Heal bots need to be buffed

pandoraslockbox

They should heal more, and rank one should use the old sound effect.

Discuss ^_^

catstarsto

This is true, even fully buffed they die fast and the AI often fails and doesnt heal or heals everyone else but you...."betrayed!!"

championshewolf

pandoraslockbox said:

They should heal more, and rank one should use the old sound effect.



Discuss ^_^

Sure, as long as they start draining your energy every time they heal, then you got a deal.

catstarsto

gradii said:

championshewolf said:

pandoraslockbox said:

They should heal more, and rank one should use the old sound effect.



Discuss ^_^

Sure, as long as they start draining your energy every time they heal, then you got a deal.

Some people just hate pets. Care to elucidate why so many other games have effective pets and somehow CO cannot?

because of nerf herders are listened to here >.>


Other games, no ones afraid of being too powerful...your team depends on it!

"Player X you killed that boss too quick, we wanted it to last a few hours so the one battle ate up all of our time!"

STO and Champs is the only place where you can make fun of underpowered players and complain about ones that are to powerful at the same time.
" Hey your too powerful, I hate you! (gets nerfed) ...no, we dont want you along your not powerful enough to handle the fight!"

^grintched!



I said it before and will say it again, anyone who asks for a nerf hoping to spite/smite another player, should have a perm tinfoil hat on all of their toons! maybe the title too XD



...ok, im done. Had my laugh for the night.

championshewolf

gradii said:

championshewolf said:

pandoraslockbox said:

They should heal more, and rank one should use the old sound effect.



Discuss ^_^

Sure, as long as they start draining your energy every time they heal, then you got a deal.

Some people just hate pets. Care to elucidate why so many other games have effective pets and somehow CO cannot?

Wow, not only do you continue to demonstrate a complete lack of understanding, you continue to demonstrate a fundamental flaw in your logic; you have no clue what you are talking about. For starters maybe take note that the pets are free heals, plain and simple, as it is to begin with. Since it requires no effort beyond summoning that they continue to do so, then buffing them and removing any maintenance cost what so ever just turns them into got to haves. I know you have absolutely no understanding of balance, but at least pretend you have some semblance of basic forethought other than removing all doubt, constantly, of how little you actually understand.

catstarsto

Wow, that was cold as a winter wolf. if you have pets its part of your power set, imagine someone finetooth combing your build tearing into it too, deciding what they think suits them about your toon....but i rest my case:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6SdCDpvTnw

championshewolf

catstarsto said:

Wow, that was harsh. if you have pets its part of your power set....but i rest my case:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6SdCDpvTnw

Pets might be part of your power set, but unless you are paying a maintenance cost for them, they are free damage. Whether you want to call it nerf herding or your inability to listen to facts, it's the plain truth. You can say you built around pets, but pets are free damage and making them tougher, heal more, or take more damage removes that forethought and basically turns them from a choice to a got to have.

And since all this post was about is buffing pets I saw no suggestions that would actually make it balance, since again pets are free damage/heals or whatever. So try again cat.

catstarsto

You havent used a pet build before have you; direct powers takes built in bonuses that come with the powers...heals...buffs...attack powers, that work as passives. They are also free! Pets are spread out making it already weaker, if the pets pop the mini amount of heals and damage they do decreases since less of them are available.

Pets are for tacticians, ones like me who cant keep up with fast players. I have to run for it and wear them down, if they catch me or wipe my pets with their buffed aoe im sunk. I dont want this to sound the wrong way, but you seem very bitter at a lot of people, i cant tell if your just being mean or are serious about your positions.

roughbearmattach

Pets have a small maintenance cost (energy penalty), though for folks running in Support role, it isn't really noticeable until you have something like 6+ pets out.

For my part, I like pet builds, but Cosmics, event bosses, and TA make them obsolete. Wish there was a way to make pets balanced for these kinds of things, but giant AoEs and very poor pet AI makes that too difficult.

catstarsto

roughbearmattach said:

Pets have a small maintenance cost (energy penalty), though for folks running in Support role, it isn't really noticeable until you have something like 6+ pets out.

For my part, I like pet builds, but Cosmics, event bosses, and TA make them obsolete. Wish there was a way to make pets balanced for these kinds of things, but giant AoEs and very poor pet AI makes that too difficult.

