Creature Handler Archive
Thread: What is SOE's vision for Creature Handler?
Instead of just nerfing skill trees to oblivion why not take a different approach? You know, be original, and really run screaming off of the beaten track.
How about you encourage the team to fix the bugs (all of them, not just for CH) first, andthen start on balancing. And instead of weakening skill trees (which annoys everyone) you could actuallystrengthen others! Sounds pretty radical doesn't it?
Well.. for a start it would makeeveryone happy, the whiners would get their loving, and the potentialvictims of the whiners would remain unscathed.
And it's not too late, Raph. We aren't spending hours of our lives to be miserable, SWG is meant as entertainment. I think somewhere along theroad you might have lost sight of this fact.
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(This is why store moved btw)
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Who asked for this? non of us that I know of. I don't know anyone that ever had a problem with this.
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Some of the pets you control are by themselves as powerful as an elite combat player, and that's not counting you, the CH, into the combat equation.
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I beg to differ pet don't have that good of control. Watch an elite profession drop us in 1 shot (even with the PvE at 25% we still have rifles that do 4k of dmg before 1k after)
then take out our pets while they don't do anythin.
Master CH = a 4400 CH. WOooo 1/2 the skill points and 1/2 the xp needed
Saying you've made great strides in making us better.....umm NO!
Pets now pack up for no reason
Pets still don't engage in combat some time
Pets still don't follow for more then a few hundred meters
Pets still get caught on the smallest pebble
Pets still run away in combat
Pets still gate or bolt to called spot
Datapads go blank forcing you to completely logout for 10 minutes before you can come back and see if you can call a pet
CH that take care of their pets is useless. Those of us that take care of our pets are hurt while everyone else is given Novice CH for free.
You say you want us to take care of our pets? You have most of us going out and getting 3 or more pets of the same type so we can rotate them.
You realise that players go after our pets to deliberately incap them so they loose stats now.
I've even gone as far as using one of my pets as Medical experiments. Let a bunch of people kill it then get 7k of medic xp bringing it back to life....oh you're nerfing that next.
All the attention to CH has been nerfs from other classes that haven't got their best gear.
Holo what happens when these players get their best gear, weapons etc?
With pet stims all you've done is make it so we don't have to have medic to support our pets thus freeing up more skill points for those that don't care about their pets to devote to advanced combat classes.
You know the worst part. You are SOOOOO drastically changing our class non of us know what to do. For me I've got 1 skill point left. Do I give up master medic to get the advanced Pistoleer class? Will you make that useless as soon as I get that switching back to something that forces me to be a master medic agian?
So we are left with you saying you don't want our pets disposible but thats exactly what you've made them into
You say you want us to take care of our pets but you promote people to not care about their pets and use them as meat shields
You imply that you don't want us to solo but you make our pets useless in groups. They can't deal dmg 1/6th as good as a player and they can't tank for a group and everyone hates us using our pets in combat because they think they steal xp.
Killer pets are useless in PvP because they steal the DB.
Pets are only cannon fodder in PvE faction because they don't count toward our dmg and faction standing
CH that support their pets are forced to do missions of Level 7 or 9 because our pets don't get taken into account when missions are generated. Thus you make us the ultimate bottom feeders.
You know, you can't tell us your vision because like you said in beta you don't really know what to do with us. So most of what you are doing to us is based on yellings of others that are jealous of something they have no clue about.
You know, this was pretty much on target for me....UNTIL the vitality patch. I have and still USE the first pet I ever tamed when the game went live (a sludge pather that has stood at my side every fight I've ever been in to date). But now he's starting to wear.
And as a result I now collect pets and name them "A" "B" and "C" because they are nothing more special than my blaster.
It "feels" different now....a pet is certainly not something to get attached to.
We are overestimating the value of the armor (we may have to agree to disagree on this one--but if we can compensate for the armor in other ways, will that be sufficient?)
Why bother NERFING something so that you have to COMPENSATE for it later, to make the community happy?
LEAVE armor alone and go FIX a bug or something.
It sounds to me like you guys had it sooo good and now that you have had to give up some of your instant eliteness you are a bunch of cry babies. It sux to go from 3 rancors to a womprat but get over it. For you guys to complain that you are not powerful enough is insane.
I am a master smuggler with alot of pistoleer and I will duel anyone and usually come out on top unless I duel a CH with his pet(s). However there are a good number of creature handlers that I fight and own because they are noobs and have only got to the point they are now because they could just sit back and watch the racors own.
My friend is a creature handler and there is a huge difference when he is not in the group (i.e. much more likely that we die). High level CH's are extremely powerful and can make the difference when fighting things such as Kimos.
