Since you’re not going to bother actually reading the various threads I’ve made to improve Primalist diversity, I’ll spell it out for you here:
You can, in theory, do Leap with pets, but what does Leap really do? Move pets out of the way of danger while providing a minuscule damage boost? Do you think this is worth a slot can be used for a better buff like Frenzy Totem or a better survivability skill like Eterra’s Blessing / Healing Wind? Do you think it’s worth taking Wolves simply because they can Leap with you instead of taking a more sturdy pet like Bear? My suggestion for the skill: Use the Leap Tree for the nodes that add Lightning strikes when you land and when the Wolves use the Leap ability in their skill tree, have the Wolves’ Leap use the nodes from your Leap Skill. That way, your Wolves have the Lightning nodes + Leap ability while the player also has the Leap ability + can take a good number of Lightning nodes in the Shaman Tree to benefit both you and your pets. That gives Leap + pets a real playstyle that can’t be copied or obsoleted.
You can, in theory, do Melee with pets, but why would a Beastmaster- a class with no Ward, no benefits for Dodging, and can’t get the increased Protections from Totems the way a Shaman can- want to risk his life to get inside Melee range? Flanking Strike, located right at the top of the Beastmaster tree, doesn’t have a skill tree yet, so we have no idea what the vision is for this ability and whether the taunt + big Melee strike would be worth changing equipment to obtain increased player Melee damage instead of going the traditional route and giving every affix slot benefits to pets. You can take the Beastmaster node that adds 1 additional companion at the expense of having to do Melee attacks every few seconds, but which pet currently is worth taking that route instead of taking Frenzy Totem or another support skill? In the previous thread, I proposed giving Summon Bear the Earthquake skill; if you route the Earthquake tree so that it gives a guaranteed stun, you introduce giving yourself and your pets good ground control, which would be necessary since without a skill slot for a healing ability, you’re reduced to pet leech and potions. That makes Melee ability + pets a real playstyle that can’t be copied or obsoleted.
You can, in theory, take the passive nodes that require you to only take one companion, but in my experience actually testing this build idea, without the additional defenses a Sentinel has or increased Leech + Ward and Ward retention a Lich has, Beastmasters are far too fragile to compete on the same level as the other classes. The passive nodes you get for only having one companion are pathetic and require too much investment in the Druid tree where you could be taking higher level Beastmaster passives instead to be worth it. Can you name a single pet that does better on its own than with 2-3 other pets to assist in its damage? I have already proposed ideas for the Summon Raptor skill to improve the nodes where it does more damage and have more AoE capability the more enemies it kills; this sort of proposal creates incentives to use Raptor as a solo pet, because these nodes would be ineffective if the Raptor were competing with three other pets for kills.
Even if we just stick with the pets themselves, there is potential for a good variety of builds, if you give the players incentive to go off the gold path of most flat damage, most crit, most speed, most leech. Sabertooth already has nodes that give it huge amounts of increased damage in return for increased damage taken. Why not branch off this path and revamp the Sabertooth skill tree so that you can make a glass cannon that does huge single-target and AoE damage, but will die constantly against even mid-level enemies unless you equip with “increased minion health” affixes and use your other 4 abilities for healing abilities like Eterra’s Blessing and Healing Wind (which desperately needs skill trees). Frenzy Totem has a node that allows you to cast Eterra’s Blessing on an ally; problem is you can’t use it to cast it on one of your companions. The skill simply doesn’t work. I’ve already mentioned in a previous thread ideas on making Wolves swarm companions and making skill nodes + Unique equipment that incentivizes player to use a team of 4 Wolves and no other companions. It’s slightly limited by the lack of originality and build-defining passives on the passive tree, but I’ve been advocating for new ideas and posting my thoughts which would provide different builds. It’s 9 months before release - this is the time to test out what works and what doesn’t and to get your ideas out there so the game can be polished for the day when those outside of beta testing play it for the first time.
That’s what the other classes have that Primalists don’t: skills that can use other skills and benefit from their skill trees. The three earliest pet skills - Wolves, Sabertooth, and Bear - were created before the devs had the opportunity to weave skills together like this and thus desperately need a re-vamp so they could match the Raptor in versatility. Summon Scorpion’s node trees suffer from bad pathing and weird node choices (why would you want it to have Ice Thorns when Bear does retaliation so much better? Why do you give it Lightning damage when Wolves completely outclass it in that area?) and the pet struggles to come out of the other pets’ shadows and give someone an incentive to actually use it. The fact that Primalist survivability lags far behind that of the other 3 base classes just adds to the pain.
This is the problem behind the fanboyism and yes-man thinking: people mistake “RNG tedium” for “difficulty” and playing “nearly the exact same build with slightly different set-ups” for “diversity.” Then the equipment and passives get designed around these false choices, and when someone with a real original idea comes up, it comes far too late when the ability to support these ideas has come and gone. There’s a lot of polish that needs to be done before the game can reasonably compete with the other ARPG standards, but there’s enough wellspring for originality that I’m optimistic many good ideas will get introduced to the game. Let’s see what the next patch brings first and foremost.