Creature Handler Archive
Thread: Koa, let Devs know that pets definitely can NOT take on CL 80 mob
angamarth:
Don't get me wrong, I'd love to have the level raised to 80, I still have my gaping recluse in my datapad hoping I'll be able to call it again someday.
well, actually, anybody with CM can do two attacks at a time as well. Anybody that can 'dot', like fencer, can effectively do two attacks.
The main issue that I have is that it costs a grand total of 106 points to MCH. That is from novice scout all the way up to MCH. What do we get special wise? nothing. previously, our pets had specials. Where are our specials now? yes, yes, yes, sure, the devs know about it and are 'fixing it.' What about mods? creature to hit bonus of +10.
The lvl system really, really, really hurt CH as far as damage goes. Sure, a CH can go to far off worlds and do what they did before, but why? Seriously, why? Why deal with all the hassles of pets that have all those bugs when you could be two elite professions and dabble in another one and still wipe out the creatures? I can do the same amount of damage as a MBH/Master Rifles as I could when I was a MCH/MR. I see people saying on how their pets do 350 damage and all that, and how it acts as a 'dot.' I can now alternate between two high damage dealing specials that deal 1.3K on ave to lvl 80 creature with my current, non-ch self. With CH, it was less damage, but the pet could keep things at bay. Yes, they did regenerate fast, but it just was not the same anymore. Before the CU, how many people could walk around dath and endor without a buff, without armor, with just a hit of brandy, and take out Enraged rancors? How many people? I can tell you now, a Master Rifleman/MCH could do that. After I dropped CH, I went to Lok and took out a LVL 82 giant dune kimoglia without breaking a sweat, it was disappointing. I went to Dath and took out two lvl 79 nightsisters at the same time, again it was disappointing.
We invest all these points, all 106 of them so we can get a 'furry' dot that autostores, or just wants to stand there, or wants to aggro on everything in a 64m radius, or get stuck in combat with something that is already dead, or get stuck in a mountainside. What happens when this 'furry' dot gets incapped? 106 skill points are now wasted for the remainder of that time a person is in combat as we all know, we cannot bring out pets during combat.
This profession, as a whole, has a lot of possibilities. It did from day one. But now, with the lack of specials on pets, the hate system, the lvl system, it makes me wonder on what is going on. CH is supposed to be a 'versitile' profession. How are we supposed to be versitile when our pets do not have a taunt to hold aggro? How about specials? Versitile to me, means the ability to assess a situation and smoothly adapt to it. In our current state, I do not see us able to fulfull that role. We should be able to enter combat, and if our main tanker, TK drops, we should be able to summon a pet that can taunt and hold aggro. It might not domuch damage, but have good health and keep the opponents away. If our crowd control person goes down, we should be able to store that pet and call out one or two that have decent specials to induce various states. That is the role of a 'versitile' character. A character that is not as good as any of those specialists, yet able to fulfull those roles if needed.
velm wrote:
angamarth:
To play devil's advocate, if you want to call the pet a 'weapon' then a creature handler gets two weapons, the pet and their own weapon. No other character gets two weapons. Also, a rifleman's weapon stops at cl 54 I believe, so hopefully they won't make our pets like everyone elses weapons.Don't get me wrong, I'd love to have the level raised to 80, I still have my gaping recluse in my datapad hoping I'll be able to call it again someday.
well, actually, anybody with CM can do two attacks at a time as well. Anybody that can 'dot', like fencer, can effectively do two attacks.
The main issue that I have is that it costs a grand total of 106 points to MCH. That is from novice scout all the way up to MCH. What do we get special wise? nothing. previously, our pets had specials. Where are our specials now? yes, yes, yes, sure, the devs know about it and are 'fixing it.' What about mods? creature to hit bonus of +10.
The lvl system really, really, really hurt CH as far as damage goes. Sure, a CH can go to far off worlds and do what they did before, but why? Seriously, why? Why deal with all the hassles of pets that have all those bugs when you could be two elite professions and dabble in another one and still wipe out the creatures? I can do the same amount of damage as a MBH/Master Rifles as I could when I was a MCH/MR. I see people saying on how their pets do 350 damage and all that, and how it acts as a 'dot.' I can now alternate between two high damage dealing specials that deal 1.3K on ave to lvl 80 creature with my current, non-ch self. With CH, it was less damage, but the pet could keep things at bay. Yes, they did regenerate fast, but it just was not the same anymore. Before the CU, how many people could walk around dath and endor without a buff, without armor, with just a hit of brandy, and take out Enraged rancors? How many people? I can tell you now, a Master Rifleman/MCH could do that. After I dropped CH, I went to Lok and took out a LVL 82 giant dune kimoglia without breaking a sweat, it was disappointing. I went to Dath and took out two lvl 79 nightsisters at the same time, again it was disappointing.
