Bio Engineer Archive
Thread: A rational point about this whole pet vs probot comparrason
If your talking about melee combat then yes, the mob will turn the bulk of it's attention towards the damage dealer. However for ranged it's another matter. If your outside of 40m and blasting away then even if the pet you have is causing only around 30 points of damage per hit and has a decent ferocity then the enemy will hold aggro to it even while your there knocking out 800 points of damage per hit. You can even try then with wild mobs like the Mutant Rancor. If you blast away as they're clobbering each other then you'll find eveb though your causing more than 500 points of damage per hit they'll totally ignore you. It seem ferocity has more bearing on holding aggro now than before, thats why I have a superGurrcat with ferocity 8 
Dvnce wrote:
Ok .... PLEASE READ THIS CAREFULLY because u have miscontorted every post i have made... with the new combat code.. for mobs..(mobs = any npc /creature that u would go hunt or be fighting..) these CL10 pets with uber HAM .... Are NOT good meat shields.... because as soon as player...(that would be you...) hits the mob consistantly you will pull the mob off almost every time.. A good meat shield would be able to at least hit hard/well/fast enough to keep the mob on it..
so .. one more time.. CL 8k HAM /crappy offense = crappy meatshield.. and does not = CL 50 10k HAM /LA/ 50% resists and 320-330 hit with high speed and high chance to hit.....
plain and simple..
A good meatshield for a non ch.. i am guessing would be 3-4k HAMM.. and 150-170 damage.. (and still wouldnt be near as good your master CH pet ....and id prove it if i could find a freakin BE on my server to make it other than making a these 8k kaduus..
I am not saying a non ch should have equal or better pet than a master CH.. and I am saying.. that they are still no where near gettting them now..
please read that carefull.. so u dont misquote me again ... thanks... becuz if you think about it... and honestly give yourself the chance to be wrong... my point makes sense..
And I completely disagree with your OPINION on this.
They generate enough damage on most things. It is NOT hard to keep agro on your pet.
Just a few words before I begin celebrating the New Year
The comparison I brought up between the pre-nerf probot and the current non-ch pets in the game was to show they are basically the same.
To sum the whole thing up, two choices for an explaination for the stats of the non-ch are as follows:
1) the code for the game at lauch for what type of "combat assists" should be available to all players has been put back into the game.
3150 Ham MED ARMOR 40% Resist Probot =10k Ham Creature NO ARMOR 40% Resists
Meaning as stated by ther devs that Probot will be un-nerfed to match the BE product
2) The Devs released a untested and flawed profession code on the live servers
Future BE products for non-ch will be nerfed....Pre-nerf Probots are still in the game, same solution for pets?
Soon everyone will be able to check the Dev Tracker and see which choice is right
Until then, I think the BE community should applaud Tal-N efforts to understand the system and try to see if a flaw exsist in the code.
If the devs tested and planned on the changes , everyone will be able to have a usefull "combat assistant".
If a flawed and bugged code has been released, non-ch will be nerfed and no one will use them much like current Probots are rarely seen today.
Ramhorn
Once Master of many , Current Master of none
Keep in mind, Sumo is one of two characters I play.
I *DO* have experience with non-CH pets. I haven't seen a shocking change to how creatures behave. NPC's have become MUCH smarter, but your run of hte mill critter is still just as dumb as it ever was.
This might be a difference between classes too. I could see a commando or tka or other big damage class seeing different results.
the points me, Sumo and others have made are perfectly valid and yet Dius insists they are not to defend his opinion when he doesn't need to defend an opinion with false statements and flawed reasoning.
Sounds like someone started celebrating the New Year early when they posted this.
I believe they will be getting another pass when the Combat droids come in and make BE pets worthless.
JiveTimeMofo wrote:
meroc wrote:
Actually, considering they will be UPGRADING Probots from current in January to be in line with BE pets (as stated by TH), I think it is a very valid arguement.
That doesn't mean the 10k 40% CL 5 pets wont get looked at. Can't have Non-CHers running around with 14k effective pets, now can we.
that "upgrade" was with the last patch. it changed them from cl 16 to cl 10. i was disappointed since i was looking forward to having some nice probots.
the main disadvantage of a high defense probot is that it cannot be healed. you have to store it to allow itto heal.
and i've been stating all along that we say we're making outrageous pet b/c people are only looking at the small picture. they keep leaving out all the sacrifices that we make in these pets to increase HAM. all in order to make their arguments valid.
but the resampled clones and light armored low resist pets are making things way imbalanced. the ones created from them are way better than any other pet has and possibly ever will be.
