ZOMG UTILITY PETS!!11one

[Chrys]

Ok since DR hasn't quite got to making the thread first, I will Thumbs up to FC, this is the first bit of news in over a year that made me excited about the MP again. Assuming they really mean from the bottom up, and this means that pets will be able to identify their master and other radical ideas, these are my thoughts:

So anyway what possibilities are there with pets, given our game engine?

1) Pet Taunts/Detaunts - The basic idea is the enemy does massively less damage to you until he hits the pet a couple of times to reduce his detaunt. This is how PVP tanking works in other MMOs. How might it translate in AO? The pet could cast a scourge with multiple debuffs (e.g. 5x -10% damage for -50% damage) that massively reduces damage, and the opponent has to hit the pet at least 5 times to remove each layer of the debuff. Preferably controllable by the pet owner; preferably an ability for our attack pet rather than our mezz pet that would go instasplay if someone so much as looked at it 5 times.

2) The mezzpet should be all about disabling people especially when not in combat. One with init/damage debuff with %chance breakable on hit to take out a random other? A root/snare pet to help Rihwen keep up? A mezz-bomb that does AoE mezz on /pet terminate? A healdebuff pet?

3) Pet lifetap - Every time the pet does damage to someone, it heals the MP. Could it work so that the pet simultaneously casts a DoT on the opponent, and if successful, casts a small hot on the MP?

4) Spike damage - pets desperately need to be more than a DoT, and the MP needs to be able to control when a pet is going to do a lot of damage all at once from the pet. Even some kind of mongo-rage ability (i.e. massive dot for 10 seconds followed by long cooldown with low damage) might be good, assuming it was actually reliable.

5) Consume pet - Maybe the healpet/mezz pet could be 'consumed" for a CH worth of healing?

6) Fetch/Knockback - making a pet able to grab someone from far, or knock them back. Or maybe a charge ability to smash into the opponent and knock them back. You don't need to knock someone back along the y-axis, just the x-axis and that should solve most of the knockback/stuck issues. Plus Tara is a badly designed dungeon by PVMers trying to do PVP that needs to be rebuilt. L2counterstrikemap (multiple entry points, relative symmetry in lengths, multiple locations of value, etc).

X) Getting pets back - This ability to resummon pets will be very important if pets play a greater role in PVP. We've already seen soldiers splat Rihwen with ridiculous speed and we've got a huge recast time for it. This needs to be cut, preferably by having a lockout from /pet terminate or being killed, and then instacast when it is finished (make it a 20-30 second lockout by all means - the point is not having to stand still with no ability to do anything for 30 seconds, never mind rebuffing the pet given how useless pets these days are in their unbuffed state).

[Corily]

I definitely like many of the ideas here. I would love to have a more 'active' pet as well, where we can command him what to do and when to do it. (like 'Fetch' for example)

I've seen it being brought up a few times before, all the more reason to poke the devs about it.

I'll also ask in how far they're building up the pets from ground up. I've already seen a few things on that matter, but things still remain pretty vague.

[Dancingrage]

A lot of things we'd have to basically cook up and sorta kludge together in a way.

A pet Detaunt like you're saying would either be some sort of reflect or layers cast upon the whole area/team/friendlies which would be on a really short timer with really fast cast times. Say 1-2 second duration or something equally short, but about the same cast cycle too. Disabling the pet via UBT opens up more of a hole in between castings, but killing it altogether removes the debuff...pet taunt solved to some degree, you have to target and kill the pet first. Giving it a reasonable local cooldown prevents spamming the pet and abusing it. A mild aoe taunt on enemies makes this not quite an "I Win" button for pvm, too. Though I'm thinking of it as being a pet option for a utility pet instead (You did title the thread ZOMG Utility Pets, after all) but one that would be more of a sacrificial throwaway pet that would draw fire on itself intentionally.

And while my time's short, I'll poke the devs about the local cooldown idea on our pets and reducing cast time. My hope is instacast, actually, but let's see.

[Xtremtech]

Specifically regarding the Utility Pet (Mez pet):

Its debuff effects should have low chance of break on debuff and nano-cast (15%?). I think it's OK that it should have a higher chance of break on weapon hit, but we should be able to layer our debuffs onto the target fairly reliably without breaking the Utility Pet's effects.

Utility Pet effects should be implemented as perk specials that can be used while moving and queued - and have a 40m range. Short root and snare are likely candidates for the utility pet effect and these are most usefully used against moving targets. Using the effects should be designed with that in mind.

Attack Rating on the pet for the effects should be equal to 50% PM + 50% SI of MP when casting the pet. Nanoskills buffs should increase the AR of the pet as before.

What would be the absolute best would probably be to have all effects available on the same pet, with some method of controlling which one would be used. Preferably icons for each effect that could be put on shortcut bars. All effects would share the same lockout with lockouts based on duration of effect, so you can only use one effect at a time.