As a smuggler I did not feel powerful enuff but instead af crying that smugglers are too weak, I skilled up in pistoleer. Not all professions are supposed to be able to take bounty hunters and if this was anything close to being fair then all of your pets would be dead after a few lazer bolts to the head but, instead I have to shoot your pet 20 times and hope that is enough....
I am not saying you guys should be nerfed or anything as I know if I really think you guys are that overpowerful, I can just pick up CH and have my own pets if I choose. I am just saying to learn your class before you cry and if you feel you need more power then pick up skills that will compliment you in combat.
Having played EQ forever, you guys should consider yourselves lucky. I still can't beleive the dev's have given into your crying as much as they have (no pet permadeath). Maybe if you guys didn't cry about permadeath you would still be allowed to have uber pets....
Three points. Will try to keep short and clear.
1. You are WAY overestimating pets. One pet may have the same statistical abilities as an elite player, but you have a player in full control of the player and the AI between me and the pet. The sophistication of the pet control commands in this game are inferior to the command sets in the established competition games. And even in them pets are often banned or considered useless in encounters requiring finesse tactics.
2. The big item not mentioned (that encompasses many of the seperate items not in your four). Fun to maintenence ratio is out of whack. I say this as someone who has never fielded a pet I did not tame AND raise myself. I have never owned a gurreck or a rancor. I think I have played the class as intended - and while it IS fun - the design features you keep piling on to make me respect my pets (when I already do) are becoming frustrating and more trouble than the fun factor of the pet.
3. The class is being balanced with the Master Weapon skill / part CH player in mind. Many CHs do not have other significant (or any) weapon skills. This really rooks non-weapon skilled CHs. Yet, pet damage does stack with weapon damage. I see the balance dilemna .. but it aggravates #2. I'm not a MCH yet ... but it seems to really make those guys mad!
Let me just chime in here, I'm only a bio-engineer so surfice to say I understand the CH profession almost as well as the CHs themselves. Afterall it helps to understand the customers when you're selling items to them. Anyway.. after reading about how Holo wants the CH to not be any more powerful than the other elite professions I see nothing but a conflict of interests.
On the one hand you have what is in essense a profession that allows you easily own and operate a second weapon in addition to what you already do, from a very basic point of view there is no way to balance this issue within the professions themselves. The developers can nerf and nerf and tone down and weaken the creature handlers as much as they want. But the fact is that nothing they do will be enough as this boils down to creature handlers being more than capable to wield TWO high damage weapons at the same time. Sure enough the creature handler themselves are no more vulnerable than any other player, but the fact that a master can have the ability for a Kimogila bearing down on another target while also being a master rifleman and causing 2000 damage to the target every 2 seconds themselves.
So we have a problem, any more nerfs and the creatrue handlers go up in arms, if they remain as they are then CHs are still the most powerful profession in the entire game by a large amount plus they're an easy profession to get into so by all accounts they become a very easy profession to get into. Ontop of that if they remain as they are then it's against the ideals of the designers but you're gonna find the other combat professions asking 'why should be bother with this when we can be creature handlers?'
The solution from my point of view isn't to 'fix' or 'rebalance' the profession any more than it already has. At the moment from the way htings are everything seems quite balanced and anything else they do isn't going to resolve the issue. The solution is to allow ALL players to wield two powerful weapons at once just like the creature handler. That's not to mean going akimbo T21's 
What i mean is they need to include battle droids and make the certifications based on accumilated combat experience which is spent on droid certifications as they are with weapon certifications.
This solves two problems, it allows droid engineers to have a much more profittable market and it allows all non-CHs to have the same 'potential' firepower as the creature handlers themselves. Naturally both paths need to be long and hard and with different benefits. Creature handlers get mainly melee attackers with basic AI, while the battle droids are ranged and with much smarted AI allowing them to stand up against the creatures that a CH throws at them. Sure it means getting the droids balanced and such but this is the only way to avoid nerfing the CH to death while also making sure that they are balanced with every other combat profession.
Holo why don't you whip out your CL 50 CH dev as a meat shield agianst us?
Since you don't know much about us use him as a meat sheild. You think he'll hold agro? You think he can win agianst our complaints? Better poor a hundred BE stim pack in him/her. Who ever it is won't last long because you've not only not fixed 1/2 of what you said you would.....its worse and there are new bugs too.
I guess the most disappointing thing i keep seeing the devs post about ch's is Oh yes but you can still fight you have points you get combat skills. Um Yeah ok
Once upon a time I decided to go Master scout Master Ranger Master Ch I looked over the stat and decided to the best Animal tamer that the classes fit the mold the best. I had a few points left over so i took Pikeman.
Ok so yes Ralph i have some points left and i put them into a Combat class.
