I have been trying to use/test skills and builds that aren’t the typical ones seen all over the forums. Currently, I am trying hard to make use of the spriggan companion (doesn’t look good for end game… but I’m trying). My biggest issue with companions is the obviously underwhelming companion AI.
Half the time my spriggan companion is so far behind that no matter how often I use the manual attack command (“A”) it never catches back up. It is even stuck sometimes because it has pathing issues. Why is there no range limit on how far companions will get before automatically returning to the player? What about a simple toggle option that allows players to force companions to stay nearby, or even to go in a “standby/defence” stance? So many other games have implemented countless solutions to this very problem.
I am hoping to start a thread where as many players as possible can comment on their experience using companions (or minions in general) particularly in respect to the companion AI.
Any thoughts, solutions, frustrations, questions, would be fantastic. Just from watching chat I know that I am definitely not the only person struggling with companions.
I’ll admit that I totally stay away from companion builds in this game for this very reason. Coming from using pets in Grim Dawn (probably like over 1k hours of pet builds) I couldn’t tolerate even the small amount of time I did spend with pets in this game. Surely I imagine it’ll get better and, if anything, I’m a man of great patience so I can wait for that day.
Also, pet builds have always kind of been top-tier in that game which also probably helped. But yes, the pets did have a few different stances and they stood close to you only attacking enemies on screen while being able to use pet attack to forcible have them attack a certain enemy. Perhaps I just like that games implementation of pets too much, so this is clearly a bit biased on my part.
Well I generally don’t play pet builds in many games, but when I do it’s because there is enough agency given to the player that it feels worth while. In shaman/beastmaster builds it pretty much cripples the entire class when pets become useless. Kind of removes the entire mechanic.
What would you say the bare minimum pet mechanic/control would be for you do play a companion build in this game?
This is a great question. I could easily rant about why I like GD’s pet mechanics, but perhaps it was just that initial feeling I got of the pet mechanics in this game that threw me off. I may just literally have to spend a lot more time with pets in this game to achieve that same sense of familiarity. Certainly the pathing/AI of the pets didn’t help as well as my recency bias of using pets in GD. As I said, I may just be applying my expectations of what pet mechanics should be like from that game onto this game without taking into consideration how this game wants to approach pets, their mechanics, and pet builds as a whole.
Long story short, I should really give pet builds a second try, a wholehearted effort this time.
Awesome to hear you are so eager for giving things a fair try. And if you do play a companion build here, I’d love to hear your feedback then.
Just for the sake of clarity, the majority of the current pet mechanic is that they are fully automated. You can press “A” to command them to attack a specific target, but beyond that it’s pretty much just toggle them on and let them do their thing.
I’ve only used the skeletons and bone golem minions so far. The skeletons were fine, but the bone golem seemed too slow. By the time it caught up to me and my skinless friends everything was dead already.
I do like all the different ways that the Acolyte classes can specialize their skills to interact with their buddies. For a while I was using 6 skeleton warriors as mana batteries to channel drain life longer.
Yeah I definitely prefer the added synergy with the necro pets. A lot of skills interact with them quite well. The comment you made about the slow golem that kind of forgets to keep up, thats basically the entirety of companions for Primalists… it feels bad haha
i’m currently leveling thyworm’s serpent strike beastmaster that strikes a nice balance between player damage and pets… between the thorn totems, the scorpion and her babies (and to a lesser extent the serpent that serpent strike has a chance to summon on hit) there are plenty of things to draw aggro and contribute to overall dps… but thanks to the serpent strike and draalsting you contribute a large chunk of the dps yourself, so you’re not totally screwed when the summons aren’t nearby.
i also had a lot of fun with a sacrifice acolyte but that was a few patches back and iirc there were some nerfs to it that kept me from coming back to it… i imagine it would be even worse now with the ward changes but i’m not sure about that as i haven’t played with ward or that build since this patch.
i would like to see some more customizable AI for summons because i really enjoy classic summoners who just stand back and let the pets do all the work… so far from what i’ve seen of the AI in this game they just aren’t that viable yet.
Does this still hold true if you run past a large chunk of a map (several packs of enemies) and then stop to fight? Does your companion come back to you without any delays?
Even in arena my companions lag behind when I have to kite groups of enemies.
i can’t speak to that, since i have been taking my time getting through the story and haven’t made it to mono or arena yet… there have only been a couple of times so far that i’ve run past several packs before turning around to deal with them, and i have noticed the pets being somewhat behind… entangling roots has been really nice for crowd control the few times i’ve been overwhelmed with mobs though. i’ve seen some other posters saying it might get nerfed because of how effective it is (something like an 80% slow on command and with some investment the AOE is pretty much the whole screen), but for now it’s working great.
My only minion complaint is with Primalist. I hate that the only companion you can have multiples of is wolves. It makes it so if you go for a large number of companions that aren’t all wolves you use up most of your skill slots. Not that you should be able to have a pack of every summon, but more than one would be nice.
I’d love to hear back after you’ve done some monolith farming, or arenas. Curious to see if everything still holds up later on. So far, i have only found companions viable if I am a dps build that kills everything along the way. Pets are usually more of a passive utility than something to build around (poison or bear vines/chill aside).
i’ll be sure to post an update… had to take a break to eat but there’s no obligations keeping me from pushing through (thanks covid!) so aside from taking my time to enjoy act 8 for my first time, i should be at endgame pretty soon.
ok so i made it to endgame last night and in my first monolith run i made it to the 27th or 28th timeline before i got waylayed by a galumander or whatever they’re called. i tried to sneak past a large pack to get my entangling roots under them. i know i said it has near-screenwide AOE but it has an issue where if there are environmental obstacles it just clumps the AOEs up… i might respec out of the multi-AOE node and just recast it more frequently.
i ran into a weird issue in one of the last zones of the story though. my minions got caught by some allied NPCs who just stopped moving after i left the area, and i was 3 screens away before i noticed i had no minions with me. i had to open the overlay and scan around for them before i figured out what happened. (screenshot: left, overlay map showing where i found them; right, minions trapped by jerks: https://i.imgur.com/VcstuB5.jpg)… this is where something like a minion recall key would be useful. the same way A is minion attack, it could just be another key without wasting a skill on it like poe’s convocation.
in any case the build felt pretty good for monoliths… i run ahead, drop entangling roots and frenzy totem on a pack, start smacking them, then my minions catch up a moment later and join in. everything melts pretty quickly, even big tanky rares thanks to poison’s OP stacking debuff. it really has that beastmaster feel of being a capable warrior with strong pets who help in the fight. we can hold our own separately but we really destroy as a team. that’s the RP i signed on for with beastmaster.
the bad news is this build really sucks at arena… or maybe i suck at arena… or maybe i just need to stack some more dodge… or maybe the flame golem ballista things are just way overtuned… any way i made two arena runs tonight and both ended when flame golems showed up, one at wave 10, one at wave 20-something. first time the flamethrower got me, second time was the ridiculously huge AOE thing… they seemed to do it either on death or when i got them to very low health. either way they just completely one-shot me both times.
i’m already planning to start a new char and i think i’m going to go for something super tanky with ranged attacks, since i apparently have to build entirely around the flame golems. i only had one death in story mode (and it wasn’t to the one i encountered there), but those things just completely bodied me.
edit: also forgot to mention that in arena the pets were just not as useful as they had been in the more linear story areas and monolith… they were scattered by the enemies approaching from all angles and i was often fighting solo for longer than i wanted. i haven’t quite worked the minion attack key into my rotation since i didn’t really have that problem until arena.