Yeah, your definitely right about that, pets are a bad idea during cosmics they can break the CC and all get popped every 10 sec from aoes X.X Not to mention they can all be popped in alerts like cybermind making the build more of a liability in some maps. ...lol, lets add more drain to them to make it more fair to normal builds to kill us easier O.o (sarcasm) lol

gradii said:

snip

lol


....ok, now Im going to give my pet toon ruby slippers! XD

raighn

championshewolf wrote: »

Pets might be part of your power set, but unless you are paying a maintenance cost for them, they are free damage. Whether you want to call it nerf herding or your inability to listen to facts, it's the plain truth. You can say you built around pets, but pets are free damage and making them tougher, heal more, or take more damage removes that forethought and basically turns them from a choice to a got to have.

It baffles me to no end that people STILL make this misguided and blatantly false claim about pets. Try actually reading the power descriptions and using them for once before arguing against buffing them.

First off they have a STACKING energy cost penalty, if you use a mixture of pets and normal attacks, or even if you use a mixture of permanent and temporary pets you will feel that penalty very quickly.

Secondly, due to how fast pets tend to die in boss fights you have to resummon them frequently, and all pets have an innately high base cost. Add this to their penalty and you've got a recipe for being constantly out of energy.

Thirdly, like any other power they take up a power point limiting your other power options, and most of them require ranks to be any good. That may not be a maintenance cost, but it is a power cost, and with the current output of most pets it's to the degree that taking a pet power frequently results in making a build weaker, not stronger.

And as for the "free damage" claims... that is one of the most overused and missused claims against buffing anything on these forums. Seriously, people ask for Telepathy to get buffed to be actually functional, and the response is always "No DoTs are Free Damage". Someone asks for a pet to be buffed or even simply have it's glitchy behavior fixed and the response is "Pets are Free Damage". Someone suggests adding more Bleeds, Poisons, etc... to existing power sets and everyone jumps on the bandwagon calling it a great idea despite those also being "Free Damage"...

The really sad thing here though is this thread is about buffing the HEALING of Support Drones and the response is "no, pets are free damage"...


On the topic of healing pets though... Radiant Summoning should get it's healing buffed too, as well as have it's healing PRIORITIZED... it's still rather annoying to cast Radiant Summoning and then watch your summoned Angel spend all it's time attacking enemies when you and everyone around you is dying...​​

sterga

Never been a fan of pet builds. They just seem so weak and pitiful in CO.

Healing drones should probably AoE heal right from rank 1 to compensate for their tendency to heal each other. It also seems they need a nice HP / defense boost so they don't need to heal themselves all the damn time. AI update would be super, but I won't hold my breath.

Anyone say pets are "free damage" doesn't know how make builds in CO. Or how to count. You only get 14 powers, 36 advantage points, and two non-stat tree choices. If pets were so great, we'd see those build every where all the time. But we don't because they aren't.

Come on. People in this thread are talking about how they aren't even end game viable because they can't live through anything. How is a dead pet free damage? If someone has to constantly resummon a pet, no damage is being done by the player or their pet.​​

pantagruel01

The reason 'other games' can manage specialist pet builds is because they have restricted power selection. Essentially, the pet's damage/healing/etc is subtracted from the ability of the primary character to output damage/healing/etc, and the number of pets which can be used is heavily restricted.

To do the same thing in CO, pets would either have to consume one of your 'you can have only one' slots (passive or form), apply a substantial debuff to their owner (forget energy -- it would be damage and healing), or require active control to get high performance. In addition, there would be severe caps on how many active pets you can have. These things are possible, but it's a bunch of work and would lead to a brand new cluster of complaining.

raighn

pantagruel01 wrote: »

The reason 'other games' can manage specialist pet builds is because they have restricted power selection. Essentially, the pet's damage/healing/etc is subtracted from the ability of the primary character to output damage/healing/etc, and the number of pets which can be used is heavily restricted.

To do the same thing in CO, pets would either have to consume one of your 'you can have only one' slots (passive or form), apply a substantial debuff to their owner (forget energy -- it would be damage and healing), or require active control to get high performance. In addition, there would be severe caps on how many active pets you can have. These things are possible, but it's a bunch of work and would lead to a brand new cluster of complaining.

