Creature Handler Archive

**butts into the discussion**

When I look at the state of the CH profession I see a lot of both positive and negitive.

On the positive note:

• Most dabblers are gone yay!!


• Wild creatures seem to match their CL


• We can now control pet specials


• Master CH can store 22 creatures


• Some extinct pets where brought back (the rares)


• Doing away with the camp requirement

Might be missing a few but those jump out at me.

On the less positive side:

• Pet specials require macros, for the most part, to use them reliably. Certain specials have "message floaties" while other do not (leaving no way for a CH to tell if his pet attempted them or not). Furthermore, it seems many specials are intended for PvP which CH is 100% gimped and underpowered in (see below)


• CH is nearly unplayable in PvP due to the damage migration. Pet do little to no damage in PvP yet take full damage. A BE CL70 pet can be taken down in less then 10secs by most elites.


• Pets regen very slowly in the data pad forcing players to constantly rotate or buy expensive pet stims by the bucket


• Rare pets are so rare they are nearly extinct


• The 30sec timer for next publish has not been clearly defined (can we still call at will in camps and town?)


• To few **desirable** wild pets


• Mounts are obsolete due to vehicles.


• There is no market for wild CH pets anymore.

Again, might be missing a few but those jump out at me

I think, IMHO, outa all the issue good and bad two BAD issue jump out at me as being unacceptable.

1. Excessively weak in PvP (the GCW is a huge part of SWG)


2. No market for wild pets due to both a lack of desirable wild pets, exessively powerful BE pets, and declining CH population due in a large part to our weakness in PvP.

These two issues, IMHO, above all else needs to be resolved ASAP.

I understand the combat re-balancing and how things may be a little lop sided while this all gets straightened out.. but there is no reason why pets couldnt get some sort of damage migration in PvP to help add some survivability in PvP... Why not have the damage migration be spread in three parts throughout the CH tree just like other combat professions?

I also understand that BE should be able to have a viable market and that their pets should be overall better then wild ones.. atleast have an edge on em... but as a MBE I can easily make a pet in under 5 mins that will take the best rare pet, bend it over, do it dry, and spit it out. With such a huge chasm between wild and BE pets there can never be a viable market for CH.

One solution is to FIX the BE crafting system as a lot of the elite uber pets are made by using loop holes in the crafting process. Then, create a real market for mounts by making mounts offer some sort of REAL advantage over vehicles... ability to mask while riding (yet gain no scout exp), use specials while mounted, no slow up in combat,etc etc. Finally add some real desirable pets that CH can sell... pets that are not BEable...

here is a spot that a lot of people have totally misunderstood in how pet specials work. pet specials for the most part work the same way that player melee specials work. players cant stack specials into the queue then run up to a target and have em all go off. pets cant do that either. so what happens is that the pet/owner is at some distance from the target the owner tells the pet to use a special pet runs up and does a normal attack. the pet has to be in melee range for a special to go off. they only show in the floaties if the special is successful, and there is a timer for the special before you can issue another. im not sure what the exact interval is.

Special attacks are broken. They only work on command if the pet is not in combat. They will work at range (will did; more below) if they work in melee. A macro is needed to get the attack to function properly once the pet is in combat.

Poison, Disease and Knockdown do not work on command even then. I'm not sure if these are intentional or not. It might be felt they are side-effects of natural attacks so were purposefully excluded.

to test pet special effectiveness get a friend who is a master CH and get two wild rancors which will have exact same stats. do a rancor duel or 8 and have one person issuing pet special commands and the other not and see which rancor wins. the special using rancor will win easily every time. when no specials are used both rancors are damaged about the same rate. you just dont always see a visual confirmation that a pet is using specials. i suggest that we petition for just such a visual cue and documentation on how they work to dispel the special use myths. it is rather eye opening. any two same pets with specials will work but rancors have some nice specials.

Here is a better test. Train a pet that has a special such as stun. Stun will show every time it is attempted. Also make a "/follow;/tellpet special" macro as described elsewhere.

Find a target your pet can last against for awhile then tell it to engage. Order the special command as often as you want. You will only see it fire occassionally.

Then try with the macro, remembering your pet only attacks once every two seconds or so and the command does not queue, so there is no need to press too often. You will see it fire every attempt. It may not land, but it will be used.

