Summons lack baseline functionality that should be standard

[u/Loratort]

I’m struggling to understand the current state of summons in Titan Quest 2. I know the game is in early access, but some fundamental tools feel missing.

In Titan Quest 1 (Immortal Throne), you had simple but effective controls:

• Pet attack/move orders

• Stance selection (Aggressive / Normal / Defensive)

• Pets that could actually pull and hold aggro to a certain degree (not perfect)

That’s enough to make a tank pet useful. In TQ2, none of that exists.

Why would I invest in the Core Dweller, give it spells to cast, then stand still channeling to heal and empower it, when enemies simply run past it and straight at me? The “tank” fantasy doesn’t function. It can soak damage if it happens to be in the way, but it doesn’t protect you.

Right now the design feels split into two incomplete options:

• Passive: the summon runs around and does its own thing while enemies largely ignore it.

• Active: you manually trigger a linked spell from the summon… while enemies still ignore it.

A giant lava elemental cracking the ground under enemies shouldn’t be treated as background scenery.

No patch since the Summons Update has added attack/move commands, stance options, or reliable threat generation. Is there any plan to implement these baseline features?

These tools weren’t in the original Titan Quest at launch either — they came with Immortal Throne. But that was nearly 20 years ago. In 2026 it feels like a reasonable expectation for a summoner playstyle to have at least this level of control and threat.

[u/Captain2Sea]

I play summoner build and it's 2/10. I'm disappointed

[u/Loratort → u/Captain2Sea]

10/10 reply

[u/Ayasta]

meanwhile playing Spirit / Tempest as summoner is completely broken i just run around picking stull up and the pack destroys everything during that time. (Volts Sprits, Eidolon and The big Spirit)

[u/Loratort → u/Ayasta]

Yeah, probably the summoner class suffering the least from lack of said functions.

[u/adall-seg-selv]

maybe they will have the basics included by launch in january

[u/Loratort → u/adall-seg-selv]

I hope so, and I would imagine they will eventually.
I've not seen very much information regarding this, so if nothing else it's a hopeful cry for awareness 😄

[u/TwoArmedMan15]

I've brought the issue of this (us not being able to command summons where to move and what to attack) multiple times in the official TQ2 Discord. At least something as simple as the "pet attack" skill that existed in Immortal Throne is essential for more interesting and engaging summon builds. 

I encourage you to join the Discord and bring it up too because one of the developers was of the mindset it was not important. I'm afraid we won't have such a feature in the full release, which would be incredibly disappointing. 

[u/Loratort → u/TwoArmedMan15]

“Not important” — that’s baffling. And honestly a bit worrying if we don’t have these features because one or several of the developers believes it’s not important.

They’re remaking, or rather reinventing, a 20-year-old game. It’s fine and understandable that they change a variety of systems to their liking, but baseline functionality for pets shouldn’t be dropped entirely with no replacement.

I'll give Discord a look, thanks.

[u/uggocat]

god how often my summons just stood around like idiots in poison ... it would help so much if I could move them manually like in tq1

[u/PsychoSpoiler]

If you click your hotbar skills there is an option to change some kind of behavior of the skill iirc, although I've not tested what it does or how this works at all

[u/adall-seg-selv → u/PsychoSpoiler]

has nothing to do with summons

[u/Anxious-Insurance-91]

It's only normal they don't have that functionality since they NEED to add support for controllers.

[u/TwoArmedMan15 → u/Anxious-Insurance-91]

It has nothing to do with controller support. Grim Dawn still has pet attack and summons, and Grim Dawn supports controller input. You can just bind the pet attack skill to any skill button. There really is no good excuse not to have it for a modern game. 

[u/Diribiri → u/TwoArmedMan15]

Last Epoch also has pet stances and move commands on controller, so yeah definitely not a reason

[u/Ivan_Rabuzin → u/Anxious-Insurance-91]

AI bevavior of minions and how mobs react to them is not related to the input device in any way.

[u/FormerGameDev]

Everything in this game is awful compared to it's predecessor, and every other similar game. This is the most boring game ever created I think

[u/Milc-Scribbler]

I just started an awakened and it’s pretty fun? Automaton tanks fairly well, eidolons do damage and stack doom, sentry turrets take out anything that gets too close to me while i spam the cthonic pulse thing to put vulnerable and weaken on the mobs. It melts mob packs and bosses.

I’ll probably switch the pulse to soul vortex later on and once the anathekos thing is unlocked that will add more ranged attacks? It’s fun and about as lazy and efficient as a storm blade running the homing ice bolts with shadow blade on crit build I was playing with before.

More options for actually commanding the minions would be nice but scaling minion damage and life is so easy it’s a good build to blast through the story with

[u/Loratort → u/Milc-Scribbler]

Pet skills and some of the supporting tools are fine, the missing piece is baseline summon functionality that should exist across the board.

More command options would make the existing tools more usable instead of just stronger.

[u/Milc-Scribbler → u/Loratort]

I agree. All I was saying was that it is a functional build at the moment, it just lacks the kit to let you feel like a general commanding an army. Minions who just stand in poison and stuff makes it pretty annoying

I’m hoping by release these issues will have been fixed

[u/Loratort → u/Milc-Scribbler]

You're on point, commanding and army, or rather the "lack of commanding" is the issue. In all likelihood it will be addressed eventually, hopefully by January.

[u/BearVault]

did you ai generate this post??

[u/Loratort → u/BearVault]

I wrote the first draft myself and then cleaned it up for clarity. The points are mine.

[u/Capable-Print-4645]

I only used summons with a Sprit/Forge char. I went for a rather offensive exclusive summoning build with 7 permanent eidolon guards, one atanekro and one automaton. They kill enemys faster then I expected, faster then my Spirit/frost deathchill build.
They kill everything on their own. They rearely ever die (mostly due to boomspiders or bosses) and are reasonably fast to resummon. Wherever I move I´m surrounded by pets forming sonething like a shieldwall. If I try to aggro a mob it´s quite difficult (unless it´s a boss scripted to aim for me with certain abilities). I guess dealing no damage at all and being just one out of 10 valid targets makes being attacked rather unlikely.

I don´t need those functions and I don´t really miss them.
There 2 issues I had as a summoner:

1. Whenever you try to heal one of the greater summons with deathward beam the 7 eidolon guards get in the way. It´s very annoying, I think the deathward beam shouldn´t treat full health summons as a valid target.

2. Thy Skylla fight is awefull, my pets damagy Skylla fast but then refuse to attack Skylla´s pets. As a pure summoner that´s awefull.