MP Wishlist: Improvements to Pet AMS and root/snare breaking buffs

[Xtremtech]

Hi All,

I'm starting a new thread for the discussion of how best we think the MP versions of the Pet AMS buffs and pet root/snare breakers should be improved. There's a fair bit of emotion about this in other threads here, but I'd like this one to focus on the question of how best to improve the buffs rather than talking about why the present ones are less than good.

If the issue should ever get presented as a high priority one in the professionals - then I'd like to be able to reference this thread in that question - so let's all try to stay positive (including myself - I know ).

There are a few key areas to look at I think:

• 1) Duration of the AMS buff
  2) Should AMS be together with the damage add buff?
  3) Amount of time reduction on the root breaker
  4) Would it make sense to have a single buff that reduced the amount on all 3 MP pets?
  5) Range on the root breaker

I know from previous discussions about the AMS buff, that many people have felt that it would fit well in an Instill Style buff... others feel that it should be a separate buff altogether.

I look forward to hearing discussion on this.

X

[____________Scofflaw]

What bugs me about the root breakers is they come so late into the game (only one I have seen takes 530 in the required skills as memory serves). Roots and snares are available from level 1, so that's a long time in PvP we have to deal with rooted/snared pets with no way to counter it. I think the line needs to be extended both forwards and backwards.

That said, ours should be much more efficient. They only affect our pets, we have 2-3 pets up at any given time, and they will all be targetted for snares and roots. Having a poor, expensive counter to a relatively cheap attack is silly. This should be a relatively cheap to cast nano. It's already costing us time to free our pets, and that is really costly in a fight. Isn't really an issue in PvM in my experience, just an inconvienance to wait for the root/snare to wear off, or terminating pets and making new ones. However that would not work very well in PvP.

The short duration pet buffs are a pain in the rear to use. At least with the current system for targetting. I'll give a big thumbs up for raising durations (perhaps with a increase in nano cost) so I can spend more time playing the game than playing with the interface.

[Sallust]

You know quite well what i think of the AMS, so I won't get into it again.

The Root/snare removers are rather useless and I'd rather not see an extension of that line. In mass PvP it takes me too long to even target my pets for it anyways.

What we need is Nano Resist for our pets, FC seems to say repeatedly that our pets have to be vulnerable and gimped. Umkay, whatever... they have the same opinion about us it seems as a profession.

Still what we should be asking for is a Nano resist buff, or just plain regular nano resist on our pets. Professions shouldn't be able to instacast a root or calm and be able to ignore my pets. I'm a pet profession (because they won't make the rest of our tool set vialbe) and my pets should be feared in combat; not ignored.

If we do get a new root/snare breaker for the MP then it should AoE so it effects all pets and we don't have to target them.

[Xtremtech]

OK, I'm going to write a base proposal and see what people think of it. I've taken the durations from the Crat versions of the AMS buffs and used the same AMS as in the original evocations.

Changes to Evocation Line
====================

The AMS buff was looked to as a solution to issues that MPs have with their attack pets not being able to hit high level mobs, boss mobs and high evading players efficiently. As such we had expected a long duration buff that would allow the pet to hit reasonably well for normal damage in these situations.

Rolling the AMS buff and damage add buff (from the animas) into a single line has proved highly unpopular with the MP community. While MPs recognise that using an anima should come with some restrictions to our casting in the form of short duration and long recharge, MPs need the option of leaving the pet doing normal "non-anima" damage hits while we focus on debuffing/nuking for attack and focus on stunning if need be when we are under attack. At the same time of course, the implementation also makes the anima line virtually redundant.

We propose that the damage portion of the AMS buffs be removed and that the AMS only evocation be made 7.5 minutes minutes to 30 minutes in duration according to QL. This would result in:

Evocation of Unrestrained Ferocity QL16

• modify target offense modifier 24
  Duration 7 minutes 30 seconds

Evocation of Unleashed Malice QL34

• modify target offense modifier 52
  Duration 7 minutes 30 seconds

Evocation of Relentless Fury QL58

• modify target offense modifier 88
  Duration 7 minutes 30 seconds

Evocation of Implacable Hatred QL115

• modify target offense modifier 175
  Duration 15 minutes

Evocation of Maddening Wrath QL140

• modify target offense modifier 213
  Duration 20 minutes

Evocation of Pure Malevolence QL177

• modify target offense modifier 269
  Duration 20 minutes

Evocation of The Abomination QL200

• modify target offense modifier 304
  Duration 30 minutes

X

[Xtremtech]

With regard to the Root Breaker, I'm going to suggest that we leave the casting times as is, but make it affect all of the MP owner's pets within a 30 metre range (range is same as for the Crat) while including a heavier nanocost.

