Struggling pet classes

K

kallemur4

Dalayan Adventurer
This thread is about the high tier game, lower tiers I would say classes are more or less balanced.

Looking back, mages and beastlords have been frown upon as classes. They are not the first in mind when you try out new encounters (especially 6 man stuff)

This changed when Runic2 pets came. Those with runic2 were now viable options again.

After the pet hp nerf it is close to the same it was before, as in pet classes that have close to 50% of the dps coming from the pets, dont do much when the pets dont survive.

I can see the problem with having pets with too much hp. They can tank more than maybe was intended, even with miniscule ac/mitigation, and thus trivializing some content (at least that is my best guess to why it was nerfed)

So how can we help pets survive?

1. For mages, turn the murk spell into pet heal, with a different timer than the usual lvl 64 one. Larger and with faster recast (I dont wanna go into numbers, that is another discussion) This is to balance the fact that beastlords have targetted heals to use on pet as well.

2. have a /pet attack behind command that makes pet hit the back of mob. this is to help the positioning problem we get when we need to draw back pet to recieve the group heal.

3. Let group heals that hit the pet owner include the pet. (to avoid the problem above)

4. have pets low enough on aggro list and placed behind the mob be immune to whirlwinds/phantom strikes and such. That way the pets cant be used as a tank/offtank, but be pure dps. Then we just have the casted spells, turned mobs and such to heal thru.



I dont expect all these changes to go thru (tbh I would be happy if ONE of them happened at all, or other changes that can help pet survivability) but they are some ideas at least to reduce the pet classes problems to be viable dps in high tier encounters.
 
kallemur4 said:
1. For mages, turn the murk spell into pet heal, with a different timer than the usual lvl 64 one. Larger and with faster recast (I dont wanna go into numbers, that is another discussion) This is to balance the fact that beastlords have targetted heals to use on pet as well.

2. have a /pet attack behind command that makes pet hit the back of mob. this is to help the positioning problem we get when we need to draw back pet to recieve the group heal.

3. Let group heals that hit the pet owner include the pet. (to avoid the problem above)

4. have pets low enough on aggro list and placed behind the mob be immune to whirlwinds/phantom strikes and such. That way the pets cant be used as a tank/offtank, but be pure dps. Then we just have the casted spells, turned mobs and such to heal thru.
Click to expand...

1. I don't know enough about Mages to have an opinions on that.
2. Train your tanks better. A combination of peanut butter and routine lashings works wonders.
3. This idea is great.
4. Much like #2 this is not a bad idea but is superseded by the better #3.
 
I don't think pet classes are weak, especially BST(them not playing the game is a separate issue), but I also saw no reason for the pet nerf. I never heard of pets tanking anything worthwhile and still the best justification I have heard is Wold didn't like the sound of 20khp pets.

I'd be a fan of better pet heals. I dont like the positioning/immunity things since that goes towards making the game easier and more automated.
 
I agree that there is no need for aiding in positioning or immunity from special attacks. That is all the responsibility of the player to not be bad, and take the time for correct positioning and pulling back as needed. Why should pets be any different from players in those regards. The real issue is that they need more hps or avoidance or mitigation so that they do not get 1 rounded when theese things happen. A bigger/faster casting/less recast time pet heal would be great but I would much rather have the larger hps back so I am not healing the pet more and actually dps'ing and allow gheals to get the pet.
 
woah woah don't take the ability for pets to try to tank a mob away, there would have been a rather sad wipe last night when healers were not paying much attention to someone with way more mitigation than a pet if not for that.

the major problem is the mitigation (ac, dodge/parry/riposte/etc stats) being really terrible and not scaling up at all
 
kallemur4 said:
2. have a /pet attack behind command that makes pet hit the back of mob. this is to help the positioning problem we get when we need to draw back pet to recieve the group heal.
Click to expand...

i need my pet to tank wen i solo so i need my pet to have agro on mobs over me


Moraelintz said:
I agree that there is no need for aiding in positioning or immunity from special attacks. That is all the responsibility of the player to not be bad, and take the time for correct positioning and pulling back as needed. Why should pets be any different from players in those regards. The real issue is that they need more hps or avoidance or mitigation so that they do not get 1 rounded when theese things happen. A bigger/faster casting/less recast time pet heal would be great but I would much rather have the larger hps back so I am not healing the pet more and actually dps'ing and allow gheals to get the pet.
Click to expand...

yep 100%
 
The pet in the back attack with low aggro.... not intended to be the common attack. My thoughts was that if we need to draw back the pet to get it healed it would be nice if we could get it returned to the back of mob to keep hitting on it. Yes we need to be able to use the pet as sucky tank at times.

