Creature Handler Archive
Thread: Top Five Issues with the Creature Handler Profession
Who can solo a complet Merek lair alone? MCH only. ( or dude with a At-St )
We are enouph powerful, but we need:
1- MIA babies back: nerf on callinglvl, but not on stats.
2- The ability to make your pet befriend for real. I mean a command to stop attacking the mob for real.
3- A command to PACIFY with the agressive baby that is not happy becausewe killed his mother and now suiciding on you..
Fix Mission Difficulty calculation:
I have no weapon skills, by choice, but I can field 70 combat levels of pets... Seriously, I can handle more then a Gnort lair for 300cr. This is really really really annoying and stupid, that as a Master of a Elite Profession, I get treated at the mission terminals like fresh from the shuttle.
Master Ch + Combat Class vc Master CH (repost):
The way the Holo and the CH devs are talking, its pretty clear that they have no intention currently to lift that CL70 cap.
Main reason for this IMO is the (relativly) low cost in skillpoints forMCH, so that one can master CH and for example Pistoleer. With that combo, its somewhat understandable not lifting the cap.
However, quite a few here, including myself are Creature Handlers, and not a combat profession with creature handler. We want to handle creatures, and only that. Correct me if I got the false impression here.
Some suggestions on this, these ideas have been mentioned before:
The prod/whip: Have an item, that has to wielded instead of a weapon, that gives +30 CL at master level, while this item is out, you field more combat levels, but not use any weapon, and you can't de-equipt the prod/whip untill the pets called with it are stored again. Maybe there should be different items like this, scaling on the level of CH, with capping at max +30 at master
The Skill Check: The max combat levels a creature handler has can be exceeded by 50%. So, a master can field 70 levels, but can exceeds this to a max of 105 levels out. The very second he calls a pet that exceeds his normal cap, he cant use any weapon styles at all, and his auto attack defaults to a combat rating of a non marksman/brawler wielding a standard issue cdef/wooden staff regardless of his actual skills and weapon used. A system message should appear informing him about this.
Both suggestions would give the CH the option to go full on creatures if he wants to.
Responses to this suggestion under:
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=creature_handler&message.id=47614
Embolden / Enrage
Both skills are quite useless. While Embolden Pets was only mildly usefull before the patch that lowered pet regen, its utterly useless now.
And with the nerf to the player skill Enrage, the Enrage pets is fairly pointless. To enrage 2 pets, action and mind pool get drained dangerously low. That would be ok if the result was worth it.. currently the added damage is barely noticeable at all
Suggestions:
Embolden: For a short time, 2 minutes or so, pets regen a lot faster, like 1% of base HAM every 2 seconds or so, a 10K HAM creature would then regen 100 HAM every 2 seconds. Depending how powerfull you deem this, add a reuse timer on it, 10 minutes maybe.
Enrage: Increase Damage output percentage based, the fixed +75 are fairly pointless. Also, maybe add a haste component, that pets will attack faster. To make sure that pets do get hurt more while enraged, don't allow to enrage pets, while (my suggested) embolden is still active.
1. Trading issue - need to be able to sell pets in Bazzar. Why should CH be the only class have to go to a starport and yelling "Babies for sale" and wait there for customers ?
2. Storage issue - 16 for MCH is way too low.
3. Balance issue - If MCH can only call max CL 60 single and CL70 multiple, what about those AT-STs? Furthermore, if MCH can call CL60 single, which one we can call? There is no CL 60 babies around, none, zip, Nada. So what is the max CL 60 stands for? for the future expansion pack? Please explain and try to make sense out of this.
4. Communcation issue - If you wanna do something, please let your customer knows about it first. If you want to expand your subscription base, please listen and RESPONSE to your customers' feedback.
5. Fun factor issue - I greatly enjoy taming different babies, especially high level reds (well, no matter how high, its still max at 50 anyway for now). This is a main fun factor I got as a MCH. After the baby nerf, some high level reds no longer have babies, none, zip, zero. Please bring them back so I can at least enjoy the game again.
Above statements are given under assumptions of SOE fixed the pathing/crying for food/stopping for no reason/fake attack bugs in this latest release.
I'm not a CH, I'm a tailor... but I saw this in the patch notes today...
1. the problem of beeing forced into medic AND a combat profession beside chs
-you HAVE to be a medic, since 10 second reuse on a 200 - 300 ham heal petstim is simply a joke
=> fix factory issues for BEs
=> raise the effeciency of petstims AND lower the cost of those
=> let first aid effect petstims or add a similar bonus for petstims to ch tree (empathy?)
