Creature Handler Archive

Message Edited by Vertexon on 03-31-2004 02:16 PM

Does it have to be combat only? I still think that critters can have a huge variety of uses, but since everything seems to focus on combat, I'm not going to repost them, unless that is what you want.

Thank you.

I'm a Master BE with a few CH skills, so frommy perspective:

- Let pets (at least mounts) carry extra stuff for us (The Banthas already have bags!)
- Let BE's modify your pets, tweak them to be better attackers, add specials, make faster, better defense, etc.
- Let them heal themselves faster
- Multiple pets fighting together, even if owned by different CH's, get a bonus (boost to PVP)
- More resistant to status effects like KD and Dizzy
- Armor to make able to take more damage (Just modify the wacky Wookiee armor! )

That's all I've got for now...

Oh, I will. *grin* It's hard to keep my mouth shut.

OK. Specifics - all of which have been mentioned before, in detail, in a far better manner than I can:

1) Give the CH a command that will tell the critter to guard him (or another player) to the death. That ninety seconds can be the difference between a successful hunt and a quick trip to the nearest clone center. If the CH can give the critter a command that will make it protect the body, regardless of everything (it would have to recognize when a critter/npc was going in for a deathblow, especially), then it would enable us to enjoy our time in the wild more. Better, if the CH has any medic at all (and don't we all?), this might be just enough to give a group an edge. If the medic of the group is guarded in such a way, you will know that there is a better chance of him rezzing you when one of those annoying rancors nails you too hard.

2) Armour, armour, armour. Our critters are "born" without armour (for the most part), which means that the wild critters are pretty much ALWAYS inferior to what you can purchase. Give us some way to get extra armour on our critters, with some limitations so that you don't end up with a Heavy armour, 15K HAM, 60% resist thing. A suggestion was made that the armour could only be put onto non-BE critters, and that it should be made by Armoursmiths, and "attached" by BE's (love that interdependence). This would give our babies a chance of actually doing a little bit of damage in a PvP combat situation, and a chance of surviving for a full five minutes in the wild without overstimming.

3) Vitality loss. If weaponry and player armour can go without vitality loss in PvP, why-oh-why do our weapons (the critters) have to take vit loss every time they go down? This change alone would encourage more CH's to get more involved in PvP and the bloody factioning. Change the system in some way so that, like weapons, critters that die in factioned combat don't take vit loss.

4) A command to pretty much stand ground and don't move from within a range of that spot. About 2/3 of the posts seemed to mention the fact that our pets run all over creation. Yes, it's because they are trying to get into "optimal" range at the same time as the prey. But this still makes it harder to fight, when you have to spend half of your time trying to command the critters to stay within YOUR optimal range. Some sort of "Stand your Ground" command, that would meant that the critter would not move any more than 5M from that spot, would give us more effectiveness as fighters, and would make us (and our critters) far more effective as tanks than we currently are. Yes, some prey would move to its optimal range of about 30M or whatever, but then it too would be planted in that spot, where the group could have a better chance of taking it down.

5) This one is all my own: Guard <thing>. Think of this: What if you knew that a bunch of rebel scum were going to take out a dirty imp base? Being a dirty imp, you want to fortify your base as best you can. You call in your local CH, and he gets his critters to guard the door to the base, so the rebel scum can't get in? Suddenly, the CH is a VERY valuable member of the team, becasue that extra fifteen seconds is what let the dirty imps get the reinforcements they needed. And, if this were coupled with the lack of vit loss for factioned fights, there would be more factioned play for the CH, in a way that the devs should like. After all, we use guard dogs on this side of the keyboard.

There you go. All combat related, and even thought out well for factioning - in spite of being neutral. *grin*

Hope this helps.

Add some mount bonuses to CH (or add them to a whole new profession somehow). Stuff like being able to fire specials while mounted (perhaps with a damage, accuracy, or speed reduction), making it harder to be KDed, or other things to the CH tree. Could just shove the stuff out of the empathy line and let it instead be a line of mounted bonuses.

Remove the 75% PvP reduction on pet attacks, or add it to pet defense, since they don't do a whole lot of damage anyway.

-OR-

Make pet specials be really effective. So we can send a pet in to KD without getting too close to a TKA.

Give pets KD resist, I'm tired of seeing my graul on the floor, it's as ridiculous as when you could low blow AT STs.

