Now before I start this I will say both that I know not all skills for taming / beast mastery are in, and that I didn't play MO1 so there may be some assumptions I am making that aren't true (although I have spoken to people to try and get as good an understanding as possible first).
Looking at the domestication child skills, it is clear that being a mage will have several advantages going towards this build. The first is that mages can very well support their pets at range, letting them both fight while providing healing, magic reflect (I assume) and still being able to put out damage. Also, while I know that veterinary skills will be in the game, Mages have the advance currently of no wasting any offensive points by being able to heal, it is part of ecumenical skills and so is 100 points that they don't have to spend. Secondly, mages get access to potentially better pets through domination that can't be traded and so are not available to other builds. In fact, if the mage isn't worried about trading pets then they can drop Taming and therefore not lose any primary points to get this bonus. Thirdly, most, if not all, of the beast mastery-based skills have INT as the primary and PSY as the secondary. These are both of the main characteristics that mages will prioritise and so they will get a lot of free points in these, especially fat mages with >130 INT. Additionally, INT doesn't seem to provide much if any benefit to a non-mage and so they are more likely to put points into PSY for magic resistance, further reducing the points they have available.
Having seen a lot of discussions (admittedly as well as my own personal bias), a number of people would like the idea of a woodsman/ranger build with pets, which allows for a non-mage playstyle and also fits very thematically with what people imagine, with rangers being one with nature.
I am not sure what a solution might be but I would love for a build like this to be viable and not just possible at a stretch. If anyone has any ideas on how this might be done it would be great to hear it.
Looking at the domestication child skills, it is clear that being a mage will have several advantages going towards this build. The first is that mages can very well support their pets at range, letting them both fight while providing healing, magic reflect (I assume) and still being able to put out damage. Also, while I know that veterinary skills will be in the game, Mages have the advance currently of no wasting any offensive points by being able to heal, it is part of ecumenical skills and so is 100 points that they don't have to spend. Secondly, mages get access to potentially better pets through domination that can't be traded and so are not available to other builds. In fact, if the mage isn't worried about trading pets then they can drop Taming and therefore not lose any primary points to get this bonus. Thirdly, most, if not all, of the beast mastery-based skills have INT as the primary and PSY as the secondary. These are both of the main characteristics that mages will prioritise and so they will get a lot of free points in these, especially fat mages with >130 INT. Additionally, INT doesn't seem to provide much if any benefit to a non-mage and so they are more likely to put points into PSY for magic resistance, further reducing the points they have available.
Having seen a lot of discussions (admittedly as well as my own personal bias), a number of people would like the idea of a woodsman/ranger build with pets, which allows for a non-mage playstyle and also fits very thematically with what people imagine, with rangers being one with nature.
I am not sure what a solution might be but I would love for a build like this to be viable and not just possible at a stretch. If anyone has any ideas on how this might be done it would be great to hear it.