Proposition for NEW pet system for Mages and Epic changes

[Seipher]

The pet focus on epic wont ever happen, Lillu loves forcing us to grind 1200 LDoNs for the aug instead of fixing the pet focus effects on other items :p but anyway ....

About scaling the pet up, i think its fine how it is, since getting the next set of pets would be something to look forward to, if its scaled to 73, thats gonna make it so the later pets have to scale to like 78 or something for them to be balanced.

[ChaosSlayer]

I believe Lillu wants to keep focus augment separately from epic so even non raiders can get to it.
If are going with pet buff on the epics, I will prabobly lower recast time to say 5-8 min, with 1 min duration. The purpose of such buff is to give you a momentary burst when really needed, like when solo fighting a named mob, or during critical stage in a raid fight.

I really don't like the Burnout line, since they present of pet all the time - if pet always going to be buffed with that - may as well make that a default stat bonus on a pet and save on a spell slot. Specially when epic 1.0 comes into play with Burnout 3 already on it, canceling 2 previous buffs right out.

I think I am going to start wit buffying 2 of the pet choices- water and air. And then we will see how it goes from there.

RE: necro epic - I plan to get my hands on that too

[Nagash]

All I read here has, to me, the signs of "Nerf coming" and you want give the boot to necros too? Bare in mind that even with that pet, I can not solo a single named in Sebilis (!!!) and that's with a cleric and a paladin bot (tried them both). I don't want to imagine the life of a mage without the luxury of FD. If you want to balance the INT caster, don't start by taking away the only ok(ish) tools they have as you will give yourself much more work later on, tweak them instead. What next? Beatlords pets? These epic pets are the only things that have a remote chance of living in a raid, why giving them the boot? I fail to see the logic here. The very original idea sounds flawed "Mages pet are not powerfull enough so we will remove epic pets and tweak the other pets". Of course I don't have the figures you havein mind mate but that sounds very flawed to me.

I disagree with several points with you here:

- "Don't like the burnout serie, given a bit of time, pet will always have it up so we might as well integrate that to the pet" this statement is so flawed it makes baby Jesus cry mate: if a mage (or necro) forgets to cast it, he seriously reduces his pet capabilities; it is something that has to be monitored! Going down that route we could say "Well, anyone can have a cleric and a shaman and an enchanter bot, might as well leave all their buffs permanently on every player and pet" or "Well, everyone can have any LDoN reward, might as well sell them all for 1 point", hell, and don't get me wrong when I say that, but we could also say "Hell, players will have whatever they want given a bit of time, might as well let them post on the forum the details and give them in game", but hang on, are we still speaking about The Hidden Forest or are we speaking about EZ mode server? Of course my last example might sound extreme but, thinking about it, it's not that far from yours; actually, their concept are identical!

- "Don't like pet equipment, sseeing how pet will always have it, we might as well integrate it": same thing but even worse. Seeing how the "dimensional pocket AA" (sorry can't remember the name now) to "park" a spare pet don't work, in case of trouble if you need another pet, you won't have time to equip it so the pet will under-performed and this is exactly the point!

- I already said, a swarm pet is cool looking but is a bad idea: even if it is very powerfull, what's the point giving someone the possibilitiy to be super-duper-uber 30 sec but then be helpless 19min30?

But first of all, I'm not even sure why touching to the epic pet altogether? Nothing in this post details the reasons why!!! He's fine AFAIK. The only 2 problems are:

- mages have it at level 49 which is really OP (no arguing here). That looks easy to sort, tag the spell level 71 or simply remove it from the list of spells learnt at 29 (or 48 or whatever the level is that mages get it now)

- pet have a general survivability issue in raid, mainly due to rampage. Well, one thing is sure, if you give the epic pets the boot, they won't be killed during raids because no one will be able to have one but I very much doubt that's a solution.
Obviously the ideal idea would be to make them rampage immune which I understand can not happen, obviously we don't want to give them one gazillion hp but maybe if we were to give necro/bst/magician a buff that would last 10 min (I'm not sure how long are the figts against bosses) with a very long recast (1h, maybe 2) that boost pet's parry/avoidance/resist to a huge figure (90%) that would allow the pets to survive boss fights without having the pets being super-overpowered. Hell, why not doing something else: give an equivalent of Harmshield for petss: pet can't take any damage for say 5 min, recast is 1h and pet doesn't generate aggro during this time (good way letting your pet tank if he doesn't generate aggro, that would be actually the limiting factor). These are 2 examples which, I think, would greatly help pets survivabiliy in raid, without being OP out of a raid setting. Beauty of it: you just have a few spells to code/tweak instead of all series of pets and items.

