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Anti-Pet AoE

Something I saw but didn't actually notice until recently.

The event bosses DoT is made to kill nearly all pets. When it is used I noticed my pets don't take damage from the actual hit, then they lose 4/5 of their health on the DoT. My dual wolf summons take that much damage, so does my Loyal Agate. If the wolves took as much damage as Agate they should be one shot. 2k vs 12k

What pet hating dev made that skill? p..q
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Comments

  • pantagruel01pantagruel01 Posts: 7,091 Arc User
    It's an irresistible percentage of hp attack that can be reduced by blocking; as far as I know the original intent is 'dangerous to everyone without slaughtering squishies' and 'kills trolling OVs'. Since pets don't block, it has a side effect of killing them as well. Teleiosaurus has one of those as well (green spines that apply a DoT).

    None of which means that killing pets isn't viewed as a feature rather than a bug. Pets consume relatively more resources than most powers, so you don't want a lot of them in large group content.
  • bluhmanbluhman Posts: 2,410 Arc User
    Yeah what panta said.

    It's funny because pets specifically have their own passive defense buff that's been present since like super-early on, and they never thought to maybe just do something simple, like 'make this buff register as a block in the context of block-required event-boss attacks' or whatever.

    As for pets eating up system resources: maybe they could do something like... Prioritizing only visual effects from bosses and the player instead of literally everyone at all times? Maybe make that an option like how it was in old dead rival mmo?
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  • spinnytopspinnytop Posts: 16,450 Arc User
    edited January 2019
    bluhman wrote: »
    As for pets eating up system resources: maybe they could do something like... Prioritizing only visual effects from bosses and the player instead of literally everyone at all times? Maybe make that an option like how it was in old dead rival mmo?

    VFX aren't the only resource they would be eating up tho, there's processing resources too. They already prioritize certain visual effects, it's why when there's a lot of people fighting a boss it looks like we're all larping rather than actually shooting out super power stuff.​​
  • areeeareee Posts: 817 Arc User
    bluhman wrote: »
    It's funny because pets specifically have their own passive defense buff that's been present since like super-early on, and they never thought to maybe just do something simple, like 'make this buff register as a block in the context of block-required event-boss attacks' or whatever.

    [/s]

    Yes, exactly. Most games admit to pets being unable to dodge and add in an 80% or 90% flat damage reduction to AoE damage just because of that. This is the first game I have run across that hasn't.
  • spinnytopspinnytop Posts: 16,450 Arc User
    There probably also aren't a lot of games that let you summon like 12 things that are also running into effects caps causing attacks not to register .-.​​
  • pantagruel01pantagruel01 Posts: 7,091 Arc User
    spinnytop wrote: »
    There probably also aren't a lot of games that let you summon like 12 things that are also running into effects caps causing attacks not to register .-.​​
    Yeah, though it's not like pets are worse offenders than, say, bleeds. However, the game also has to worry about things like pet AI, and pathing, and applying damage and status effects to the pets, and (for the subset of pets with it turned on) collision. Pets are cheaper than characters, but that doesn't mean 100+ pets at a cosmic wouldn't choke everything.

    I would not expect anything that makes pets more durable and useful without a simultaneous limit on how many of them you can have.
  • bluhmanbluhman Posts: 2,410 Arc User
    Which, you know, would be nice considering the strategy of "PILe ON AS MANY PETS AS POSSIBLE" makes no visual sense from a character-theme standpoint.

    "I'm a mage master, I summon devils and angels! Also I have four robots. Also I have animatronic toys. Oh also here's this giant metal spider I summon once every minute or so, any questions on how this all works?"

    The debuff of choice for that, of imposing an energy penalty, kind of backfired horrendously in making builds involving pets a choice between "use the bare minimum of pets to gain some kind of benefit, or you know, don't use them at all because Teleiosaurus keeps one-shotting them and they attack hearts for no good reason" and "pile on every single possible pet you can find because lord knows you're not going to be able to help with your own attacks with that kind of energy generation."
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  • pantagruel01pantagruel01 Posts: 7,091 Arc User
    Yeah, it's not inherently impossible to balance around energy, but you'd have to massively change how energy generation works. I would probably just cap controllable pets at 2 (change the powers that currently summon 2 pets to summon only one, with an advantage that makes them summon two weaker pets) and add a feature to certain blocks that causes your block to also apply blocking to your pets (could be an AI command, could just be a buff that also disables them so they don't attack through it).
  • nbkxsnbkxs Posts: 766 Arc User
    edited January 2019
    Just get rid of them entirely, they cause more problems than they help. Don't forget, all they do is wake up CC'd stuff as well.

