Creature Handler Archive
Thread: Discussion Topic: Know your Role
1. Whatwas the appeal of the Creature Handler profession to you? In other words, what things make being a Creature Handler something you have chosen to do?
Taming and using creatures to fullfil missions and hunt.
2. What role(s) do you, as Creature Handlers, fill in the game world? For example: Tanks, damage-dealers, roleplayers, status effect inflicters (i.e. poison, disease, knockdown), resource harvesters, mission runners, pet salesmen, pet trainers, etc. Which roles (combat or non-combat)does the CH fill better than any other profession?
next to none, harvest resources, any scout or ranger can do it and do it better, run missions nothing special for us on that.
pet salesmen, go see a BE cause thats all anyone wants. status effect inflicters dpends on how good your BE is when he makes you a pet or if your REALLY lucky and catch a Rare that has area effect attacks. Roles we fill better than any......
We have pets, and they can tank (well they keep teh MOB busy while you or your group attack, sometimes) other than that NONE.
3. What should a Creature Handler's place in a hunting group be? Everyone in the group wants to feel important... what should make the Creature Handler an important addition? What would it take to get us to that point?
Our Place..... we used to have tanks to command and help the group as a whole, and we went out and caught them ourselves (sense of accomplishment) now we go to our BE friends for really hardcore PVE and PVP pets cause you CANT FIND ANY in the wild. (but it's still fun to go look hours upon hours upon hours for those rare pets and pray your pets can stay up long enough to help you drop those cl 50+ MOB's just to get that chance of finding a baby. OR watch that little baby you worked so hard to finally get to come out be EATEN BY A PARENT AND QUEEN, and you and your pet are so beaten up you can't do anything about it.
What would get us BACK to the point we used to be at...... Take away the nerf bat from the devs, take away their ludicrious ideas that THEY think will help everyone, make them LISTEN to the people who PAY THIER SALARIES, as to what would be nice to keep and have and use COMMON SENSE to know what not to use as far as ideas.
Am i being clear enough on this?
1. I like creature handling from a roleplaying prespective. I like mounts alot... even though a vechicle is more productive. I think overall I wanted a large forebooding creature to keep me company and to aid me in combat. That's why I started CH.
2. As for roles that we play..... CH's are really for one main thing in my book. Tanking. Our pets should and do tank better then just about any other class. It makes sense for a rancor to take more blows then a human wearing armor to me.
Beyound tanking I see CH's filling two other roles. One is salesmen. I think CH's should have more of a roll making money off creatures. This could be more ranching oriented, like having a 'ranch' where you milk your creatures for profit. It also could be selling mounts. Of course right now mounts aren't really worthwhile to use compared to vechicles so nobody wants them except for RPing or fun.
3. A CH has and should provide a good 'tank'. I'd like to see us be able to teach creatures to help taunt too to further this. I honestly don't think a CH should be the 'uber damage dealer'. It does make sense that a laser rifle or flame thrower would hurt something more then a bite or claw scratch..... unless it's a rancor and they could just pick up the mob and rip it's head off 
; that would be different. CH's provide the tank. CH's would be benefited greatly if the pet 'tank' could be *trained* to hold aggro better.... make this a Master CH option.
I'd just like it if we fit the ingame description, especially the yellow highlighted bits:
"A Master Creature Handler has shared many trials with their pets. The Handler has mastered every form of animal communication and has a deep understanding of the nature of life. The Master Creature Handler demands much from their pets is often surrounded by powerful and fearsome beasts."
This very statement could be enough to start a class-action lawsuit. Alas, the agreement we click on every time we log in states they can change the game at will.
meroc wrote:
I'd just like it if we fit the ingame description, especially the yellow highlighted bits:
"A Master Creature Handler has shared many trials with their pets. The Handler has mastered every form of animal communication and has a deep understanding of the nature of life. The Master Creature Handler demands much from their pets is often surrounded by powerful and fearsome beasts."
1) I think becomming a CHwas a logical precipitate of the game content for me. My principal toon is a master weaponsmith (WS) and master artisan. I find that WS can be a bit of a second job once in awhile and felt I needed something to break the "stay in your shop and get the orders filled" content experience. However there were not enough skill points left to achieve any meaningful combat ability so I started a second toon to hunt with. Now, as everyone knows, weapons have been nerfed, and nerfed weapons, and nerfeduntil you nearly can't kill anything anymore in any reasonable length of time nor can you take on anything solo bigger than a toad unless your a master in a PvP combat class. So, the pet was a logical extension of that whole desire. The idea was to enable me to hunt again ... like I was able to hunt when I started the game ...hunt like when the decision was made to spend the money on a game that provided certain content to me .... to restore content that had been taken away ... And .... for the most part it does .... even though it takes two characters and I can't hunt with my old friends on the old server because ...well the toon has to be elsewhere in a different galaxy ... but hunt again anyway at least.
2) I use my pet (alt toon) as a tank to tie up a target while I slowly chew away on them with nerfed weapons eventually killing them more from frustration morethan trauma. I do think however that a whole "people" dimension is now missing because it was taken from the game. That dimension is "people". When I first started the game Master CH's could always be found in front of the Theed or Coronet starport selling lev 15 pet tanks and later mounts as well. People we grateful to them for the service they provided at large and there was no question about them having a place in the community. They were regarded as a welcome and needed group. But alas, that content too was torn down and destroyed. And how is that? Well people cannot use lev 10 pets for anything ... they won't last in a fight long enough to achieve any meaningful result ... and mounts vs vehicles is a no-brainer ... so .... why spend the money? No real rocket science there. Shouldn't this have been obvious from the start?