Allow BE's to "Upgrade" our tamed pets with the risk of killing the pet. Each successive ormore dramaticUpgrade would carry an increased risk of pet death. This alone could consume gulping quantities of pets with the successes actually being worthwhile. Higher CL pets could "mount" stronger upgrades but stronger would equate to higher risk.

Suggested upgrades are:

Location Specific Armor. As in Head, Chest/Torso, etc. Additionally restrict it to specific types, Kinetic, Heat, etc.

Attack Speed. Since my Attack speed-2 pets attack every 4 seconds (as revealed by timestamp) it would be a good upgrade like slicing is for PC weapons.

Potency. Raw melee damage output, Increasing Light Poison to Medium/Strong Poison, Change Poison to a specific typelike Mindor Healthetc.

Movement speed. Want thatBocatt to haul ashes like a Razor Cat?

Terrain Movement Bonus Upgrade. 'Nuff said.

Ferocity. Tired of your Bull Rancor running like a rabbit?

Other ideas:

State & SpecialResistance. IMHO any pet bigger then a horse should not be able to be knocked down by a 50 kilo Bothan TKA.

Assuming this is impossible, how about actually making the mobs that would be worthwhile in PvPtamable? CL70 wild pets anyone?

Thanks Vertexon!

Asheesh Ahssin

I think that this is a good chance to give some idea and I will offer one up;

In pvp, since most pets are alot like the melee profs, why not stacking types of defenses similare to that of tka. My biggest problem with my pets in pvp is when they attack a melee, they get killed way to fast. My example is a graul mauler, 11k ham, lvl 50 pet. When it gets sent in to attack one good hit by a melee prof that knows what to do will incap it (blowtorch also), but in the pve, it takes a flamethrower like 4-5 specials at least to drop it. Not to mention you can get the same type pets with resists and specials. What does this mean? I think that the BE pets should be a little better than the pets in the wild. If we could somehow make the pets have better defenses against weapons in pvp at least like it is in pve.

One

I think that this is a good chance to give some idea and I will offer one up;

In pvp, since most pets are alot like the melee profs, why not stacking types of defenses similare to that of tka. My biggest problem with my pets in pvp is when they attack a melee, they get killed way to fast. My example is a graul mauler, 11k ham, lvl 50 pet. When it gets sent in to attack one good hit by a melee prof that knows what to do will incap it (blowtorch also), but in the pve, it takes a flamethrower like 4-5 specials at least to drop it. Not to mention you can get the same type pets with resists and specials. What does this mean? I think that the BE pets should be a little better than the pets in the wild. If we could somehow make the pets have better defenses against weapons/melee in pvp at least like it is in pve.

One good way that could be used to do this would be to incorporate more defensive training abilities in the skill tree but make it where it would be most benificial the higher you go in the tree and maybe give some extra defense abilities available only to MCH. My theory is that if we could make the pets have better defense in pvp then there would be a good adv to MCH but not an unstoppable one. Plus the damage stats on the pets could stay the same.

One other way that we could help defenses would be to make the MCH have the ability to put armor on the pet, this way would make a good compliment to what I was talking about in the second paragraph above.

Thank you for letting us offer up suggesstions and I hope this helps

Ovie

I agree with Kzin. In light of JustG's honest but ridiculous post about no combat rebalance in the near future they must un-nerf our pets. Any thing short of that shows the malice they have towards our class.

Effective specials would help. Currently I am not so sure of how a special sticks. It is these secret statistics that make it hard for CH's comparatively. After all, weaponeers of all types get to see what their wound percentages are. We only see attack speed and damage. Which they see as well. We need to know how specials work. And some base rate effectiveness in which they have at sticking. Is there a base chance per individual creature of sticking? Is it related to CL of pet versus effective Level of Player? Is it purely the players base saving throw and the pet has little to do with it? It is a save versus each pet special. IE intimidation has its own save and strong poison another?

AOE specials that work for PvP. AOE poisons or bleeds. Realistically I think we all believe CM will be nerfed. Our pets have little effect in combat. If only specials did work that would make things better.

Force Sensitive Creatures for MCH. We all have seen creatures heal lairs. Why couldn't their be a FS creature that heals the MCH in combat. Especially when incapped.

This last one is not necessarily PvP related, but shrunken pets would improve the over all game to include PvP. I get so frustrated when I must deal with my own pets in the way, but being cursed at for the same reason I get angry does not help.