    Bluhman knows this first hand, remember the pet from ebon ruin?
    [NbK]XStorm
  • areeeareee Posts: 817 Arc User
    I would go for a max number of pets allowed if they were given a boost to their damage and durability. Not a tiny one like the Tier 3's of the Sorceror summons that is worthless compared to releasing the player from the summoning circle.
  • spinnytopspinnytop Posts: 16,450 Arc User
    edited February 2019
    bluhman wrote: »
    Which, you know, would be nice considering the strategy of "PILe ON AS MANY PETS AS POSSIBLE" makes no visual sense from a character-theme standpoint.

    I mean, depends on the theme. My magical girl conjurer has quite the swarm and they all fit the theme perfectly!
    areee wrote: »
    I would go for a max number of pets allowed if they were given a boost to their damage and durability. Not a tiny one like the Tier 3's of the Sorceror summons that is worthless compared to releasing the player from the summoning circle.

    I support bigger strongerer fewer pets o3o9

    Also temporary with cooldowns.​​
  • areeeareee Posts: 817 Arc User
    spinnytop wrote: »
    bluhman wrote: »
    Which, you know, would be nice considering the strategy of "PILe ON AS MANY PETS AS POSSIBLE" makes no visual sense from a character-theme standpoint.

    I mean, depends on the theme. My magical girl conjurer has quite the swarm and they all fit the theme perfectly!
    areee wrote: »
    I would go for a max number of pets allowed if they were given a boost to their damage and durability. Not a tiny one like the Tier 3's of the Sorceror summons that is worthless compared to releasing the player from the summoning circle.

    I support bigger strongerer fewer pets o3o9

    Also temporary with cooldowns.​​

    Hell no to temporary. That's just a DoT with graphics.
  • spinnytopspinnytop Posts: 16,450 Arc User
    edited February 2019
    areee wrote: »
    Hell no to temporary. That's just a DoT with graphics.

    That's all pets have ever been, a DoT with graphics ( or a HoT with graphics in some cases ). A cooldown is just an excuse to make them stronger.​​
  • areeeareee Posts: 817 Arc User
    Not at all.
    Munition bots can transform and have PUNY rockets. Artic critter has Ice and snow attacks.
    DoT pets.. just melee, some with poison or bleed effects.
  • pantagruel01pantagruel01 Posts: 7,091 Arc User
    spinnytop wrote: »
    That's all pets have ever been, a DoT with graphics ( or a HoT with graphics in some cases ).
    Nah, DoTs only hit things you target. Pets with a finite lifespan are basically DoTs, but pets with an infinite lifespan and no upkeep requirements are just a dps increase. Powers that are pure dps boosters are either things everyone is expected to take (passive, form) or have rather small net effect (other dps boosters: active offenses, attacks with CDs, non-stacking DoTs). The devs do not expect everyone to take a pet, so they necessarily have small net effect. Since pets do have low upkeep (energy penalties, getting killed) they do a bit more than minimal, but still, a 200 dps pet that lives for a minute did 12,000 damage, and the time cost it does have can be paid outside of combat.

    The only way to make pets be significant, without turning into a balance problem where everyone needs to take one, would to add a significant extra cost to pets, and there's only two real options for 'significant': either it consumes an effect everyone is expected to have (passive or form), or it has to cost time (i.e. you'll have to micromanage your pets).
  • markhawkmanmarkhawkman Posts: 4,915 Arc User
    You know you can heal your pets right? :p
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  • spinnytopspinnytop Posts: 16,450 Arc User
    You know you can heal your pets right? :p

    aint nobody got time fo dat​​
  • spinnytopspinnytop Posts: 16,450 Arc User
    spinnytop wrote: »
    That's all pets have ever been, a DoT with graphics ( or a HoT with graphics in some cases ).
    Nah, DoTs only hit things you target. Pets with a finite lifespan are basically DoTs, but pets with an infinite lifespan and no upkeep requirements are just a dps increase. Powers that are pure dps boosters are either things everyone is expected to take (passive, form) or have rather small net effect (other dps boosters: active offenses, attacks with CDs, non-stacking DoTs). The devs do not expect everyone to take a pet, so they necessarily have small net effect. Since pets do have low upkeep (energy penalties, getting killed) they do a bit more than minimal, but still, a 200 dps pet that lives for a minute did 12,000 damage, and the time cost it does have can be paid outside of combat.

    The only way to make pets be significant, without turning into a balance problem where everyone needs to take one, would to add a significant extra cost to pets, and there's only two real options for 'significant': either it consumes an effect everyone is expected to have (passive or form), or it has to cost time (i.e. you'll have to micromanage your pets).

    I mean they're just damage with graphics u3u
    areee wrote: »
    Not at all.
    Munition bots can transform and have PUNY rockets. Artic critter has Ice and snow attacks.
    DoT pets.. just melee, some with poison or bleed effects.

    Yeah so they can be damage with graphics, or damage with other graphics u3u​​
  • rtmartma Posts: 1,198 Arc User
    edited February 2019
    spinnytop wrote: »
    You know you can heal your pets right? :p

    aint nobody got time fo dat​​

    Sad truth is I find myself occasionally healing my own pets cause most people being too self sufficient/reliant or healing opportunities are taken away from me from other support, being trivialized, at-least my pets give me that opportunity to be useful in that circumstance, even if no-one else cares about it.
    (I logged on just to reply to that, your welcome)
    Want to get to know me a bit better, Click me and take a read of My Dragon Profile Page, it's a bit dated but still relevant.

    I take this quote from a review that I agree with.

    "customisation is so linear; everyone is after the optimal dps:survivability ratio with 0 reliance on other players = autonomous gameplay... Players don't need each other anymore... which in my opinion is a bad thing."
  • spinnytopspinnytop Posts: 16,450 Arc User
    rtma wrote: »
    (I logged on just to reply to that, your welcome)

    Aint nobody woulda had know you had did that.​​
  • monaahirumonaahiru Posts: 3,073 Arc User
    2qe9nh.jpg
  • soulforgersoulforger Posts: 1,649 Arc User
    bluhman wrote: »
    Which, you know, would be nice considering the strategy of "PILe ON AS MANY PETS AS POSSIBLE" makes no visual sense from a character-theme standpoint.

    "I'm a mage master, I summon devils and angels! Also I have four robots. Also I have animatronic toys. Oh also here's this giant metal spider I summon once every minute or so, any questions on how this all works?"

    The debuff of choice for that, of imposing an energy penalty, kind of backfired horrendously in making builds involving pets a choice between "use the bare minimum of pets to gain some kind of benefit, or you know, don't use them at all because Teleiosaurus keeps one-shotting them and they attack hearts for no good reason" and "pile on every single possible pet you can find because lord knows you're not going to be able to help with your own attacks with that kind of energy generation."

    Pet summons are one of the few powers I always felt like should allow you to get multiple copies of the same summon. Would make more sense for a demon summoner to have an army of demons, and not include an angel, robots, and animals. Though, being a mage, summoning an air elemental and a golem would still make sense. Like wise, if I want to be a tech pet master, having an army of robots makes sense. Hence why I've always felt like they needed to make pet summon powers allow multiple selections of the same power. Also, we need more summons. Such as: Fire Elementals, Ice Elementals, Lightning Elementals, Earth Elementals, more fantasy based summons, more types of robot summons, and more animal summons. But, I'm not holding my breath.
  • soulforgersoulforger Posts: 1,649 Arc User
    Yeah, it's not inherently impossible to balance around energy, but you'd have to massively change how energy generation works. I would probably just cap controllable pets at 2 (change the powers that currently summon 2 pets to summon only one, with an advantage that makes them summon two weaker pets) and add a feature to certain blocks that causes your block to also apply blocking to your pets (could be an AI command, could just be a buff that also disables them so they don't attack through it).

    I've never had any energy problems with my pet summoner. But, might have to do with how you built your build.
    nbkxs wrote: »
    Just get rid of them entirely, they cause more problems than they help. Don't forget, all they do is wake up CC'd stuff as well.

    Bluhman knows this first hand, remember the pet from ebon ruin?

    Or, they can revamp the AI. WoW makes it so that if you (or an party member) CC a target, your pet's cease attacking the target (unless you force them to attack the target). Another game I play, ARK: Survival Evolved, and it's sister game, Atlas, have a taming system, and on the creatures you tame you can activate an option that causes them to not attack unconscious targets (in Atlas, this also means target's you bola'd).

    And if you still don't like that idea, than I propose we get rid of your favorite power set, just to spite you. Lots of people like having pets in this game. Do not go around spitting on their fun.
  • soulforgersoulforger Posts: 1,649 Arc User
    spinnytop wrote: »
    bluhman wrote: »
    Which, you know, would be nice considering the strategy of "PILe ON AS MANY PETS AS POSSIBLE" makes no visual sense from a character-theme standpoint.

    I mean, depends on the theme. My magical girl conjurer has quite the swarm and they all fit the theme perfectly!
    areee wrote: »
    I would go for a max number of pets allowed if they were given a boost to their damage and durability. Not a tiny one like the Tier 3's of the Sorceror summons that is worthless compared to releasing the player from the summoning circle.

    I support bigger strongerer fewer pets o3o9

    Also temporary with cooldowns.​​

    Agreed, though, in this case, as someone that loves his pet builds, I'd make all current permanent pet summons be turned into temporary summons with CDs, with an advantage that limits itself to being selected twice at most on a character that would turn the summon into a permanent summon with no CD (for quick resummoning in case bad things happen). In short, the advantage would cost zero points and would not be selectable more than twice.

    But, that would be a programming nightmare over all. Might be easier to just limit permanent pet summons to two selections and making copies that are temporary versions of themselves.
  • pantagruel01pantagruel01 Posts: 7,091 Arc User
    soulforger wrote: »
    I've never had any energy problems with my pet summoner. But, might have to do with how you built your build.
    That's why energy-based balancing is fail.
  • bluhmanbluhman Posts: 2,410 Arc User
    soulforger wrote: »
    Or, they can revamp the AI.

    they can't revamp a power without whining incessantly about how hard it'd be to do.

    What makes you think they think they're competent enough to code Artificial Intelligence?
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  • pantagruel01pantagruel01 Posts: 7,091 Arc User
    bluhman wrote: »
    What makes you think they think they're competent enough to code Artificial Intelligence?
    Well, there's always the option of making the AI stupider. Most of the problems come from the AI trying to select a target, if you just set it to passive unless informed otherwise and force people to choose the target it will be less convenient but also won't cause as many issues.
  • hemslordhemslord Posts: 164 Arc User
    Honestly, I wouldn't want the devs messing with the pets AI until they have proven they can sort out the traffic AI. Baby steps!
  • lan#8253 lan Posts: 34 Arc User
    I would hope anything dealing with pets is several orders of magnitude higher priority than traffic.
  • soulforgersoulforger Posts: 1,649 Arc User
    bluhman wrote: »
    soulforger wrote: »
    Or, they can revamp the AI.

    they can't revamp a power without whining incessantly about how hard it'd be to do.

    What makes you think they think they're competent enough to code Artificial Intelligence?

    They could always hire Google for that.
  • darqaura2darqaura2 Posts: 932 Arc User
    soulforger wrote: »
    bluhman wrote: »
    soulforger wrote: »
    Or, they can revamp the AI.

    they can't revamp a power without whining incessantly about how hard it'd be to do.

    What makes you think they think they're competent enough to code Artificial Intelligence?

    They could always hire Google for that.

    LULZ, with what money? :p
  • areeeareee Posts: 817 Arc User
    It's just too bad that the pets and companions don't have a hit check. Ya know when inside one of the Massive boss AoE warnings it triggers a Block check that holds until the boss skill has completely hit then they go back to what they were doing.
    Normal monster AoEs would still grab em but this will give them more survivability. Plus imagine what pets would have what block.