Think about it, the epic 1.5 is not very hard to get, not everyone will have it but hey, it's not very hard (I won't comment on 2.0 as I'm not there yet). Now, one of my good friends plays a magician (Eskarina), he's a very skilled player and I've played with that bloke for something like 10 years. Let me tell you something: remove his epic pet and there is nothing he can do beside trash farming in Sebilis/PoV/Naggy's lair and seeing how it's the state of the necro (for me at least) at the moment, I don't wish that for him. Should a level 70 be able to solo nameds (maybe not all but a good chunk) in Sebilis? Well, I'd say yes seeing how monk/berserkers/warr/ranger... can do it. If not then ok bring in the nerf, but man, before nerfing the int casters (now maybe I misunderstood the whole thing), start by nerfing all the melee although I very much doubt it's what you are looking for.

To finish, I apologize if I sound irrate or angry, I certainly am not. I'm just passionate about things and want them to evolve in the right direction. When I read something that has a flashy sign above it reading "Wrong" (to me), I have to say it and explain why.

Regards,

Nagash

[ChaosSlayer]

Nagash - could you do me a favor and link both epic 1.5 and 2.0 for necro?
I just want to be sure I am looking at the right thing.

[Seipher]

1.5 - http://www.thehiddenforest.org/item.php?id=3541

2.0 - http://www.thehiddenforest.org/item.php?id=6543

[Nagash]

Epic 1.5 is http://www.thehiddenforest.org/item.php?id=3541

Not sure for epic 2.0 as I don't have it, I think it's called Deathwhisper so probably that one http://www.thehiddenforest.org/item.php?id=64067 that I think needs a tweak up.

Just saw Seipher's post, I'll take her word for the 2.0

Regards,

Nagash

[ChaosSlayer]

Thank you =)

I am curious why pet on epic 2.0 MUCH gimpier than on epic 1.5? Is it a swarm pet?

and Nagash- looks like you missed a major news 2 days ago - normal necro and bst just got MASSIVE update. The Normal level 70 necro pet almost as good as the epic 1.5 pet after update.

And I did not say I am going to nerf anything. On contrary, the whole thing stated by desire to make pet classes more powerful, and make pets more powerful. When I said - I will get to necro epic- that meant- I will review it, if it needs any works. Since necro pets all come in one style, they do not have kind of issue mage epic has. And note that so far - nothing has been nerfed. Thats why I started this discussion in the first place, to see people's opinion before any action is taken.

[Mortbise]

Been reading this whole topic, talking a lot about it with said necro above, checked other classes' boosts to their pets, and I seriously feel suddenly I've been stripped of what makes me a mage, with possibly more to come.

Let's try to order all that came to my mind.

- First, take into account what a mage is. I saw Chaoslayer mention "Mage is already a nuker (primary) supplemented by a pet.". I can't agree with that. A mage's main subject of worry is his/her pet. A loss of pet means a loss of most, if not all, of your defensive arsenal (yes there are clickies, but everybody can have them).

Mages are second best nukers ex-aequo with druids (well that was the case when I stoped on live, I would assume the trend is still the same), their forte being their pet. After seeing the new necro and beastlord pets, I'm thinking "could I get some of their support/defensive spells then ?". 'cause yeah, we have nothing. No snare, no root (I said clickies can't count, we're talking class balance), no FD, no fear, no rune, no heal, well you get the point. We have Gate, period. This was to clearly point at the importance of a pet for a mage. It's not just a floating DoT you send on mobs.

- Second, put a swarm pet on the mage epic. The very idea made me roll my eyes so hard they'll maybe stop in an hour or two. For two reasons, 1: it's a MAGE epic, a mage's pet is THE class defining element. So take it away while necros get it on their 1.5 ? 2: it's a mage EPIC, necros getting a strong pet on theirs as well while plans are made to wipe mage's one made me shed a bitter tear. Let's not talk about beastlords that get an even stronger pet from simple Icewell Keep farming.

