not a fan of umbral beast

the graphics really do look cool and all, but the sound effects it makes are just god awful

i know its not advisable to skip the pet in the control set but i honestly do not like the pet much, the sound effects are terrible and personally i would prefer something a little more "dark" like nerva spectral daemon lord esque

when i saw what it looked like in the character creator in beta i thought it was cool looking, but actually seeing it in combat just makes me disapointed and want to skip it (i know its AI is a little broken atm, but thats not what im disapointed about)

personally i like the shades from the Haunt power more than the umbral beast

The ingame pet looks really cool..then I right clicked and looked at its mugshot..its looks like Lassie! Way to nice and just..doglike. How about making teh bio pic a lil more..beasty looking?

It is not advisable to skip your pet on a controller IMO, but on a dominator they are all optional. We don't need them and a lot of the time they cause unwanted aggro and just get in the way. It would be fine if at the very least we could put them on passive or aggressive at our choosing. My final build might not have the pet either, although it is a nice power to slot for an extra 6.25% recharge so I will see how it goes if mids ever updates. I am going to keep it while I am leveling to 50 though at least.

I plan to use it until I respec at 50. Once you crank up the difficulty most pets can't keep up with a dom anyway.

I don't know, I like the Umbral Beast, its actually selling point for me on the set for me. Also if recall correctly haunt takes recharge intensive pet sets, meaning you can get the both flavors of unique +Def and +resist IO's to help toughen up the pet some giving you an extra +20 resist and +10 def, combine that with Cardiac to increase his innate resists

I have to agree with the OP... of all the possible things they could have made... a wolf is the least pleasing to me (well, unless it had been really ridiculous like a big goldfish).

I would even have been happier with just Dark-flavored Imps.

A lot of people complained about it being lackluster, or just another way for the devs to work the shiny new four legged rig into something. Honestly, that's how I feel. Something specific like a dog really doesn't have much of a place as the big pet for a set about darkness. Give us something more elemental and generic, like the fire imps, ice and rock creatures, or electric gremlins. Make a more bad *** version of fluffy, or those new haunts. Save the animals for Beast Mastery.

However, I wouldn't want them to remove the dog, as a lot of people also love it, and it makes sense for their characters. If we could just get an option to choose between the dog and something more formless I'd probably actually play Dark Control. But as it is, the dog is just a deal breaker for me, mainly 'cause the character I wanted it for wouldn't use his mastery over darkness to construct man's best friend.

I for one love it, even the sound is cool IMHO, but no one wants to hear a barking dog the whole time they play. It needs shut it's infernal yap after a cycle or two. I have put my Dak/Kin on hold to see what kind of options we get, and what other power sets come down the pipe next.

I'd much prefer a reskinned/Possessed spectral daemon like the CoT have.

See,



Keep the dog as an option, sure, but I can't see how they didn't think of this aside from "we gotta get our money's worth out of this dog rig!"

I can't tell you how happy this thread makes me. I thought I was the only one who hated the stupid dog.

Of all the things this could have been, taking the dog and sticking an aura on it was probably the most lazy, most ill-fitting option they could have done. The tier 9 was apparently so 'awesome' it needed a separate release when the set was revealed. Instead, it almost killed the set for me. I'm still levelling my Dark/Dark Dom but I have no intention of using GothLassie except as a set mule.

What I would have given for a reskinned Spectral or even a Giant Ghostly Spider... Maybe if pet customisation even becomes a reality, I can replace it with something appropriate to the set.

I think a bigger more vicious clawed version of the creatures from [Haunt] would have been superb.

the thing that annoys me the most about the dog still is the god awful noises, NONE of the other controller pets make hardly any noise and thats what i would prefer

even in RL i absolutely hate dogs barking, i dont want to listen to it in game as well


i could potentially deal with the dog model if it werent such a noise machine (although as i stated in the OP that there are other things i would still prefer over the dog)

I'm not crazy about the canine model either. I'm not crazy about dogs in general. I keep mine saturated in blacks so I don't have to see its stupid doggy face. It seems like a lot of coloring options really make it obvious that, yep, it's a dog.

Compared to the Cthulhuesque horror we could have gotten, the wolf is a big disappointment.

WARNING: I bold names.

I was on a BAF with 3 players that had them.. I thought someone was doing the howl emote. After the 10th howl I asked because it was ANNOYING.. Once I was told it was the pets I had to shut my volume off.

These Devs really, really, really know how to beat a dead horse with this one. If a person loves the howl that much create a command that allows the player to have the pet emote the howl after the first 2 times.

The more players that level up these dam pets the more annoying it is going to be everywhere. I have a DS MM and even I am respectful of others and either dismiss them or have them emote drinking to keep them quiet.

And yes anything other then black make it look like a gray dog with some sort of odd color hanging over it.

Inside Dev Meeting
Lets give them some sort of new demon or some sort of existing npc just recolored.

Nah, give them a dog !! Didn't you see how many bought the vanity dog pet in the market !? They will LOVE this... And give him that 10 yard stare and smiley face the vanity pet dog has..

I can see the dog putting me off from playing this set for a good while - it really narrows down the concepts that fit the set somehow.

Similalry, I hated Jack Frost (and Fire Imps to a lesser extent) on my mutant X-Men style controllers way back. Even my current earth pet is far from ideal for Dr Harmony - who powerwise is effectively like Firestorm.
Most control sets it feels like I need a lame excuse as to what I'm doing in game when I hit 32, or skip a very effective power.

I'd pay for more neutral optional models for all the control set pets. Something more like Singularity would be great as an alternative.

The sounds are probably a little like Demons for MMs. I really hate playing with people that have that set as it's rather loud and constant, and I find their dismiss animation to be freaky and obnoxious.

Still, I like the shadow wolf look. Nightmarish for a lot of people, and there are a lot of myths that use wolves in a dark sense... Fenris, etc.