We invest all these points, all 106 of them so we can get a 'furry' dot that autostores, or just wants to stand there, or wants to aggro on everything in a 64m radius, or get stuck in combat with something that is already dead, or get stuck in a mountainside. What happens when this 'furry' dot gets incapped? 106 skill points are now wasted for the remainder of that time a person is in combat as we all know, we cannot bring out pets during combat.
This profession, as a whole, has a lot of possibilities. It did from day one. But now, with the lack of specials on pets, the hate system, the lvl system, it makes me wonder on what is going on. CH is supposed to be a 'versitile' profession. How are we supposed to be versitile when our pets do not have a taunt to hold aggro? How about specials? Versitile to me, means the ability to assess a situation and smoothly adapt to it. In our current state, I do not see us able to fulfull that role. We should be able to enter combat, and if our main tanker, TK drops, we should be able to summon a pet that can taunt and hold aggro. It might not do much damage, but have good health and keep the opponents away. If our crowd control person goes down, we should be able to store that pet and call out one or two that have decent specials to induce various states. That is the role of a 'versitile' character. A character that is not as good as any of those specialists, yet able to fulfull those roles if needed.
Spot on ... absolutely spot on. Any dev who says that controlling a CL 80 creature would make an MCH 'overpowered' and give them a 'second weapon' that is unbalancing is just not playing this game. With the level system as it is now, a CL 60-70 pet is more or less *useless* in PvP because of damage differential, even during the brief moments when it's functioning as designed and not wandering around the tall grass looking for tasty morsels and ignoring its Master's pleas for help.
An MCH/MR just has a hugely lower DPS than an MBH/MR, or MBH/MP, OR MBH/...anything other than CH and entertainer, basically.
Either CH pets need some sort of exemption from the level system's effect on damage, or we need pets that are on a level playing field with their targets, it's NOT rocket science! The bottom line is that the post-CU is not 'functioning as designed' for CH's because they didn't give CH two seconds of consideration when they rebalanced wild animals ... CH is functioning as it is today because of SIDE-EFFECTS of design changes intended for other systems. We're just suffering from toxic fallout of a bad design, not any intentional design 'philosophy,' which is far too kind a description to use for this team's haphazard scrambling to fix the latest leaks in the dike.
DaBudo2 wrote:
Yes, a pure CL 54 CH is more powerful than any other CL 54 combat profession. And, yes, it's not intended that anyone function in combat as a pure, stand-alone CL 54 profession. Fine. Except that once you combine CH with any other combat profession, CH becomes much weaker than any other combat profession.When you combine two combat professions, you become CL 80. Every other profession EXCEPT Creature Handler is then able to function in combat at that level. To repeat myself, as a CL 80 Master Pistoleer using only pistoleer skills, I can solo anything my level and lower. In fact, I've successfully soloed CL 81. Even more, I can solo more than one mob at a time if they're just a couple of lower levels than me. We know that our pets can not take on CL 80 mobs, and the only way they can take on more than one mob at a time is if that mob is several levels lower. This is fair?
So, if as a Master Pistoleer I can solo CL 80 mobs and multiple lower level mobs, logic dictates that I should also be able to do the same as a Master Creature Handler. BTW, from in-testing I know for a fact that I can also solo CL 80 mobs as a CL 80 rifleman or carbineer. The fact of the matter is that as an MCH, because my highest level pet is CL 66, the highest level that I can solo is maybe CL 66 and more realistically a couple of levels lower than that. This is fair?
Now, let's look again at that argument that a pure CL 54 CH is more powerful than any other CL 54 combat profession. When are you EVER going to have a pure CL 54 CH pitted against any other pure CL 54 combat profession? Well, that's just by way of comparison you say. Ok, by way of comparison, lets pit a CL 80 CH - using just CH skills - against any other CL 80 combat profession. For that matter, let's pit a CL 80 CH against anything in the CL 70-80 range. Who's going to win? This is fair?
Well, you say, combat professions are supposed to complement each other - there really is no such thing as a pure CL 80 profession. Except that once you combine elite combat professions, the reality is that those professions do function at CL 80. Other than CH that is. As you indicated, Koa, CH does not really complement or add anything to any other combat profession. Oh, sure, our dps increases a bit. My pets versus a CL 80 mob do about 70 pts of damage per hit on the average (and I think I'm being generous). Woohoo.