I heard the concerns about mages getting a pet way too strong at lvl 45, though to be exact, it's only clickable at 50 (where did that lvl 48 mention come ??). I will toss this idea then : the Ancient frozen staff comes with an upgraded version of manifest elements; so move Summon orb to lvl 70, make it drop from, say, icewell named (and move the beast pet there too while you're at it), and have its clicky be a... say "Gather elements", a lesser version of Manifest elements, and keep the rest of stats the same. That should solve nicely the pet power progression. Taking into account this idea of having only 2 pet lines, one for tanking, one for damaging, the epic pets would be a combination of both lines to a certain extent, kinda like a generalist pet while other lines are specialists.

Third, Pet stuff. I've seen worries about "one mage gets the spell, whole raid get shiny stuff". The answer to this resides in two other mage spells, burnout and mod rod. If you really want to limit the shiny stuff to the owner of the pet, make those summons target based like mod rod, and automatically target the caster's pet like burnout. Mechanics for this are already present in both spells, it should be easy to design

I'm not completeley convinced by the idea personnally, but talking about modrod made me rememeber pre-rod nerf raids where I spent hours making rods, and more rods, and some more rods. I've been a rod machine, the idea of keeping my shinies for me isn't so bad after all. But also, if you abandon the idea and let mages share their toys, you can keep the targeted summon, I personnally hate summoning bags of stuff (I got 8 tae ew backpack damit).

Also, spreading them across raids tiers in succession with news pet spells. Sounds good to me. Getting news strong pet at a tier, stuffing them next tier, that's progression allright. But integrate buffs in the pet characteristics, or even stuff, with the idea "it's available, people will alwayd have'em", NO. Buffs can get dispelled (ever fought a dragon that AE dispell 4 buffs a pop ? yeah ? memories coming back ?). You can forget to refresh them. Pet stuff has to be handed to it currently. If the pet gets killed, you gotta resummon/restuff/rebuff (unless Suspended minion works but I don't think it was fixed ?), incorporating buffs and stuff in the pet characteristics trivializes getting a new pet up and running. How about incorporating them to players as well after ? It's nice enough already to die and repop fully stuffed, with buffs too it'd be even nicer </sarcasm>. Those last lines were discussed with the ogre necro above on guildchat and I totally agree with them.

Fourth. Well nada. I'd wait to see the new pets and pet stuff, their stats, their availability, the new epics to comment. I just want to add that personnally, I'm a 70 mage with 312 AAs, and reading the topic more and more gave me the feeling mages in my situation, let's say decently stuffed though bot duoing with epic 1.5 obtained through hard guildwork except for dragon blood looted from generous people whooping dragons and leaving blood for the takers, were soon going to be stripped of their best pet, leaving them with that dumb ball of dirt that tanks roughly as well as me (we only get the earth pet at 70 for the last wave of pets and I've only ever used it on live for killing spiderling in PoF, ie send pet, let it root stuff for me, /hold it before he gets owned, nuke, rinse repeat).

That is, a nerf stick the size of a sequoia.

PS : New posts spawned in my back, just adding a note for Chaoslayer regarding necro and mage pet, since we discussed that also on GC : personnally, despite having pet affinity for the buffing, elemental fury 5 ele durability 5 ele agility 5 ele alacrity 2, I don't think my pet would win a one-on-one confrontation versus a necro pet. Well I wouldn't buff it though the NPC buffer for that, to be honest, since that slacking necro doesn't have affinity.

Another thought : If normal 70 necro pet became almost as good as 1.5 click, why ? Is 1.5 gonna be boosted ? 1.5 was my reference for a pet duel.

[tl;dr] I spent considerable time puting into shape this wall of text, kindly read it please.

Eskarina. GL of Ancient combattants.

[Nagash]

Thank you =)

I am curious why pet on epic 2.0 MUCH gimpier than on epic 1.5? Is it a swarm pet?

and Nagash- looks like you missed a major news 2 days ago - normal necro and bst just got MASSIVE update. The Normal level 70 necro pet almost as good as the epic 1.5 pet after update.

And I did not say I am going to nerf anything. On contrary, the whole thing stated by desire to make pet classes more powerful, and make pets more powerful. When I said - I will get to necro epic- that meant- I will review it, if it needs any works. Since necro pets all come in one style, they do not have kind of issue mage epic has. And note that so far - nothing has been nerfed. Thats why I started this discussion in the first place, to see people's opinion before any action is taken.

I can't confirm why it is so much gimp, maybe a swarm pet, can't tell for sure.

