Development Cycle Archive
Thread: IC 1-6: Combat Roles; Creature Handler
What defensive abilities?
Defensively speaking, CH pets are good at tanking creatures one-on-one.
However CH’s have little means available to them to "manage" aggro.
Role in combat: To provide extra damage dealing/receiving power in the form of creatures controlled in combat. Control of creatures to perform activities that may be too dangerous for 'intelligent life forms' (TANK).
Combatelements: the ability to control pets to their maximum potential incombat. Also, the ability to know the strengths and weaknesses of creatures they may face in combat (e.g. some kind of bonus to damage/defense for creatures because they know their weaknesses - just an idea, not really necessary to the class). (other abilities should be a part of other skill groups, not part of CH).
Offensive abilities: Fully dependent on the creatures they control but those creatures should be as or more effective than their wild counterparts due to the guidance and training of the CH.
Defensive abilities: Some bonus defense vs. creaturesmay be in order due to their knowledge of the creatures they face. Otherwise they should be reliant on their creatures and other skills.
Special ability: The current control ability of creatures plus the ability to spook or distract an attacking creature.
Added Advantage in Group combat: No more than they have: the pets represent their added advantage.
Interact w/ other professions: by providing tamed animals as pets, Pet Tank services/role they would gain income. Spend money on Petstims/other medical and on creatures from BE profession (however the wild creatures should be competitive - you have good competition at high levels but lower levels are a little weak on the natural pet side. Also, rarity and requirement in many cases (e.g. on Naboo) to attack a lair to get a baby to spawn is not good.
Dependencies on other combatants: medical healing on self and pets (same as others-where benefit can be had but not required to succeed). No others.
Unique role in Galactic civil war: as a provider of high damage dealer/damage receiver entities (creatures) that are highly effective and require special effort to counter. (e.g. when a tank was introduced in WWI it required special effort on the part of the other combatant to counter the threat. If they didn't provide the counter, they took excessive losses. the problem w/ swg is no one wants to provide the level of organization and planning to plan/counter plan operations. They want to be able to take on whatever they may run into with whatever they have available. Thus the 6 foot TKM gets to kill the 2 or 3,25 foot tall rancors withoutanyspecial effort on his own part.
All pets are not born and bred equal in the wild. It would be nice to develope a growth system for pets similar to experimentation. Except with a random modifier. Basically you tame a pet and store it....once its stored and any time before its next growth cycle...the creature handler would have a radial options on the pet that takes them to a "nurturing focu screen" based on a normal standard in the wild creature model there would be a range of stats for any particular breed of pet for Damage, Resists, Armor, and Health, Action, and Wounds. Ranging from extremely low for the species to extremely high for the species in each category. The creature handler would have a skill mod that helped etermine how much he can influence the growth of his pet. The creature handler would set what stats he wanted to focus on and what he didnt and with each growth cycle the areas he focused on would mature more while the ones he didnt focus on will mature slower.
This creates a dynamic creature growth system where two pets of the same breed are never grown to the exact same. At any time the creature handler can go in and adjust the growth focus of his pet and it will affect the following growth cycle. So if a CH wanted to focus his rancors growth on pure dmg he could dump his ten focus points at master into damage...and the ham might only improve by like 102% while the dmg may grow by 120%. There would be a level cap that would stunt the creatures growth when it hits it (based on its overall stats) or at any time the CH would be able to stunt the pets grown manually, preventing it form further growth cycles.
Built in with the new BE system...ensure that the absolute strongest pet through nurturing isnt as overall as powerful as a BE pet.
Lobaca
What defines theCreature Handler role in combat?
First of all, since I am also a creature handler...
What basic combat elements should they possess? The CH depends upon her ability to control creatures in a combat situation, therefore they posess the special combat abilities of the creatures they control. The difference between a veteran and a rookie should come in the degree of that control. One would expect a novice to have their animals to become distracted or defend their master less aggressively. Though at the moment, these things depend more upon the unpredictability of the game itself. The CH is only as good asher pets, and her pets are only as good as the AI that controls them. When commands stop working either through lag, a server boundary or through some other unknown bug (/tellpet), the CH who for one reason or another has few outside combat skills, finds herself taking a dirt nap.
What offensive abilities? These depend upon the creature used. As such the CH has a great variety of weapons to choose from.
