Proposition for NEW pet system for Mages and Epic changes

[Mortbise]

Actually your history of hardship of getting epics is exactly why I don't like concept of epic at all.

Heh, it's all I like in the concept. But keep in mind the many differences between old-school epics and THF epics :

- Each class had its own quest. Here we all do the same.
- Quest were in ABSOLUTELY NO FINE WAY equal in difficulty (any rogue or cleric reading this ?). Here it's not a mean beast to do, heck we made all but the dragon with our small guild, and though not 100% sure how we'd do against an overgrown lizard, I'd say we have our chances.
- Regarding difficulty too, you had to camp high/raid-level stuff for drops (Phinny jump to my mind), here it's a matter of skill/equipment check. You pass the encounter, you get the drop.
- And last, the incredible gap in power players have between the two eras.

Epics shouldn't be too easy to obtain, heck it's supposed to be epic, and we've had an epic fight or two doing them.And over all, it's their uniqueness, in look and use, that makes them wanted. I'll remind you what I proposed in my first wall of text, epics having an epic pet that borrows from other lines and thus achieves domination over the specialists pets, and moving the actual epic 1.0 to 70 and dropping from mobs of decent difficulty.


Now the idea of the pet turret... errr you're saying you want to give mages a DoT ? 'cause that's what it is. I don't see the concept blend too well with the concept of mage and pet, might as well make a DoT spell line if it's going to be a turret that just nukes the crap out of mobs and is designed so it will totally avoid melee. There's an AA that does that, but I've never had it and don't quite plan to since I tried Raging servant too and... lol ? For that mana cost I can toss 3 nukes that will do 5 times more damage. Those pet turrets or swarm aren't exactly appealling right now.

I just like to say, that level cap of 70 is not the end

Dam right you are, talking about progression level would be infinitely more appropriate

About fire pet... you mean parsing the 63 pet ? Unless I missed that we can actually get the missing 66-69 spells. I could see a couple problems with that, the target being a tough lvl 70 mob, pet being... errr are all pets from 61-65 equal in level ? That'd eliminate a variable, let's just hope no one's on the dummies to see actual battle spam.

[Nagash]

Ok, guess who's about to write another wall of text. You got it, it's your favourite Supreme Master of the Rotters. I promise I'll try to keep it short but I thought about something when I was having a fag a tea break earlier that I thought might be of interest.

As said, mages need the versatility of the pets they get as it's the core of their class. Chaos, your original idea to differenciate them is great but I'd try to keep it simpler and more open. Why not giving a clear role to each pet (they almost have it, I just think it needs more emphasis):

- Earth pet: tank. That one knows how to hold aggro and take a beating, his DPS should be rather low. Heck, want to make an epic version of it? Give it an AE taunt effect (details to be discussed)

- Fire pet: make it a range DPS. The "turret" pets have been mentionned. It has some pros and cons but other options are here too. Flipping heck, why couldn't a elemental lord come down with his favourite fiery crossbow from Hell and fling some bolts here and there, transforming into porcuppine everything that dares messing about with the magician who summoned him and bound him to his service? I'd say make this type of pet sustained DPS.

- Water pet: make it a melee DPS. Monk, rogue or straight in your face with no fancy stuff, just sheer power unleashed on the poors magician's foes. Make this one a more explosive DPS version with some very powerfull abilities on a long cooldown (I don't speak about 10 minutes here, 1 minute cooldown is already long when you're in a fight!)

- Air pet: the main areas are covered (tank, melee dps and range dps) so make it something different, hell, make it something completely new and unheard of! I'd have 2 suggestions here but the more the merrier:

-- Why not a CC pet, I mean proper CC pet, not random stun proc. Why not give it a single target mez that has no limit of mob type, mob level or duration, heck enable it so it can bypass mez immunity (except for some chosen nameds). Such a mez would be much more powerfull than an enchanter mez but note that it would be single target, hence the pet would not be able to keep a whole room locked and when looking at the combo magician + air pet, it wouldn't have all the goodies an enchanter has (buff, mem wipe, charm for top DPS...). Maybe a variation of this idea would be that the pet has to focus on the mob and does nothing else. This would be brand new for the mages but would open even more their versatility. Maybe it could have a function allowing the magician to target and lock a specific mob. I'm not sure if that's doable but the functionnality already exists for bots so hope is allowed here.
The main difference in utility between the earth and this air pet that the earth pet can be used to tank standard mobs and "sub bosses" (i.e. bosses in Sebilis... but not Emp Ssra) so more group focussed. The air pet would have it's role in a raid (fancy locking one of Emperor Ssras bodyguards for the duration of the fight?).

or

-- why not making the air pet a "buff" pet, while he's around people in the magician's group/raid will benefit from a unique type of buff (I think the uniqueness is very important to keep some flavour). Why not for exemple, having a pet that MGB every 30 sec a buff that makes the next attack/spell an automatic crit that can not be resisted, avoided or parried? Give the pet a reasonnable DPS (something between DPS and tanking pets). This would allow the magician to have a reasonnable DPS, not the top one but reasonnable, but if you factor in the DPS gained by the group and/or raid, the DPS suddenly comes back in line with other DPS class, just through a different mean. That would be a super goodie during a raid and depending on the mobs encountered and the raid composition, the mage all of the sudden would have 3 very valid choices (air, fire and water).

I've just touched the pet versatility here, I won't come back on pet survival as I think I've expressed my opinions in that regard bith for the magicians and the other pet users, nor did I approach the epic pet idea as I've already covered this.

