Pets have always been a bit of a nuisance, but now that Companions are available in most content there really seems to be less good justifications for running them than ever.

Aside from minor benefits (like Passives and such) the Pets give, the only really good justification for running them is if you're interested in PvP or Solo Arenas -- keeping your build intact across different activities generally makes you more familiar and thus more skilled with it, and Companions can't follow you into those activities.

But on the whole, Pets are a pain (for the user, AND for the people around you who have to suffer their unavoidable presence) so I'd definitely encourage you to dump them ASAP if you're inclined to do so. There's really never been a better time to start learning to play without them!



(But I'm also notoriously and probably overly anti-Combat-Pets, so take my opinion with a healthy dose of skepticism I suppose... I'd say just about anything to get less of them running around in the game!) ;P

FrancisCrawford wrote: »

If @DarcyMardin and I are going to duo a dungeon that will be challenging for us, my first instinct is to bring a sorcerer with a Twilight Matriarch. That's the most reliable heal in the game. The Atronach is also a great ultimate for boss fights.

But otherwise I've scaled way back on my pet use. None of my newer builds feature Volatile Familiar. I don't even consider Daedric Prey any more.

@FrancisCrawford may I ask?:

As someone who's familiar with utilizing the Twilight heal on the regular, how do you feel Companion healing compares? Do you have experience in using them in a similar fashion yet? (As in, do you think they'd make viable replacements?) Or have you been kitting them out to be more complimentary to your Sorc Pet builds?


(I know this is a bit off-topic, but figured it might be relevant to the OP. Forgive me if this is unwanted chatter!)

Amottica wrote: »

I have not been playing ESO as long as most of you, but I have not had issues with my pets being in the way. Now the new companion I have seems to always step right in front of me when I stop moving and is directly in the way of many convos, grappling points, and other interactives. I had wondered why they made the tracking for companions this way.

I've found that it also has a lot to do with your Camera settings. If you play on a more zoomed-out, wide FOV setting then your pets hanging back can put them right in your field of vision pretty often (which also blocks Interact prompts a lot), but if you're more tight and zoomed-in they kind of need to get all up in your business before it's a problem.

It'd be nice if there were different ways to work around it, but for people like me Pets are hard to deal with largely because the camera settings I'm comfortable with put the Pets RIGHT IN MY FACE all the time, haha. Whereas I've had relatively few issues with Bastian blocking me from stuff so far. He occasionally will start a conversation with me when I'm intending to loot a corpse or whatever, but it comes nowhere close to the annoyance of Twilight wings flapping in my face constantly.

As with most such things, though, Your Mileage May Vary. :P



@Darkspecialist , do you have any "problems" with Pets vs Companions? If your thread here is motivated by annoyances such as this, it might be worth trying to fiddle with Camera settings a bit!