What defensive abilities? Most creatures have higher HAM then the average player, this makes them ideal as tanking partners.
What unique abilities? Special attacks are determined by the creature used. I agree that more animal abilities would add interest to the game, like the /stampede, or maybe /entrance like the cobras do?
Should add what advantage or asset in group combat? Mostly pets have been used as tanks in the past, although pet specials may help to round out a group that does not already have disease or poison attacks. Specific pet specials would also aid in grouping.
How could/should they interact with other professions? The CH can be self-sufficient if they want to, but to get a specialized pet they go to a BE. Also they must buy pet stims, or regular stims to keep their pets healthy.I see nothing wrong with BE's buffing existing pets, but if BE's stop making pets that people will buy, then there will be even fewer BE's than there are now. That's the reason why most of us signed up for the profession. (Don't take the last month or so as SOP. It was a brand new system, and like any new system it had problems that needed to be fixed. )
What interaction / dependencies should exist with other combatants? I mostly hunt solo, so can't make a whole lot of comment on this.
What should be their unique role in the Galactic Civil War?The ability to fill a battlefield with more troops, or maybe give some special pets a scouting ability. I like the shield generator idea, maybe take a few ideas from the Gun Guns. Or the Nightsisters.
Speaking now as a BE...
CH's should continue to tame their own pets, I never said they shouldn't. But the idea of granting an animal special natural, not taught, abilities should be the domain of the BE. Customizing creatures once again is BE territory. If you have a problem with the way creatures are balanced don't blame us, we didn't design the system. But like I said, the fundamental center of the BE profession is to make pets that are better than those in the wild. We are a crafting profession. We have to be able to sell our products. This is also a game, so it should be fun. Custom creating pets that people will buy is fun. Sitting next to your harvester and factory all day to turn out crate after crate of pet related products is boring. Boring=no more BE.
Looks like I got a little sloppy on the cut and paste..oh well.
Just had another idea for battlefield type situations. Give the MCH the ability to give group commands, like entertainers do. This would be a good way to implement the /stampede command. Make it /packstampede. Or /packattack, /packpeace, /packguard. Or maybe give bonuses to the whole creature group like /packrally, /packberzerk.This would add some more interest to battlefield encounters.
Thunderheart wrote:
Given the basic considerations listed above, please answer the following questions:
What defines theCreature Handler role in combat?
Imo, the devs went the wrong way with regard to creature use in combat, whether by accident or design. In the real world, animals have never caused fear in man by being able to withstand huge amounts of damage, they have caused fear by being able to rip humans apart in a few seconds. As technology has improved we have been able to kill creatures quicker and more easily with every advancement, yet still there is fear and danger because even a wild animal weighing less than a man can easily maul or kill him in a very short amount of time. SWG CH role (and creatures in general) should shift toward this and away from tanking. Melee professions, wearing hi-tech armor and using techniques developed over centuries should be used to keep opponents busy, while blasters and fast in-out attacks by CH creatures do the killing.
What basic combat elements should they possess?
CH combat should be more fluid than it is now and have more variety. Pets with much better offensive abilities are needed at the expense of defensive ones. With the coming introduction of higher capability droids, whoever it ends up being implemented, CH will become less sought after (again). High CL pets especially need to be made better than lower CL ones by a real amount - as it stand now CL 70 is probably less than 20% better than CL35 in real gameplay terms.
What offensive abilities?
Ability to use offensive oriented pets, ones that do more than 600 max damage every 2 seconds. AP1 at the very highest levels (CL60+, with no way to BE one lower than that - I'ma BE as well btw) would go a very long way to making high CL pets really worthwhile.
What defensive abilities?
The ability to train creatures to dodge, or even give all creatures (wild and pet) defenses other than high HAM, armor and resists. Currently creaturedefenses are so low as to be basically inconsequential. Large quadrupeds (Kimo, fambaa etc) should be immune to posture change attacks (including KD). Disease using creatures should have very high resistance/immunity to any disease equal to or lesser than the one they use, same with poisons. Further, pets (and wild creatures)that are 100% resistant to a damage form should also be 100% to DOTs based on that same damage form. Bleeds and other DOT effects are cheap ways of getting around resistances and lead to the current state of seeing a few 'uber' weapon/attack templates and everything else being basically ignored.
What unique abilities?
