Struggling pet classes

[darksabbath]

As far as overall pet durability I am not as sympathetic.

And then you (as a dev team) wonder why the beastlord and mage are the least played classes? Why is it ok for those classes to lose a third of their dps to the excessive aoe mechanics in use, while the rest are not hampered the same way? Rangers don't have their bows damaged by the aoe, or rogues find they suddenly can't backstab.. etc.
/sigh, not sure why I bother anyways, you seem intent not to listen to the player-base anyways.

 

[Moraelintz]

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?

Why are you not sympthetic?

I would very much be in favor of an 'oh shit' button, but that does not address the issue at hand. This is almost like putting a bandaide on something that needs stitches.

Here I do not want to fix the real issue at hand, but take this instead.

 

[Kjiel]

As a beastlord through the tiers it was always having to worry about my pet, and it dying before getting runic 2. This would always kill my dps, having to heal, etc... wasting mana only to have it die and sit low on the dps chart...being totally useless to the overall raid except for cunning and savagery. I haven't played since the nerf to pet hp, but the super unsatisfying dps increase of only 10-15 dps on finally getting my runic 2 pet made up for it that my pet would at least be steady dps and last the hard raid fights. Now with the nerf it seems to bring our class back down to a useless level, and even though I don't have time to play much at the moment it's frustrating to see this. You guys really need to look into beastlord pets, and the class overall.

 

[Tparim]

What about creating a spell / command, a previous AA ability that was on live called "Suspend Minion". So, in the case when your pet dies on a Whirl Winding Phantom Striking asshole is tearing at your pet and its not receiving group heals. you can pop that one out and you have another stretch with your pet at your side, and this without having to change anything within the pet class's. (bst, Necro, Magi)


And my 2 cents, I love how the pets are currently. I play both a Magician and a Beastlord (not as much as a mage) but, I'm very satisfied with what you all have and wouldn't really like to see any other changes.

 

[mechkl]

suspended minion wouldn't really fit in this server how pet gear works atm... would require a major overhaul to that system in itself... this has been suggested numerious times b4.

believe last time someone suggested it it was, then everyone gets animation blades on their pet forever....

 

[Waldoff]

And then you (as a dev team) wonder why the beastlord and mage are the least played classes

For one that is completely wrong. But I suppose it would help your argument if it were true.

in use, while the rest are not hampered the same way? Rangers don't have their bows damaged by the aoe, or rogues find they suddenly can't backstab

Of course all classes have differing mechanics that hamper their ability to DPS. If a mob does major close proximity damage a rogue is 100% screwed while a mage is only 30% screwed. High AC screws over pure melees, high resists or reflects screw over pure casters - pet classes cut their damage in a fraction of each. You can not argue class DPS in a vacuum. Each form of damage has a downside and those downsides are what allow us to have as many classes as we have while keeping it so that one class is not king dps on every fight that exists. You can make arguments about which damage needs to be increased, or lowered, or that fights in tier Y are too easy on X damage - but you can not argue that the downsides of specific types of damage should just go away entirely.

Different forms will be better at different times, fights, tiers and places in the game. That is the entire point of having different forms of damage in the first place. In terms of pets you also have to factor in other benefits that come out of having a separate entity from the caster in the first place.

As for pet DPS - if we think the DPS of pets are too low then that is something that can be looked at. If the DPS increase is really only 15% on beastlord pets than that seems much too low. I do know that mages have gotten some huge DPS boosts from their pet tomes - maybe some of that should be filtered back into the pet upgrade itself.

But as far as the argument that your pet dies on some fights (even with the huge buff to runic 2 pet resists) then that is just not a very good argument. If you are arguing your pet dies on *every* fight then I would want some proof of that because that is not what is being observed in the field. Saying your class is *useless* will just make every dev and reasonable player ignore your post. If you want to make a reasoned argument about why the reward of pet damage is being outweighed by the problems keeping it alive, or that pet classes should be able to sacrifice damage somewhere else to keep their pet damage alive (most likely in the form of a mana using spell) then I am more than willing to hear it.

As an aside: We are not against beastlord class changes. We understand that the class as a whole is not quite up to snuff since most of its benefit come from boring buffs. The answer to this is not an invincible pet.

 

[Rorne]

Of course all classes have differing mechanics that hamper their ability to DPS. If a mob does major close proximity damage a rogue is 100% screwed while a mage is only 30% screwed.

A rogue is not screwed because fights are not designed around making it impossible for an on-tier rogue to DPS for obvious reasons. Your example actually illustrates how pets are even more fucked by any mechanic like this because while they may have more HP they are going to have way less actual mitigation and be a lower priority to keep alive.

High AC screws over pure melees, high resists or reflects screw over pure casters - pet classes cut their damage in a fraction of each.

Mob AC is almost never comparable to resists because few mobs have appreciable enough AC to shut down melee like they can shut down caster DPS so that's a bad comparison right from the get-go but how many mobs are designed to only have either appropriate resists or appropriate AC and not both?