Utility Pet effects should work to enhance our other tools:

Short Root to give pets a chance to catch targets and to slow oncoming melee

Single Target Mez vs PvM - as now

Nano Resist Debuff, to enhance our hostile casting

Crit Chance Debuff to work alongside damage reduction

Init Debuff to go alongside our damage debuffs. Init debuff values should be at least equal to crat dmg/init debuffs.

Snare, 3 times duration of short root, to give pets a chance to catch targets and to slow oncoming melee

Higher pets in the line get higher debuff values or longer durations as appropriate.

That's how I'd do a Utility Pet, I think.

X

[Mazzarin]

That's all very nice, but don't forget our pet only has like 20k hp and no defence at all, so all these nice utilities will all be entirely wasted if he doesn't first get a massive hp and defence upgrade.

[Chrys]

A pet Detaunt like you're saying would either be some sort of reflect or layers cast upon the whole area/team/friendlies which would be on a really short timer with really fast cast times. Say 1-2 second duration or something equally short, but about the same cast cycle too. Disabling the pet via UBT opens up more of a hole in between castings, but killing it altogether removes the debuff...pet taunt solved to some degree, you have to target and kill the pet first. Giving it a reasonable local cooldown prevents spamming the pet and abusing it. A mild aoe taunt on enemies makes this not quite an "I Win" button for pvm, too. Though I'm thinking of it as being a pet option for a utility pet instead but one that would be more of a sacrificial throwaway pet that would draw fire on itself intentionally.

I'm hesitant to be too specific since I'm more interested in function than the actual mechanics. The idea is (1) give the opponent a very large incentive to attack the pet rather than the player (2) Some defense for the player. In that order. If people can think of something else that works essentially the same way it would be fine by me (e.g. it could just be that the pet does insane damage on the opponent until he smacks the pet back to set his head straight again).

It could be a nano, or perhaps controlled with a perk action. I don't care. It just needs to not be spammable but useful say once a minute to control for heavy damage to the player and force the opponent to switch targets.

(You did title the thread ZOMG Utility Pets, after all)

That was quoting you

And while my time's short, I'll poke the devs about the local cooldown idea on our pets and reducing cast time. My hope is instacast, actually, but let's see.

Yes, the tradeoff for making pets active in combat is that they'll become much more important targets in combat and we should expect them to die much more often. These new abilities of pets won't be worth crap if they're dead all the time (like at Tara) and having to be recast constantly.

That's all very nice, but don't forget our pet only has like 20k hp and no defence at all, so all these nice utilities will all be entirely wasted if he doesn't first get a massive hp and defence upgrade.

The other idea is to make pets easier to get back as well.

[Dancingrage]

3 days and nobody's got any fresh ideas?

I recall there being a wish for layers to be cast on a friendly target once long ago, I'd like to see that on a utility pet, give us a bit of a buffer between us and whatever's trying to kill us. Giving it a long local cooldown to start (for instance, treating this like the keeper Ward buff line) starting with a long cycle time but moving up faster until it's about every 30s or so would be useful not just for us but for about anyone who's in team with us and tanking.

Nano healing might be more of a concern with rebalancing, and while we're looking at 3-4k nano regain every 20-25s we might either need more or need to give a doc some help as well. That said, this might not be such a higher priority compared to other options.

Blind, blind blind, we've asked for it, almost got it, didn't, and now that the pet's being looked at we'll ask for it again.

I do think we probably need something that has an AOE option on it, but what is pretty difficult. The big problem with the MP toolset as it stands is it's very good in 1 on 1 encounters both pvp and pvm but add another target and the difficulty jumps up a wall because of number of targets to maintain debuffs on, etc. The Mezz Pet was intended to handle just one target at once, but until the nano lands you still have a busy time with things. One more beyond that, even assuming the mezz lands, and it just got interesting. Perhaps an AOE mezz (much like our current mezz, doesn't wipe hatelist or really pacify, just stops the target), or an AOE blind (or -aao debuff) could help in the situations where you thought you had just one add and then that number (and the difficulty) just went up. Engineers already have AOE snares and while this is a nice little nano to have running, oftentimes it winds up screwing up things more than helping, especially considering that this snare breaks in a stiff wind (which I would likely expect from any MP utility pet debuffs)

An AOE blind would be useful as well in survivability, but would work less on stopping the mobs as just lowering their AR, which is also incredibly useful and could go a long ways to helping out the survivability of 1hb, pistol, and bow MPs in heavy situations.

[Metafly7]

Have little time currently :P

Will be thinking once my heads cleared out a bit, knowing FC it wont happen next week anyway so we have time to think up some good ideas. I shall return once tests, papers x3, mumbojumbo, moving friends, installing stoofs is over.