The very ability to tame and train wild creatures, then control them in combat while doing other things ourselves, is already a pretty unique ability. Everything else draws from this. Most useful would being able to train 'abilities' into tamed pets - terrain negotiation perhaps. One possible would be the ability to use specials while mounted, or the mount itself being able to attck while the owner stays on. I suspect the latter would be very difficult to do, however. See the 'interact with other professions' section for more on how we could add unique abilities to others.
Should add what advantage or asset in group combat?
Damage and state effects, and far less tanking. PCs make better tanks than pets even given half the basic abilities, because they are smarter, react better and plan ahead. Pets need to be dropped from this idea of being just there as tanks (which excludes them a lot of group fighting now, as PC melee fighters are better most of the time, especially in enclosed areas) and should be able to deal real damage.
How could/should they interact with other professions?
The ability to train non-combat commands for other professions would be a great addition, but not at the expense of real improvements to the CH core role of fighting. E.g pets that can drag incapped friendlies (with possibly a cert added into, for example, Combat Medic to limit who can use such a pet). These additions are very much a low priority in my opinion - we need to focus on making CH itself a useful and desirable profession before worrying about adding new tricks to others. The current CH/BE interaction, while still a bit antagonistic at times, is good and needs to be kept. It could also be improved upon,by adding to BE a range of doctor-like pet buffs in much the same way as pet stims were added a whileago.
What interaction / dependencies should exist with other combatants?
First off - please remove one interaction that is frankly sickening. Almost every day I see medic-type PCs asking for commandos to burn their pet down just so the medic can get free xp from healing its wounds. This used to happen with just HAM damage, but that was stopped and I have no idea why the ability to get xp from healing pet wounds was retained - it is hardly in line with Holocron's idea that pet owners shouldcare for and value their pets. Perhaps have pet AI improved to be able to react to group actions in a meaningful way - if an opponent getsdizzied, a pet would automatically on its next attack attempt its KD/Crippling Strike attack.
What should be their unique role in the Galactic Civil War?
Well, first CH need to be encouraged to actually participate without feeling their pets are useless (as they currently are) and simply being subject to multiple vitality losses without being able to do anything back. CH are joke in PvP atm - pets are either ignored completely as the CH is killed (rapidly, because he will have less defensive abilites than a non-CH combatant) or taken out in a matter of seconds by melee combatant PCs. With decay-on-death being taken away for other combatants, personally I would love to see vitality loss for pets being taken out of PvP combat as well. At least that way we don't get punished for using pets that are basically ineffective. Then, allow pets to do more than apply one or two state effects as their only useful contribution. Add AP1 to some top end pets and improve their own defences to state effects, including adding some real immunities. Things like allowing fambaa to carry the massive shield generators would be awesome, if unlikely in the current timeline.
Final Comments:
CH started off as fun but brokenly overpowered. With the addition of CL limits the profession was brought very much back in line, with more recent creature changes having another significant (downward) effect on CH capabilities. BE changes have offset some of the last change, and its currently difficult to compare against other combat professions as they have not yet had their changes implemented. However, with all that said, it is clear that the fundamental weakness of CH is the pet's inability to do any meaningful damage in either PvE or PvP, leading to CH that like to hunt being relegated to having to pick up another combat profession in order to kill things with any kind of speed. Just relying on the pet to do the killing is ridiculously slow, expensive (in terms of stims for healing) and risky (each heal gives a chance for the CH to get aggro). Getting into a group as a CH is limited to general hunts, we are generally not wantedfor dungeon type hunts.
I have little to add here since it hasn't served much purpose adding posts to the CH boards. We still got horriblydamaged in the December patch.
Defense: restore CH as the premier defensive class in the game. It is NOT in keeping with the Star Wars theme to have any person (human, wookie , etc) standing toe to toe with a Krayt/Kimo/etc. Only a big, mean, durable creature should withstand such punishment. Does anyone else recall the description of rancors demolishing AT-ST's? Heck, I'm a master TK now and I do not want to out tank my pets in any way, shape or form. It just isn't right.
Offense: CH is weaker offensively than any other combat class. If we have our defense, this is liveable--but as the class is now, it is woefully deficient at both ends of the combat spectrum.
Right now the "Unique Abilites" of CH are that we can increase the mission level of groups. Beyond that, the class is not needed anymore. Specials do not work, pets do not tank worth a **edit** on high end content, pet damage is a joke.
