It’s always best to play MMORPGs with friends, but there are those who would rather create their friends and command them to do what they wish. Those kinds of folks are fans of pet classes, so they’ll enjoy that Ashes of Creation is talking up its own upcoming pet class, the Summoner, in the May developer livestream.

The devs at Intrepid Studios brought on to talk about the Summoner point out that it will be the most versatile in party play, capable of tanking, healing, and DPSing, which is all governed by the kind of pet they have summoned. That’s not to suggest that the Summoner character will be idle, as they’ll have a mage-like suite of abilities, most of which are DoTs and channeled abilities, ones that directly interact with their pet, and utility skills like teleportation and buff dispelling.

Summoners will initially be able to summon one of three pets, but there are plans to allow for other smaller pets to be brought forth as well; the current design suggests a primary pet with supporting smaller pets that can be summoned with an augment.

As for pet control, it should feel familiar for MMORPG pet class fans with direct control commands and stance toggles, while there are later plans to include an individual command bar for pets and logic that dictates when a healing pet engages heals automatically, though full manual control is still going to be a feature as well.

With so much available to the class, the question of balance came up, which was answered with the point that even if a Summoner is spec’d in a specific trinity role, it’s still not going to be quite as good as a dedicated archetype; the class can basically sit in as an off-tank or supplementary healer/support. As a reminder, the Summoner is slated to be part of the third phase of Alpha Two, which was pushed back into August

The May stream also discussed other matters as well, including how Intrepid processes and prioritizes bug reports, an overview of upcoming economy changes that generally involves knob tuning for recipe needs while still letting early levels make their own gear, upgrades to the Unreal Engine, and efforts to detect and prevent cheating. The full two and a half hours of broadcast await below.