Necro & Mage Pets

[mukkel]

At the moment the pet breakdown looks like this - for Tier 8 pets:

Magician (Fire, Water, Air, Earth)
- Of these pets, the only one worth using is the Air Pet (Monk)

Necromancer (Skeleton, Zombie, Spectre, Vampire)
- Of these pets, the only one worth using is the Vampire (Monk) or "Hooded White Guy" as Melkor likes to call him.

There have been numerous occasions where I've cast the pet spell over 20 times and still didn't summon the desired pet. This can be especially tedious for the Necromancer since the pet summon spell is a 16 second cast.

I know this likely plays into a larger issue; however it would be great if the summons were cyclic. What I mean by this is that it would cycle through the different pet types so that at most, it would be 4 casts before you got the pet you wanted. Really though, and I likely speak for pretty much everyone who has a pet class character. Other than the monk pets, the rest are practically never used.

/fitz

[Sian]

Well I have already said this on the topic about what to give necros to balance them. It is a pain, that's true, especially if you have to summon dozen of pets before getting the right one, then summon weapons for him, then give it to him.
This is so long, but maybe that's intended.

My suggestions about that was to either find a way to do something about summoning, like you said : a cycle or four different spells for four different pets ; improve the interest of the other 3 pets (specific spells or abilities or dps) in comparaison with the monk one which is good. I remember at the very begining that I sometimes used the warrior pet to tank, but I was already too far in the tiers to make it with just a warrior pet. But it can probably work out in ldons or in lower tiers so having four different pets IS interesting. It's just their summoning that is a bit annoying.

Personally, I really like your idea of cycle : monk, rogue, zerk, warrior, monk, rogue, zerk, warrior ... Maybe that would be hard to code and to keep track of where you stopped in the cycle of summoning.

[mukkel]

I think the cycle would work well. It would ensure that at most, you're only casting 4 pets instead of potentially casting 29. (Yes, 29 is my record for trying to get a monk...)

It would also be fantastic if the Void of Death cast time was reduced to that of the magician pet. Not sure why it's so long, but 16 seconds is a LONG time. Hasted I believe it's around 13 seconds, which is still a long long time - maybe that's why it feels so painful.

/fitz

[Blique]

Could it be coded to summon a corresponding pet depending on what direction you happen to be facing?

LOL.

[Argonas]

Cycled pets would require a global quest or entirely new coding in the source. Sounds like it would be tedious at best.

[mukkel]

Any great ideas or alternatives that may be great for the player base and dev team would not be shied away, I'm sure.

That said, spending a solid 7 minutes summoning the same pet over and over (worst case thus far) is pretty tedious as well.

/fitz

[Microdia]

Cycled pets would require a global quest or entirely new coding in the source. Sounds like it would be tedious at best.

Perhaps just a different spell for each pet sort of like earlier mage spells. Not sure how this would work in order to get 4 spells from 1 scroll though.

[Vaion]

They will cycle in order of Warrior > Zerker > Rogue > Monk now.

[mukkel]

They will cycle in order of Warrior > Zerker > Rogue > Monk now.

Thanks Vaion, that's great!

A couple of questions on the zerker pet:

- They don't cast a self-buff on themselves like the others. Is this intentional?
- I had my pet attack Vlad in the GH - he was only meleeing for 441 (with the donor click buff). Assuming this is wrong.

/fitz

[Vaion]

The zerker pet casts a volley proc, not a self buff like the others. Ill look at their damage. WHich rank pet?