Yes I would also rather have the r2 pet have the hp back, but tbh I dont think that will happen, and then we need to see what we can do to keep pets alive anyway.

Probably best option is for group heals to hit pets that hits the owner combined with a better pet heal to keep it up. There will still be problems with whirlwinding/phantomstriking mobs that only can be kept alive with more hp pets.
 
Or have Companion Health also affect mitigation/avoidance.
CH AC = 400 + 200 * CH Level
CH Dodge = 10 + 2 * CH Level % chance to dodge
Which equates to:
CH 8 Pet boosts to 2k AC and 26% chance to dodge
CH 7 boosts to 1.8k AC and 24% chance to dodge
CH 6 boosts to 1.6k AC and 22% chance to dodge
CH5 boosts to 1.4k AC and 20% chance to dodge
CH4 boosts to 1.2k AC and 18% chance to dodge
CH3 boosts to 1k AC and 16% chance to dodge
CH2 boosts to 800 AC and 14% chance to dodge
CH1 boosts to 600 AC and 12% chance to dodge

Companion Strength increases resists. Yes, this will put resists higher than the player's average gear, but players can also stack resists for a particular fight. It would be easiest if pet resists = player fomelo resists on summon/zone. But barring that:
CS 50 + Level * 50
CS 8 = 450
CS7 = 400
CS6 = 350
CS5 = 300
CS4 = 250
CS3 = 200
CS2 = 150
CS1 = 100
 
speaking of Lower Tiers, Zaela's idea from the locked thread about BST changes I think was great and should be reconsidered instead of just dropped because people didn't like the stance/spell changes, as it can be a separate issue.
Inherent Ability: Companionship
A Beastlord and his pet are as one. Rather than getting a new pet each spell level, they get one pet summoning spell at level 9 which scales up in power with its owner. The pet's level is automatically 9/10ths of its owner's level, its HP and AC are 80% of its owner's after items but before buffs (HP still increased by Companion Health), its damage scales up automatically with level and also receives a bonus based on the ratio of its owner's weapons or fists (still increased by Companion Strength and Codex of Power), and it receives 50% of its owner's resistances from items. They also share the Beastlord's defensive skills/avoidance chance. Oh and size increases with level too (it already does, technically).
Click to expand...

From memory (it was 3-4 years ago) Leveling up a beastlord is is hit and miss. Level 1-8 you have no pet, no spells, and its pretty balls in general. Then lv9 you are badass because you got a pet, then around 13-14 the pet is old and starts sucking. At 15 you get a new pet and kick ass and the cycle repeats until lv50 when they get spells each level and pets come more often. 2-3 levels before you get a new pet the old one is bad, at a few points the pet cons green (39 & 49 I believe). Companionship would smooth out these high and low dips in the power curve while leveling up.
One question though, For some reason I thought pets already shared the BSTs resistances in some way, do they?
I don't remember having this problem with my mage since they got pets every 4 or 5 levels instead of 6 to 10.
 
Last edited:
It would be a big change to put in considering it would do nothing about the actual issue (high-end pet survivability) and would only affect 1 class. A class that neither needs nor wants any change to their pets beyond increased survivability at the high-end.
 
Alternative Solution:
What about adjusting the levels they get them? Right now its 9, 15, 22, 30, 39, 49, 54, 56, 58, 60, 63. Take out the 56 & 58 pets and then smooth out the levels before them to look more like 8, 14, 20, 25, 30, 36, 43, 49, 54, 60, 63. Same number of pets so it wouldn't be any extra spells, no need for new names, just an adjustment of spell lv req and pet stats. I didnt add a lv1 pet because honestly it seems like the "power curve" from 1 to 8-9 is huge and any pet that is good at 1 will be crap by then and any pet good then would be insane at 1. It's also fairly quick, no death penalty, makes leveling that early not to bad without a pet.
Downsides:
Spells wont have such a "clean" grouping as they do now, but BST already get quite a few spells at odd levels. I'd say it was a small price to pay for a huge benefit.
If there was some reason why they got pets so quick in the upper 50s that I've forgotten, just looking at the list 54, 56, 58, 60 seems rather odd to get so many pets so quickly.