So, whatever rationale that CH is balanced with other professions that the Devs want to throw at us, don't let it be that pile of horse pucky that a CL 54 CH is more powerful than any other CL 54 profession. It's not fair that a CL 54 CH is more powerful than other CL 54 professions, but it is fair that any other CL 80 combat profession is stronger than a CL 80 CH???
This is a very valid train of thought, and I said as much above in a manner of speaking. We are one of the only combat professions that does not combine with another seamlessly (unless you mix/match melee/ranged). Pistoleer/smuggler blend to become one indistinguishable set of specials behind a pistol. Master BH/carbineer blend to become one set of specials behind a proton carbine, etc.
Master Creature Handler and anything else becomes a pet + a weapon. And that's the problem that needs solved. How do they make MCH powerful enough, yet not more powerful, than any other pair of combat professions? To be honest, that's a tough call.
Let me use my own character as an example... As a Master Rifleman/MCH/4040 BH, I have essentially the same rifle abilities as a Master Rifleman/MBH/something. The MBH would have slightly more speed/accuracy, and more specials. But, I can use the same Trandoshan Hunting Rifle to do virtually the same damage with Head Shot as they can. At the same time, I also have a pet that can be dealing damage/tanking/whatever...
So, how to we make that work? Obviously, the pet can't be just as good as my rifle abilities, or I'd be double-powered and CH would become the nerf-worthy FOTM class again. The pet has to have some kind of balance applied to it to make the system work.
So, the pet is limited to CL 70... weaker than a finished template character, but still pretty strong.
Remember also that the example of being a CL 80 player who can stand alone against a CL 80 target using "only one set of skills" is still using the other set passively to boost their CL. If they were just the level 54 granted by the one profession, the CL 80 would rip them in half. So no matter what, you aren't able to honestly say you don't benefit from the other profession in some way. Similarly, a CL 80 CH is benefitting from the other profession by using it to supplement their pet in combat.
I think the key is that we aren't done yet. CH left the Combat Upgrade unfinished. We knew this in Beta, they talked about the same pet customization system they mentioned at FanFest and how it would be something taken care of after the CU was released. Until that system is in place, our pets are essentially mediochre at most tasks. Some pets work better than others, but in general our pets don't stand up quite like we'd want them to. They don't quite tank, they don't quite deal damage, and they have zero other abilities even though we're supposed to be jack of all trades.
If we can train our pets for specialized roles like they discussed at FanFest, and for example make a pet that's a brick wall of tanking but that's all its good for, or a vicious pet with huge damage output that can only take a few hits before needing to retreat, or various other combinations, then I believe we'll be in the position where Creature Handler is far more viable and on par with the rest of the combat professions. We're already starting to see some results from the new BE system, although there's going to be quite a while until all the changes are shaken out. I've seen new BE pets that can actually hold aggro quite well from the moment combat starts (even over rifleman-level damage) and I've seen BE pets that attack 2x faster (and thus do 2x more damage) than a wild pet. The pets need a lot of fine tuning, but the potential is there.
Don't worry though... I know you might think I'm not "on your side" from the way I seem to support the dev point of view here, but what I realize is this is how the CU falls and to maintain balance we have to work within the existing system. If we shoot for imbalance again, we completely invalidate the CU and what it was trying to do. No amount of screaming at the wall is going to change the CL we can control to 80, not after they stated they balanced every other profession against our numbers. We were the marker. You don't change the marker after the system is finished. I'm going to push hard for these customization changes to work correctly when they come down the pipe and make sure the customization is adequate to satisfy what we want CH to be, along with all the other issues we have and need to have addressed.
Of course, if these fixes come down, and we're still having severe problems, then we can go nuts.
I'm still convinced we will be viable to the tastes of most people here, the problem is time. It may not be "now" but hopefully it's "soon."
Yes, this isalmost exactlywhat I did except that I fought CL 80 war grondas and npcs (CL 80 because I got missions from a terminal), and I didn't have a stopwatch. Oh, and except for that part about "quickly kill the first one with your pet". As I posted, in every single instance I tested - and there were several - my pets lost half their hit points in about 10 seconds or so while doing almost no damage of their own. In two instances, my pets got incapped because I wasn't quick enough in being able to get aggro. That's how fast they lost health. (Average damage my CL 65 pets were able to do was about 65 per hit and that might be generous).