You can not argue class DPS in a vacuum. Each form of damage has a downside and those downsides are what allow us to have as many classes as we have while keeping it so that one class is not king dps on every fight that exists. You can make arguments about which damage needs to be increased, or lowered, or that fights in tier Y are too easy on X damage - but you can not argue that the downsides of specific types of damage should just go away entirely.

This is true in theory but it's much less true in practice outside the binaries of physical vs magic dps and single target vs multiple target.

Different forms will be better at different times, fights, tiers and places in the game. That is the entire point of having different forms of damage in the first place. In terms of pets you also have to factor in other benefits that come out of having a separate entity from the caster in the first place.

What is the penalty for other hybrid damage classes? What are the benefits of having a pet as a separate entity especially when it is a component of your dps which is at an automatic disadvantage versus any kind of damage when compared to an actual player?

But as far as the argument that your pet dies on some fights (even with the huge buff to runic 2 pet resists) then that is just not a very good argument.

Which resist buff? I checked the numbers on the pets and unless you meant via tomes orthere is some mechanic which I am not aware of the comparison looks like:

Mage relic vs runic:
Runic is 1 level higher (59 over 58)
Loses 5 base MR/FR/CR
Gains 166 PR
Loses 29 DR

Beastlord pre-runic vs runic:
Runic is 4 levels higher (59 over 55)
Gains 2 base MR/FR/CR/PR/DR

If you want to make a reasoned argument about why the reward of pet damage is being outweighed by the problems keeping it alive

What is the reward, that is the disconnect. Having a pet is just a burden most of the time and you can talk about the ability to do a hybrid of physical and magical damage but there are other classes that can do that with no penalty. I think in your mind you equate the raw HP advantage runic 2 pets have now post-nerf as being equal to the mitigation of damage an actual player character will have and it's not. Not to mention your philosophy breaks down even more when you consider pre-runic 2 pets that have both less HP *and* mitigation than playercharacters.

 

[Rorne]

Oh yeah sorry I should add the mage runic stats are for the base summon so add whatever form shit on top of that

 

[Titanas]

Rorne has very valid points.
As far as groups and soloing go their pet HP and AC is an extension of their own. by this I mean it actualy benefits them to have this where you and your pet can both take a few hits. Where as a Wiz has only him self to absorb damage.

In the raid game it your pet turns into a portion of your DPS that is Disable able. I would compair it to Breaking a tanks shield or sundering a rogues dagger during a fight when a pet is killed or the caster is forced on the defensive to save it.

Where most classes are only hindered by rare combat effects like Spell reflect, Debuff/slows Silences, Pet classes are hindered by anything that reposts or AOE's.

 

[darksabbath]

Gerick handled most all of the arguements I would have made. As for my claim of least played classes that you seem to fault Woldo, my thought process was about actively played 65+ toons. Not inactive buff-bots, and the likely plethora of lower level toons that have been basicly abandoned for something else.

 

[Malicre65]

On live you where able to bank a pet and buff a 2nd to have out at all times, Would that be a possibility on the current setup of the server?
That might be a good solution for the fact pet classes loose alot of dsp on select fights, if they where able to call out an already buffed / geared pet that had geared and banked before the mob it would be a solution to the problem of pets dieing mid fight.

 

[Bridger]

It should be relatively easy to get a rough idea whether the "survivabilty" of the runic2 pet is reasonable or not.

Take a Tier 4 Rogue (or whatever tier the initial Mage Relic pet is deemed to be) and a Tier 11 Rogue and determine the increase in the survivability factors - AC, HP, damage reduction etc etc.

Now do the same for the Relic Pet and the Runic 2Pet.

This should give you an objective set of numbers to measure whether the survivabilty scaling is reasonable or not.

 

[fuwok]

Getting a runic 2 spell is a phenomenal pain in the ass and for it to be barely an improvement over the level 63 pet (which it is) just isn't adequate.

Beastlords have to use the level 63 pet until the middle/end of spires. Then they get the reward of getting 4000 more hp and 20 more dps for a quest that is lengthy enough and difficult enough that 99% of players or more will never complete it.

 

[Zaela]

I haven't really read this thread in any depth and this isn't particularly on topic as far as arguments for/against whatever are concerned, but I'm in an idea-thinky mood (though I'm sure people have brought this up before):

When a character dies, they don't lose their gear. It doesn't seem to me that there's any huge reason why it couldn't be the same way for pets.

So my thought is basically just to make the pet inventory static and let players gear up their pets in much the same way they gear up their characters. Add some pet-only armor and weapons to raid encounters across the tiers--preferably as wholly extra drops rather than taking up space that could have held player-usable pieces of gear--and take out most if not all of the trash-drop pet weapons from citadel and emberflow and whatnot.

Could be used to address survivability and scaling issues as well as just adding an extra level of pet management and give pet classes more to achieve. At the same time stats like INT and WIS can be made to do something for pets, and maybe we could even make them use their ATK values in their damage calculations. Also, I'd make it so pets return whatever they were wearing when you give them a new piece of gear, allowing you to swap in their gear for them and suchlike.