Changes to Pet Root/Snare Reduction Line
===============================

In order to keep both attack and defence effective the MP has to maintain two pets at any one time. Assuming an eventual fix for the Psychosis pet, this would entail maintaining three pets at any one time. The MP root breaking nano also reduces the root/snare for less time than any other pet root breaker, resulting in the MP having to cast the nano more often per pet for more pets.

With the prevalence of area roots and snares in the game this often means that the MP would be needing to cast 3 to 4.5 times the number of nanos in order to release his pets. Given the attack and recharge times on these nanos and the number of casts, this represents a major reduction in available casting time for an MP - which thus also reduces casting time available for both nukes and defensive debuffing nanos.

The MP community would like to propose a change to the MP pet Root/Snare reduction line, that makes the nano affect all of the owners pets that are in range at once (whether they are rooted or not) while paying for this extra power by increasing the nanocost somewhat. Since the root/snare breaker also carries a hit on the pet's health on the top of the line version, we would sometimes pay for this ability by damaging pets' health that weren't rooted at the time.

Succor of Expedium QL163

• Nanocost: 727
  Range: 30 metres
  
  hit all pets health 150 .. 150
  text chat Your manifestation moves more freely.
  reduce all pets nano strain 145 756s
  reduce all pets nano strain 146 756s

Modulate Manifestation QL120

• Nanocost: 727
  Range: 30 metres
  
  text chat Your manifestation moves more freely.
  reduce all pets nano strain 145 547s
  reduce all pets nano strain 146 547s

Fluctuate Manifestation QL88

• Nanocost: 639
  Range: 30 metres
  
  text chat Your manifestation moves more freely.
  reduce all pets nano strain 145 417s
  reduce all pets nano strain 146 417s

X

[_____________Meurgen]

Don't raise the nanocost on the root breakers. As it is, it takes at least 2, usually 3 or even 4 (for higher level roots/snares) casts to free the pets. Instead of using 4 seconds to cast it 4 times (around 20 seconds with lag) and nearly 4k nano (...) I'd much rather terminate the pets, and resummon them. Doing so takes around 10-15 seconds, and costs around 1k nano. Even buffing the demon again would cost considerably less, and take around the same amount of time. Either way: before the introduction of the root breakers, any root or calm put us out of the fight until we could terminate and recast. Right now, roots and calms put us out of the fight until we terminate and recast... a root breaker means our pets would be back in the fight in 20 seconds, and we would be out for the next 1:20 while sitting and recharging nano. :\ It was a very poorly thought out fix, and it's gonna need a *lot* of work before it's viable, at all.

[Xtremtech]

Hi Meurgen,

I'm open to that.

I'd based it on the top of the line fixer snare which has 1719s duration which would allow us to release the pets in 3 casts. The fixer snare is actually part of nanostrain 145.

In the nanostrain 145, top duration is 1719s (released in 3 casts)

In the nanostrain 146, top duration is 288s (released in one cast)

At least that I can find. Apart from the top 5 nanos in strain 145, the rest can all be released in 2 or less castings so only the top 5 nanostrain 145 rootbreakers would require 3 casts.

Still, as I said, I'm open to correcting it down to the same nanocost. What does everybody else think?

X

[_____________Meurgen]

Yeah my numbers were stolen from personal experience... both in ql190+ missions where they do cast the top roots all the time... and pvp, where they do cast the top snares nearly all of the time. The real killer in pvp is AoE snares, not the roots. Top snares are so severe that they accomplish exactly the same thing as roots, and as you pointed out, the top one takes 3 casts to get rid of. :\ ow. My pets rarely ever get rooted any more, it's all about those evil snares.