None of that would have to happen. The energy penalty already translates into a DPS cut on most builds, and with the recent changes to powersets and energy management, that penalty is a more substantial hindrance than it used to be. The advantage point costs to make Pets worthwhile also translates into less potential for other powers. 14 power choices, 32 advantage points... that translates to a maximum of 8 R3 powers, fewer if you take any 1pt or 3pt advantages. You're going to R3 your Passive unless you took Defiance but if your building pets you probably took a Sorcery Aura passive. So that leaves you with 28 advantage points for 7 R3 powers, if you took 3 pets you've limited yourself to 5 R3s for your remaining powers and have a 40% energy cost penalty (10% from form + 10% per pet)... Most builds utilize a couple 1-3pt advantages on weak abilities for buffs/debuffs so with 20 pts remaining and a high likelyhood for atleast half of those to be dedicates to buff/debuff advantages you're only going to max rank 1 or 2 attacks, meaning you're going to be weak in AoE, Sustained, or Spike damage.

The changes you suggest would indeed lead to a new brand of complaints, and rightly so. Not only would your suggestion just make adding pets to a build even more of a pain than it already is, but it wouldn't even fix a damn thing. "You can only have one" slot option completely destroys the entire concept of pet builds all together and NO ONE wants that, that's not even an option period. Requiring active control to get high performance is a laughable option, considering the simple fact that IT ALREADY DOES REQUIRE ACTIVE CONTROL TO GET HIGH PERFORMANCE!!! Seriously, pet AI is practically non-existant, pet users have to actively order their pets to attack individual targets all the time and even then the pets often forget what they are doing, stand around doing nothing or run off to attack a random enemy off in left field for no apparent reason. The debuff on the owner, sure a damage penalty (ONLY DAMAGE) can be applied to the player, but before that even can come onto the field as a real option pets have to be buffed up to the point that they can actually be viable and comparable to non-pet builds.

And then your last suggestion about limiting number of active pets, Not a chance. First off we have powers that summon multiple pets at once, would each individual pet be counted in the limit? or would it be each individual pet power? Both are bad options, one either encourages use of the multiple summons while the other heavily discourages them. Both of those outcomes spit right in the face of the design of the game.​​

pantagruel01

raighn said:

None of that would have to happen. The energy penalty already translates into a DPS cut on most builds

Yes, a very small one. I mean a large penalty -- a real reduction of 25-50%. Because of the way CO energy management (mostly doesn't) work, you can't really do that with energy costs.

catstarsto

oh my gosh... its not something that going to destroy the game, a bit more armoring...maybe a choice between the second level or an extended shield version, surely that wont make the naysayers feel upstaged!


Feel almost like Oliver Twist sometimes when people go Berkeley over buffing something they dont use, nor think anyone else in the cool kids section approves of or thinks you should have. >.>
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAvCMQ_ok1c

sterga

Pet builds are so bad that no one makes them. I never see single pets in a build outside of Med Drones and I don't even see them that often. I can't remember the last time I saw the sorcery heal pet. People complaining how useless they are in end game content with terrible AI and being dead all the time. And somehow they're still "free damage" and "free healing". I don't even...​​

pantagruel01

sterga said:

And somehow they're still "free damage" and "free healing". I don't even...​​

In content where they don't get constantly destroyed, they're free damage/healing. They're just really small amounts of each, and content where they don't get blown up continually isn't very challenging so who cares. The current state of pets is not overpowered; the problem is that you don't want to buff them so far that they're a mandatory add-on to any top end build, and it's hard to make them a workable specialty without buffing them that far.

jaazaniah1

Personally, I can never figure out why there are even pets, let alone pet masters, in the game. How many superheroes actually have them (as opposed to sidekicks)? I could see this in a fantasy world with wizards and so on, but in a superhero world it just seems weird.

pantagruel01

gradii said:

jaazaniah1 said:

Personally, I can never figure out why there are even pets, let alone pet masters, in the game. How many superheroes actually have them (as opposed to sidekicks)? I could see this in a fantasy world with wizards and so on, but in a superhero world it just seems weird.

Superhero worlds have wizards too.

Now show me where said wizard is using pets....

magpieuk2014

Personally, I can never figure out why there are even pets, let alone pet masters, in the game. How many superheroes actually have them (as opposed to sidekicks)? I could see this in a fantasy world with wizards and so on, but in a superhero world it just seems weird.

Weaponised drones are one of the future things they didn't really see coming in the Golden Age of Heroes. But they make sense and they should be in the game; as long as they're balanced so that each cast, over its lifetime, doesn't exceed the amount of damage or healing that you could get from using regular powers, then there's no problem. Although even that might even be quite fun. Instead of Strafing Run x3 you could have two or three alpha strike missile drones in the air and call them all in at the same time.....

