I Can Has Zhok?

[Hacre]

Crat ones maybe, because crats can CC people for their pets, mps only get a crappy stun, way easier to kite them

Yeah, CC at TL7 isn't broken at all. Also, on the rare occasions when CC doesn't hold someone in place long enough, pets do AWESOME damage!

Sheesh.

[aramsunat]

zhok would be possible to cast at 165 with having like 50 nanoskill in excess iirc (i calced)

[JustinSane4]

I just calculated that Zhok would be possible at 150 with a wrangle if there were no level lock. Zhok in S10 would be full of win.

Ok, that's a bit much, but Soldiers and MAs get full benefit from pushing their attack skills to extremes don't they? Our weapon is our pet. We should see benefit for twinking nano skills, and if not Zhok, at least Ettu or Urolok might not be too OP? S10 MAs would still probably still OD us and have better survivability, but at least we'd be closer.

[Xtremtech]

Bit of a necro but hey... still valid.

but Soldiers and MAs get full benefit from pushing their attack skills to extremes don't they?

You could say they don't in some ways... MBS restricts some of the usefulness of higher skill. 1K+ Damage templates also reduce the effect of higher skill. Profession specific weapons take skills budgets into account too when setting requirements - sometimes using level locks too.

X

[JustinSane4]

Debated whether or not to resurrect this thread, but ultimately I think that it is a great thread and the concept that MPs are defined by pets and nano skills, and so should be rewarded for pushing nano skills by being able to use higher pets, is an important one for the developers to consider in re-working our nanos (more specifically, our pets).

While you do make a valid point regarding 1k+ damage templates, the bigger point is that higher weapon skills let the best TL5 professions equip much stronger weapons. There are Keepers running around S10 with http://auno.org/ao/db.php?id=246018 (exact copy of excalibur) hitting 2-3k normals and critting 35% of the time at 4k+ because that's their reward for twinking their most important skill to 1601. Similarly, MAs equip a better "weapon" the higher their MA skill, all the way up to 3000, resulting in S10 MAs critting every other hit for 4.5-5.4k as their reward for pushing their damage skill. S10 Engineers get http://auno.org/ao/db.php?id=274557 (IMEP) for twinking Pistol, Advies get http://auno.org/ao/db.php?id=246044 (SoS, tough to do but the profession forum says it's been done).

All of those are awesome, all are single-prof locked, and none are level locked. I think our pets should be in the same category.

[Dancingrage]

That's sort of the gist of my initial argument with this thread, that weapon using professions are able to twink into insane levels of skills and be rewarded for it with impressive damage statistics, while the pet professions, and the MP in specific, are hosed out of similar benefits thanks to a set of level locks and non existent pet scaling.

[Xtremtech]

Hey, you won't get any argument from me that pusing nanoskills should really improve pets and casting for us, more than it does. Just to be fair on the other side though, there are some limitations to the weapon-users side. Not as many and not so deep cutting... but they're there.

X

[JustinSane4]

Ah, missed one: Crats get http://auno.org/ao/db.php?id=267255&ql=300 equipable at 150, and can solo at least one S10 general. So both other pet professions have amazing weapons they can twink into, whereas the best we have isn't as good a weapon (healing staff) and costs us our toolset's strongest defensive component for TL5, shield of asmodian.

Oh, one limitation we'd have that weapon profs (and I'll include both crats and engies here) wouldn't, even if level locks on pets were removed: We'd have to reach that skill level each time we log in, whereas they only need to once; thereafter they only need to keep it out of OE.

A final example of the phenomen: Even S10 doctors have equipped their prof-locked supposedly endgame weapon, http://auno.org/ao/db.php?id=267618. We really are left out here.