[_____________Meurgen]

While I'm on track here...

As I pointed out, the current line accomplishes it's purpose no faster than recasting my two pets... it also costs very nearly the same amount of nano... a very poorly thoughtout situation.

For the root reducer to be useful at all, it would have to a) cost either the same, or less than it does to resummon both pets, b) happen much quicker, and c) happen to all 2(or 3) pets in a single cast.

Before I would even think about using it, the top reducer would have to have stats somewhere along these lines:

NP Cost: 950 (cost of resummoning caco and bela is 1050 total)
Range: All pets within 30 meters.
text chat Your manifestation is free to move again.
reduce all pets nano strain 145: 2000 seconds
reduce all pets nano strain 146: 300 seconds (together this would completely remove any root or snare on all of the pets)

Those would be the effects. Any less, and it's simply not worth casting, *at all* because we can resummon our pets more effectively.

The cast time would be greatly increased to reflect the amount of time necessary to cast a caco and bela (6/3.1 and 9.6/5 respectively). I wouldn't mind it having a cast time of 14 seconds and recharge of 5 seconds. This would be a long time, yes... but also quicker than terminating and resummoning the pets. With my compiler in, and 1300 init, that would take 12.5 seconds total to cast, which is considerably more effective than recasting pets, and yet I'm sure any pvper would agree that 12.5 seconds of inactivity is far from overpowered.

The lower level reducers would be scaled down by finding the highest ql root and snare of the ql of the reducer nano, and completely removing them for the cost of the highest ql pets (again matched against the ql of the reducer).

Example:

Modulate Manfestation:

NP cost: 620 (cost of Restite and Lesser Frenzy Embodiment together)
Range: All pets within 30 meters
text chat Your manifestation is free to move again.
reduce all pets nano strain 145: 1200 seconds
reduce all pets nano strain 146: 180 seconds (those times will completely remove Greater Netcast Wide (ql119) and Prolong Encounter (ql123))

Cast time would be 10sec/5sec, that's about 3 total seconds less than the total time for summoning Restite and Lesser Frenzy, and with 700 init it would be reduced by 3.5 seconds to 11.5 total time... again, far from uber in the heat of battle, but sufferable, given the circumstances.

That's the kind of hardcore logic we need if these nanos are going to be used, versus being thrown into the Notum Rejection bin alongside all of the other useless uploaded nanos we have. (creations, instills, root reducers, notum rejection, init/dmg debuffs, ice nukes, mez pets, etc)

[Xtremtech]

versus being thrown into the Notum Rejection bin

lol! I like that.

I get your reasoning here, but to be fair we should at least compare a true minimum cast of Caco, Bela, Chant: 1566 Nano. You can't really leave a caco without a chant - the damage is excruciatingly slow.

With that in mind two casts at the original nanocost is quite reasonable. I'll drop the nanocost to the original for you. My experience of the roots in missions has been that a single cast always gets the pet free (and I'm only using the shop bought one). The snares are the big baddies indeed.

From a balance point of view, no other root/snare breaking nano in the game can break the fixer snare in one cast. Even the absolute top of the line snare breakers for the Crat (1702s) and fixer (1701s) need to be cast twice and they are the crowd control specialists. This goes too for the top of the line AoE root/snare breaker that the crat has.

Similarly, a QL200 purge nano kit requires 3 usages to free the top of the line snare with only the QL300 one requiring 2 usages.

On the pet root/snare breaker side even the Engineer one needs to be cast twice for the top of the line snares, so it's a pretty good bet that the designers intended these nanos to be cast at least twice so that it wasn't a simple matter to remove the top of the line snare.

We've already reduced the number of casts from 9 when using three pets to 5 casts required. When using two pets (which is more normal) we've reduced the number of casts from 6 to 3 thus halving the time and nanocost. I think that that's an excellent improvement - particularly when you consider that the Crats as the crowd control and root breaking specialists also need to cast their Pet root breaker twice to free up a single pet and in theory they too can have three pets (although theirs are all attack so they have less need to free up two pets at once).

I'm going to reduce the nanocost and leave the durations as is for the moment.