Chessack wrote:
...So I am not sure how you guys did these tests, but... the PROPER way to do this test is to kill off all but one level 80 from the lair, or pull one level 80 out of the pack somehow, or get one alone somehow... and THEN have your pet solo it, one-on-one. This should be easy enough to do. You can single-pull sharnaffs on Corellia with pets... I do it all the time. Single pull and quickly kill the first one with your pet. Then wait for the pet to heal. And now, when there is only one left and thus no chance of an "add" from other enemies, have your level 60 pet fight the level 80 sharnaff. Hit the stopwatch. See how long it lasts. Record how much Health the sharnaff had when your pet went down. /bug it, then report it here...
C
Chessack wrote:
Well there is another issue no one has even brought up.
As a level 80, you can no longer tame babies from a mission lair. Even if you wanted to take missions at level 70 and get zero combat XP but just look for babies, you can't. Unlike before where we could team with a weak pet to get lower level missions or a strong pet to get higher level missions, now (excepting the bugged terminals that give you level 15 missions when you're level 80) we can ONLY get level 80 lairs. Which means double-master CHs can't tame babies off their lairs, but lower level CHs can.
This makes finding just generic babies (not something special) of the level you are after a much more time consuming and tedious task. Sometimes I like going into the wild to tame random things, but sometimes if I want a certain baby, I used to know what planet, what mission level to take missions at, and I could get what I wanted in short order. Not everyone has a 4 hour session to spend running around looking for the right baby. Nor should that be considered a required element of the class.
C
are you absolutely sure of that ?
Because a few days ago, i went grouphunting, and we took lvl80 or higher bantha missions. When we were doing the missions,
i saw several babies, and i tames 2 of them (i didn't try the other babies, cuz i didn't need more than 2 at that time).
So it seems that your bugged (or i'm bugged :smileyvery-happy
Another thing i wanted to say, about the balancing of the CH profession.
At first, it would be only fair if they'd remove the hunting tree from scout as a necessity to become a CH. I know that for every elite combat profession, you need 2 trees from a basic prof to get novice, but since CH is way less effective in combat than all the other profs, i think that's a good solution. That way we can spend more sp on for example medic (so we can heal our pet), skills to strengthen our other combat prof.
Then, it would be nice if they'd let other professions play a more effective asset to a CH. For example, they could let your defense (melee and ranged) skill mods also affect your pet. So if you gain higher melee defense (for example because you got master fencer), the defense you got for your own, also apply to your pet. Also the specials like knockdown, dizzy, stun, blind recovery (those specials you get by learning other profs) should be possible to apply to your pet. So if you pet gets knockdown, you can use knockdown recovery on you pet. That would make other combat profs be of more valueto CHs, like now a smuggler is a great asset to a pistoleer.
There you go 
velm wrote:
angamarth:
To play devil's advocate, if you want to call the pet a 'weapon' then a creature handler gets two weapons, the pet and their own weapon. No other character gets two weapons. Also, a rifleman's weapon stops at cl 54 I believe, so hopefully they won't make our pets like everyone elses weapons.
Don't get me wrong, I'd love to have the level raised to 80, I still have my gaping recluse in my datapad hoping I'll be able to call it again someday.
well, actually, anybody with CM can do two attacks at a time as well. Anybody that can 'dot', like fencer, can effectively do two attacks.
The main issue that I have is that it costs a grand total of 106 points to MCH. That is from novice scout all the way up to MCH. What do we get special wise? nothing. previously, our pets had specials. Where are our specials now? yes, yes, yes, sure, the devs know about it and are 'fixing it.' What about mods? creature to hit bonus of +10.
The lvl system really, really, really hurt CH as far as damage goes. Sure, a CH can go to far off worlds and do what they did before, but why? Seriously, why? Why deal with all the hassles of pets that have all those bugs when you could be two elite professions and dabble in another one and still wipe out the creatures? I can do the same amount of damage as a MBH/Master Rifles as I could when I was a MCH/MR. I see people saying on how their pets do 350 damage and all that, and how it acts as a 'dot.' I can now alternate between two high damage dealing specials that deal 1.3K on ave to lvl 80 creature with my current, non-ch self. With CH, it was less damage, but the pet could keep things at bay. Yes, they did regenerate fast, but it just was not the same anymore. Before the CU, how many people could walk around dath and endor without a buff, without armor, with just a hit of brandy, and take out Enraged rancors? How many people? I can tell you now, a Master Rifleman/MCH could do that. After I dropped CH, I went to Lok and took out a LVL 82 giant dune kimoglia without breaking a sweat, it was disappointing. I went to Dath and took out two lvl 79 nightsisters at the same time, again it was disappointing.