So out of combat - specials works. Once in combat - broken. Since my pet is in combat more than out of it, I consider this mostly broken (with a work around using the macro).

ranged attacks: the devs didnt say taht we could command the pets to use ranged attacks i dont remeber that but if you can point to patch notes or one of their quotes i would like to see it. not saying they didnt tell us that im just saying i dont remember it. but anyway with BE pets a pet skin that doesnt have some varient that does ranged attacks in the wild will not have them in a BE version. i dont know if that is a bug or not.

The entire purpose of the ranged command at master was so ranged pets would attack at range. Thunderheart's posts on the revamp confirms these and the devs have mentioned ranged attacks elsewhere, so they were intended. They might want to nerf us to oblivion, but I am sure they would have mentioned their removal if intended.

As Cailid010 points out, pets that used to always attack at range now only use melee attacks. The distance bug that was fixed yesterday was what prevented their use. The fix did not give it back to them, probably because only two or three of us ever mentioned it. The ranged command won't even make my pet engage, nor will it force them into ranged distance.

Every pet I have except my Queen Merek has (had) a ranged attack, so I can definately say this is broken.

As a side note, specials will function with ranged attacks, except the chance to hit is significantly lower if your pet is further away than 20 meters. If the attack missed, so would the special associated with it. In combination with the need for the macro to make specials work, most people did not realize this (including myself who said this in many of the special attack macro threads; I later proved myself wrong by constantly doing it). This is moot until ranged attacks are fixed though.

[Edited for HTML correction]

Message Edited by Seiryuu on 02-25-2004 02:52 PM

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SomeUser wrote:

• Most dabblers are gone yay!!

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Why does everyone hate Dabbers? ....sigh.... I mean, i thought this, a skills based, was aimed at dabblers... lol. The more dabblers we stamp out... the closer we come to a strictly class based game...

And i don't know about you, but i don't want a strictly class based game...

Anyway, nice arugument on both sides. I've only recently dusted off my old MCH/MRM. Bordom on the Jedi hunting frount, and the lure of rare pets have brought me back.

I also have a new patawan. My brother has made a new toon to follow in my MCH footsteps...

I said i'd never Delete my old Ch, and now i'm glad i didn't.. couldn't imanagin relearning CH in it's current state. (I.E. no dubble pet xp bonus...)

You know what would revive the pet trade market? Flying Mounts.

Hey, we'll be able to move stuff up and down in our house now... so why not? I'm sure they'd sell... for awhile...

KingSnake.

Dabblers are fine.

Dabblers with the full capabilities of a Master were the problem, and they are gone. (Yay! )

My 2cr on the economy and pet trade market. It is my belief that non-CH should not be allowed to use BE pets. I am sure they could be tagged as BE. If a non-CH wanted an attack pet it would be CL10 wild caught. Not much more market but still something for lower levelled CH's to earn money at rather than doing durni missions.

Personally the /transfer command bothers me. It was the end all be all reason to be MCH, according to some pre-nerf posts. The only reason I ever use it now is when I tame someones deed from BE pets. I would be just as willing to let anyone train their own BE pets rather than be annoyed with teach transfer, mount and naming it while I wait for a shuttle (and I'm likely to miss it because they do not have a name yet).

Barb you say there are bugs now? What happened between now and a few days ago when you "completely and totally disagree(d) with this post"? Yeah you do just troll. You like to argue for arguments sake. I am guessing your some dev or csr's wife.

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fantoq wrote:

That's an interesting concept but, assuming the CL was truly balanced ( I don't think it is), the net effect would be the same. If I take a plain CL 30, which has what, about 7500 HAM and add a 50% resist to it, I've effectively created a CL 30 with 15K ham.

To answer your question, I don't know why you can't tame an enraged bull rancor. I think that an MCH should have some, even if a small percentage, ability to train anything.

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To be honest we probably do have a small chance to tame anything. Unfortunatly even if we suceeded the chance roll we'd hit that CL 70 cap and auto fail. Personaly I'd love to see that modified slightly. Leave in the 70 cap for multipul pets but alow use to exceed that cap if we went for 1 huge criter. I mean why not let us use a CL 85 or so pet asumeing we could find one... bet you an ATST could still kick the snot out of it unless the pet happend to have 100% resist to energy or something. Imps may say ATST is now useless but the fact remains that it would win hands down in a duel with any CH pet if there was no outside interfearence. Considering that we pay points to access CH skills I see no reason why we cant control a single powerful pet that could stand toe to toe with JoeShmo Imp that just ran faction missions to get his pet.

yep adding to my own list

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taloncard wrote:

Is CH totally broken no and unplayable NO!!

that being said.