I also noticed when glancing at the spell list for levels the wiki doesn't have the 2 new lv65 procs if anybody has the info and wants to add it.
 
kallemur4 said:
4. have pets low enough on aggro list and placed behind the mob be immune to whirlwinds/phantom strikes and such. That way the pets cant be used as a tank/offtank, but be pure dps.
Click to expand...

There is the pet taunt / no taunt command to help with stuff like that.
 
The group heal change does nothing to help the fact that the runic 2 pets still die in less than 2 seconds if they need to pick up a mob/take agro. The change is nice and will help pet classes going up the tiers but between Spires, Tur'Ruj and Sanctum i can only think of one fight where a pet would be out of group heal range in the first place.

What the pets need is some durability, I can't speak for beast lords but I always had he idea of changing our Barrier Ward AA and this seems like a good a time as any.

Barrier Ward:
-Reduces all incoming damage by 50%
-4 tick duration
-2 minute cooldown

Essentially gives mages a panic button/buffer that would give our pets some survivability for a short while. It doesn't last long enough to really tank anything that hits hard and a recast long enough that it couldn't be abused.

I had other ideas like making overcap Conj. add to the pets HP (a caster with higher skills should be able to conjure a better pet), overcap Evoc. give bonus damage to their nuke (good for runic Fire pet), and so on for other skills. It wouldn't have to be the same for each pet, say earth pet gets a larger HP bonus then the others, air gets a larger attack bonus (since conj adds to pet damage already), alteration to water pets healing ( would need to be a somewhat big boost since mages don't have a ton of alteration options), and Evoc to their nukes (fire getting the biggest boost).

This could be something unique to Runic pets to make them less lame and let's then scale with the caster.

Just some ideas, it would also be nice to hear something back since Wald completely ignored the other thread and refused to answer/respond to any questions we asked.
 
This is not strictly on topic but regarding leveling up mages I never understood why fire pet DS does not stack with mage DS (or at least why the fire pet ds wasn't much better than whatever current level of your ds). You're paying the price of less pet hitpoints when you could just go with another pet-type and slap your DS on it.
 
I would not be against a panic button replacement to Barrier Ward. As far as overall pet durability I am not as sympathetic.

Would an oh shit button replacement be something mages as a whole would be interested in?
 
If you're against our pets being able to stay alive then what about at least making it easier to get it back up and running. If the pet dies we loose 40%+ of our dps and (as a mage) the only real defense we have.

I'd propose some form of pet revival:
-15 second cast time
-2 minute re-use (or whatever the pet recast timer is already)
-Re-summons our pet with the same gear and SB buffs as when it died.
-Only works if the pet dies and the Mage/Beast has not zoned or died themselves. If they have, the pet must be resummoned from scratch.
-Can be used in combat

I figure since pet data is saved on a toon already (or at least when you zone) there could be a chance that something like this would be possible. It would give us a chance to get our pet back into a fight with enough limitations that would prevent spamming pets and we still get the penalty of re-doing everything if we died or zone (looking st this as abandoning the pet).

If that wouldn't be possible what about letting pets have a corpse that we could cast it on. The corpse would hold the data if there wasn't a way for it to be saved to the charecter itself.
 
If pet maintenance is sticking around just because it was originally a thing (so OBVIOUSLY it should always be a thing, like rogue bs working off piercer dmg or rangers not being able to ranged auto attack) you could at least do the kindness of having it scale better.

Really though which other classes can be hobbled by similar mechanics? Are rogue weapons going dull mid-fight and I just haven't heard about it? Is this all because the two main pet classes can cast some buffs? Or is it because they do a split between physical and magic damage? What is the philosophy behind "you need to worry about your hp and the hp of an npc you can only enhance the stats of so much"? I guess it totally makes sense to have to rely on something you don't control the fate of in a raid setting.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom