Summons & Pets - bugs

Synta - Dreamweaver

This is a bug I've reported several times through tickets. Originally I reported it in January 2011, and it was said it would be looked into. I reported it again early 2012, a year later, just after the introduction of mystics which experienced the same bugs, though to an even greater degree. This ticket was closed without a response, which irked me. I think I also sent another ticket earlier this year. So two years of trying to report this bug...

It's very complicated, unfortunately...
There are several aspects to it, but essentially pet skills don't work properly.
This applies to both venos and mystics.

A pet set to defensive mode when attacked in open world PK will go into combat and follow the aggressor, with skills going on cooldown, but without doing damage or actually using the skills. The pet has to be manually pulled back and resent.

This leads onto the next bug. If a pet that is not in combat is told to use a skill on someone, the skill will go into cooldown but will not actually cast. A workaround is to send the pet to hit them and then use the skill, but this is slow and defeats the object of things such as default skills and having a ranged stun on a melee summon...

It's not just limited to PvP though. Mystic summons are horrific in PvE, in that their skill defaulting is bugged beyond belief. It requires repeated selecting, unselecting and reselecting of the default skill to get it to work as a default skill. This is most evident with Storm Mistress. The first time in a session that a summon is used, it's usually fine. If it is resummoned, it starts to get really buggy...

A few more bugs:
Pet damage is no longer visible - that is, damage to the pets. This changed a few years back, about the TB expansion time... (edit: pvp)

Nixes still get stuck in the ground, I believe.

Demon cragglord does not work. Supposed to have 50% chance to save a spark. Doesn't ever happen. Have extensively tested this.

Can't summon pets/summons in certain areas, such as ground floor of advanced endless universe, and random places like south arch platform by the banker.

Summon mana costs were reduced but this is not reflected in the skills descriptions.

Catapults target mystic summons.

Pets and summons sometimes get stuck trying to leave safe zones.



I can't think of any more right now, but surely that's enough?

genotypist

Synta - Dreamweaver wrote: »

A pet set to defensive mode when attacked in open world PK will go into combat and follow the aggressor, with skills going on cooldown, but without doing damage or actually using the skills. The pet has to be manually pulled back and resent.

Hi Synta. Our devs replied to this issue as something they would not fix. Flagging yourself (in a PvE server) or being attacked in the open world (in a PvP server) carries with it some penalties. While it's not exactly intended behavior, it was ultimately decided that the pet behavior fit in their intentions.

Synta - Dreamweaver wrote: »

This leads onto the next bug. If a pet that is not in combat is told to use a skill on someone, the skill will go into cooldown but will not actually cast. A workaround is to send the pet to hit them and then use the skill, but this is slow and defeats the object of things such as default skills and having a ranged stun on a melee summon...

I'll take a look into this.

Synta - Dreamweaver wrote: »

It's not just limited to PvP though. Mystic summons are horrific in PvE, in that their skill defaulting is bugged beyond belief. It requires repeated selecting, unselecting and reselecting of the default skill to get it to work as a default skill. This is most evident with Storm Mistress. The first time in a session that a summon is used, it's usually fine. If it is resummoned, it starts to get really buggy...

You'll have to submit a properly formatted bug for me on this issue. See here for the guidelines.

A few more bugs:

Synta - Dreamweaver wrote: »

Pet damage is no longer visible - that is, damage to the pets. This changed a few years back, about the TB expansion time... (edit: pvp)

I believe this was an intended change. It was slightly before my time on PWI, so I'll see about getting you a confirmation.

Synta - Dreamweaver wrote: »

Nixes still get stuck in the ground, I believe.

Known issue, but if you can provide specific spots, we can try to alleviate it.

Synta - Dreamweaver wrote: »

Demon cragglord does not work. Supposed to have 50% chance to save a spark. Doesn't ever happen. Have extensively tested this.

I'll look into this, thanks.

Synta - Dreamweaver wrote: »

Can't summon pets/summons in certain areas, such as ground floor of advanced endless universe, and random places like south arch platform by the banker.

Working as intended.

Synta - Dreamweaver wrote: »

Summon mana costs were reduced but this is not reflected in the skills descriptions.

Should be an easy fix, unless summon skill descriptions are imbedded in the scripts. In which case, it might be awhile in coming.

Synta - Dreamweaver wrote: »

Catapults target mystic summons.

Why should they not? I think you're working off some assumptions here I'm not aware of.

Synta - Dreamweaver wrote: »

Pets and summons sometimes get stuck trying to leave safe zones.