X

[Sallust]

I still don't understand why pet professions can be so easily "disarmed" and detoothed in the first place. Pets should be able to resist snares/roots/calms/fears. Pet professions shouldn't simply be click and dismiss by crowd controllers.

I mean thats as pathetic as NTs being able to insta-nuke a fixer to death. What becomes the point in PvP then? If FC wants PvP to be more strategic, fun and involved then they're going about it the wrong way.

[_____________Meurgen]

Hah, but what's the point of making us sit there in a mission chaincasting just so we can move room to room? Most of us don't use pets anyways.

I'm leaning on a PvP tilt here. To put it into perspective:

Modulate Manifestation (the best I have right now) took 4 casts for my demon last night after it was snared by a top fixer snare... another 4 casts for the healpet. That's 8 casts, and it costs 727 per cast... that's about 5700 nanopoints, which is a LOT. Our entire nano pool can't be dedicated to unrooting our pets.

Look at it this way: with no pets, we die.

With no nano pool, we die.

The way things are now, if our pets are snared or calmed, we are dead. I personally don't like this. I don't think that a single snare (a long range, AoE nano that doesn't take a huge amount of nanopoints to cast) should be the death of us. That's slightly more crippling than the NT anti-GA nuke. :P

Funcom decided that every class and their mom should have roots/calms/snares... the VERY least they could do is make *effective* methods to fight against those for the classes that are hurt the most by them. I'm totally serious about the Notum Rejection bin thing (heh, I liked that too. )... unless it's made *considerably* more useful, the nano is 100% useless! We can terminate and recast our pets for less nano in missions, in just about the same amount of time, and in pvp, with or without this nano, and even with the proposed changes, a snare means we're out of the fight.

[_____________Meurgen]

Sorry if that post was a bit confrontational... it's fueled by the fact that I spent 2-3 hours straight last night @ the Tir arena with friends. I fought a couple enfs without pets (after they were feared) and a couple fixers who had no trouble at all snaring my pets to uselessness. As a class that completely relies on it's pets (as EVERY pet class...) I'm totally serious here... there are no compromises to be made... no halfway points to meet at. When 20 stitches are needed, 10 ain't gonna fix the wound. As far as I can see it, we're moving towards the complete death of the meta profession (as a pet class). It's simply being facilitated by the halfway efforts we're seeing tossed around in the past couple patches.

[Toxinator]

To tired to read this whole post so i will post my ideas, if someone already said em, well sux for me then doesnt it? *shrug*

Now, AMS buffs, duration = time the pet lives, i dont know how long that is and i dont really care, 2xxx s so the buff should last the life time of the pet, before he disappears into the great beyond.

Next, Pets need nano resist. I dont care in what form i get it. I just want it, that way my pet is not made completely incapable of **** when he is selectivly humping a piece of furniture, or a tree, or a rock, or a tower, or a controller, or he is snared 2 miles back by the first snare nano that a damn profession gets. I dont want some half assed root duration debuff as my primary defence against this type of attack. This should be secondary. Its like a perma-stun nano. Our main wep is made useless. Again duration = pet duration. Quite simple.

[Sallust]

Ditto what Meurgen said.

At least hopefully when the last MP retires all the others will stop complaining about how getting a buff from a MP makes them better.

[Xtremtech]

OK this thread has petered out so I'm adding the following entry to the wishlist:



Changes to Evocation Line
====================

The AMS buff was looked to as a solution to issues that MPs have with their attack pets not being able to hit high level mobs, boss mobs and high evading players efficiently. As such we had expected a long duration buff that would allow the pet to hit reasonably well for normal damage in these situations. The goal of this proposal is not to increase the damage of the MP's pets in any general sense, but is instead focussed on this issue.

Rolling the AMS buff and damage add buff (from the animas) into a single line has proved highly unpopular with the MP community. While MPs recognise that using an anima should come with some restrictions to our casting in the form of short duration and long recharge, MPs need the option of leaving the pet doing normal "non-anima" damage hits while we focus on debuffing/nuking for attack and focus on stunning if need be when we are under attack. At the same time of course, the implementation also makes the anima line virtually redundant.

