Pets ability to keep up.

How are pets going to keep up with kiters/runners etc etc?

we all know pets are easely kited by every prof, especially MP/engi ones.

We all got rootgrafts, but to long cooldown to be reliable enough. We also can all get stuns (freakstrenght perkline), in which we lower our personal dmg just so that pets can work (with added benefit of target not able to do anything). engi's get AoE snare, but when peeps are kiting it simply won't land, and almost any 220 it will never land due to high NR check, also easly removed by FM. Crat's get an entire arsenal of roots/snares, so i suppose they'll be alright.

New RS mechanic might (most likely totally not) give pets are fair chance to outrun/come close to the target. but seeing every melee user gets some way of getting close to the target, i highly doubt that RS mechanics would work that way.

Fix (nerf to hell and back) the AR and damage on engi pets and then they may do this.

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Originally Posted by Weltall

Fix (nerf to hell and back) the AR and damage on engi pets and then they may do this.

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What about MP pets? We get the short end of both sticks, low AR/damage, and pets kited!

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Originally Posted by Weltall

Fix (nerf to hell and back) the AR and damage on engi pets and then they may do this.

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All pets should have the AR of engi pets, with engi pets hitting the hardest and slowest and mp pets hitting the lowest and fastest.

Attack Pets reaching their target may well be key to the rebalancing of pet professions. This is certainly an issue that must be addressed. AR and damage doesn't help a bit if the pets aren't even close enough to land hits in the first place. Since Crats have a much wider range of CC tools, they're perhaps least affected... but even for them there is still an issue with pets trying to hit moving targets, which should really be addressed.

You play down the importance of the run-speed nerfs and synch work that FC have done/plan to do. But it will still be a part of any solution. Whatever is done, reduction of general runspeed and synch issues will be important. In particular, things like the Engi snare aura are more likely to land properly if synch/speed issues are reduced.

Additionally, the improved pet stats, that have already been promised, must include much, much stronger NR in order to give pets more of an ability to counter crowd-control and debuffs. That will help both with pet reaching targets and also with pet performance when they do reach their target.

MPs may get some help when the Mez Pet line is turned into a utility pet line. The mez root will likely still be there and there may be an option for that pet line to cast a less breakable snare. Again though, work needs to be done on the casting mechanism and AI in order to get the mez pet to land its effect against moving targets - which at present it doesn't do.

There are other thoughts of course... increasing the range of the weapon that the pets use, but leaving it as a melee weapon, is one of the options. Snare procs might be an option too. I think it's unlikely that they'll be given tools like reverse knockback, but you never know.

There's no doubt that the balancing of pet professions - particularly in PvP - is heavily dependent on solving the issue of pets not being able to reach their target. There's some stuff already announced that may help... but it's something that we have to keep an eye on throughout design and testing - particularly in beta when most of the other changes are in place - to be sure that they are a reliable tool.

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Originally Posted by XtremTech

There are other thoughts of course... increasing the range of the weapon that the pets use, but leaving it as a melee weapon, is one of the options. Snare procs might be an option too. I think it's unlikely that they'll be given tools like reverse knockback, but you never know.

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Not sure how snare procs might work (atleast if you mean pets gain em) because, well how theyd proc if your pets can't hit target, and what about MP's with shield. diffrent solution would be better i suppose

Wait a minute... RS just got nerfed. What I miss? Pets should be able to keep up with targets better now.

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Originally Posted by Ocene

Wait a minute... RS just got nerfed. What I miss? Pets should be able to keep up with targets better now.

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No, they simply don't. i suppose thats what you missed.

Pet should have 2x the RS of the owner.. just my opinion.

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Originally Posted by Weltall

Fix (nerf to hell and back) the AR and damage on engi pets and then they may do this.

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Sounds like: remove Challenger and Rage and then the enfos get a root Oo

RS didn't exactly get nerfed did it? They removed the bug where you could move faster in strafe running. That will have had an effect on pets' ability to keep up to some degree - but not necessarily enough to make a deep, substantive difference.

The thing with Runspeed and Synch is that there are threshold levels where effects will become more obvious. The effectiveness of change has partly to do with the frequency of synch that is set up within the system (which will directly affect thresholds), partly to do with the AI behind how pets move and partly to do with the actual speeds involved.

Another difficulty with pets is that, because of the way their pathing AI works, you can get into a situation where you're increasing speed... but actually reducing the quality of the pathing AI responses... and so end up increasing pet speed but reducing speed to target. It's a real balancing act to get the best performance out of pets in this regard.

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