In my experience, pets have always just been there for kicks n giggles 8/
Pets maybe great at the start, but later on you'd want to keep the exp to yourself, furthermore there's the risk of afking and them running away, people like me forget to egg them 8P
Whether or not a pet has skills is not much of a concern to me
;
and looters don't require armor? Does that mean the poring family doesn't require backpacks to loot?
Anyway, if you can find a way to give custom pets more performance options I'm all for that ^~^