We propose that the damage portion of the AMS buffs be removed and that the AMS only evocation be made 7.5 minutes minutes to 30 minutes in duration according to QL. This would result in:

Evocation of Unrestrained Ferocity QL16

• modify target offense modifier 24
  Duration 7 minutes 30 seconds

Evocation of Unleashed Malice QL34

• modify target offense modifier 52
  Duration 7 minutes 30 seconds

Evocation of Relentless Fury QL58

• modify target offense modifier 88
  Duration 7 minutes 30 seconds

Evocation of Implacable Hatred QL115

• modify target offense modifier 175
  Duration 15 minutes

Evocation of Maddening Wrath QL140

• modify target offense modifier 213
  Duration 20 minutes

Evocation of Pure Malevolence QL177

• modify target offense modifier 269
  Duration 20 minutes

Evocation of The Abomination QL200

• modify target offense modifier 304
  Duration 30 minutes

General Comments:
==============

1) If the damage increase due to having the Instill and AMS buff as long term buffs were deemed to be too much and unbalancing, it would be acceptable that the Instill buff and AMS buffs should not stack with each other. This would still leave MPs with a long term tool that would enable our pets to hit harder targets, while not overly increasing the overall damage profile of the pet.

2) The above durations are based upon the existing Bureaucrat AMS buff durations. The MP community would strongly support an increase of the minimum durations for these buffs to a 20 minute minimum duration.



This proposal was designed in the MP Wishlist: Changes to AMS buffs and pet rootbreakers Thread. For more information about how the design was reached please reference that thread. To propose changes/additions to this design - please post to that thread.



.

[Xtremtech]

And this one for the Pet root/snare breakers:




Changes to Pet Root/Snare Reduction Line
===============================

In order to keep both attack and defence effective the MP has to maintain two pets at any one time. Assuming an eventual fix for the Psychosis pet, this would entail maintaining three pets at any one time. The MP root breaking nano also reduces the root/snare for less time than any other pet root breaker, resulting in the MP having to cast the nano more often per pet for more pets.

With the prevalence of area roots and snares in the game this often means that the MP would be needing to cast 3 to 4.5 times the number of nanos in order to release his pets. Given the attack and recharge times on these nanos and the number of casts, this represents a major reduction in available casting time for an MP - which thus also reduces casting time available for both nukes and defensive debuffing nanos.

The MP community would like to propose a change to the MP pet Root/Snare reduction line, that makes the nano affect all of the owners pets that are in range at once (whether they are rooted or not). Since the root/snare breaker also carries a hit on the pet's health on the top of the line version, we would sometimes pay for this ability by damaging pets' health that weren't rooted at the time.

Succor of Expedium QL163

• Nanocost: 727
  Range: 30 metres
  
  hit all pets health 150 .. 150
  text chat Your manifestation moves more freely.
  reduce all pets nano strain 145 756s
  reduce all pets nano strain 146 756s

Modulate Manifestation QL120

• Nanocost: 727
  Range: 30 metres
  
  text chat Your manifestation moves more freely.
  reduce all pets nano strain 145 547s
  reduce all pets nano strain 146 547s

Fluctuate Manifestation QL88

• Nanocost: 639
  Range: 30 metres
  
  text chat Your manifestation moves more freely.
  reduce all pets nano strain 145 417s
  reduce all pets nano strain 146 417s

This proposal was designed in the MP Wishlist: Changes to AMS buffs and pet rootbreakers Thread. For more information about how the design was reached please reference that thread. To propose changes/additions to this design - please post to that thread.



.

[_____________Meurgen]

I still don't think the root breakers are going to be worthwhile.

This is depressing.

[Xtremtech]

Meurgen,

I'd still agree that there are serious drawbacks too... but in terms of balance against the other pet rootbreakers in game I'm thinking it's probably the best we can do. This wishlist entry above all needs to be implementable immediately if we are to have any hope of it getting it fixed quick.

I'd happily add a modified extra wishlist item for a "Premium Rootbreaker" of some kind. Post your proposal for one that you'd see to be an excellent one and I'll include it.

X

[Alpherah]

Pets shouldnt be able to be rooted so easily period, Even i resist roots more easily than my pet, and my pets suppost to be level200 ffs!