It is just ridiculous to me that they released this game after one year in early access and the literal FIRST ENEMIES in the game which are the zombies are not tested enough so that pets could fight them without problems.
I usually use my bears to GY farm because they will DIE TO EVERY FUCKING THING, other than a zombie (okay they can deal with a bandit or two if I keep healing them and are okay against other wild bears and wolves etc.). But in general a bear will die to just one risar even if healed, because it has low dmg and no resists.
But yes, so GY farming, most cities it is difficult or impossible because the zombies won't acknowledge the existence of my pets, they will just stand still while attacked, and then start running and regenerating, which means it is faster for me to just kill them myself as they usually properly aggro to me.
Even in places where they work better (MK, Toxai), these things are happening constantly with just the basic: order pet to attack zombie and nothing else:
1. Pet attacks zombie, zombie stands still until dies (fine by me but clearly broken)
2. Pet attacks zombie, zombie sometimes attacks back, but during this slides on the ground, eventually being like 10 meters away from my bear, and when they die, their loot still gets placed at my bear's location (so visually they are not where they actually are).
3. Pet tries to attack zombie, but it failed. Meaning they will just stand near them and nothing happens. This is fixed often by recaling the pet and reattacking.
4. The zombie goes into frenzy, and starts pushing my bear around like it was a paperback, this causes the bear to constantly retreat/get shoved by several tens of meters even during the fight, making it really inconvenient as they often are pushed over some other zombie loot i'm trying to collect etc. And looks ridiculous ofc.
5. The worst option, zombie gets damaged, is unresponsive, and before dying start running away regenerating constantly. At this point it is time to switch targets altogether. For example at Tindrem GY nearly all of them do this, so pet farming is too obnoxious for me there.
AND, they want to introduce some ADVANCED MECHANICS (which I'm all for point to attack and that's it is really shallow), but how on earth are they gonna pull that off if this basic function does not work even on the ZOMBIES? After all this time of development too.
Before messing the system completely, I'd really appreciate a basic defensive stance or aggressive stance so I don't have to re-target my pet every single time a zombie dies. Or even shift clicking to chain commands would be nice.
And zombies are the things that work the best really, any wild animal out there if it does not already target you the player, chances are the bear/pet won't be able to attack it. And the attack stopping of course happens a lot during a fight too, so it is unbelievably unreliable to use pets, and these bugs as many have mentioned do get your pets killed often..
And yes, pets cannot swim, although they will sometimes try and get stuck under river water, and will get stuck wherever.
However, maybe the most annoying point about pets is their slow ass speed, meaning if you wanna have a pet, you basically are stuck with riding at 2 all the time, as otherwise you really risk losing your pet constantly. They really need to stop with the realism in that and let you somehow call your pet faster to you, or just increase their speed to match horses at least when following you and you are riding.
And as the last comment says nothing has changed since beta I'm like wtf.. I don't want to play a boring melee character, but mages and tamers are both ridiculously weak/broken. I won't be subbing to wait 2 years to get pet combat working, I will be coming back when, and if it does get fixed after the subs start rolling. It is so sad as I really enjoy the game and the taming definitely is something that I want to do in this game, but it is too frustrating atm.