If this idea was agreed to I'd almost want to say that Companion Strength and Health focuses should be axed in favor of focusing on a more robust pet inventory, and maybe axe the replacement for Pet Discipline and have pets consider Focus Effects on the items they are wearing themselves too. Maybe even have pets consider weapon damage and delay somehow, although that would be tough to balance with their old "new pet, bigger dmg numbers" values. But those are details that could be ironed out later.

Anyway it's kind of a theme with me recently I guess but I think pets could be much more interesting than the simple bags of HP, damage and maybe 1 ability that they tend to be.

Would need to replace the Mage murk spell though.

 

[fuwok]

Sweet idea!!!!

 

[Nwaij]

This is an awesome idea Zaela!

 

[Kanwen]

I like the idea but if we don't address the problem of pet mitigation we're just going to end up in a similar situation. First off resists aren't a big deal, by the time we got the pet everything is un-resistable anyway (even with the resist change it's still pretty much the same thing) so AoE's aren't something to balance a pet around. The problem is that pets have next to 0 melee damage mitigation so any riposte/ramp/WW/or just taking agro for a split second will just decimate them (which is why the high HP was nice cause it gave a buffer). I can't see how Wald could possible say pets are some kind of invinvible force with high HP, they're ballons wrapped in a paper bag (at least mage pets), and the fact that he would say such a thing means he has is clearly out of touch with the reality of what a pet class deals with.

I remember being told a long time ago that classes treat AC differently. If you took a tank, melee dps and caster, gave them all the same AC each one would gain different mitigation (tank getting the highest bonus, melee dps second, and casters third). I talked to Eisley when the nerf first went in and he said the air pet had around 16khp and 2200 AC fully buffed. That looks alright on paper but what does that 2200 AC actually do for the pet? Do they gain any actual benefit from AC because if you see how much damage they take it doesn't look like it. I'd be curious to find out.

 

[Bridger]

What I am about to say is effectively the same as Kanwen above but from a slightly different perspective.

A Mage can be considered as a hybrid Caster/Melee character with a roughly 70/30 split.
So unless the caster portion of a T11 mage is above T11 (which clearly it is not), then the overall character can only be T11 if the Melee portion is at least T11.

Now the only factors that determine the tier of the Melee portion are damage and survivability.
The damage is a given at 30% of the overall Mage damage and is in any case less than 30% of an actual T11 Melee.
So the Pet can only be T11 if it has at least the survivabilty of actual T11 Melee characters.

With the nerfed Runic 2 pet this is demonstrably NOT the case.

The conclusion is that the Pet is clearly NOT Melee T11 and hence what is supposed to be a T11 Mage is not T11 either.

QED

 

[Marza]

I haven't really read this thread in any depth and this isn't particularly on topic as far as arguments for/against whatever are concerned, but I'm in an idea-thinky mood (though I'm sure people have brought this up before):

When a character dies, they don't lose their gear. It doesn't seem to me that there's any huge reason why it couldn't be the same way for pets.

So my thought is basically just to make the pet inventory static and let players gear up their pets in much the same way they gear up their characters. Add some pet-only armor and weapons to raid encounters across the tiers--preferably as wholly extra drops rather than taking up space that could have held player-usable pieces of gear--and take out most if not all of the trash-drop pet weapons from citadel and emberflow and whatnot.

Could be used to address survivability and scaling issues as well as just adding an extra level of pet management and give pet classes more to achieve. At the same time stats like INT and WIS can be made to do something for pets, and maybe we could even make them use their ATK values in their damage calculations. Also, I'd make it so pets return whatever they were wearing when you give them a new piece of gear, allowing you to swap in their gear for them and suchlike.

If this idea was agreed to I'd almost want to say that Companion Strength and Health focuses should be axed in favor of focusing on a more robust pet inventory, and maybe axe the replacement for Pet Discipline and have pets consider Focus Effects on the items they are wearing themselves too. Maybe even have pets consider weapon damage and delay somehow, although that would be tough to balance with their old "new pet, bigger dmg numbers" values. But those are details that could be ironed out later.

Anyway it's kind of a theme with me recently I guess but I think pets could be much more interesting than the simple bags of HP, damage and maybe 1 ability that they tend to be.

Would need to replace the Mage murk spell though.

I really like this idea, would need to change a few items probably but very cool.

 

[Moraelintz]

I agree with both the previous posters, for the most part.

I think it sounds like a great idea, and will make re-summoning pets much nicer, but does not solve the problem at hand. Currently our pets have next to 0 mitigation, this is not really a problem until you get to content around the time you get your runic 2 pet. There are trash mobs that 1 round the pet, and they still do special abilities such as ramp and WW. Most melles will stay alive in between group heals but the pets do not make it. This is why the huge hps on the pets was nice, because it have that buffer that even if you take 2 rounds of the WW's there was still 15% health to get a heal snuck in. Heaven forbit the pet pulls agro thought, that is an insta death for the pet.