Didn't really find anything discussing this, just a casual mention so here goes.
The thing I love about pet classes is that in many cases they are somewhat easier to get started with and for general use but also somewhat harder to master, though that mastering depends on the actual complexity allowed among the pets.
CoH did a pretty good job with this but looking back it was kinda limited with the pet classes primarily focusing on damage. I would love to see that among the sets there are those that primarily focus on buffing debuffing control or even tanking. Not sure what the power level would be compared to the other classifications but perhaps a bit lower.
Now I'm not talking about having 6 pets all throwing +3 mag holds (plus mine from secondary) onto the same target or having 6 tankish pets all playing ping pong with threat among the enemies so that leads to my second point, number of pets within a set. The tankish and controllerish sets would most have to limit them self to one, maybe, stronger pet(s) so as to somewhat "balance" them out.
There has been mentions that we may get pets in tertiary sets but I don't think they would satisfy this since I doubt they would get up on the same power level nor have the same granular command control.
For single-pet and perhaps dual-pet sets we could get toggles and/or cast buffs that only (and automatically) apply to the pet, so we get a little more to do and have something in those slots where we won't have summon powers. but also because one powerful pet shouldn't everything "by default".
Which brings me to my last point, please please please make any upgrade powers that are designed to be permanent as passives. Never really made sense to be lugging around (or summon separately) lots of "upgrade materials" compared to them having access to it prior to me summoning the pets, as in summoning an already more powerful demon/undead instead of making more powerful in the field or your reserve of robots already being upgraded to their fullest or the mercs/thugs/ninjas waiting having a fully stocked armory.
Taking all this into account would essentially make Master a "Jack of all trades" classification, which may not be such a bad idea as long as it doesn't overshadow the "pure" classifications.
I feel the need to point out that Mastermind pets focused on damage because they were supposed to. But there were more than just MM pets in CoH and Controllers, Dominators, and even a few Defenders got in on that action. Pets in CoH did indeed run the gamut you mention.
When you look at all pets as a whole then yes you might be correct but I am essentially only talking about pet sets, a.k.a sets who's primary purpose is to summon and handle pets. By that criteria it would only include MM.
Even if we include them I'm not entirely convinced that their primary design was not to be a DPS boost.
I could see having a choice of "Robots" pet sets where one set gives you a lot of little robots to swarm your enemies with, thus doing debuff or damage, another gives a few medium sized robots to perform various tasks (buff and damage) and yet another gives you one BIG robot to tank for you (pet is tanky, character needs DPS). Then you could have secondary and tertiary stuff that people can mix and match as desired (some where the mastermind does more damage, some where he buffs the pets more, some where he debuffs the enemies even).
In a "you only get one pet, but it;s a good one" type set, the question becomes what level do you get that pet summon at, and what are the other powers in the set? Do the other powers just apply resistance buffs to the pet? Since you're presumably going to be using the tank-pet as your tank, you want it to take and deal with aggro, how does that happen? Can I select targets for the tank as if I were the tank somehow, thus effectively shooting or punching stuff via the tank as a sort of puppet, like in the movie Real Steel? If that's a thing, you could make the other powers in the "one big pet" primary set the attacks that the big pet gets, I suppose. Then when you're in "puppet master" mode, you get to use the pets attack tray as if it were yours, but you can still use your tray too.
I'm not sure that applies as well to other pet memes. Like having one big ninja doesn't seem as good as a team of them (then again, there is that conservation of ninjitsu "law"...)
I guess it could work with animals, demons, illusions, and robots, not sure about mercs, thugs, and ninjas.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
On the other hand, if I had my choice of a whole score of henchmen, or Brock Samson, I think I'd go with Brock...
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R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Something for everyone to think about, when it comes to Pet Powersets.
In City of Heroes, there were essentially only a few major archetypes that "managed" Pets full time ... Controllers (initially) followed by Dominators and Masterminds. Storm Control sort of fudged the boundaries a little, but the "pets" this powerset spawned were functionally immobile, for the most part.
So Controllers were the "original Pet" Archetype, with Fire Control sporting the highest quantity of Pets ... and Mind Control getting NONE (unless if you counted [url=https://tomax.cohtitan.com/data/powers/power.php?id=Controller_Control.Mind_Control.Mass_Confusion]Mass Comedy[/url] as Temp Pets). But the Level 32 Pet was the "endgame" of being a Controller. Poo Man ... FImps ... Singy ... Jack ... and so on. These Pets were all located in the Primary.
Then along came Masterminds, and now you had 3 tiers of Pets ... but they all came from the Primary. Dominators were just Controllers who didn't believe in Buffing (as a Secondary).
So ... what if ...?
In City of Titans, instead of dogpiling ALL of the Pets into a single group of choices (such as Primary powersets only) ... what if, instead ... Pets were a "limited" portion of the Primary/Secondary/Tertiary choices?
Basic idea is:
Boss Pet is in your Primary
Lieutenant Pet is in your Secondary
Minion Pet is in your Tertiary
It widens the scope a bit as to who can HAVE a Pet, but it also means that there isn't a "dedicated" Pet Archetype akin to Mastermind. Instead, there would be a CHOICE to assemble what amounts to an entourage of Pets ... IF ... you choose the appropriate combination of powersets, which just so happen to include Pets within them. Note that this makes things a bit more flexible, since it doesn't lock in the 3/2/1 like Masterminds had with their Primary, so things work out to be a bit more ala carte.
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
We would have to design brand new Secondary sets to pair up for our Operators, which we aren't about to do, making the Operator summons sets in the first place will prove quite a mountain to scale. The Summons sets are planned to still follow our module system, with a slight twist. It'll combine number of pets with subsets of 'roles' of each pet. Each tier is its own individual module as well, so some with multiple tiers may have slight changes in the 'role'. An example could be a set with multiple pets having its first tier of pets be designed with a melee offense role, while the second set is ranged offense with support, and the third is melee offense with increased protections. Then there is each set having its own theme of effects within each frame work.
We had kicked the idea around creating pets with a wide diversity of powers, as in each having melee, ranged, support (buff / debuffs), controls, and some with summons of their own. And then providing a command system for the player to apply the parameters of prefered behavior. But that was before we had begun applying the frame works, our power designer, and npc modules together. The work involved for creating a single set with specific types of powers (particular themed effects) but with such a wide range of possible combinations would result in us getting very little variety of summons sets released. It is simply too much to test.
It is a lot to test as is with a simpler design system (which is still complex mind you). But now, while we have a more structured system in place, there will still be plenty of variety, and we will be able to better manage our design time / testing time cycle to get a bit more variety of Summons sets pushed through. Still, this is subject to change based on a couple of factors, so mountain of salf and all that.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
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[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
Hmm, don't really like it since the trouble will be in making one who focuses primarily on pet handling. Your suggestion would make it that every classification would need a pet mastery , which would probably need to adjust the baseline stats so to make the pets more prominent. Another aspect of this would also be the upgrade powers, especially the permanent ones.
One big problem is how to "arrange" the defense sets. By this I mean how to properly replace up to 3(?) powers with a pet and its possible support powers and still keep the integrity of the sets purpose. For all but the defense sets its simple to just move those types of abilities to the pet and still keep that integrity, but for defense not so much. Personal buffer would become a fairly big weakness and not really add to the feeling of being a pet handler, and turning the pet into something else would most likely gimp you compared to the non-pet defense sets.
Also out of "fairness" they would either have double up on sets by making one pet version and one non-pet version, or just doing "pet versions" of everything. At least for primary and secondary sets but probably for tertiary as well.