Even if, in the upcoming patches, some of the other fighting professions get nerfed down, the problem with pets being too weak is still going to be there. It wouldn't take much in the way of programming changes to beef up our pets a bit and make us into CH's with fighting roles instead of tanking roles. Some CH's are happy with their pets being meat shields. Most are not. The common consensus on this forum is that's what CH's role is in a group. I disagree wholeheartedly with the direction devs want CH to go, to be a support profession. It simply makes more sense for CH to be a fightingprofession first and a supportprofession if need be. We can fulfill both roles. As a MCH I'd much rather have my pets as my weapon than have to invest in a separate tree to defend myself AND my pets that can't do the damage to get the job done. As far as I can see the only real benefit of a tanking pet is if you're a wookiee (no armor) with a pea shooter and need the protection. BUT, you can look at it like this---if our pets were balanced more for damage and less for tanking (i.e. a fighting profession) we would still be able to kill the target(s), only faster, but at a slightly higher cost to health.
I've said this before in other threads, but I'll repeat it here. Give us our fighting profession so that we can choose for ourselves. MCH wouldn't have to take it, but it would be there. It just seems more natural to advance in using creatures as weapons than relying on a separate skill tree. A sub-tree for CH for fighting OR a creature-sensitive slot that opens at Master or after taming so many creatures would be ideal. Huge changes wouldn't have to occur, just the ability to adjust/train/endow pet stats according to what a fighting class should be (these would be the specials we get with our fighting tree) along with special fighting commands that are close cousins to our existing commands. It CAN be done with minimal effort. This is what all CH's have been wanting all along, to be a stand-alone fighting profession.
Devs could kill two birds with one stone - make us viable again in PVP and PVE by giving us limited control over what our pets grow up to be (stats/resists/damage) so that we can tailor them to our needs, but not be an overpowering force. A true CH should be able to train his pets in the ways of combat. A creature alone should know by instinct how to deal massive amounts of damage in a short period of time (as they do in the wild). It only makes sense to change pets from tanks to damage dealers.
What unique abilities?
There’s nothing truly "unique" in terms of abilities for CH’s.
Because everyone can control pets, the "unique" part of being a CH is "how many" pets, and "what level" pets, can be controlled.
They aren’t even the king of "obtaining" pets anymore... BE's make better pets than we can get in the wild... we don't have to hunt for them, we just have to pay for them.
Pet’s themselves, even with their special attacks, don’t do anything that other professions can’t do as well (poison, stun, etc), except stand up to other high-ham creatures.
Tanking isn't really "unique", per se... but it's certainly the pet's most usefull ability.
Should add what advantage or asset in group combat?
In groups, pets are "tanks", and sometimes "crowd control" (if it's possible to match up one pet per mob) while the group focus-fire the mobs down one at a time.
How could/should they interact with other professions?
This is an important question.
Relations with BioEngineers:
Currently, the BioEngineers are the "supplier" of pets to the CH.
However the CH still has a choice to tame wild creatures, which means that BE'd pets must be superior to wild ones in order to desirable.
The problem here is that a BE can make a pet with MAX kinetic resists under level 35.
A MASTER Creature Handler could buy it, but so could a "dabbler". Then the "dabbler" has a pet just as good asthe MCH's pet. The last patch distributed pet tame levels throughout the profession in order to reduce the power of "dabblers", but clones gave it right back.
Pet levels should be determined by some formula that considers the highest single resistance, armor, damage, ham, etc, so that ALL level 40 pets are comparable, ALL level 50 pets are comparable, and ALL level 60 pets are comparable...
Otherwise, what's the point of having a "level" if it doesn't reflect the strength of the pet?
The overpowered low-level pets give power to "dabblers" and undermine the advantage of being a master in the profession....
But if cloned pet "levels" were evaluated by the same forumla as wild, tamable creatures, then the "dabbling" problem goes away, and BE's can still offer desirable pets which are "custom" made, neither "better" nor "worse" than wild ones of the same level.
This is a serious problem.
Rather than designing a system that has these two professions in harmony, we are at odds.
What interaction / dependencies should exist with other combatants?
Relations with Rangers:
Rangers have a wonderful ability to /areatrack.
This is great to helpfind (baby) creatures.
Rangers need to have this ability enhanced furtherto include /track, not just /areatrack.