3) The role of the CH in a hunt ?.... it is to hunt of course. Sending nerfed pets in against a Krayt dragon with something like three quarters of a million HAMM .... gotta be kidding. A battery of Master Riflemen skillfully using company-fire techniques maybe... otherwise it's gonna be a long day.
"What would it take to get it back?" What I hear in this thread and others as well is "How do we "fix" the CH profession? "What is our role"? These questions would not be there to ask if it wern't for the fact that something was lost. So ... what was that? Take stock now .... exactly why do we play MMORPG's anyway? Many reasons I suppose but one common thread is to interact with other players. Right? If you can't offer anything to the community then what are you doing here anyway? Well, we have to have pets that can actually stay in a fight if we are going to add to a hunting party, and if we want a role in the community then we need pets to sell them that are actually useful in combat. The entire concept of nerfing has been to constantly to diminish never to build up ... never to improve by construction. We are now at a point that enough content has been removed from the game that it has affected game play. The solution is to put in place people with a mindset to build things up .... and given enough time ... they can. But as long as the old mindset of constantly tearing down is operative then we can expect nothing else but further decline in game play.
I know this is hard to hear. No doubt the devs will at first feel great offense ... but offense is not intended. This CAN become an epic game ... but not unless this arrogance in regard to disregard for players and their game play stops.
1. Whatwas the appeal of the Creature Handler profession to you? In other words, what things make being a Creature Handler something you have chosen to do?
As I play on 2 different servers, Shadowfire and Valcyn (Shadow=Master Architect, Valcyn = Master CH), I liked the idea of being able to both solo as well as be in a group. It also gives me the ability to do something other than crafting on my other server, and knowing that I can do things without the need for a group, as a ready made group is there, just add pets, then I'm good to go.
2. What role(s) do you, as Creature Handlers, fill in the game world? For example: Tanks, damage-dealers, roleplayers, status effect inflicters (i.e. poison, disease, knockdown), resource harvesters, mission runners, pet salesmen, pet trainers, etc. Which roles (combat or non-combat)does the CH fill better than any other profession?
As for the role(s) a CH plays in the game world, well, that's tough. Tanks used to be the main role I think, and to some extent still does. They are effective in assisting in harvesting runs, mission runs as well. But as far as pet sales persons, well, since the vehicles have been brought into being, who needs a mount? The purchase of mounts was great in the early running, however, diminished greatly after the vehicles were actually brought into the game. So.. as far as a salesperson is conscerned, not much of one.
Combat or Non-Combat.. They really are stronger in a Combat role, as that is what the pets are for anyway, not just for looks, as you can't pull them out to do much more than to look at or fight with.
3. What should a Creature Handler's place in a hunting group be? Everyone in the group wants to feel important... what should make the Creature Handler an important addition? What would it take to get us to that point?
The place in the hunting group for a CH really should bea tank commander, after all, it's easier for the Pet's to lead the charge than a player character, and often they are more effective at that, however, with influxes of bugs, i.e. running pets, pets that don't take to their commands, broken specials and such, this actually makes the CH a weak and unreliable group member, so therefor, any other combat skills that they have, would be their only reasoning for being in the group. To make the CH more viable, I think that the Dev's really need to address the issues of pets and their commands, and make sure that the bugs that exsist get fixed and stay fixed, not broken again with a new addition to the game or a patch that fixes something else and breaks our patch.
All in all, I enjoy CH, however, it's hard for me to play him as much as I'd like to because I find it funny to see 2 of my biggest pets in my arsenal of pets, my Rancors and My Kimo's run off from battle. You want to fix that, then I would suggest that they implement a pet range into the system, almost like an electronic fence, once the pet reaches that certain range, he automatically returns to his CH, and awaits a new command, unless provoked by an attacker.
Just my 2 cents
Overall i enjoy being a MCH. That being said, last night i went to try out my new wookiee armor. Yes, i lasted longer than 2 seconds... i lasted 4. i have LLC 4 from the BH tree. There goes all my other skill points if anyone is counting. I figured CH and BH would be a great combo. Xpecially for a wookiee. When i tried again to PvP with my new armor and my Battlelord and avarietyofother creatures with light armor i had my ............ handed to me. Something is horribly wrong. With weapons getting more and more powerfull and creatures getting less and less powerful we are faced with an imbalance within the Force.
Please correct me if it isnt true that Night Sisters and thier pet rancors were one of the most feared group within the galaxy. Yes they used thier force powers, but what made them infamous wasthier ability to tame and control creatures as strong as the rancor.
I enjoy MCH and i will not be giving it up any time soon, but it has no place in PvP as it should.
P.S. ShouldI be Tanking for my Pets?
In loving memory of TIGGS. God Bless, and Good Luck!
Cyprus301 wrote:Please correct me if it isnt true that Night Sisters and thier pet rancors were one of the most feared group within the galaxy.
The Night Sisters did not use rancors; they did not treat them well and were abandoned by what the Dathomiri saw as COMPANIONS and PARTNERS, not pets to be used.
Er, that's not relevent. The rancor was a big part of the Dathomiri's arsenal.