Actually Tal, it's not just BH/Commandos/TKA's who use them (even though they don't actually even need them really), straight crafting classes use them as shield when they check harvesters etc, though Speederbikes probably help them more now with a good macro to mount up fast.
The point being that for someone without any combat ability, a meatshield is a requirement, if it isn't a meatshield, it isn't useful. If it isn't useful, we wont sell it.
Devils Advocate showing there is actually another "side" to it. The BH/C/TKA with pet thing needs looking at, but not at BE and crafters expense.
Tal-N wrote:
What he's saying is that some people consider that CHs should have damage dealing pets while non-chs have huge meat shields. These are the people saying that these pets are fair because they bearly hit for anything but soak up huge amounts of damage.
However they fail to realise that pets aren not generally used to deal damage, the whole point of changing to CH tree was to stop dabblers such as commando/CH who use pets as this huge target and then throw on as much damage as possible without taking any themselves. I won't lie I did the same with my shadowfire character and I was able to take a CL18 Gronda in against a Forsaken Darkside drifter and a Force crystal hunter and come back out the other side without a scratch to me but with my pet nearly dead. So there I was soloing high end contant which I shouldn't. Now they nerf that and some people think they've handed us something even MORE powerful as a meatshield.
Your not going to change the opinions of these people, all they're looking at is the fact our super clones hit for nearly nothing yet have massive HAMs and resistances. In their mind thats fair.. go figure.
The comparison is exagerated to make a point.
The real bottom line is that if BE is not left alone and is nerfed, non-ch pets wont be worth squat. A non-ch will be better off with a probot, because theyll be cheaper, more readily available, usable emmediately, dont require expensive Pet Stims (batteries are a lot cheaper), less space occupied on the datapad by useless pets, and trainable in all commands w/o the need for a MCH. Role reversal will be the strategy of the day. The player will tank. The probot or BE pet will peck at the target while not being touched until the player is incapped.
That is if the player is of the mentality that every bit of damage done to the target helps. If hes of the mentality that its not worth the trouble, then BEs will lose bigtime business. I wont use a non-ch pet or probot. Its a waste of time, datapad space,money, and is toomuch of a hassle for a virtually useless pet. If I cant have a good pet for my CH Levelit willbe a waste of skill points and inefficient. As such, I will drop my CH skills. As other non-master CHs realize this, they too will drop their CH Skill.
Im sure you'll enjoy selling Pet Stims to the remaining MCHs,a few skill mod tissues, and the odd pet here and there. Great money that.
DiusFidus wrote:
Certianly smacks of elitism to me. Since youve been around the longest, your opinion means more then anyone else. No one else can love the profession as much as you 3. No one else knows whats better for the profession then you 3. Ive already noticed your cliquish standard in tagteaming on stars. Woohoo!
Heh Dius and this is where you're obviously clueless, yet again, about the relationships on this board. Tal-N and I, in particular, have been here since day one. You don't have enough fingers and toes to count the times we have gone at each other's throats over issues with this class. I actually kinda chuckle that Tal-N and I so completely agree about this pet-bug. It is a rare instance where he and I see eye to eye on any subject.
I think you read too much into Tal-N's statements to claim he, or I, are basing anything on "we know better than you" elitism. But it does stir up the drama.
There is a group of us BE's from the beginning that have made just about ALL of our research public. That is hardly elitist. There is a group of new BE's that are following suit (several that I am very indebted to for making my research easier). That is inclusive. Even the most inane questions get answers here from knowledgable folks, both new and old... I try to answer what I can, of course I am one person and only have so much time to post.
Of course, anything presented in these forums has to bear scrutiny. I don't see it as elitist that we apply our collective knowledge of the system and its history to look for consistency, coherence, and cogency.
As far as stars go...I could care less. The best it gets out of me is a smile when I write a good post and someone takes the time to 5 star it. Makes me feel I've expressed myself well and added something of worth to the community. At worst it gets a chuckle from me that someone took the time to one star it... I at least made them think long enough want to do it, for good reason (which Iconsider)or for spiteful immaturity (which I giggle at).
