I really hope they don’t remove the Bear’s ‘caster crap’ but instead improve it and add more different nodes to the tree instead. The Primalist only has one viable caster companion as it is. There should be multiple options for melee, retaliation, spell casting and buffs. I may be alone but I would love a spell casting Bear companion 
For sure.
An additional remark that leads to another problem the devs will have to solve : none of the worst skills you selected belongs to the rogue. Maybe fair to say that none of the rogue skills would belong to a bottom 10 ? A bottom 20 ?.
Because, in my opinion, the rogue is just a more polished and designed class than the 4 original ones by a mile. And the problem is deeper than just tweaks and numbers.
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I think there should be a separate “caster” pet. Bear, thematically, should be a tank.
I think a couple could be redesigned from the ground up. Pick a theme, design tree/skills with multiple interactions and build options around the theme. Boardman’s 5 worst masteries is a good place to look at those that need a total rework.
I’m using a poison bear caster with a poison totem build, and it actually gives you one full skill slot worth of utility easily. The bear casts fast, and pierces, so is great for clearing trash mobs and dense packs. Also, if you are using totems, just one passive gives the bear 85% more damage, then the frenzy totem also gives a nice buff for more poison and cast speed. plus compared to a spriggan it never dies!
Ive seen a caster spriggan that never dies 
Bears don’t poison. The whole idea of a “caster bear” seems absurd. If anything, the druid should give a skill like “poison tipped” that lets him augment the attacks of his pets with poison. The bear should not be able to spec that itself though.
I know it is a fantasy game, but some things are to the point of absurdity and it takes away from immersion.
Well i mean…
Sabertooth cast ice vortex
Wolves cast lightning
Scorpian cast ice thorns.
Not sure a line needs to drawn. I think the bear just needs two ways to build into it. Spell or pure melee
I should say: It rarely dies with no investment into strength or glancing blow, etc.
All of those are equally absurd. To me, it looks like they just didn’t give much thought to building the pets. They could have pets like Spriggans or Fairies that are spellcasters. Maybe they just weren’t creative enough, or didn’t want to invest the time, to make the pets reasonable, strong, and different. I can see them struggling to make them all different enough to inspire builds without including absurd casting abilities.
Bears - should be all about being tanky and strong. (Like a barbarian)
Sabertooth - should be fast and agile. (like a rogue)
Wolves - should be about pack fighting. (they could scale for each wolf in a range)
Scorpion - should be about poison. (I really like the little scorpion swarm thing)
Raptor - I don’t like it. Thematically it should be like a mix between wolves and sabertooth. Seems redundant. I would replace this or sabertooth with a real caster pet.
I could see both wolves and sabertooth doing things with bleed, but in different directions. Wolves apply lots of bleeds that stacks damage. Sabertooth applies fewer but stronger bleeds that also debilitate in some way, like slow.
I don’t know. It is just my opinion. Of all the pets, the only one I even remotely desire to play is the wolves because they seem the most reasonably on theme.
Well, all of these pets are quite old and im sure once there ever upgraded things would change.
Another thing to look at is this game is heavily based on synergizes so getting ride of pets abilities to build into elements like cold/lightning/fire would kill off its synergies with shaman.
I like that all pets have different ways to build into even if some our outside the realm of realistic, we are playing a time traveling game with wizards after all.
I think pets (when they receive a rework in there trees) need to just have more diverse ways to play and be able to build into them more.
Example: Summon Bear
It needs to retain its retaliation, but retaliation should have more ways to build it not just fire poison/bleed thorns, but an actual “swipe” retaliation as well
It needs abilities like “Roar” that frenzies allies or taunts/fears enemies or boost damage
It needs more life and damage and perhaps even a “Devour” where it gains life back on kill
Its physical/melee presence needs to be better felt on the battlefield.
You already feel this with the newest companion added “Raptor” It does a good job of gaining damage/size after kills and it has a lot of “MORE” modifiers that lets it do good damage.