But yes, a buff for healing drones, for sure. I stopped using them as their vulnerability to damage and low heal output makes them pointless at higher levels; it was better just to use Conviction. And that should be reason enough in itself.

raighn

jaazaniah1 wrote: »

Personally, I can never figure out why there are even pets, let alone pet masters, in the game. How many superheroes actually have them (as opposed to sidekicks)? I could see this in a fantasy world with wizards and so on, but in a superhero world it just seems weird.

Superheroes that use pets:
Aquaman - Commands fish to fight for him
Falcon - Original version accompanied by his bird companion Redwing, Modern version utilizing an automated drone called Redwing
Green Lantern - and various members of the Lantern Corps have utilized Living Light Constructs from time to time
Gwen Tennyson - utilizes magical constructs

The list goes on... there's actually quite a few Superheroes who utilize pets. There is also a multitude of villians who utilize pets as well. The most common ones being Drones and Magical/Mental Constructs.​​

sterga

Raighn outlined all sorts of considerations needed when making a pet build which I don't see being refuted. All I see is some cherry picking to badly refute some comments while ignoring huge chunks of things just in the name of bleating out "free damage and heals". It doesn't even pass the common sense test in basic build making. Can you tack a fully ranked pet into a 15th slot? No. Guess what that means? You have to dump something. The more pets you have, the more other things need to be dropped.​​

pantagruel01

sterga said:

Raighn outlined all sorts of considerations needed when making a pet build which I don't see being refuted. All I see is some cherry picking to badly refute some comments while ignoring huge chunks of things just in the name of bleating out "free damage and heals". It doesn't even pass the common sense test in basic build making. Can you tack a fully ranked pet into a 15th slot? No. Guess what that means? You have to dump something. The more pets you have, the more other things need to be dropped.​​

That 14th power slot, if used for more dps, is typically gonna buy you 100-200 dps (extra power picks lose effect rapidly), so that's what a pet gets you.

catstarsto

sterga said:

Pet builds are so bad that no one makes them. I never see single pets in a build outside of Med Drones and I don't even see them that often. I can't remember the last time I saw the sorcery heal pet. People complaining how useless they are in end game content with terrible AI and being dead all the time. And somehow they're still "free damage" and "free healing". I don't even...​​

I use them... O.o

Im not that half bad ether, i beat 2 elites last night with teddybears : 3

dont mess with the chibi Clarence Gang!!

...my drones died fast, with no time to activate more and the free heals where not there..."you promised me free heals!!" lol

jaazaniah1 said:

Personally, I can never figure out why there are even pets, let alone pet masters, in the game. How many superheroes actually have them (as opposed to sidekicks)? I could see this in a fantasy world with wizards and so on, but in a superhero world it just seems weird.

...come have a seat by me, allow me to tell you the history of the top 15 comic book pets....
http://screenrant.com/coolest-pets-comic-book-history-walking-dead/?view=all
^ number 2, a cat that can detect peoples BS! :P

Whats weird is how desperate people are to stop this power from being fixed to fit the times....they are buffing everyone elses stuff, dont forget us Cryptic!

^kitten bouquet bribe!!

magpieuk2014 said:

But yes, a buff for healing drones, for sure. I stopped using them as their vulnerability to damage and low heal output makes them pointless at higher levels; it was better just to use Conviction. And that should be reason enough in itself.

I use pets as a diversion, because the elite builds can wipe me in less then 10 seconds if its a head on battle! =X.X=
...but you dont see me asking to nerf them, they arent Cat-proof, ive beat them before, and the challenge is more thrilling if you are facing a superior foe, with no margin for error given! if you are built for pvp with them, you can take on anything in the game!! You just have to use your head...power and HP isnt everything, if STO would figure that out, they wouldnt have stale predictable enemys with just more HP. This causes the players to just worry about big guns and armor gimmicks, instead of strategy!

catstarsto

gradii said:

How long has it been since you've played STO catstar? the last few batches of enemies have all had unique mechanics in ground and especially space.

Also they buffed engineer fabs, you know, pets.

I havent been into it in a while. Im more into champs atm. PM me if you have details or recommendations of anything you think would be worth trying out.

jaazaniah1

Best use of heal bots is for snipers.