- you HAVE to get a combat profession since 3 lower lvl / 1 high lvl pet just dont do good damage at all
- you HAVE to get it for any faction related destroy missions
=> let pet damage count as CH damage, like it does count on non impr/rebel targets where you (strange...) still get faction even if YOU dont touch him/her
=> take pets into account when geting missions, lvl 5 missions just dont cut it for a master profession(even if its not supposed to be 100% combat related)
=> change anrage pets to something actually useful again
2. bring some worthwhile things to master chs, like stated alot - give the useless boxes in the ch tree some flavor (again)
=> add babys to most creatures, especialy lvl 35+ (and 51+ too) - there was some good idea about a system to give MCHs the ability to tame adults which might be worth a second look and some thoughts too
3.replace/repair bugged commands and add new ones
=> embolden pets = kinda useless, but would fit very nice in some kind of mind/action consuming ability to heal/help the pet regen
=> befriend = think it was supposed totell your pet to take commands fromthe person you pointing to
=> patrol =useless ....
=> enrage pets = see above 
=> sit/lie/rest command as so many stated, would also bring the cute animations back which are only on the wild animals
=>mounts/caravan related commands - when/how is it planned?
=> for pvp: deathblow command for normaly non deathblowing pets?
4. group loot bug - its annoying if you have to disband your group all the time when you want to loot something, especialy when you are grouped with other players
5,read shnelles post
some of this stuff sounds unreasonable (like decreasing vitality being a bad thing... it makes sense to me. I'm going to miss the hell out of my gualama when she's gone... ok... you can laugh at me now) and some seem just to be obvious bugs... but one thing caught my eye and would add SO MUCH to the game...
3) Create a YARD as an option for houses that you can drop your pets into. This is just like the VENDOR option that artisans get, the option appears when they have enough skill in something. In this option a window opens up with a large amount of storage dependent on the size of the house.
This storage is ONLY for pets. When a pet is dropped from the datapad into here that pet will immediately appear outside the house and treat the house like a nest. They will wander around, lying down, eating, looking just like they do in the wild. Commands will not work on them. BUT,the GUARD feature is ALWAYS turned onfor them. This makes it so if YOU and ONLY YOU are attacked the pets inclose proximity to you then will defend you. But what if they take on something that is to much for them, simply after they have taken a beating, say 3/4 ofHAM they retreat INTO the house and don't come out till they have healed. Also large pets, PHYSICALLY, should take up more slots in the YARD.
This would give a good perk to HIGH lvl CHs, it would make you know there is a CH in the area, it would allow CH's to be able to keep pets they have become attached to, AND it looks darn cool. Also this would work on PA halls as well so that people could share pets if they wanted.
DO THIS OR SOME VARIATION OF IT!
Have the pets count against the inventory of the house even so the potential for extra server space usage (or whatever) isn't even impacted. But this would add so MUCH to the aura of the ... player city.. game ... WHATEVER.
Mooko,
they disable DNA sampling from pets, because some pets apparently weren't dying from a sampling. So a master bio-engineer could sample there crafted rancor and kimo as much as they like and make uber pets from it.
maybe I'm not understanding... but shouldn't a master Bio Engineer be able to do that (in general/in theory) unless their DNA was so complicated to be un-analyze-able with currenlt levels of technology (or something, just trying to help here...)
(and no... I'm not a BE either... I'm just a novice tailor n00b who gets pwn'ed by every living breathing thing out there)
OK, So I'm thinking that the fact I'm late to the game on posting means my comments are going to get lost in the noise, but here they are in order of how soon I thinkthey need to be fixed.
1. Pet storage. I don't care what form it takes - let us drop them in our houses, allow us to continue to put them in a droid datapad, or create a new class of structure an architect can make called a Creature Paddock (in S, M, L) that takes up our allowed structure slots. The best case scenario would be the latter and the paddock would nurture and grow the pet from baby to adult (maybe faster, maybe with more HAM than if raised in the wild, there are lots of gameplay possiblities including adding Bio Engineering effects like more damage, more attacks, specific attacks, etc.). Currently (9/4/03) we can still store them in droid datapads so as long as they don't "fix" this before an alternative goes into effect, we're cool.