One idea tho, is the single possibility of debuffing other proffs from using fears in the area of the "mezz" pet

[Snowmorph]

4) Spike damage - pets desperately need to be more than a DoT, and the MP needs to be able to control when a pet is going to do a lot of damage all at once from the pet. Even some kind of mongo-rage ability (i.e. massive dot for 10 seconds followed by long cooldown with low damage) might be good, assuming it was actually reliable.

We already have this. CR + AK anyone?

[Metafly7]

Okay just listing all possible debuffs:

Snares, roots, stuns, calms, init debuff, nano resist debuff, crit chance debuff, nanopool debuff, fear, anti fear, nanoskill debuff, evades debuff, weapon skill debuff, blinds/AAO debuff, reflects debuff, shield debuff, nano attack modifier debuff, heal modifier debuff, nanocost debuff and damage debuff.

It would ofcourse be stupid and overpowered to involve all those already excisting debuffs, but a select few of those would be feasable.

Ill mention the ones that could be possible (calms already excist in our mezzpet ofc):

Nano resist debuff

We are a nanocasting proffesion and being able to debuff that as only action for the mezz pet, should not make it OPed as they will still have the ability to run like they do now, with information currently reveiled.

Anti fear

The fear is new and at first hand totally unrelated to MPs since we got neither fear nor fear resist, but it would be a debuff that disalows other ppl from using their fears, that would could be a benefit of having to stand still to cast our longer nanos (for instance recasting pets mid battle)

Nanoskill debuff

MPs already always had nanoskill debuffs, its what they are known for, being able to keep that nanoskill debuffing going is only logical. However to what extend it should debuff or how big it should be, i have no idea.

Blinds/AAO debuff

Blinds and AAO debuffs are pretty minor in this game, only engineers and NTs really use it, but if the Bow Mp cant get evades, this could be a manner of instead of buffing urself, debuffing the other, to survive.

Nano attack modifier debuff

Nano attack modifier debuffs came looking around the door after LE set in, its usable in some occations and since the usability is very limited a pet with only debuffing that would definitely fall under specific debuffs

Nanocost debuff

Nanocost debuffs are always anoying and its been in the Mp's line of nanos for a long while now. I could definitely see that worked into a sort of extension via pet.

Damage debuff

Damage debuffs also have been in the Mps duties along the road to where we are now. Its been asked a few times to extend the nanos before, but in this case it could be extended via a pet.

Now all of these debuffs are ofcourse usable for pvp, but some also work great for pvm. And due to all the debuffs being appart from one another they cant be to OPed, as ur anticipating on a specific goal. If u choose for one option u leave out the other options which would work for specific other goals. Surviving, incapacitating or own offencive purposes. AAO debuff and damage debuff = Surviving, nanoskill debuff (for as much as it works, there are always nanos that have lower requirements and we arent looking at an NSD here) = incapacitating and finally debuffing nano resist = offencive purposes.

[Chrys]

We already have this. CR + AK anyone?

What is a mediocre, unreliable dot becomes a mediocre semi-reliable dot. I mean spike damage. I mean PVP. We are losing the reliability of AS, we need a replacement.

[Xtremtech]

Has anyone seen something that says we lose AS concretely?

My understanding so far has been that the Primary AS will take 3 seconds to launch, but may still have no def check. And that the Secondary AS will be instant but may have a def check.

I haven't seen anything yet that states that MPs won't still have access to the Primary AS. It does seem likely that MPs won't have access to the secondary... though that hasn't been clearly stated yet afaik.

Also, one of the reasons why having 'spike damage' is so important at present is because so many professions have access to similar spike damage, so you need to be able to emulate that in order to kill before being killed. With specials gaining common lockout timers and AS becoming weaker generally, there should be less pressure on everbody in terms of having to produce 'spike damage' anyway - especially if everybody except Agents is going to 'lose' so much from AS.

Additionally, of course, the increases in perk damage and nuke damage should contribute to more powerful - though still somewhat stretched out over time - 'spike damage' being available to MPs anyway.

Just not enough concrete information about what the actual changes are going to be and how they'll turn out to be saying with any certaintly what's going to happen really.

X

[kabulla]

Has anyone seen something that says we lose AS concretely?

My understanding so far has been that the Primary AS will take 3 seconds to launch, but may still have no def check. And that the Secondary AS will be instant but may have a def check.

I haven't seen anything yet that states that MPs won't still have access to the Primary AS. It does seem likely that MPs won't have access to the secondary... though that hasn't been clearly stated yet afaik.

X

from what I have read in post by FC here and there only agents will get secondary AS which has a def check and will do about as much dmg as burst

the main AS will only have the 3sec execute time when not concealed meaning AS will become a true opener as opposed to the 11sec dmg that it is now, cause there will be a chance to interupt

PS: noone is losing AS just the mechanic is getting slightly changed

[Dancingrage]

What is a mediocre, unreliable dot becomes a mediocre semi-reliable dot. I mean spike damage. I mean PVP. We are losing the reliability of AS, we need a replacement.