Ok i go out with my Now 1 pet (1pet because only a fool would pull out 3 wus pets )and the first Man with a gun i meet Kills me in two shots and runs away from my Pet. Um ok so i have all these things mastered and my Combat Skill you mentioned and it still =Death.
The only thing that stands between me and death in the wilds is my pet. But almost any Ch you meet would give there life for there pets (Even before you started Ganking there Ham upon deaths).
You mentioned that you guys feel that ac on the pets is over powering.
When the Ch has no ac (God help him if he is a wookiee) the only thing that protects him is the pet in the wookiees case the pet is his ac,
Devs i am not talking about the folks who go out and try to Kill red con mobs I am talking about your standard Blue mobs If the Ch has the skill to tame a high end pet who cares what he fights, So what if his creature can smack down lower level mobs . Um that is what he trained and tamed creatures to do .
As a Unit the Devs have responded often to the ch issues but Instead of helping us out you have hurt our class over and over. and to drop this ac bomb on us after the big bat last week was unfair and unwise.
The Fact that you guys made everyone a ch for FREE and made being a master ch useless I feel like a lot of the other ch's when i ask so what did i get for my 15 skill points to get Novice ch to start with when you gave it to everyone else for free?. (How about giving us out 15 points back ?)
Ok so your Vision and the player base vision is on two ends of the spectrum and both sides show no signs of moving towards the middle.
My question is with all the bugs out there and there are tons of bugs in this game alot more serious than wether a gurreck has a ac 2 or not. you guys choose this to dink with .
At this point i have sent a bug report in everyday since the big Nerf stateing that i am way over my limit in pets last count was 29 before i destroyed some , last nite a fellow ch handed me 8 more pets and i can still tame pets with no problems so i have no cap it seems not sure who all else is getting this cool bug.
but as of yet i have recieved no tells no msgs no questions an No sign of Customer support on this and many other issues that i have sent in reports on day after day.
I still have the same question i have asked since beta and have still as of yet gotten an answer for
If balance is such a overbearing concern for the dev team then lets get an aswer to one that has been there all along. Ranged V Melee. If you guys can show how you can Balance a Gun user v a Stick user i may be able to Stomache the Balancing you are forcing on the Ch's now.
I still say the only reason that Jedis are not in the game yet is because they cant figure out how to Keep a Range user from Kiting the First jedi with a light saber they see around till he bleeds to death .
So to me the Vision i see is you can be a Novice Ch for free (while to get a title you pay 15 skill points)and getting Master Ch is useless unless you jut like the Title. And no mater what your skill you can get 3 At ST pets that come fully loaded and the badest thing in the game adn it doent ever require you to have a drivers lic.
have you tryed playing our broken class of creature handler ? have you had pets out in battle to just disappear or had pets deathblowed lets compare say to :a lazer rifle ..if you shot something 1 time and the rifle went poof would that b ok? or say if you got hit 1 time and that kool composite armor went poof how would you like it not to mention how would you like to run back to the last server boundry and re dress and re arm your armor and weapons everytime you crossed 1 or have them just unequip in battle and leave you there neckade and without a gun ooo and to re dress and rearm you now need to pitch camp.
IF YOU DONT PLAY A CH AND YOU DONT KNOW THE BUGS AND STUFF WE DEAL WITH THEN DONT MAKE REMARKS THAT WE ARE OVER POWERED AND EASY TO PLAY!!
as of now we are pretty much worthless accept asto b pet shows in town.
What?
Let's be fair. Those of us who are playing CH have an enormous advantage in that our pets are meat sheilds. All of the other classes can get eaten by us in PvP and even more so in PvE because we have tanks that deal out pre-PvP damage. A PC attack that used to do 1K is only doing 250 in PvP. Even lowbie pets regularly do this type of high end combat class damage in PvP.
The "best" template in the game for powergamers right now is combat medic/creature handler. I wasn't super happy about the CH changes, but I KNEW they were coming and I'm flabergasted they are so incredibly light.
Actually, the best template in the game right now is Imperial Bio-engineer with AT-ST's, but that is a WHOLE other game balance issue.
Let's not misrepresent to get love because we are going to get caught and lose integrity with the developers. They will KNOW that this is
BlackTigress,
Ah, but, as Master Pistoleer / Master CH, I DO have enough combat ability to compete. Currently, CH is just additional damage. If they made it to where CH was just as good as the other combat classes then it would be too powerful...in fact, it was like this to begin with, and it was too powerful.
Yea, if you want to be the best combat person you can be, either with pets (if they make a new class or something) or with a weapon, you will probably have to give up the dancing a lot of the medic. That's just the way it is...
Very true, some do have other elite combat classes I agree with someone's suggestion of making a 'Shepherds' stick that maybe adds the extra CL points so you CANNOT use a held weapon that would be great!