Regards,

Nagash

[Mortbise]

OK... Ward of Xegony vs Child of Ro...
Just buffed with BO V, vs Vlad, in front.

Child of Ro is a serious piece of dragon poop. Hits top for 55, so slowly that I thought I had forgotten BO V at first, apparently doubles, but not exactly very often, buffs it self with a couple int caster buff and a crappy damage shield that wears off quite fast. He seems to have a fire proc for 70-ish, that goes off from time to time. And he casts Tears of Ro from time to time, which gets some resists.

Ward of Xegony, triples for 110 at a decent speed, kicks for 798 tops from what I saw (ok, monk pet, allright), casts a stun from time to time.

Then, I went to SolB, gave them a round vs a lightblue greater kobold shaman. WoX killed it, had around 40% HP remaining. CoR got its fiery ass kicked and the kobold still had 70% HP remaining.

Out of curiosity I tested the other 2 on Vlan :

- Servant of Marr hits for 93 top, doubles, decent speed, uses an ice strike for slightly under 100 dmg from time to time, and if properly positionned, will attempt to double backstab for 398 top.

- Rathe's Son hits for 99, doubles, looks kinda slow, probably faster than CoR but not much, misses a lot though. Kicks in the 124 range or bashes, and uses his root with a cooldown only slightly longer than its duration.

So Air > Water > Earth > Fire, the old trend hasn't changed. Fire is ptiifull, and taking it out, even for show, is a declaration of suicide (or bad taste)

[ChaosSlayer]

thank you for the data.
yeah fire pet is horrible
There is a way to make it better, but without turning it into a turret - it will be useless anyway - cause it will run off to melee and get itself killed in a matter of seconds

the more I think about it, the more I believe soe was right when for eq2 they stayed with just 2 pets (the 3rd was a swarm).

On a subject of Air pet as buffer and MEZZER - we will be stepping over some serious class boundaries =) So this is very unlikely to ever happen. Not mention - how can you get your pet to mez exactly what you need mezzed?

On subject of dps pets. In original design we have 2 dps pets- we have water - who is rogue, and air who is monk. It was generally accepted that air was great vs casters cause it stunned them, and water was great in groups. But on average I have to say they relatively equal.

So atm I a bit torn which and I really want to do the upgrades, and if we really need 2 dps pets. I will start with plain and simply earth tank now, and then we see what would be most welcome opposite of it.

[Nagash]

thank you for the data.
yeah fire pet is horrible
There is a way to make it better, but without turning it into a turret - it will be useless anyway - cause it will run off to melee and get itself killed in a matter of seconds

the more I think about it, the more I believe soe was right when for eq2 they stayed with just 2 pets (the 3rd was a swarm).

On a subject of Air pet as buffer and MEZZER - we will be stepping over some serious class boundaries =) So this is very unlikely to ever happen. Not mention - how can you get your pet to mez exactly what you need mezzed?

On subject of dps pets. In original design we have 2 dps pets- we have water - who is rogue, and air who is monk. It was generally accepted that air was great vs casters cause it stunned them, and water was great in groups. But on average I have to say they relatively equal.

So atm I a bit torn which and I really want to do the upgrades, and if we really need 2 dps pets. I will start with plain and simply earth tank now, and then we see what would be most welcome opposite of it.

I know I was stepping on some serious boundaries but hey, every idea has to be put on the table in order to be evaluated. If out of 50 ideas one is good, then great the discussion has moved forward And I wans't thinking about buffing and mezzing but buffing or mezzing and these were mere examples, just trying to open new horizons.
How do you get your pet to mezz what you want? Not sure as I'm not a programmer. All I know is this already exists for the bots some maybe, just maybe, it was possible to use the same mechanic.

Other than that, mages need a fix asap and I like your will to have this moving forward asap. Your idea is not bad, maybe start with 2 super pets (we know mages need a tank and at least one DPS pets), the two others can be implemented/tweaked later. Actually it might be really good to do that as it would also give you some time to evaluate the 2 new pets and would help finding the direction for the 2 others. There is a lot of things to fix that are important for all pet classes but even more for the magician so let's walk this thing one step at a time, it might make things easier in the long run.

Regards,

Nagash

[ChaosSlayer]

The earth pet update under way. The stats will likely to be noticed real time, but new special effects will only come with next spell file reload.
I am also shifting scribe levels on some of the pets in 40+ range to address a huge gap between 5s and 60s, so pets come in even intervals in 5 levels.
The pet is 3 levels higher that the caster when first obtained, and should now be much more durable.

I am also moving the epic 1.5 pet off the scribing chart. (with next spell reset)

all earth pets from level 1, but most noticeable changes at the high end. Example below:

The new stats will look like this:

Rathe's Son (lev 68 pet - last scribed pet):

original stats: HP 5760 AC 2500 Dmg 70 / 90 Regen 3
new stats: HP 15000 AC 3000 Dmg 70 / 150 Regen 80

earth pets from 40+ now also come with Triple attack (before only last 2 pets had it), but innate 7-12% haste removed to make them a bit slower compared to other pets, so this pet will now in fact highly benefit from haste than before.

Once Rune proc has been added, it should be a survival pet

Epic pets are NOT changed at this time

[ChaosSlayer]

UPDATE: Air pets are the new Rogues
let me know how they perform

[Pyronost]

Aren't they supposed to backstab?

[ChaosSlayer]

they are
the pet has to be 13+, and having mobs back - all the ones i tested- they all backstab

[Pyronost]

Odd, I was testing child of wind on the dummies and never once saw it BS (from the back or front)