JiveTimeMofo wrote:
this particular dev for this particular profession thinks dps is the most important factor. he's had 6 months to determine that. we've been through changes before. didn't know? Check the CH boards.
This might have escaped you, but i"m not sure... don't wanna sound condescending about it... the previous CL system was 100% about Damage. You could take the minimum damage of a pet, divide by 10, and you would have the creature's CL to a very close degree of accuracy.
The system does seem to be weighted too heavily toward the damage side, but even taking that into account we're seeing CL1's created with damage that exceeds CL15's. Check Tal-N's post today in his thread about the Kam DNA.
do you think it's fair to have a creature that has only 800 HAM be a CL 20 pet?
or would you look deeper and find out why it's CL 20? could it be the 200-220dmg it outputs?
This part seems to imply that you know how the old system worked... i'm not sure though. Previously CL20's had around 200 damage. I'm not quite sure where you're going with this though. Are you arguing for HAM playing a higher role in CL?
you fail to look deeper into any of this. you're so close minded with your vision you fail to look at anything but what you want to see. all you see is the 8000 health and stop. you don't take in any info after that, well, except for the kinetic.
Flat out erroneous. At least on my part, and I think Tal-N is there also. We don't stop at 8000Health and stop. These super-pets have pretty decent damage (well above wild compatriots), pretty decent resists, specials that are ONLY found on very high CL creatures (strong poison is one of them). Attack is meaningless (hope you can agree on that... 0.1 seconds isn't worth mentioning). That leaves To Hit.. which no one has ponied up more than an "I feel" justificatoin for its importance (someone PLEASE show me some parsed logs of To Hit, I would LOVE LOVE LOVE to see them... not being facetious).
that's about all you use in your arguments. Health and Kin.
7111 HAM against everything should be a max. for a CL 10 pet now. we should be able to readjust and reassign weaknesses and strengths to suit our purposes.
I must have missed where this 7111HAM came from. Are you using pre-nerf probot stats for that? Pretty sure thats close to what pre-nerfs are. If so, consider what happened to the Armor2 pets.... I had 7 of them change to utter junk pets with the revamp. Pre-nerf probots likely will suffer the same fate when the new droid system is put out.
hell the way you want 6000 avg eff HAM against everything is too much.
No, we want a logical balance that takes into account everything. But this still isn't the problem. THe problem is that something is totally freaking borked with the way CL's are calculated. Again check Tal-N's latest post in the Kam DNA post that he started a few days ago.
i think you continue this debate more because you just wanna be right rather than help people enjoy their time with this game.
I'll be glad to eat humble pie if Kel comes out and says that the stuff Tal-N has created and posted was meant to be. If the devs want these sick pets to exist that just means I can keep on almost uneffected by the creature revamp.
But all these posts go further than just wanting to be correct. Everyone needs to stop and think about whats going on. To consider the big picture. To consider how it all fits together. But... well.. it is fun to argue
Sumorex wrote:
Weren't people enjoying the game with their Graul Maulers? Those were changed in a harsh way.
Weren't the rock beetles (insert other nice non-CH pet) enjoying the game? They got the serious smackdown with the revamp.
this is exactly what i mean by that statement. instead of nerfing the players beef up the mobs. add new mobs w/ higher stats, like they did w/ the krayts.
dont make a player weaker to fix things.
Not sure where the grinding comes from. I haven't asked for more grinding. Matter of fact I think the skill point requirement for BE is too high by 15 to 29 skill points.
the grinding is from the other profs that now have to suffice w/ killing while in a group or taking on lower level low XP critters (from my experience groupinggives way less xp and takes more time). grouping in it's self is a grind. it takes upwards of 2 hours or more just for the groups to get ready. that's why i became a solo player.
Its clear to me the direction the Devs want to take this game in. They don't like us soloing high end content. CHeck out the metrics they released on player vs environment kills... the one that leaps out at me goes something like this for a title "Things players have soloed that they shouldn't be able to". I *LIKE* to solo.. these pets are great for me and my alts.... I don't want to be forced to group or raid... but I also have the ability to step away from my desires and to see the big picture they are painting and realize the pet-weirdness we're seeing doesn't fit the theme.
It's really that simple to me. There is a problem in how these pets are stacking up. I don't have to agree with what the devs are doing to the game (I disagree quite fervently and it will most likely push me out of the game if they make my solo play impossible).