How well does a pet ritualist fare long term?

[sutasafaia]

I understand that pets can have some hiccups in act 3-4 for all three difficulties, but just how bad are they? I'm running this character in a duo with my fiance (Spirit/Dream melee focused) so I figured having all the wolves, a nymph, the lich king, and the nightmare all floating around at once could make a pretty nice pet parade. Is it just going to end badly in the long run? We aren't so far along that we couldn't reroll

Also of curiosity, will two different nightmares Master Mind stack...

[Ancient_of_War]

I haven't been using pets for long, actually I have a Harbiner in Act IV and a Seer in Act III, and and a Spellbreaker in IV. I put one point only in the pets for now. According to those in whose footsteps we follow, in Epic and in Legendary pets get a boost in health and resistances. I've watch some of the videos posted in the forum archives and the wolves rock as do the others. Hopefully somebody with more experience can give you more info.Pet builds are very popular and I don't people would use them if they didn't get better.
If you look through the naure mastery forum you can get some good ideas and build suggeation. And if you read any post by Violos he has a link to post on pet mechanics. As for the Master Mind stacking I have no idea I've never played mulit-player

[ASYLUM101]

Ritualist is prolly one of the best pet masters.

Nightmare makes the damage output of the wolves ridiculous, and the Nymph becomes something that actually deals damage lol.

Combine that with trance of empathy (yes, this lousy trance) and you have not one reflection char, but a potential of 6 reflection chars. (3 wolves, nymph, nightmare and you.) Also - keep in mind if you have briar ward...each of the bushes has reflection as well. Briar Ward + maxed reflection + army = reflection of doom. I have seen a video of a LEGENDARY difficulty Ritualist who kills the demon bull in Orient by casting briarward, letting the bull summon his fire of death, and then the bull dies.

I don't think mastermind stacks btw.

Ever had two players with earth enchantment? Doesn't do anything.

[gotaplanstan]

My highest character is a Petulist as I've dubbed it. Its lvl 58 in Act 1 of Legendary so far. Was my first char into epic, and first into legendary. Its a great deal of fun, but as you've (and Asylum confirmed) stated acts 3 and 4 of normal are the hardest things you'll run into from lvl 1-75 with pets.

A few ways I found around that were 1-patience, 2-healing, and 3-kiting. Maxing out Accelerated Growth will greatly increase you and your pets survivability. Added to that, Trance of Convalescence (which I believe is superior to Empathy until you start epic), and as silly as it sounds, you become a sort of tank. Because you aren't casting any nukes (dps spells...excuse the terminology XD) int is only needed for staff req. so the rest of your points should go straight into health (at 58 I have about 11k hp with HoO up). So once you have enough points into Regrowth and Accelerated Growth, you can basically pull, stand still while all the mobs beat on you or your pets, and spam healing until all the mobs are dead....silly I know, but it works.

More on Trances....I've been experimenting with all 3, and they all serve their purpose. I've actually found the reduce resistane of Wrath to be the best dps wise, but obviously it comes at the price that its basically taunt, so its only viable if you can out heal whatever you're tanking. This worked through acts 3 and 4 of epic fine until I hit the deathlancers in wusao, and obviously the mobs on the way up the summit were too much, so I switched back to Empathy for a bit of Typhon farming.

The biggest negative I think to playing pet builds is lack of aoe, which may not seem bad at first, but once you've played a bow char it kind of feels sluggish in kill speed. They do have great survivability though, b/c if something starts to go wrong you can just run to safety baring anything blocking your way.

The most troublesome encounters I found were:
(highlight them, as I've whited them out in case you don't want spoilers)
Act 1-
Polyphemus (as silly as it sounds, but at this point you only have 2 wolves and Regrowth's cd is still too long)

Act 3-
Barmanu - quest mob (this shouldn't be as tough for you in a group, however when solo you need to keep moving at ALL times, you also need to be moving your pets too in case hes target them, because his Blizzard type attack WILL one shot anything except a nightmare [it might even 1 shot them on normal...])
Yaoguai (his warnings for doing his fire aura is hard to notice and avoid, it'll shred your wolves)
Typhon (again, difficulty is relative if you're playing grouped, should be much easier, just make sure to take your pets away when he puts his thorns up, for about 5-7 seconds [if you're interested in how to tackle him solo without dying on normal with pets let us know])