I did indeed see the pet buff we had a couple of days ago and liked it (although I still can't solo nameds but he, I got some buddies to come with me for that so...). I admit I was a bit lost regarding you saying you'd look into that soon (sorry if I read that "look" as a "nerf", my paranoid side I guess that's what happens when you see dead people everywhere all the time)., it didn't make much sense after the recent update.

But coming back to mages (this is the heart of this discussion, isn't it?), if one thing, remember, please remember, a magician without a pet, it's like peanut butter with no gelly, it's like the sea with no waves, like Juliette without her Romeo or Strom Thurmond without his secret daughter. Magicians are the one who needs the most attention when it comes to pets. In a group as a necro I can work without one (well my DPS will suck as it's all based on DoTs but that's beside the point, if I want big KABOOM effects, I'd have rolled a... magician or wizard), a beastlod can still do some pretty good bashing but a magician, what can he do beside being a sub-par wizard?
When I solo, as a necro, my pet gets killed: root rot, fear kite, reverse kite are all options open to me and FD if shit really hits the fan. Magician loses his pet, hope that last bolt will be enough to kill the mob but hey, you'd better start casting gate now and pray it doesn't get interrupted.

As I said, I'm all for keeping the diversity of the pets available to magician, it's their class signature, but instead of removing the epic pet from the 1.5, I'd leave it here and tweak it as a real mix of the elements. Or even better let's be wild man, another solution would be to give them 4 epic 1.5 weapons (yes 4 but only one equipable or 1 wih stats + 3 statless clickies), each of these would summon an epic pet of said element. I don't want my necro epic pet doing more damage than a mage's (which it does), I don't want my necro epic pet to tank better than a mage's epic pet (which he certainly doesn't). I want my pet to be kind of a reference point around which mage pets would evolve: tank better with less DPS or tank worse with more DPS (2 pets as a choice would be a good start if not the 4 for magicians). Another thing, but hey, you'll get it for now, I want magicians to have an epic pet, a super monster (or some super monsters) summoned through different means: not a forumlae found in a dusty old book but a wonder of the elements for which the summoning magic has long been lost and can only be found crystalised in a item.

Of course, all that doesn't sort out the pet viability but several options were already proposed by me and others, I'm just sticking to the epic pet for the non raiding mages, we gotta leave these guys something and a decent something.

Right, I think it's time for me to stop chatting like an old lady and go to bed.

Regards,

Nagash
Militant for mage's epic pets diversity

[ChaosSlayer]

[quote="Mortbise"]

I see your concern but so everyone on the same page I like to point on that:

-I have started general pet upgrades for all primary pet classes - classes for whom pets is primary source of power (don't misunderstand my statement about mage being a nuker, what I truly meant to say that he is say half nuker - this mostly reference towards a wizard pet - if mage already a nuker, then nuker with a nuker pet kind of silly)

-BST pets have already received their upgrades. Considering BSt as partial melee class benefit massively from gear and weapons, this was the fastest and easier part of the upgrades.

-Necro normal (non epic pets) have been boosted as well. Also easy task.

-I have stopped at Mages, because I wanted offer a different approach to things. I do not offer just to take away your epic pet and leave you with nothing. The idea was to give you pet upgrades via raid level pets (or LDON for non raiders) which will come in form of scrolls, and give you something other on your Epic than a pet (idea of Swarm or pet buff are on the table)

-In regards to pet buffs. The reason I don't like Burnouts, is cause they just pet haste, which is put on a pet and forgotten. yes you can forget to recast or it can get dispelled. What I am offering is a pet buff, which will do more than haste and atk - how about critical? It will last for a minute, have long recast time, but will turn your pet into berserking monstrosity when occasion calls for it.

-Once again- mages pets have not been touched yet- so if you looking at a pets stat list , mages pets do look pale compared to the new necro and bst pets atm.

EDIT:

Nagash,

yeah I get it - you want epic pets and you want them diverse I do support the general spirit of idea, I just put an actual Epic weapon and actual pets on 2 different plates
You can still have your epic pet - more if we going with 2 pet lines- so you will have TWO EPIC PETS to choose from , and a clicky effect on your epic weapon which does something else too. So you getting 3 things, where you had 1

As far as new pets not being available to non raiders - this will addressed. Personally I am not a fan of LDOn farming, so I actually leaning more towards a quest which can be done at roughly same difficulty as Epic 1.5 (or partially along with it). This quest will give a 2 pets which will equivalent in power to current Epic 1.5 pet (maybe stronger after I done upgrading the base pets), and true raiders can go higher and get bigger pets from higher raid tiers.