The Hidden Forest

I am separating this from a general discussion thread about pets and casters, as the changes I want to do to mages are rather global, and before I do them, I like to see if people would support this.

The situation with mages is following:

-Mages pets generally too weak
-The type difference between pets is not very significant
-Normal pets past lev 50 are useless, cause at 50 you can scribe and use Epic 1.5 pet (which feels like exploit to me, and makes Epic 1.5 useless)
-Epic 2.0 pet is great, but it just a single pet, which effectively erases entire "different pets system"

Here is the proposal for NEW system:

-remove epic pets from epics (from 1.5 and 2.0)
-make epic pet 1.5 non casteable (its simply an exploit atm)
-replace click effect on 1.5 and 2.0 with a POWERFUL temporary swarm pet - usable once in 20 min (The temp temp, due to being temp will have A LOT more dps than the normal pet you can have out all the time)
-redesign normal mage pet according to the following structure:

-Earth - warrior, procs self rune (a pro-tanking pet)
-Water - warrior, procs dot with a minor slow components on a mob (can come handy if no better slower is available)
-Air - rogue with stun proc
-Fire - monk with fire nuke proc
(DPS and survival power of the pets will also be upped along the lines of changes just done to BST and necro pets)

-create 4 new raid level pets according to the new system above to replace the loss of epic 2.0 pet, for the raid level game (possibly more than 1 set)

Please discuss

Be careful with swarm pets, the current ones in game barely last seconds on raid mobs due once again to the rampage and ae mechanic.

This is a temporary fix. The problem with casters ( and their pets) is that they dont scale as well as melee oriented class do.

The weapons that are available for free in forest have a proc better damage values than regular pet attack ( i assume, im not sure how exactly pet mechanics work).

How many items can a pet hold/wear? What is stopping you from creating right click summonable item lines on mage / necro gear? The mask has a haste effect on it, wouldnt it be possible to include other skill mods on them as well?

I seems like it shouldnt even be that hard to implement as you wouldnt have to create entirely new items.

Why cant the ToV mage/necro arms have a right click summon short sword of the yeska that would be pet usable only? The bracers would have a summon ring with dodge III or parry or something like that.

Then the next raid tier has higher summonable gear / skill mods. Sleepers arms with summonale ring with dodge IV (pet usable).

Sorry if this is beyond the mechanics of the game.

Furgis

-make epic pet 1.5 non casteable (its simply an exploit atm)

You could also just tell Tyler to make the epic 1.5 pet a level 70+ spell, that way it's never scribed. Right now it's set as a level 59 mage spell so its probably scribing like any other spell.

http://www.thehiddenforest.eu/spell.php?id=1936

If that's what's happening then be careful with the new swarm pet or you'll have the same thing happen =p

Yes, mage pets are generally too weak, and I agree that the mage getting the epic 1.5 pet at level 48 (its not 59, im looking at the spellbook), is a overpowered a bit, but so what? We hit 70, and congratulations, epic 1.5 pet is still a 3-4 shot in raids 90% of the time. Setting the level restrict for the spell to 70 is all fine and cool, but for those of us who don't have the option of raiding, wont have the option of gaining these new pets that youre implementing from what I understand.

Can't raid = gimp a gimp class. Unless something of an equivalent power is set within one of those four, it hardly sounds like it would be an upgrade, ya know? And the swarm pet thing, unless those things have like 50k health and a 15 second timer, they're just going to be cannon fodder for the boss to giggle, sneeze, and ramp to death in one go.

The mage epic pet(s) are designed as a class benchmark. Until you hit that benchmark, you deal with four split elementals, each with different strengths and weaknesses. Once you reach that power level of being 70, its supposed to signify a mastery of all four elements, a combination of the four to form one supremely awesome pet. I can honestly say that when I'm out grinding, the 1.5/2.0 pet has no match in durability or damage, and as a mage, the one class in the game that is pure pet, its supposed to be our specialty. Good ol Goboberer is the all around solo/grind pet, but not much more. So I completely support the implementing of superior pets at the higher end raiding (T3+), but anything below that, taking away the 1.5 for those of us who simply cant get into the three-ish elite guilds to get the dang things, is kinda kicking a mage while they're down.

Also you have to think about it this way. Those pet summon spells that would drop in raid, if raiding guild refuse to take mages because of their shitty DPS in the first place (unless its a boxed alt), you're going to see even less of this caster class in game that's actually played as a main.

My 2cp anyway.

Im sure lillu can stick some of the spells on the LDoN Merchant for a high price for the non-raiders as an alternative or have a quest for them. But i dont think they should get the same powerful pet as someone who raids.

Naw, thats not what im sayin at all. The way it was worded (or at least how I read it), was the 1.5/2.0 was being dropped for a clicky swarm thing, and new high end pets were being added for raiders, leaving casual players with a clicky swarm for 20-30 seconds, and a shitty pet for the remainder of the time.

good points everyone. I like to say that:

-the mage power will be scaled via upping their pets (see how much bst and necro pets went up). The epic 1.5 pet was truly meant for the epic, but normal pre-70 pets should become sufficiently powerful to replenish this loss. Also, this won't be the only new bonus: other aspects of the mage class will be looked into.

-the 1st tier of new raid pets will be available in both Lower end rads and in LDON (the price will be high however). High end raids will receive a 2nd rank upgrades.

-I think I will definitely implement the idea for special raid zone only pet buff which should give pet longevity under raid situation.

-the new swarm pet WILL REEK HAVOC =)

-I like the idea about new set of raid level pet toys. Are there any other pet toys available beyond those sold on the vendor? So I know what I am upgrading from.

As far as having full set of pet gear with dodge effects and such, unfortunately pets can only get effects from simply stats, we not even sure if the haste mask is actually having any effect at all. I know that Emu coders are working on making pets being able to universally use any gear, so perhaps one day we will have this option.

Other things:
-I plan to look at Malo debuff line and give it a serious boost, basing on how much resist mobs have. This should be a bonus for shamies as well.

Their are pet toys from ToV (mage class legs and arms off one of the dragons) and supposidly from Fear off Dracoliche, but ive not seen the fear one, the tov ones are nice upgrades, but i think an upgraded mask / belt with haste etc to go along with the weapons would be nice too. From my testing the mask with haste on it, does help the pet quite a bit, maybe have a new pet toy summon a 4 slot bag with 2 weapons, mask, and a belt for it or a bigger bag with 2 daggers and 2 swords + mask and belt. that way we can choose for the rogue pet and non rogue pet.

You can boost and tweek pets all you want but like Rerfus said, AE Rampage is death to pets unless you give them 100k hp's and the ability to life tap as a proc. If you were to do that, you could solo raid bosses with a pet and would be stupid. The only obvious thing to do is make them immune to rampage and boost their dps.

As far as the epic 1.5 and 2.0, swarm pets? Really? Why not make it a focus for summoning the pets to a higher level and the right click proc (if you want one) could be an advanced version of pet gear.