    Totally off the subject but I wish I could use skill points to buy an extra summon for my favorites. Imagine, an army of 8 healing drones. XD Nah they'd probably limit it to 2 or 3 otherwise... Toys everywhere.
  • soulforgersoulforger Posts: 1,649 Arc User
    darqaura2 wrote: »
    soulforger wrote: »
    bluhman wrote: »
    soulforger wrote: »
    Or, they can revamp the AI.

    they can't revamp a power without whining incessantly about how hard it'd be to do.

    What makes you think they think they're competent enough to code Artificial Intelligence?

    They could always hire Google for that.

    LULZ, with what money? :p

    Ours of course, Google is a company making money off of everyone still.
  • monaahirumonaahiru Posts: 3,073 Arc User
    edited February 2019
    You know you can heal your pets right? :p
    spinnytop wrote: »
    You know you can heal your pets right? :p

    aint nobody got time fo dat​​

    I'm using AoED PRE/DEX/CON pet summoner build.
    [Lifedrain] with adv.
    Its s a DoT with nice AoE heal. o3o
  • pantagruel01pantagruel01 Posts: 7,091 Arc User
    areee wrote: »
    It's just too bad that the pets and companions don't have a hit check. Ya know when inside one of the Massive boss AoE warnings it triggers a Block check that holds until the boss skill has completely hit then they go back to what they were doing.
    If something was done, I expect it would be the master blocking triggers blocking by pets.
    areee wrote: »
    Totally off the subject but I wish I could use skill points to buy an extra summon for my favorites.
    Reduce base summons to one, make summoning two an advantage. :)
  • darqaura2darqaura2 Posts: 932 Arc User
    soulforger wrote: »
    darqaura2 wrote: »
    soulforger wrote: »
    bluhman wrote: »
    soulforger wrote: »
    Or, they can revamp the AI.

    they can't revamp a power without whining incessantly about how hard it'd be to do.

    What makes you think they think they're competent enough to code Artificial Intelligence?

    They could always hire Google for that.

    LULZ, with what money? :p

    Ours of course, Google is a company making money off of everyone still.

    If we don't have the money to make improvements that folks have been asking for for years, we don't have the money to hire Google.
  • soulforgersoulforger Posts: 1,649 Arc User
    darqaura2 wrote: »
    soulforger wrote: »
    darqaura2 wrote: »
    soulforger wrote: »
    bluhman wrote: »
    soulforger wrote: »
    Or, they can revamp the AI.

    they can't revamp a power without whining incessantly about how hard it'd be to do.

    What makes you think they think they're competent enough to code Artificial Intelligence?

    They could always hire Google for that.

    LULZ, with what money? :p

    Ours of course, Google is a company making money off of everyone still.

    If we don't have the money to make improvements that folks have been asking for for years, we don't have the money to hire Google.

    Hah! True enough, I'll give you that.
  • spinnytopspinnytop Posts: 16,450 Arc User
    soulforger wrote: »
    darqaura2 wrote: »
    soulforger wrote: »
    darqaura2 wrote: »
    soulforger wrote: »
    bluhman wrote: »
    soulforger wrote: »
    Or, they can revamp the AI.

    they can't revamp a power without whining incessantly about how hard it'd be to do.

    What makes you think they think they're competent enough to code Artificial Intelligence?

    They could always hire Google for that.

    LULZ, with what money? :p

    Ours of course, Google is a company making money off of everyone still.

    If we don't have the money to make improvements that folks have been asking for for years, we don't have the money to hire Google.

    Hah! True enough, I'll give you that.

    I'm only posting to keep this qouteception thing going o3o​​
  • soulforgersoulforger Posts: 1,649 Arc User
    spinnytop wrote: »
    soulforger wrote: »
    darqaura2 wrote: »
    soulforger wrote: »
    darqaura2 wrote: »
    soulforger wrote: »
    bluhman wrote: »
    soulforger wrote: »
    Or, they can revamp the AI.

    they can't revamp a power without whining incessantly about how hard it'd be to do.

    What makes you think they think they're competent enough to code Artificial Intelligence?

