Hey Gibbous, as the game director with a pretty severe case of carpal tunnel from an extreme amount of ARPGing I stand behind this sentinment. We’ll definitely make it so that you can be a lazy zookeeper though you may have to earn it through passives with an opportunity cost and certain uniques to make it really shine. This is another step forward in making our Primalist, and specifically Beastmaster, feel unique to our Necromancer.
You can still roll a Necro and be pretty lazy from the get go if you specialize/gear that way. The primalist just has to work for it a little more!
Hmm I’m not sure how I feel about this. A Primalist summoner with many wolves seemed pretty cool as it wasn’t something that you could really make work in Diablo 2. I like the active abilities for companions, but making the number of companions so small kind of ruins the fun. I think you guys should reconsider the number of wolves that are allowed and place limits on each kind of companion instead of a flat number as someone mentioned in a post above.
We have relaxed it slightly since this post was made based on feedback from the beta testing group. There is a node in the new wolf tree which makes 1 wolf not count towards the cap. You can still get up to the same limit of permanent wolves. The temporary wolf node has been removed because we thought that it conflicted with the core values of the Primalist character.
If it really doesn’t work then we’ll look at changing it back. We aren’t set in stone with anything really. We are going to give this new system a little while to grow and see how it feels though.
I’m currently running a MonoPet Druid, but I’m a bit disappointed that I wasn’t able to run a Mono-Pet Druid with Serpent Strike (potential 18 nodes of investment completely lost if the minion gets killed during a boss with low adds, doesn’t count as a companion for the purposes of Mono Pet Builds), without also needing to run another Pet at the same time. Took a long way to find that the interaction doesn’t work like I’d want. Can Companions be more clearly marked - fancy border on the UI, or a Companion Tag, say?
(PS, In general, I think Guardian Spear in general for the Primal Serpent Build is so integral it will never not be taken, and thus should be included within the core skill - I’d also consider giving this Pet or the associated skills another go over - so much investment to increase it’s longevity after specifically stating the pet doesn’t heal is a bit of an odd decision, I think)
Yea, we have a lot of talks about pets still. We’re looking at all sorts of options for them right now and we aren’t really locked in to an option yet. We’re testing some things out internally right now but I’ll see if we can get some sort of update on the plan.
A follow up as totems are “pets”. Are totems meant to be the huge aggro poles that they are? It would be nice if everything on screen didn’t make a B line for them the second they are summoned.
I like it when the totems pull aggro. At least the thorn totems. But I tend to use the 5-at-a-time nodes and like getting everything around them so I can wipe out the enemies with less risk.
It would be nice if storm totem didn’t with it’s lengthy cooldown but I assume I just need to learn to place it smarter.
I haven’t paid enough attention to the aggro mechanics, for all I know they’re random. I assumed that mobs went for the first thing that hit them. I know they can be distracted after that because they’ll chase me occasionally when I haven’t hit them at all and my minions are whacking them.
Well I think Totems pull a lot of agro and this is the best way to handle it. Imgain placing a Totem and all enemys say “nay!” and move away from it. Would be fun for sure but right now the enemys kill those. I have skilled the Claw totem node in the swipe tree and those little ones are agro magnets as well. Would be strange if melee range totems simply would be ignored :D.
No offence intended but isn’t this a bit wrong from a balancing point of view? Aren’t the storm totems very potent and should therefor be focused by enemys? Sure if they did indeed had a taunt mechanic build in, so to speak, that’s a fair move but I think it’s a bit difficult to leave the totem at a lower agro after it starts to damage enemys ^^.
This was a consideration when we made the change. It is something that we’re going to test and change still. We are planning several changes to the minion agro systems.
and change that tree summoning unique ring, it’s a low level proc minion for a low level with high aggro draw. The tree model looks awesome though, could we get the tree fleshed out, and added in a skill tree with modifiers to the tree? maybe add a chance to summon a big tree in the spriggan form skill tree?
Thx for the replies :). I was just thinking about it and didn’t want to make a fuzz :). I think so far everything is in a good shape and after some number tweaks things will be fine. Then again I hope there will be some kind of substitute if totems will have less agro. Something like a dummy totem that shouts insults at enemys forcing them to attack it or something like that.