Act 4-
Kallixenia the Liche Queen - quest mob (this was too tough for me at the time, the problem is she has regen, so even if your nightmare [b/c she does tons of magic dmg, chances are your wolves will die] sits there beating on her she won't die)
The Grey Sisters (they do A LOT of magic damage, don't be surprised if you finish this fight even in a group, with only your nightmare left alive)
Charon (not so much "hard" as it is attention to detail, there are ground effects which you need to avoid, he will hit your pets for good dmg too so they need heals, you also need to make sure your pets avoid the ground effects....lots of "micro" if you will)
Cerberus (basically same as Charon, ground effects)
Hades (in his 2nd form he has an aura explosion which causes massive damage so keep pets topped off, and he drops a red circle on the ground that moves slowly that both you and your pets need to avoid)

[sutasafaia]

Thanks for the advice so far, sounds like playing a pet class is going to be a bit of a nuisance in the short term. Suppose I'll have to see how it fares long term, assuming we even get to epic without one of us having an idea for a new character lol. We wanted a group that would synergize well but with so many options the best we could come up with was both having pets.

Can't help but wonder which duo could have the most beneficial stacking buffs tossed on each other to do absurd things :P

[Irma2]

You don't have to take pets from the get-go. You can defer getting them until Epic, when they become a lot sturdier. I'm playing my third Ritualist as a melee hybrid and it's doing really well atm. Dream gives you everything you need to survive and kill throughout Normal.

Here, for example, is a video of my Ritualist dealing with Deathlancers, which can murder pets quickly and are generally viewed as one of the most dangerous monsters in Normal. As you can see, she has no problems whatever with them, taking maybe one or two hits per mob.

You can rely on the pets through the latter parts of Normal but I always find it quicker to go solo.

[gotaplanstan]

I'd like to reiterate that if you do intend to play a pet class solely in a group environment, that many of the troublesome and difficulty tasks for a petclass (that they encounter playing solo) won't even matter for you. The biggest thing when playing in a group I'd focus on, is maxing your pet's dps (via jewelry and staves) so you're contributing as much dps as possible, and to be healing not just your pets, but your fiance as well (unfortunately, you can't efficiently [because you can't see their lifebars] heal their pets as well without mousing over them) and act as a healer/debuffer support role. Pet classes are really great for multiplayer with how much they provide, more than other classes in that they can dps, heal, and debuff, basically all at the same time.

edit: for the debuffing part I'd focus on maxing out Distortion Wave's (only put 1 point into the skill itself for the slow) first synergy Chaotic Resonance for the armor down, and Plague itself and its second synergy Susceptibility, then finally its first synergy

[Tyr]

Pet classes have no problem getting through Act 3-4 depending on playstyle. There are basically three ways to get through Act 3-4 as a pet class:

a) Defensive
gotaplanstan discussed this at length, and it's safe but slow. It has its advantages though, like it gives you more time to get to know your character better and shop for better items.

b) Switching to a nuke build
Simple, straightforward, effective. Obvious downside is that you lose your pets for an act or two, but it's a solid alternative. Especially if you're a Ritualist (Dream is ridiculously powerful in normal).

c) All-out offense
High risk factor but just as fast and effective as switching to a nuke build (unless they start using scrolls too ). This playstyle basically focuses on killing things before they kill you. Dying on your first few attempts is more or less inevitable with this playstyle though. Experience is the best teacher when it comes to this playstyle.

[gotaplanstan]

c) All-out offense
High risk factor but just as fast and effective as switching to a nuke build (unless they start using scrolls too ). This playstyle basically focuses on killing things before they kill you. Dying on your first few attempts is more or less inevitable with this playstyle though. Experience is the best teacher when it comes to this playstyle.

Yeah...after 6ish acts of playing defensively thats kind of how I got later in epic when I was experimenting with ToW. Its got to the point in legendary that I pull maybe 5-10 groups of mobs at a time and just run around spamming DW/plague until everything dies lol. Of course thats while using wrath still