1) economy

We once had a very strong market for pets, it was yanked out from under us in 1 patch

We once had a very strong market for Mounts same as above

i went from being able to make 200K+ from a few hours of hunting down babies training them and sitting in AH yelling and selling them. 1/2 of the fun was in walking all over talus finding GSP's (yeah I said walking). The other 1/2 was seeing how happy someone was in getting their 1st GSP or the ability to call 2.

I don't consider the ability to run missions a viable economy, If that is what was ment why bother with the TRANSFER command.

I hate to say it but bring back the inablity to transfer all pets unless they have the transfer command, and put the transfer command to Novice CH, Give us some market back.

Again economy is supply and demand, running missions is an income.

2) PvE

nothing really too broken here, we are not as powerful but I really have no issues with it, added issues, meele and master ranged professions make better tanks unbuffed then pets, um why?

3 pets should be a better tank than a single player anyday.

3) Creatures

I find creatures IN GENERAL (not just pets) way too weak. things I used to fear I now laugh at. Why is a CL 50 rancor weaker in protection than a CL35 GM. Rancors are defined in the SWU as a heavily armored arachnid like creature (minius all the arms).

You should not have to go to an expert planet to find semi-challenging creatures to fight not just to tame. also CL, DL and creatures. a CL 10 is 500 ham, a cl 34 is 10K HAM and a CL 70 is 12K ham um double the CL for 2K more HAM and about 50 more damage? what kind of fuzzy math is this?

4) PvP

Lets face it pets are as effective as a D18 pistol or a DLT20a rifle for PvP. I laugh when I see a CH send his pets against me, it's barely even a distraction. To be honest I don't know what a real fair solution to this would be. Yes a MCH sending 3 pre patch GSP's against 1 person in PvP may provide too much of an advantage to the MCH. I won't argue that one person becomming an army of 4 is a tad unbalanced. On the other hand why is the most powerful pet in the game a faction perk (AT ST) and not a CH pet. been trying this again lately with a Rancor and a Baz nich, they get taken down in about 10 Sec by most players, in batle they let me take down 1 person as a Master rifleman before they are useless, then it's my rifle all the way and that's not an issue.

5) Broken commands

The big bone we were promised with the revamp was pet special attacks and command over ranged attacks. These rarely if ever work. and most state attacks have no effect on creatures they are meant for PVP really, where even there they are useless.

6) Bugs bugs bugs

some of the bugs have been around since day 1, the pet auto store being the worst, and the pet warp being the 2nd worst in my oponion. for every fix they make it seems to create another bug, I understand the nature of programming. I have done quite a bit, but things need to be tested more before they are pushed to live. Add the mount bug in it's 6th week

7) our roll

It seems that a CH's role of support or combat profession is yet to be decided, by the devs. To tell you the truth I don't care the outcome just decide already. we started out as a combat proffeeion that is now stuck in limbo. Still good PvE'ers but horrible PvP. Still no word on this, however if you read the combat rebalance thread, TH says pets may seem weak for a couple of months, well a couple is 2 last time I asked webster, we are on 4.

This is not a rant, this is not a whine or a flame. These are my oponions. I ask that replys to this thread stay constructive, feel free to add your own views, and keep in mind I also am entilted to mine.

Thank you

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Why am I necroing?

As pluto pointed out the same things keep getting brought up again and again, If you notice (for the old timers) my state of the profession post has not really changed since May when I first posted it.

This is a post from Feb that I dug up, showing that the state of the profession has remained largely unchanged since then. Actually since the great nerf CH has been treated like a mushroom.

Yes this may annoy people and I am sorry, but why rewrite the same things over and over again when a simple /bump will serve the same purpose. This will also serve to show how many Vocal supporters of CH are now gone.

It is my honest belief that if SOE doesn't fix this game soon and if JTL proves just as buggy and unbalanced (please please no uber loot ship components make it rely more on twitch ability then looting stuff) this game will be dead in 1 more year.