There is some sort of bug interaction with runes: Nagu and Ceh.
Nagu: “Maintain at least 1 active summon for 5 seconds, gaining offering for each up to 6 summons”
Ceh: “Summon a Spirit Wolf to attack enemies for 8 seconds”
In general it appears to be working as intended: after waiting 5 seconds, it summons several spirit wolves, after another 5 seconds, it summons another set and there is a couple seconds overlap before the first set despawns and a new set spawns.
It happens noticeably more often in things like compass and the pit compared to overworld and regular nightmare dungeons. I have gone over many permutations of witch powers, rune location slots, specific spells, running too fast [sic, getting out of range of them], tight spaces/lots of mobs/grouped mobs (regular dungeons have tight spaces like pit, but they don’t disappear as consistently; the compass is an very open layout and yet they still disappear very consistently).
Though not consistent, it seems to be linked to the ultimate in some way that I can’t figure out how/why. It’s easier to use petrify since the specialization reduces it’s cooldown to use more often compared to the other ult’s. For some reason they tend to disappear after using an ult, but not all the time.
For most places, the problem can be fixed by removing/replacing any piece of gear, doesn’t even have to be the one with the rune-combo on it (same for removing/replacing a witching power, it also brings them back). This is of course only a bandaid, and while actively fighting, trying not to die, it is not ideal.
More so, you can’t do this in the pit, which is the most important place that it really screws things up, and this bug occurs more consistently. It’s a massive nerf, not just because of the “Shepherd’s aspect” multiplier (less pets means less multiplier), but also losing the multiple extra hits to proc crit/lucky hit (due to less companions). Effectively, if at high pit level, one can go from beating it with a little extra time to spare, to literally never being able to complete it due to the massive dps loss. And, since it’s the pit, you can’t remove/replace anything, nor port out, so the entire pit is gone until you are near a portal to the next area, which also resets the runes……but in a pit you can’t simply run back and forth to the portals due to time loss.
Once they are gone, they don’t come back without “resetting” them as above (changing your character’s equips in some way, or porting). As you’d imagine, that is very bad for pit pushing, since once they are gone, especially earlier or later in the pit run, the entire run is worthless/wasted.