    They could always hire Google for that.

    LULZ, with what money? :p

    Ours of course, Google is a company making money off of everyone still.

    If we don't have the money to make improvements that folks have been asking for for years, we don't have the money to hire Google.

    Hah! True enough, I'll give you that.

    I'm only posting to keep this qouteception thing going o3o​​

    Fair enough.
  • darqaura2darqaura2 Posts: 932 Arc User
    soulforger wrote: »
    spinnytop wrote: »
    soulforger wrote: »
    darqaura2 wrote: »
    soulforger wrote: »
    darqaura2 wrote: »
    soulforger wrote: »
    bluhman wrote: »
    soulforger wrote: »
    Or, they can revamp the AI.

    they can't revamp a power without whining incessantly about how hard it'd be to do.

    What makes you think they think they're competent enough to code Artificial Intelligence?

    They could always hire Google for that.

    LULZ, with what money? :p

    Ours of course, Google is a company making money off of everyone still.

    If we don't have the money to make improvements that folks have been asking for for years, we don't have the money to hire Google.

    Hah! True enough, I'll give you that.

    I'm only posting to keep this qouteception thing going o3o​​

    Fair enough.

    Look, ISSA PYRAMID MOOD! :p
  • Pets are a staple of RPGs. I'd rather see them fixed than made irrelevant. Make controlling them easier, and give them block... Either sharing the master's block or having thier own that a master can activate by command.
  • spinnytopspinnytop Posts: 16,450 Arc User
    darqaura2 wrote: »
    soulforger wrote: »
    spinnytop wrote: »
    soulforger wrote: »
    darqaura2 wrote: »
    soulforger wrote: »
    darqaura2 wrote: »
    soulforger wrote: »
    bluhman wrote: »
    soulforger wrote: »
    Or, they can revamp the AI.

    they can't revamp a power without whining incessantly about how hard it'd be to do.

    What makes you think they think they're competent enough to code Artificial Intelligence?

    They could always hire Google for that.

    LULZ, with what money? :p

    Ours of course, Google is a company making money off of everyone still.

    If we don't have the money to make improvements that folks have been asking for for years, we don't have the money to hire Google.

    Hah! True enough, I'll give you that.

    I'm only posting to keep this qouteception thing going o3o

    Fair enough.

    Look, ISSA PYRAMID MOOD! :p

    I think all this "pets need to block" stuff is silly. Learning how and when to recast is part of what makes the pet master playstyle unique! o3o/ Long live the quote pyramid!​​
  • areeeareee Posts: 817 Arc User
    spinnytop wrote: »
    darqaura2 wrote: »
    soulforger wrote: »
    spinnytop wrote: »
    soulforger wrote: »
    darqaura2 wrote: »
    soulforger wrote: »
    darqaura2 wrote: »
    soulforger wrote: »
    bluhman wrote: »
    soulforger wrote: »
    Or, they can revamp the AI.

    they can't revamp a power without whining incessantly about how hard it'd be to do.

    What makes you think they think they're competent enough to code Artificial Intelligence?

    They could always hire Google for that.

    LULZ, with what money? :p

    Ours of course, Google is a company making money off of everyone still.

    If we don't have the money to make improvements that folks have been asking for for years, we don't have the money to hire Google.

    Hah! True enough, I'll give you that.

    I'm only posting to keep this qouteception thing going o3o

    Fair enough.

    Look, ISSA PYRAMID MOOD! :p

    I think all this "pets need to block" stuff is silly. Learning how and when to recast is part of what makes the pet master playstyle unique! o3o/ Long live the quote pyramid!​​

    This might be true if there were not certain bosses that spawm AoEs like they are going out of style. Those few of us with 8-12 summon skills can't do anything there beyond being an aura bot.
  • pantagruel01pantagruel01 Posts: 7,091 Arc User
    areee wrote: »
    This might be true if there were not certain bosses that spawm AoEs like they are going out of style. Those few of us with 8-12 summon skills can't do anything there beyond being an aura bot.
    Step 1 to improving pets: make having 8-12 summon skills impossible.
  • jaazaniah1jaazaniah1 Posts: 5,424 Arc User
    Pets are a staple of RPGs. I'd rather see them fixed than made irrelevant. Make controlling them easier, and give them block... Either sharing the master's block or having thier own that a master can activate by command.