Same issue as stuck bugs above with the phoenixes. It's a problem with the engine, and not something we can wand-wave away.

Synta - Dreamweaver

genotypist wrote: »

You'll have to submit a properly formatted bug for me on this issue. See here for the guidelines.

Alrighty, um, I manually patched so I'll have to wait until after maint to do that. Would a video of this help at all? It seems a bit too random to be able to do a proper step-by-step thing.

genotypist wrote: »

Known issue, but if you can provide specific spots, we can try to alleviate it.

It's when going up hills, essentially. I don't really play my veno much any more though, so I'm not entirely sure where exactly it occurs... I figured it wouldn't be fixed though. :P

genotypist wrote: »

Why should they not? I think you're working off some assumptions here I'm not aware of.

Hmm, why should they? Catapults don't usually interact with players at all, beyond following their puller. They dont target veno pets, don't attack players directly and can't take damage. That they target mystic summons is really rather strange. It's not a massive issue as it's a benefit as well as a drawback, but as far as I can tell it's unintended (I'm probably wrong!) so I figured I should report it as a bug in case devs aren't aware...

genotypist wrote: »

Same issue as stuck bugs above with the phoenixes. It's a problem with the engine, and not something we can wand-wave away.

I'm aware, and while it's a bit of a shame, it's not a serious bug, just something that sprang to mind to mention in case it is something fixable.

irishranger

Hi,

Recently my veno (lvl 60) faced a problem with Glacial Walker (lvl 57) not using skill "Icicle" properly.

May be it's coincidence but it started after I learned lvl3 of this skill (3-4 weeks ago). The pet used it on Razorjaw (FB 19) automatically as the primary attack before but now it doesn't.

Previous time (last week) in FB 39 the pet didn't use it on any bosses but this week it used the skill on Hercule Trioc and Calcid but not on Farren, I had to activate it manually every time.

All the times the mode for the pet was manual.

I am not sure about not FB situations now but just after I learnt lvl3 skill it worked fine on mobs.

I hope you can help me solve this problem.

shashahah

im having real issues with mystic pets in nation wars lately
set on defense, but doesnt do anything at all, no matter if resummoned etc
also doesnt obey manual commands, just uses normal attack, and gets stuck at every single hill (lol)

Sirkura - Raging Tide

another glitch ,although really minor and not game changing, is that if you set a battle pet, (veno/mystic/seeker's angels/etc), to halt then load an all class pet, it is stuck and won't move. need to re-summon a battle pet and set it to follow again to fix.

Mayfly - Dreamweaver

Synta - Dreamweaver wrote: »

It's not just limited to PvP though. Mystic summons are horrific in PvE, in that their skill defaulting is bugged beyond belief. It requires repeated selecting, unselecting and reselecting of the default skill to get it to work as a default skill. This is most evident with Storm Mistress. The first time in a session that a summon is used, it's usually fine. If it is resummoned, it starts to get really buggy...

genotypist wrote: »

You'll have to submit a properly formatted bug for me on this issue. See here for the guidelines.

This is actually easily reproducible. For venos, summon a different pet while another pet is summoned. For mystics, summon any summons while another one is summoned. The default skill will not be used automatically until you have right clicked it a couple times.

Marid - Dreamweaver

Mayfly - Dreamweaver wrote: »

This is actually easily reproducible. For venos, summon a different pet while another pet is summoned. For mystics, summon any summons while another one is summoned. The default skill will not be used automatically until you have right clicked it a couple times.

Yeah, I set about trying to format a bug report, and ended up just coming to the forum to say what you just said - that there's no point in a step-by-step report when all that's involved is

-Summon
-Bugged?
-If no, summon again
-Will now be bugged

Edit: Oops, this is Synta btw, other acc xD

Alexis - Lothranis

Let me try to detail it.

Let's assume you have no summon out and no default skill (that yellow square that appears by right-clicking a skill that makes the skill activate automatically when cd is over).

- You summon Storm Mistress (best example) and right click on it's first skill Luna Blade so it's selected as default. The skill is a spammable magic attack. So now when you click normal attack the summon goes into range and performs Luna Blade as intended. No bugs yet.

- For whatever reason you need to resummon it. You do so and Luna Blade stays selected as the default skill without you doing anything. You click normal attack, only the summon instead of using Luna Blade as intended it goes into melee-range and start melee attacking without ever using the skill. That's the bug.

