies had no interest in attacking something that was docile. They need to seek out targets within the small radius they meander, I found myself not bothering to summon them toward the end of my time in the beta

Anything that would allow minions to follow you or if you could just call them to you or something would be fantastic.

Something to mark minions. The zombies were relatively easy to tell apart from the hostiles because they were like 12 feet tall and spewed blood everywhere. However the specters were hard to tell apart from other ghosts, but by far the worst were the skeletons. The skeletons look exactly like any other skeleton and were literally identical to the skeletons that some mobs would summon. It frustrated the friend I was playing with (not to mention occasionally myself) who would stand there attacking them instead of the actual enemy. Make them brighter or glow or something to further distinguish them from the undead that wish me harm.

Please remove the minion's mouse over health bar. When I'm in a room with a dangerous boss the last thing I want to see when I'm trying to check his health is “summoned skeleton” no one cares what a minion's health or name is, they're expendable.

I only made it to level 27 and had just started a second play through but I was noticing that I was getting very close to actually being done with all of the MM skills. I had zombies, specters, skeletons a few mod gems for them and almost every +number/health/damage skill in the tree. I find myself wanting more. Granted my plan was to do MM with hexes for support but I wanted more minions or at least some spells/skills that modified them more. For example maybe something that caused zombies to have a cloud of poison around them, maybe a summon that you can only have 1 of but is far more intelligent and survivable, what about a skill that makes skulls rain from the sky instead of fire, arms come from the ground, or something that causes a single zombie to run out and blow up like a “fireball”, modify my skeleton load out so I can summon like a warrior, archer, and mage or just a random assortment each time I cast the spell. There are other ideas, I just wanted to feel like hardcore necromancer for dedicating all my points to the minion buffs, not just a mage that happened to be able to summon zombies.

This isn't a rant by any means I hope it doesn't come across as such. This game exceeded my every expectation, I just happen to be very picky when it comes to my favorite RPG playstyle.

In the game DFO the summoner class has an ability that puts a mark on a specific target, which makes all her pets attack that target. I think something like this would be great for this game, since most of the time in dungeons and stuff, "pets" roam off and arent much help when you find a boss or something.
Maybe make it a type of support gem, and have the gem only tell the minions that is linked to attack. That way, if you got more then one of this gem, you could have your pets focus different monsters giving the player alot more control over there pets instead of letting them run wild.

I'm really hoping they don't lower the health to much once they start following you through zones, and with better AI. As it stands even with pretty heavily buffed up minions they don't exactly last very long. I know the zombies only real issue is the lack of a pet counter and bad AI.

Skeletons though? Wow, those things can't take a hit. And half the time, as has been stated - just don't do anything. Though I found if I spawned them in between me and a charging enemy then ran-circles around them it would get the enemy to start attacking them and get it off me. That's kinda general summoner tactics though. Summon stuff, run around it till stuff stops chasing you.

Other then AI, pet counter (which they've stated there adding) and whatnot... definitely need to get rid of the pet target like Coonix mentioned. Got my Shadow summoner guy up to 27-ish over the weekend while I could play, and that was probably the number 1 thing that stood out. My friend was playing a melee ranger and they also got in his way - constantly.

Now the small troll living in my head found that amusing. But yeah that's really bad. He couldn't attack half the time cause they where getting in his cursors way. I couldn't cast detonate corpse majority of the time cause they where blocking my cursor... just a mess.

I look forward to all that being cleared up as im sure it will.

With the exploding minion passive, I use my skeles as bombs more then attackers. I can have 12 out atm, and with the the minion HP support gem, and a few points into minion passives, they make great exploding barriers.

A lot of great ideas in the thread. I don't think Zombies\spectres should follow us through a zone though. One of our weaknesses is that we need to be able to kill a few things to build our pet armies up to really be powerful. If the zombies were persistent, then with the improved AI, we'd have little downside. We're solid where we are, just need a few tweeks to make things more viable.

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Sharlow wrote:

I don't think Zombies\spectres should follow us through a zone though. One of our weaknesses is that we need to be able to kill a few things to build our pet armies up to really be powerful. If the zombies were persistent, then with the improved AI, we'd have little downside. We're solid where we are, just need a few tweeks to make things more viable.

I'd have to agree here, if the AI gets bumped you've got skele's as a quick solution to snowball your better summons into play. Zombies/specters are your heavy hitters, and with enough buffs they're pretty hard to kill (I've got +life/damage mods on the zombies. They rarely die and 1-2 shot most things), so if they followed you from zone to zone there'd be little need to do much of anything. MM is already a pretty chill play style, i enjoy the kinda restart you get from zone to zone. Reminds me the path to supremacy is paved with a single body. =)

This isn't a rant by any means I hope it doesn't come across as such. This game exceeded my every expectation, I just happen to be very picky when it comes to my favorite RPG playstyle

I would prefer minions following through, we still have a week side. Your spending all these points on minions leaves little else for actual self combat. Summoning skeletons to make a few corpses doesn't feel like a weakness to me to be honest.

If your looking for an 'actual' weak point its the same weak point most necros have - boss fights. Generally we lack enough corpses in them to keep are 'actual' army in force to kill the boss. And majority of are fighting 'is' are zombies killing for us. We don't have the massive %dmg for spells as intended to make them really worth it. Lack a lot of the other stuff as well.

Pet classes have always been the slower, more methodical gameplay which tends to fall apart on bosses. So far, this game isn't any different just we lack the ability to keep track of are pet, they run off, and every new 'instance' (not lvl) we have to start from scratch again.

I find that more of a nuisance then some kinda massive weak point. Yall may really like re-starting your 'army' over every new instance but It's just a time waster for a class that already plays slow.

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AdhinJT wrote:

I find that more of a nuisance then some kinda massive weak point. Yall may really like re-starting your 'army' over every new instance but It's just a time waster for a class that already plays slow.

Totally agree, it isnt a weakness, it is just a waste of time.

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AdhinJT wrote:

I find that more of a nuisance then some kinda massive weak point. Yall may really like re-starting your 'army' over every new instance but It's just a time waster for a class that already plays slow.

I can respect that saving time on a slow class is a really good point, and you bring up a good point with not having any other sort of damage output.

so my recommendation would be either, spells that have damage modified off minion buffs

or

a augment gem that makes the spells attached to it use minion buffs as its modifiers rather then fire/ice/lightning