Crat needs

This is a follow-up to my crat analysis. Both documents were reviewed and suggestions made on the crat forum but any and all mistakes are mine. The analysis can be found here:
http://forums.anarchy-online.com/sho...threadid=21059

A disclaimer: This was done up before yesterday's notes were released. I understand that some professions are in more dire need of help than crats, but there are some things here that would be very simple changes. Others would take longer and we are happy to wait, as long as there is progress and feedback.

Crat Needs

Nano Fixes:
Charm I: Increase the Psyche check considerably on all charms higher than level 100 to allow us to charm mobs while we are in teams. This the #1 need of crats, BAR NONE!

Charm II: Give us a counter that tells us when the nano is going to expire.

Demotivational speeches: In order for these to become useable, the pulses must not break mez. Make the pulses register as something other than attacks.

AoE mez: Create lower level versions of these so that crats can be more useful in groups at an earlier level.

Motivational speeches: Increase the effect of these to make them worth the NCU, especially the nano resist and crit buffs.

Cut/Red Tape: Increase the effect of these by a factor of 10.

Stun: Decrease recharge time.

Pets:
Improve pathing. Allow pets to move through obstacles in missions such as tables just like they can go through mobs and chests.

Tradeskills:
Implement Paperwork tradeskills based on Psychology as announced 6 months ago.

Miscellaneous Items:
Increase Lab Director spawn rate in TLR dungeon (or allow for another way to get crat suit).
Implement briefcase and XP insurance nano that were announced 6 months ago.

Charm I: Increase the Psyche check considerably

YES!
Or give crats a quick cast psych debuff.


Charm II: Give us a counter that tells us when the nano is going to expire.

/pet report should list the remaining time left in your charms.
Is it like this already? I haven't played my crat in a long while.


AoE mez: Create lower level versions of these so that crats can be more useful in groups at an earlier level.

This nano is arguably the best nano a Crat will get.
Giving them such a powerful nano at lower level would be far too imbalancing.


Cut/Red Tape: Increase the effect of these by a factor of 10.

Red Tape = AOE taunt
Cut Red Tape = Waste of 49 NCU

FIX MISPLACED INTEGER!


Stun: Decrease recharge time.


Recharge on Crat stun puts it in line with the stuns that NTs, Metas and Agents get. A decreased recharge would come to close to giving crats the ability to keep a mob or a player perma stunned. For reasons of game balance, this would not be a very good idea.





Keep up the good work, Scorus.

The only thing really needed is a fix to the horrible pet pathing that make all pets, regardless of class, useless at higher levels. And it is even two times as worse now since 14.0.

The game is 100% not workable for pet classes in groups from level 140+, period, you HAVE to use a direct attack, pets are 100% useless, it does not work, it is always more efficient to not use a pet, because you lose too much time to get the pet to follow and cannot deal any damage due to that fact !

Players with no gun and only a pet in level 140+ groups hinder the group, and are experience leechers of the worst kind and should be kicked out of any group if a direct attack user is available. Pure pet users do not contribute to the group at all, they make a group considerably weaker, period.

Funcom does not believe this, and refuses to fix one of the worst imbalances in AO since launch, but it is so. This simple and plain obvious fact is known to everyone playing AO in groups level 150+ and the reason is soleley, that NO pet since the first glimpse of the first AO beta can keep up with any high level group due to the horrible pathing.


The charms are ok, with a meta buff i can charm most Real Mean and Ace Mobs at level 140ish. Sure you have to team with or seek out a Meta before the mission to do so but it is ok in my view.

A timer on how long the charm lasts is needed though, no idea why they forgot that, the game very well knows when the mob goes wild, "print Pettimer" seems to be real hard to program for the FC developers though (?!?)

*self-bump*

Are you meant to see how long is left on a charm? I know in EQ one of the tradeoffs for the charm ability was that you didn't know how long it was going to last.

Knowing when charm is going to end makes it a much more useful ability. My EQ enchanter never knew when her charm would end, but my bard did, it amlost always lasted the same amount as her other songs, a nice fixed duration. Knowing just when to recharm made my bard's charm much more useful than my enchanter's, even though the duration of each individual charm was so short, knowing exactly when to reapply it made the de facto duration whatever I wanted.

Not sure how crat charm is meant to work.

I agree that pet pathing needs some work, hate when my bot gets stuck inside a table or starts running into a wall when the door is 1 foot to his left.

Here are some things they can do to fix problems with crats:

1) Add the ability to refresh charms before they have run out.
2) Let us see how much time is left on a charm
3) Fix mezz so that if it succeeds, the mob cannot "call out to his buddies." Currently if you mezz a mob in a room full of mobs, the other mobs will attack you.
4) Fix mezz so that the effect actually kicks in right when the mob is mezzed, instead of 10 bloody seconds later. If a mob is mezzed, it currently chases you and hits you once or twice (depending on how fast the mob is). This should not happen. When a mob gets mezzed, it should immediately halt all activites and DEFINITELY NOT attack the player who mezzed it.
4) Change the way the Psychic check works on charms to the following:
Charms should use a formula to make psychic add to the resistance of the charm when it is over the listed amount, instead of being a hard-coded block. By this, I mean that if the charm says "psychic < 203" then if the target has over 203 psychic, each point over should add large amounts to there nanoresists for that charm. Or, if it would be easier, just give the mob 2 chaces to resist it. The first check would be based on psychic, the second check would be based on nano resist. Feel free to play around with the formulas to tweek them on test until players agree that they are satifactory.

As it is, if for example a level 60 crat tries to mezz a level 120 mob, it will take many many many tries. If they are doing this solo, they will almost always be dead before it succeeds. If charms are adjusted so that they have an additional psychic based resistance check, it will make them useful wonce more without making them too powerful.