Trance has it in it's first action, Focus, iirc, which gives a scaling nanodamage boost for 5s. 200% at perk 8. There's your spike damage. Combine that with 85% NR check for the ice nuke line, the general rebalancing of our nukes in general, and that's probably going to be where the spike damage comes from (along with 1s attack speed on the Starfall perk chain instead of 3/5/7 execution), combined with AAD going away from defense checks using NR (Starfall/TR3/Trance) and having high nanoskills looks to have a point again.

As for AS and it's reliability, it's not likely to be so reliable anymore, while other parts of our toolset look to be becoming more so. Nanoskill-oriented MP setups should wreak hell on earth for landing perks and debuffing their opponents.

[Snowmorph]

What is a mediocre, unreliable dot becomes a mediocre semi-reliable dot. I mean spike damage. I mean PVP. We are losing the reliability of AS, we need a replacement.

But we are getting a replacement You might not have heard, but their removing AAD from NR perks, which means that we'll even perk fixers, crats, advies, engies even blinded (AAO also beeing removed from NR perks *giggle*) The only proffesions we won't be able to perk is Enfoes with rage up, other mps, NTs and possibly MA's with twinked NR. Now I can see why you want a pet that hits 9k in pvp every hit, but we need balance.

Also, if you've ever tried CR + AK you KNOW how sick it becomes. If you don't agree with that statement your using it wrong. Try to time DoF, and don't be in SS recharge so you can stun them (or if it gets countered an oldfashion rootgraft).

What consearnes me, however, is our defense. I don't know what FC was thinking removing blockers from SS. We'll instawipe to 216 soldiers in ofab and 210 agents in predator! Should we just give up on this proffesion? *sighs and runs before Corily arrives!*

[Dancingrage]

But we are getting a replacement You might not have heard, but their removing AAD from NR perks, which means that we'll even perk fixers, crats, advies, engies even blinded (AAO also beeing removed from NR perks *giggle*) The only proffesions we won't be able to perk is Enfoes with rage up, other mps, NTs and possibly MA's with twinked NR. Now I can see why you want a pet that hits 9k in pvp every hit, but we need balance.

Also, if you've ever tried CR + AK you KNOW how sick it becomes. If you don't agree with that statement your using it wrong. Try to time DoF, and don't be in SS recharge so you can stun them (or if it gets countered an oldfashion rootgraft).

What consearnes me, however, is our defense. I don't know what FC was thinking removing blockers from SS. We'll instawipe to 216 soldiers in ofab and 210 agents in predator! Should we just give up on this proffesion? *sighs and runs before Corily arrives!*

CR is lasting 2 hrs and AK's actions are mega changed so you don't need to target pets anymore, on top of that.

[Mazzarin]

Trance has it in it's first action, Focus, iirc, which gives a scaling nanodamage boost for 5s. 200% at perk 8. There's your spike damage.

Even with +200% nanodmg that nuke will only hit for 2k tops in pvp, so maybe 4k if you manage to land it twice in 5 seconds

[Xtremtech]

... assuming that the nukes stay as they are.

I'd like to see nano-damage multipliers apply to perks too.

X

[Chrys]

Has anyone seen something that says we lose AS concretely?

Never said that. I said we're losing the reliability of AS. It's now going to be unreliable as hell, everyone should move to blue shield etc blah blah since nukes (and being nanomage) and having tons of free perks not in weapons is where it's currently at given the current state of perks.

Trance has it in it's first action, Focus, iirc, which gives a scaling nanodamage boost for 5s. 200% at perk 8. There's your spike damage. Combine that with 85% NR check for the ice nuke line, the general rebalancing of our nukes in general, and that's probably going to be where the spike damage comes from (along with 1s attack speed on the Starfall perk chain instead of 3/5/7 execution), combined with AAD going away from defense checks using NR (Starfall/TR3/Trance) and having high nanoskills looks to have a point again.

You ever tried killing an enf? The only thing we could do was scaling damage of AS, now there is absolutely no way possible to kill a top enf, we simply don't have the damage to OD his hots, and the defenses to survive his alpha (since our nanoline is stuck in either offense or defense). Focus 200% damage is laughable given where our nukes are at (and RRFE still reflects them right?)

As for AS and it's reliability, it's not likely to be so reliable anymore, while other parts of our toolset look to be becoming more so. Nanoskill-oriented MP setups should wreak hell on earth for landing perks and debuffing their opponents.

As long as they're nanomage too. Other breeds got the shaft here: not having enough def to make it worthwhile while not having enough offense either. Rule 101 of AO is half-and-half builds don't work, and that's what all of them will be except nanomage.

[Metafly7]

Wow u guys lost track of what this thread is about....