2. Allow Challenge 45+ AR 2 creatures to spawn again. They were nerfed for game balance, and the result has proven to be anovercorrection. I totally agree that we shouldn't be able to control 3 AR 2 Arachne Queens...and now we can't. But the gameplay of the last month has proven that being able to control one is not an imbalance. I'm ok with them being incredibly rare or incredibly difficult to obtain (only spawn in a far off location away from any starport, etc. and even then 1 in 20 lairs will spawn one, etc.). This will only make them cooler to have. If you are still overly concerned with balance, raise their challenge level so that only Masters can use them. This will have the secondary side effect of creating a reason to train Master CH.
3. Allow us to sell our pets in a vendor. Although the pets now have less value since anyone that could buy and control their own pet could conceivably go get one, it's still a major limiting factor of the profession. If Bio-Engineers can place their (better) pets in a vendor, we should be able to also.
4. Fix the pathfinding as others have stated. This is an inconvenience, not a show stopper. After all, it's not that hard to pull out a camp and call them again and it sounds like a workaround was just implemented although I haven't confirmed this in game yet.
5. Communicate. Make giving us regular updates an important part of your job function. This is a tremendous opportunity to differentiate this game from all the others. Enage us. The player community is never going to agree and we will always have our nitwits, but we have valuable feedback to provide and unless the developers are playing the game 8 hours or more a day (which I doubt), we're your best source of it. I make this suggestion because SWG staff have taken an important step in the right direction by appointing a CH advocate. I hope it's not a token effort at appeasing us. Take his feedback seriously and communicate with him regularly. As a specific example, I'd like to know that Arachne Webmaster babies aren't spawning anymore BEFORE I spend 8 hours of play time looking for them on Endor.
On a side note, I'd like to see players distinguishCH issues and from non-CH issues. Examples are Bio-engineering and Faction pets. Neither have anything to do with the CH profession - and when we offer feedback and throw these into the mix, it only detracts from the core message to the CH devs.
This is a great profession and for me, the reason I play the game.
Regards,
Cookiepuss - Bloodfin
1- Pet vitality being permanent. If it were up to me pets would be raised 1 vitilaty point at an interval of time (based on CH's empathy branch). I'm not looking at hours, more like a couple of days in RL would equal 1 vitilaty point for a Master CH.
2- Pet CL level. To small. Needs to be ATLEAST (ATLEAST) 90. 100 is the least you could do, but 70 is a JOKE.
3- Pet storage. Yes, it was only intended to be 14, and now we're getting 16. But that is only what, a 1/4 of our old capacity? Heck, with multiple droids we could have 100s of pets, which is wrong. I think we should be given the ability to store our pets into a single droid at management 4.
4- Bio-Engineered pets being the only useable pets. When you fix BE, you may really hurt the CHs. We love taming our pets. It makes it seem like we've raised them from *almost* birth. You develope an artificial friendship, and that doesn't happen with BE pets. Give BEs the ability to "slice" pets. If you'd like, I've made a very large post about what I'd like to see in the future for CHs including BE pets.
5- Bio-Engineered pets being pointless. The opposite of above. If BE pets gain and lose CL, then it's pointless to buy one. Why? If all stats contribute to CL then the same amount of stats will equal 70 CL no matter what combo of pets you use. Therefor BE pets just take up extra CL that could be used for multiple pets.
I agree with the changes that have been suggested so far and would like to add a new one to be considered:
Allow Master CH's to view thelevels/abilities/etc.of all creatures on the radial menu on Examine -babies and adults. I find it odd and a bit frustrating that as an elite professionmaster CH I have to ask a master scout what level a creature is. I thought a CH was a creature specialist.. so I'm really not understanding why we can't see the complete informationon the creatures we spend so much time taming and training. It's not like I want to track babies or anything, I just would like one of thesmall perks at Master CH to be that we can know all about the creatures.
shnelle wrote:>>>Obviously you haven't seen the 12K+ HAM and 700+ damage, .60+ to hit, 2.4 spd Rancors BE's can put out, have ya?
If the rancors still have the same resists and armor or better then I'll be impressed. But I haven't seen them on my server no, and belive me I've looked. Most of the good BE pets I've seen aren't improved pets, they are stat trade off pets. Less speed more damage, more HAM less resists things like that, when they start making them where they can improve everything over all then I'll be impressed.
Oh and higher damage is nice but if he hits slower then it really doesn't matter much. Only thing that really impresses me is the .6 to hit.
I have seen them too. I have a Guild Mate who is a Master Bio-Engineer and his pets are awesome. I don't even tame pets that he can make anymore cause his are so much better! And his rancor had even better resists!
Khanx wrote:
4 Vit, a way to portect say 2 of your most loved pets, maybe some flag on 2 selected pets and can only change ever week etc
hmmmmmm...that idea has potential.