Customary "When are summoners getting new summons" thread

[Remus]

I hope SE sticks with the whole trance thing it's more fun in my opinion. GJ SE. I prefer it how it is now pet assist me (bit of extra dmg) and I do majority of the dmg. If they made it so you just control the pet they would be a very lazy job in my opinion.

[Tolmos]

If they made it so you just control the pet they would be a very lazy job in my opinion.

Having played games that did "control the pet" classes right, I have to say that I disagree with this entirely. Here are a few examples:

Take Aion. Aion Spiritmaster has a pet that is the primary damage dealer. The spiritmaster itself has mostly DOTs and some utility skills to increase the damage of the pet. However, along with the pets own special abilities (sort of like our egi has now), the spiritmaster also has pet skills of their own; in fact, an entire bar's worth. When the spiritmaster casts that skill, the pet performs this (on top of the pet's own skills). What this results in is the spiritmaster being something of a puppet master, using the pet as their arm to attack and defend as necessary. The spiritmaster itself can drop DOTs and do utility, but their main strength comes from their summoned pet. A true summoner.

Another pair of examples that worked similarly were City of Villains/Diablo 2 zoo necro. In those games, you had multiple pets and the character itself was basically the buffer/healer/rezzer for that group. You were the utility to your pet army. You spent all your time dropping debuffs on the enemy, buffing your NPCs, and then doing some small amount of damage of your own to supplement what your pet army was doing.

The way you described above

I prefer it how it is now pet assist me (bit of extra dmg) and I do majority of the dmg.

is the exact mechanic of the WoW hunter. Now, that's all well and good but the issue is that the pet is nothing but a gimmick in this situation, as all it brings to the table is a tiny bit of extra damage. The class itself now becomes a DoT version of the black mage. WoW players got so fed up with this playstyle that they made calls for, and eventually got, the ability to just not need the pet at all and be able to reclaim that DPS into the main character, since it was more of a liability than a boon.