- Possible fixes are deselecting and selecting the default skill yourself though that doesn't always work (from my experience it only works when both you and the summon are standing still and not attacking) or deselecting the default skill before resummoning and selecting it again afterwards.

Basically it works only when u manually select it, it doesn't work when it's suppose to "remember" the default skill after resummoning.

SylenThunder - Twilight Temple

And don't forget the random attack glitch.

I'll sit on my veno and farm some mobs. Kill a bunch of them, and I always have the pet on manual. Once finishing the group and stopping for a moment, the pet will randomly run off to a mob that isn't even within it's normal running range. This has happened to me several times in TT, and also out in the open world. Have not tested it with a Mystic summon yet.

I could understand if it was on Defend and maybe attacking a nearby target. Or if it was on attack and I had selected the target to be attacked at some point, but then re-directed the pet. But neither of these are the case. It is in manual, and it will run past groups of nearby mobs to go attack some random mob off in the distance, usually at the extreme edge of even being able to tab-target the mob.

I have opened a couple of tickets on this, and have never been satisfied with the support teams responses. (Or lack thereof.)

Synta - Dreamweaver

SylenThunder - Sanctuary wrote: »

And don't forget the random attack glitch.

Oh yeah! This one is kinda rare, but really weird

Azura - Lost City

Well guys, the problem of the pets getting stucked on the ground is about to get fixed at last for the phoenix.

I've been reading about the coming update for PW, which is an update to venos's pet mostly. It says there that phoenixes' habitat will be changed to air, ground, and water. This means they will no longer get stucked. I hope they put 2 habitats for all flying pets (ground and air), at least, so no flying pet gets stucked on ground.

I think this will also help fix to some degree the problem of pets casting a skill, and not doing any damage/effect because they are glitched they can't do damage to players.

I've never had that problem of the random attack, I'm not even sure if I'm understand there...

Mayfly - Dreamweaver

The random attack thing is when your pet will go off and attack a mob that's recently respawned after the most recent fight is over.

Marid - Dreamweaver

Mayfly - Dreamweaver wrote: »

The random attack thing is when your pet will go off and attack a mob that's recently respawned after the most recent fight is over.

That sounds likely. When a mob respawns, it's not a new mob, is it? It has the same ID has the mob it is replacing. If it died with a seal or something, for a fraction of a second after spawning it is sealed. Therefore it makes sense that for a fraction of a second, the pet could have aggro towards it...

I'm fairly sure it has happened to me in instances such as TT and FBs though, so I'm not certain if this is the correct or only reason this happens...

Xx_BeLLa_xX - Harshlands

Alexis - Lothranis wrote: »

Let me try to detail it.

Let's assume you have no summon out and no default skill (that yellow square that appears by right-clicking a skill that makes the skill activate automatically when cd is over).

- You summon Storm Mistress (best example) and right click on it's first skill Luna Blade so it's selected as default. The skill is a spammable magic attack. So now when you click normal attack the summon goes into range and performs Luna Blade as intended. No bugs yet.

- For whatever reason you need to resummon it. You do so and Luna Blade stays selected as the default skill without you doing anything. You click normal attack, only the summon instead of using Luna Blade as intended it goes into melee-range and start melee attacking without ever using the skill. That's the bug.

- Possible fixes are deselecting and selecting the default skill yourself though that doesn't always work (from my experience it only works when both you and the summon are standing still and not attacking) or deselecting the default skill before resummoning and selecting it again afterwards.

Basically it works only when u manually select it, it doesn't work when it's suppose to "remember" the default skill after resummoning.

That is freaking annoying. Sometime when my summon die, I summon again then all she (mistress) does is auto-attack and even when I deselect and reselect the attack she don't do it, I need to deselect the attack resummon her then select the attack.

genotypist

We'll try to get a full pass through the battle pets' behavior and document as many of the issues here as possible, but that might take a little while to complete. Please continue the discussion in the meantime, thanks everyone.

viciousminx

Azura - Lost City wrote: »

Well guys, the problem of the pets getting stucked on the ground is about to get fixed at last for the phoenix.

I've been reading about the coming update for PW, which is an update to venos's pet mostly. It says there that phoenixes' habitat will be changed to air, ground, and water. This means they will no longer get stucked. I hope they put 2 habitats for all flying pets (ground and air), at least, so no flying pet gets stucked on ground.

I think this will also help fix to some degree the problem of pets casting a skill, and not doing any damage/effect because they are glitched they can't do damage to players.