We invest all these points, all 106 of them so we can get a 'furry' dot that autostores, or just wants to stand there, or wants to aggro on everything in a 64m radius, or get stuck in combat with something that is already dead, or get stuck in a mountainside. What happens when this 'furry' dot gets incapped? 106 skill points are now wasted for the remainder of that time a person is in combat as we all know, we cannot bring out pets during combat.
This profession, as a whole, has a lot of possibilities. It did from day one. But now, with the lack of specials on pets, the hate system, the lvl system, it makes me wonder on what is going on. CH is supposed to be a 'versitile' profession. How are we supposed to be versitile when our pets do not have a taunt to hold aggro? How about specials? Versitile to me, means the ability to assess a situation and smoothly adapt to it. In our current state, I do not see us able to fulfull that role. We should be able to enter combat, and if our main tanker, TK drops, we should be able to summon a pet that can taunt and hold aggro. It might not domuch damage, but have good health and keep the opponents away. If our crowd control person goes down, we should be able to store that pet and call out one or two that have decent specials to induce various states. That is the role of a 'versitile' character. A character that is not as good as any of those specialists, yet able to fulfull those roles if needed.
I'll check again, but I would swear that all of my tamed creatures have a much better to hit mod than 10. My converted BE pets did not fare as well.
I believe I mentioned in my second post that some form of taunt and a return of creature specials was in order. I seriously doubt that we'll get a taunt of a magnitude that will hold agro in a group if the TK drops, if the Devs truely want to stop people from sniping from behind a meatshield.
As to crowd control, I already do that with my pets. I can sic them on adds to keep them off the rest of the group until the group kills whet they're currently focused on. Again, the pet won't hold agro once the group turns it's attention to the new target, and if you're using a pack instead of a single creature you've got to have separate control orders, but it is doable.
If you want to call a DoT a second attack, that's fine. As MCH you still get a third (possibly 4th and 5th) attack. Calling DoTs a second attack doesn't change my point.
I believe you are correct here, I've tamed babies off of lvl 81-82 lairs. The babies are 'normal' not a lvl 81-82 variety of the mob.
Spir4 wrote:
are you absolutely sure of that ?
Because a few days ago, i went grouphunting, and we took lvl80 or higher bantha missions. When we were doing the missions,
i saw several babies, and i tames 2 of them (i didn't try the other babies, cuz i didn't need more than 2 at that time).
So it seems that your bugged (or i'm bugged :smileyvery-happy
"The idea is, CH skill would control your max potential, which cannot be exceeded, but Character Level would determine what you can control right now. This would allow level 80 CHs to control level 80 pets (reasonable) while restricting level 54 CHs to level 54 and below pets (IMO, also reasonable) -- i.e. your pet is limited to the same as your level (assuming enough CH skill). Since everything ELSE is tied to your level (including the XP you gain for CH), they may as well just finish the job, IMO."
This defeats the object totally, what this world do is to make level 80 MCH's way too powerful - level 80 pets as well as level 80 rifles or what ever?! And what's to say that you are any better at taming than a CL 54 person? Nothing...
Spir4 wrote:
are you absolutely sure of that ?
Because a few days ago, i went grouphunting, and we took lvl80 or higher bantha missions. When we were doing the missions,
i saw several babies, and i tames 2 of them (i didn't try the other babies, cuz i didn't need more than 2 at that time).
So it seems that your bugged
OK I guess I was not detailed enough.
Level 80 lairs do provide babies. You can tame them. They are level 10. If you want a level 10 pet this is a good way to get them.
If you want anything other than a level 10 or so pet, you cant' get them off of a level 80 lair.
C
Eh...I decided to get rid of my reply. I find the current MCH very playable. That is all.
Message Edited by BraccusD on 06-08-2005 07:58 AM
So, how to we make that work? Obviously, the pet can't be just as good as my rifle abilities, or I'd be double-powered and CH would become the nerf-worthy FOTM class again. The pet has to have some kind of balance applied to it to make the system work.
So, the pet is limited to CL 70... weaker than a finished template character, but still pretty strong.
Ko-a, in PvP would a CL 80 pet in your hypothetical come even *close* to the DPS of a Master Rifle or Pistol or Carbine with a good weapon? Because my current high-level pets, even in PvE, aren't remotely in the same league as my rifle for damage output.
At the moment, pet 'effectiveness' in PvP is impossible to evaluate because of broken specials. Fix specials and then we can honestly look at whether pets are as underpowered in combat as we currently perceive them to be.