    But how common are they in comic books? How many heroes have a horde of creatures around them? Powers should fit the specific genre.
    JwLmWoa.png
    Perseus, Captain Arcane, Tectonic Knight, Pankration, Siberiad, Sekhmet, Black Seraph, Clockwork
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  • theravenforcetheravenforce Posts: 7,065 Arc User
    I think the idea that you have an army of robots, monsters or otherworldly creatures at your finger tips is pretty cool. It's less cool if a boss sneezes and all your army falls over and dies or if the boss straight up exists and your army melts.

    Personally if things like Muni Bots and Support Drones were actually as useful as two potential power slots, I don't think I'd be inclined to want more than just those two to fit the theme I'm going for.

    I do think pets need to be sturdier, more dangerous but limited to a maximum of 4 pets at any one time, if possible...make all target-able pets controllable as well.
  • spinnytopspinnytop Posts: 16,450 Arc User
    areee wrote: »
    spinnytop wrote: »
    darqaura2 wrote: »
    soulforger wrote: »
    spinnytop wrote: »
    soulforger wrote: »
    darqaura2 wrote: »
    soulforger wrote: »
    darqaura2 wrote: »
    soulforger wrote: »
    bluhman wrote: »
    soulforger wrote: »
    Or, they can revamp the AI.

    they can't revamp a power without whining incessantly about how hard it'd be to do.

    What makes you think they think they're competent enough to code Artificial Intelligence?

    They could always hire Google for that.

    LULZ, with what money? :p

    Ours of course, Google is a company making money off of everyone still.

    If we don't have the money to make improvements that folks have been asking for for years, we don't have the money to hire Google.

    Hah! True enough, I'll give you that.

    I'm only posting to keep this qouteception thing going o3o

    Fair enough.

    Look, ISSA PYRAMID MOOD! :p

    I think all this "pets need to block" stuff is silly. Learning how and when to recast is part of what makes the pet master playstyle unique! o3o/ Long live the quote pyramid!

    This might be true if there were not certain bosses that spawm AoEs like they are going out of style. Those few of us with 8-12 summon skills can't do anything there beyond being an aura bot.

    Not true actually. With that many summon skills you can just spend the entire fight summoning things in a rotation and not even have to worry about timing. Just keep throwing summons at the boss until it dies. People with less summons, especially those that have cooldowns, are the ones that actually have to learn the fight and plan out their summons. You've got it easy!​​
  • pantagruel01pantagruel01 Posts: 7,091 Arc User
    spinnytop wrote: »
    Not true actually. With that many summon skills you can just spend the entire fight summoning things in a rotation and not even have to worry about timing.
    The problem is mostly that summoning is a poor use of time unless they have a minimum survival. If we assume that a Commander spec should be able to be competent (basically ranged) dps, possibly with some small bonus for pets drawing aggro and thus tanking for the team (they mostly don't do that so it's not a very large bonus), we expect to get 5-6k dps. A commander spec controllable pet summon takes 1.83s and a fairly high amount of energy, so to be a coherent use of time in combat, the pet should do more than 10k damage over its lifespan (also, pet summons are not a spammable effect, so they should probably be evaluated more like a non-stacking DoT, maybe it should do 12k). For a 200 dps pet, that means a survival time of 60s, which is a lot less than their combat lifespan.

    There's actually a pretty easy fix for this, though, and it doesn't involve pets blocking. Just give pets a short duration buff when they are first summoned; say, they do 1,000 dps for the first 10s, and then it drops to the normal 200 dps or so. At that point, resummoning your pets every 10s is actually a perfectly plausible play style.
  • paneth48paneth48 Posts: 31 Arc User
    I'm kinda surprised you can't change the theme of the pets anyway (or am I missing that?) If I recall these orginally were some of the same people who worked on CoX which had the Mastermind. I figured the summons would be somewhat customizable by theme, like if you wanted robots you could have robot demons or robot dogs, you wanted a hell theme Angels would become fallen and wolves would become hellhounds. Just click the skin to apply or something.
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