When you say on “Theme” I assume your referring to them hunting in packs. But that doesn’t mean they cant have even more abilites or different ways to build into (Dots/hit/crit/spells) the more possibilities the better as the most fun skills in this game are the ones that have the most viability and synergy with other things. If theres only one way to build wolves it wouldn’t be as “Fun” im ok with the game leaving the “theme” of wolves as we know them in Our world, for us to get them in the “theme” of eterra. I think I shaman running around would lightning wolves is awesome, I think a werebear using a bear pet that great solo and can help tank or give buffs or take the taunt is awesome, I don’t think adding layers to these would be bad in anyway. We all have our opinions, in the end lets hope they find a good compromise for us both.
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I agree mostly, but elemental pets should not be build into the individual pet trees but rather be some augment skill from the Beastmaster/Druid/Shaman. I could see it as a separate skill that buffs your pet and you can build it for any of the elements as well as other pet buffs.
I also like the idea of a single big wolf like a Direwolf kind of pet.
Speaking of the max 1 companion nodes, maybe every pet tree should have bonus’s if your max companion limit is 1.
Why not?
What if we make things more spicey? Best to worst skill for each mastery and why? Best synergys of skills for each mastery + base class and why? Skills that should work togheter but don’t synergyse well. This should be content for maaaaaaaany hours of YT vids and it would be even more fun if some content creators do this to give feedback. Maybe @Sarno want’s to put some giftable keys out for this for a raffle on the videos? Might be a nice marketing thing. people see the skillsystem and how the game is working and because there are keys to win people will go mad for it and watch it a lot… win:win from my point of view.
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Consistency. If you have 4 different pets, you most likely aren’t going to take all of their respective trees. It would be nice if you could spec one skill that buffs them all to a certain element or tactic. Some people may want a pet of each different element, but I don’t see how that doesn’t just put us exactly where we stand with pets being bad.
That’s a long video most likely to lose interest, but breaking those up into categories and covering 5-10 skills at a time over the course of a few weeks would be alright.
This would be very hard to balance, essentially what your asking is for a skill to buff a companion so it does as well as your other companions that have been spec’d into but what this leades to is Spec’d skills + the skill buffing keeping the gap the same.
The skill your wanting works a bit like eterras blessing/frenzy totem/entangling roots does now, these skills boost different companions different ways whether it be flat melee/spell damage attack/cast speed crit chance or ailment chance, they can also heal at the same time.
Instead of pets having different elements id be really excited if EHG would go the route of every companion playing a different role, just like different class msteries will in multiplayer in the future. Id like bear to be able to taunt enemies and keep there focus and tank while spriggan can spellcast from range cast healing spells, I wish you could designate a companion the “alpa” so other companions will attack the same companion as the “alpa” instead of diverting into different directions all the time and constantly needing micro management.
One thing I currently don’t like about companion is they don’t have auto casting skills that affect there fellow companions. I wish a bear could auto roar every 10 seconds buffing allies, and spriggans auto casted eterras blessing every 10 seconds while wolves howl does a good job on hit/on kill with buffs raptor Rampage should affect allies in some way and scorpion should have an aura, im not super fond of poison pools.
Anyways will be interesting how companions are brought up in the future.
Yes every companion skill tree should have at least one branch in it dedicated towards it being solo companion, and we’ve asked before that wolves tree could have a solo alpha wolf before that was bigger and meaner, but I don’t think pets have really been looked at in a long time.
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That’s what i ment. A segment for each mastery ^^.
Do you think that perhaps skills that move enemies around (Static Orb/Black Hole), might become more useful simply by the inclusion of additional players that are able to capitalize on a higher concentration of enemies in a given space?
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I would be disappointed if a skill needed other players to be playing with you in order to become as viable as other better single player skills.
That said, Im not convinced that mob density is the issue with static orb/black hole.
why doesn’t abomination just take an AOE poll of all minions at point of cast and make an amalgam? You COULD even make a tree where it either prioritizes ST mobs vs AOE type.
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