Ebon Ruin's lil pet

salmialmi

Ebon Ruin has become darkness staple single-target murder weapon with its respectable damage within its framework, but there's a problem, the shadow pet (which was added to fill the void left by the removal of trauma).

The shadow wouldn't be such a problem if it only could attack your primary target and didn't run around like a nuisance. It hinders those who would like to participate with an effective darkness build in cosmic fights. The prime example is when it decides that it would rather claw a heart than risk Jibo's fury, not to mention aura stealing.

An easy fix could be rolling the average damage of the pet into Ebon Ruin itself or the dot it provides, which would unfortunately remove the heal (unless fancy percentages was applied).

Another alternative is making the pet only able to hit your primary target and it not being able to receive aura buffs, or make it lower priority than a player so it cant pilfer it from anyone unfortunate enough to be affected.

these are two I thought up from the top of my head and I hope Cryptic acknowledges this problem as Ebon Ruin was never a pet ability.

flowcyto

I'm generally not for axing a functionality of a power based on a select few encounters in the game. Imv, I'd rather ask for those encounter mechanics to ignore non-player allies that can't be fully controlled, as that's the way it prob should be anyways, and it could help pet builds in general out of the limited-appeal state they are in.

salmialmi

I agree that that these encounters should give leeway for all pets that would rather do their own thing and that axing isn't something i generally support. This post was borne out of frustration of having to resort to spamming shadow blast for an entire encounter.

I was also exposed to the erratic behaviour of shadow friend (which is probably shared between all non controllables) when I was testing out the Qliphothic War zone where it decided to bolt to the first and best cc'ed target when It was another guy I was currently curbing. I fear that this will become a problem in the Open Missions that resides in the war zone.

flowcyto

Non-controlled pets could be smarter, yea. They don't seem to generally have a sort of 'attack my target' style AI enabled as much as a general independent AI that only takes an initial que on what to target based on who you most recently hit (or hit you/them) when they first popped, and that can obv cause clashes in behavior w/ summoner intent.

salmialmi

The interesting thing is that shadow friend jumped hearts and other non-targets when the prime target is the only one who has been taking damage for the last minute. I theorize that the non controllable pets attack what's on "their" center screen, like how the unedited tab targeting tabs for players. And since shadow friend spawns on the target facing a random direction.. mayhem ensues.

cptmassive1

If it is an uncontrolled pet give it a toggle like the summon shadows. Or make it a 1-point advantage to the power.

hasukurobi

I would agree with the giving it a lower priority and making it attack your target or even the one it was summoned on only. After all, if I use ER I kind of want the damage to be on that thing. It will deal more damage to that thing because of ER's debuff.

roughbearmattach

cptmassive1 said:

If it is an uncontrolled pet give it a toggle like the summon shadows. Or make it a 1-point advantage to the power.

I was surprised the pet wasn't an advantage. I have characters for whom summoning a shadow doesn't make thematic sense, but want to use Ebon Ruin. As the OP said, the pet can cause problems in team play, too.

salmialmi

Ok, another post. I did Teleios ascendant for the first time yesterday and had a ton of fun.

Right off the bat I asked what bosses not to use Ebon Ruin on, these bosses are Gravitar, Medusa and Grond. Teleiosaurus was ok because her adds are worthless and Teleios himself was ok since his adds are so far away.

Champions online is moving more and more in a team focused direction (not a bad thing) and as a result the pet powers are in dire need of an overhaul. Ebon Ruin really shouldn't have received a built-in pet given the current state of pet AI, and as roughbearmattach and cptmassive1 stated it can be turned into a one point advantage for thematic reasons (or if there's no plans to fix the uncontrollable AI problems).

pantagruel01

salmialmi said:

Ok, another post. I did Teleios ascendant for the first time yesterday and had a ton of fun.

Right off the bat I asked what bosses not to use Ebon Ruin on, these bosses are Gravitar, Medusa and Grond.

Huh. Wonder what your control tank was up to. In general when I'm running control in TA I'm too far away for shadow pets to matter in Grond and Teleios, and I don't actually care if you kill the adds in Gravitar and Medusa.