I've never had that problem of the random attack, I'm not even sure if I'm understand there...

Let's hope so. Our pets have been gimped for way too long.

genotypist wrote: »

Known issue, but if you can provide specific spots, we can try to alleviate it.

Geno, air pets will stick anywhere on the map there is a height difference between player and target. It's almost better to list the places they don't stick instead, like the flat beach terrain near village of naught.

SylenThunder - Twilight Temple

ViciousMinx wrote: »

...Geno, air pets will stick anywhere on the map there is a height difference between player and target. It's almost better to list the places they don't stick instead, like the flat beach terrain near village of naught.

I think it's more of an issue with how the ground textures are mapped. Pretty much anywhere the ground isn't flat, the pet can get stuck.

Mayfly - Dreamweaver

The air pets target the base of the mob, so any line of sight between their current position and the base of the targeted mob that passes through ground texture causes them to hang up. If they'd target a higher position on the mob it would not be anywhere near as big a problem.

Marid - Dreamweaver

Mayfly - Dreamweaver wrote: »

The air pets target the base of the mob, so any line of sight between their current position and the base of the targeted mob that passes through ground texture causes them to hang up. If they'd target a higher position on the mob it would not be anywhere near as big a problem.

Mystic pets have a "flight mode" and a "ground mode".when in "flight mode", they don't get stuck. So they're coded differently in some way, that difference should be changed in veno flyers...

viciousminx

SylenThunder - Sanctuary wrote: »

I think it's more of an issue with how the ground textures are mapped. Pretty much anywhere the ground isn't flat, the pet can get stuck.

It's a bit of both I think. Air pets apparently have no minimum distance value to maintain above the ground in their flight coding. If they did, we would see a rise and fall with the terrain to maintain that value instead of using purely linear paths to targets. Even a small minimum distance value should provide enough cushion to prevent collision and stop most of the hang ups.

hexsubah

Synta - Dreamweaver wrote: »

This leads onto the next bug. If a pet that is not in combat is told to use a skill on someone, the skill will go into cooldown but will not actually cast. A workaround is to send the pet to hit them and then use the skill, but this is slow and defeats the object of things such as default skills and having a ranged stun on a melee summon...

We've looked into this particular issue, however we're unable to reproduce this occurrence with pets. The various pets we've tested seemed to respond accurately when casting their pet abilities on players and mobs while out of combat. Is this problem occurring with a specific pet? If so, which pet? Also, any additional details you can provide about what setting this is occurring in will help us out greatly.

Any one else experiencing this issue is also welcome to chime in if they have any additional details that will help us to try and reproduce this.

Demon cragglord does not work. Supposed to have 50% chance to save a spark. Doesn't ever happen. Have extensively tested this.

Thanks for bringing this to our attention! We've confirmed this issue and have reported it to the devs.

Although as a side note, the tool-tip states a 25% chance to consume 1 spark instead of 2 for the summon, not 50%.

Alexis - Lothranis wrote: »

Let me try to detail it.

Let's assume you have no summon out and no default skill (that yellow square that appears by right-clicking a skill that makes the skill activate automatically when cd is over).

- You summon Storm Mistress (best example) and right click on it's first skill Luna Blade so it's selected as default. The skill is a spammable magic attack. So now when you click normal attack the summon goes into range and performs Luna Blade as intended. No bugs yet.

- For whatever reason you need to resummon it. You do so and Luna Blade stays selected as the default skill without you doing anything. You click normal attack, only the summon instead of using Luna Blade as intended it goes into melee-range and start melee attacking without ever using the skill. That's the bug.

Thanks Alexis. We've been able to confirm this also, and have reported it to the devs as well.



~Hex

Synta - Dreamweaver

Hexsubah wrote: »

We've looked into this particular issue, however we're unable to reproduce this occurrence with pets. The various pets we've tested seemed to respond accurately when casting their pet abilities on players and mobs while out of combat. Is this problem occurring with a specific pet? If so, which pet? Also, any additional details you can provide about what setting this is occurring in will help us out greatly.

Any one else experiencing this issue is also welcome to chime in if they have any additional details that will help us to try and reproduce this.

Ok, I recorded a video that might help: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0x53xh5lGM (updated with better quality version)

Hexsubah wrote: »

Thanks for bringing this to our attention! We've confirmed this issue and have reported it to the devs.

Although as a side note, the tool-tip states a 25% chance to consume 1 spark instead of 2 for the summon, not 50%.

