Soothsayer problem

[Violos]

Pets are actually fine in normal until way into act 3. You just have to buy damage gear for them, and support a little.

[Buy4now]

Pets are actually fine in normal until way into act 3. You just have to buy damage gear for them, and support a little.

I've considered going back and playing my SoothSayer over again with post-expansion/fanpatch game mechanics. That class has really been enhanced by clever build suggestions like Poinas' guide to Spirit and stronger pets. I agree that pets can be fine in normal, but it would require a very different build than the ternion focused ones above. One of the challenges I face with normal builds for a lot of classes is that a lack of skill points often means I have to choose a playstyle that fits. The SoothSayer will have a hard time being a powerful ternion wielding caster and a petmancer at the same time prior to late epic... the lich king and wolves have skill lines that require a tremendous number of skill points to flesh out. Also, the ternion dynamic (deathchill aura line and ternion line) require a fair number of points to be "effective."

One of the things I like about +skill gear, mastery shrines, and mystics for pet classes in this game... they allow multiple strong pets to exist at a relatively early part of the game.

When a 42 level Soothsayer reaches Delphi in Epic, he has access to a mystic to rearrange his skill points. If he wants to see what life would be like with a fully developed wolf line, lich king, and ternion build... then he could rearrange skill point into a pet build, cast the pet, and then respec into a different pet line. Since pets tend to stay alive longer in epic and legendary while dealing more damage than they did before the fanpatch, you could play an entire gaming session with that configuration. A relatively low level Soothsayer could have a full line of very powerful pets AND a powerful ternion attack using that method. It would cost money to respec the skill points, but the cost caps out at 45,000 per point... so the cost of respecing gets relatively cheaper as the game goes on.

Mystics and mastery shrines give pet users, like Soothsayers, a way of temporarily boosting skills in order to summon a relatively permanent uber pet long before it might have shown up "naturally". The pet will revert back to a weaker version if it has to be resummoned, but post-fanpatch pets stay alive much longer than they used to (especially in epic and legendary). Just a way of using an in-game dynamic to give the Soothsayer and other petmancers an edge.