Pale Master's Skeletal Summon Needs Gear

[jsm123]

I recently decided to try changing my Pale Master Elf Arcane Archer build to incorporate the Skeletal Knight which I thought would be able to be a decent tank to pair nicely with my ranged playstyle, but the pet has some horrible scaling in high levels. I invested in all of the summon/pet/hireling/minion upgrades like Augment Summoning, Improved Augment Summoning, Harper Agent's Harper Leadership, Magus of the Eclipse's Great Summoner, and Primal Avatar's Natural Shielding. I even made sure to give the pet all of my guild's ship buffs and my Wizard spell buffs. After all of this, he was still too weak. I tested him out in a Legendary Elite quest where he was constantly rolling glancing blow hits and taking a savage beating from enemies. He became a hindrance instead of a helper.

To remedy the pet's downfalls, he really needs to be able to equip gear in my opinion. Even with limitations like only a certain number of gear slots or only non-named gear, I believe it would be a great improvement that would make the investments worthwhile.

[inspiredunease]

I recently decided to try changing my Pale Master Elf Arcane Archer build to incorporate the Skeletal Knight which I thought would be able to be a decent tank to pair nicely with my ranged playstyle, but the pet has some horrible scaling in high levels. I invested in all of the summon/pet/hireling/minion upgrades like Augment Summoning, Improved Augment Summoning, Harper Agent's Harper Leadership, Magus of the Eclipse's Great Summoner, and Primal Avatar's Natural Shielding. I even made sure to give the pet all of my guild's ship buffs and my Wizard spell buffs. After all of this, he was still too weak. I tested him out in a Legendary Elite quest where he was constantly rolling glancing blow hits and taking a savage beating from enemies. He became a hindrance instead of a helper.

To remedy the pet's downfalls, he really needs to be able to equip gear in my opinion. Even with limitations like only a certain number of gear slots or only non-named gear, I believe it would be a great improvement that would make the investments worthwhile.

Pets are not great even with all advantages, I wish they were, but I don't think any amount of gear is going to make them that useful. I wish I were wrong about that, necromancer is my favourite Diablo 2 class, and I'd love to have a skeleton army, but it would be really hard to balance with a full party, which is why I think summons will only ever really be for flavour.

[jsm123]

Pets are not great even with all advantages, I wish they were, but I don't think any amount of gear is going to make them that useful. I wish I were wrong about that, necromancer is my favourite Diablo 2 class, and I'd love to have a skeleton army, but it would be really hard to balance with a full party, which is why I think summons will only ever really be for flavour.

Anything can be balanced in my opinion. A pet doesn't replace party members just as hirelings don't. But a viable pet could add to a build. For a Wizard, the Skeletal Knight could be great for maintaining some aggro. It doesn't need to do much damage, just enough to keep the aggro with increased threat. I just don't think enhancements should become unviable late game because it cuts out a people's playstyles and build creativity.