Whoops, my mistake, I typed from memory and since that skill doesn't work, haven't exactly paid it attention :P

Synta - Dreamweaver

Just a note that if a GM did per chance happen to look at the video already, I uploaded a supremely better quality version

hexsubah

Synta - Dreamweaver wrote: »

Ok, I recorded a video that might help: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0x53xh5lGM (updated with better quality version)

Sweet! Thanks for that vid Synta. Thanks to that, we were able to reproduce this scenario consistently and get it reported to the devs. Woo! b:pleased

~Hex

Synta - Dreamweaver

Hexsubah wrote: »

Sweet! Thanks for that vid Synta. Thanks to that, we were able to reproduce this scenario consistently and get it reported to the devs. Woo! b:pleased

~Hex

Awesome! Glad it helped

TCHP - Lost City

SylenThunder - Sanctuary wrote: »

And don't forget the random attack glitch.

I'll sit on my veno and farm some mobs. Kill a bunch of them, and I always have the pet on manual. Once finishing the group and stopping for a moment, the pet will randomly run off to a mob that isn't even within it's normal running range. This has happened to me several times in TT, and also out in the open world. Have not tested it with a Mystic summon yet.

I could understand if it was on Defend and maybe attacking a nearby target. Or if it was on attack and I had selected the target to be attacked at some point, but then re-directed the pet. But neither of these are the case. It is in manual, and it will run past groups of nearby mobs to go attack some random mob off in the distance, usually at the extreme edge of even being able to tab-target the mob.

I have opened a couple of tickets on this, and have never been satisfied with the support teams responses. (Or lack thereof.)

Best place to get this issue is in the Sacred Valley, Use herc to bring a bunch on mob in, and when there all dead, ( They don't always die at the same time ) Herc will be free and run to a mob that spawn, while finishing a few mob.

It's probably related to the spawning time of the mob. idk if it happen in Morai

Azura - Lost City

Synta - Dreamweaver wrote: »

Ok, I recorded a video that might help: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0x53xh5lGM (updated with better quality version)




Whoops, my mistake, I typed from memory and since that skill doesn't work, haven't exactly paid it attention :P

The second bug you showed in the video only happens to me in a few situations. One of them is while my pet is in defense mode, a guildie attack my pet or me. Veno's pets are such a mobs, and in defense they try to attack back, but they can't because I have faction protections on. If I took my faction protection off, my pet would be able to attack normally. You didn't forget to take some kind of protection, did you?

Anyway, I want to report another bug, an interesting one. Last Nw I summoned my Ancient Derjan's Hatchling, and I couldn't do any damage with it. It would get close to everyone, and then just stand there not doing anything, it didn't even try to use his skills. And, that's not all. Apperently, my pet not only was unable to deal any damage, it was also unable to receive damage. I noticed this when I was trying to dig the flag and then got bombarded with aoes. Any pet would had died with the 1st aoe, but my ancient darjan's hatchling was still there o_o. Even though my pet wasn't doing anything, it was very convenient because I could use natural synergy. f:hehe

Today we have nw again, so I will try to reproduce the bug so you guys can look into this.

XSonOfCircex - Sanctuary

Originally Posted by Synta - Dreamweaver View Post
Demon cragglord does not work. Supposed to have 50% chance to save a spark. Doesn't ever happen. Have extensively tested this.[/Qupte]
I'll look into this, thanks.[/Quote/

Have you tried testing with 200-299 chi? I don't know about demon cragglord in particular but generally when the game says "Chance to save x amount of chi" it means "Chance to grant x amount of chi before cast/deduction" as described in this thread.

Synta - Dreamweaver

Azura - Lost City wrote: »

The second bug you showed in the video only happens to me in a few situations. One of them is while my pet is in defense mode, a guildie attack my pet or me. Veno's pets are such a mobs, and in defense they try to attack back, but they can't because I have faction protections on. If I took my faction protection off, my pet would be able to attack normally. You didn't forget to take some kind of protection, did you?

All protections were off, and notice that the BM is in a different faction.

XSonOfCircex - Sanctuary wrote: »

Have you tried testing with 200-299 chi? I don't know about demon cragglord in particular but generally when the game says "Chance to save x amount of chi" it means "Chance to grant x amount of chi before cast/deduction" as described in this thread.

Yeah and:

Hexsubah wrote: »

Thanks for bringing this to our attention! We've confirmed this issue and have reported it to the devs.

Although as a side note, the tool-tip states a 25% chance to consume 1 spark instead of 2 for the summon, not 50%.