Creature Handler Archive

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Ripstinger wrote:

My Gaping Spider Hunter went to level 69 with ~6500 Health; wish I'd known this was coming before I "made room"

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My Gaping Spider Recluse (my Fav pet) which was level 45 went to 76!!! Now totally unusable and I am MCH. What is the POINT!! They are forcing us to destroy good pets instead of at least restating them to a usuable level.

What hasn't changed, is that pets are still fairly useless. But, maybe I just need to give it some time to get used to it.

Still, not wowed by the CH changes. Not certain how this will make us viable. Only reason I'm still viable is that I have another combat profession mastered.

Alas for an edit key.

Yes, we were deservedly nerfed back towards the end of 03. But, the problem now is that our pets have all the utility in combat of a wet sack of noodles when combined with the rest of the nerfs. I can pull aggro off my pet after waiting 30 seconds with just a few shots.

I'm hoping that there is a wild pet out there that I can tame that won't go down like a .com stock after 3 months - but we'll see. I still love the class and will quit before I give it up. Giving it some time before I pass any final judgement.

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Iakimo wrote:

Based on what I've read, the game started out with CH's being the huge flavor-of-the-month, because they could tame any creature regardless of level, and could pull three pets regardless of level. This led to CH pets dominating the game. The final residue of that situation is the occasional CL-1/(0) pets that still surface from time to time. Bioengineers could craft these this way because level was irrelevant.

And so cameth about the Great Creature Nerf -- was that Decenber '03? I started playing in April '04.

But anyway, the big rallying cry from the devs is that whenever they do something to shaft Creature Handlers again, it's because players complain about pets usurping players' role in combat.

The obvious retort for us is, this leaves us without a role!

It's a very good question where all this madness will settle out... or even if it ever settles out.

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The Great Pet Nerf of '03 was a *huge* over-reaction by the devs (apparently the only kind in their arsenal) that rendered CH irrelevant in PvP and the GCW .... then for two years they told us this would be fixed in the 'combat balance/upgrade/name-of-the-month' when other professions were balanced ..... which was true, except for the part where they broke our profession worse than ever in the C.U. and rendered us more irrelevant than ever.

As usual, a nugget of a good idea was washed away in an avalanche of bad management decisions and crappy testing methodology.