But it would be extra-cool if rangers could temporarily "entangle" an animal, or somehow aid in the taming process itself once the baby is found.
Also, the last patch spread "tame levels" throughout the profession. So now the CH has to climb the tree adding +2 or +3 levels at a time... but the patch didn't leave CH's any way to determine a creature's level before taming it. - only Rangers can tell the level of a creature.
Also only Rangers with Tracking 3 have the sufficient creature knowledge to see a creature's special attacks when you /examine them.
A CH should be able to see the level of a creature when we "/examine" it (i.e. added creature knowledge skillmod), even if some Rangers might object.
This was made necessary by the nature of the anti-dabbler patch last month.
What defines the Creature Handler role in combat?
Historically it has been using our pets to tank and crowd control (manage aggro of multiple assistive or aggressive mobs). With the addition of the Ranged and Specials commands (once they are fixed so they work), we will have been given the ability to apply what Vertexon refers to as "state effects" as well.
What basic combat elements should they possess?
Tanking primarily and secondarily melee and/or ranged damage with state effect application depending on the pet chosen for the specific situation. As long as pets are given the ability to be effective tanks across the spectrum of game content the damage need not be great, so long as the pet can hold aggro for the purpose of tanking/crowd control. Because tamables can have a wide range of attributes it should be possible to implement some which are more tank oriented and some which are more damage oriented. The ability to use state effect attacks also has great potential. Once it is working properly we will be able to evaluate it more fully.
What offensive abilities?
Some basic damage. In addition, state effects, such as dizzy, poison, etc. This assumes pets are given viable tanking ability across the content spectrum. If pets are not made viable tanks for high end content or in PvP, then pet offensive damage output should be increased to compensate for the defensive shortfall. It is possible to implement some tamables which are strong in tanking and others which are strong in damage output. But if it is to be one or the other, I much prefer we have good tanks to fit any scenario.
What defensive abilities?
Tanking, first and foremost. Pets should be available in game which can act as tanks for any of the content. Even raid level mobs must be tanked in a MMOG, so pets should be available that can handle this role. Pets need not be the exclusive tanks, but they should be the equal of any other tank in the game. (Assuming, of course, the correct pet is chosen for the correct situation. I am not proposing that every pet should be able to tank every mob. But each mob in the game should be tankable by at least one tamable pet. And some pets should be viable tanks in PvP, which they currently are not.)
What unique abilities?
In short, our uniqueness should be our adaptability to the situation by calling pets to fit the situation. We should be able to provide a pet or pets that fits the particular need. For instance, if we are dealing with NPC humanoids that deal primarily ranged weapons damage we should be able to provide a pet or pets with high resists in the ranged weapons damage types. If we are dealing with a creature, we should be able to provide a pet or pets with high kinetic resist, etc. The adaptability of the CH to the situation requires a broad variety of tamables both in levels and in characteristics such as armor, resists and special attacks. By providing us with a variety of good tamables with a wide range of attributes and specials you give us the tools to be adaptable.
Should add what advantage or asset in group combat?
Our professionshould be able to add great tanking ability with our pets. As a corollary to the tanking ability and ability to call multiple pets we should be able to do crowd control. State effects will assist in this latter particularly. Tanking and state effect infliction should apply in PvP as well.
How could/should they interact with other professions?
This is a very broad question that seems to require a response of our interaction with each of the other professions. That would indeed be a very long response. I will, for the sake of bandwidth and storage space, defer answering it at this time except to say that I, as an MCH, interact economically, in groups and in a player association with essentially every other profession to some degree. 
What interaction / dependencies should exist with other combatants?
Other combat classes have been and will remain the primary Damage Output. CH pets have historically dealt and continue to deal low damage, below even Marksman level, being tanks instead. As a result, damage output remains the perview of other classes. Neither pets nor CHs heal players, so CH is dependent on healing classes. In group/raid situations, tanking PC's and CH pets are complimentary in allowing for primary tank/secondary tank relationships. State effect attacks can bespread amongor duplicated by PC's and pets depending on what the situation requires. In PvP, PC tanks currently are the only viable tanks. This should be changed to add viable pet tanking in PvP.
What should be their unique role in the Galactic Civil War?
AOE state effect attacks would be an excellent meaningful niche distinctivefor the CH in the GCW. This would require broadening the number of tamables with AOE state effect attacks. At the very least, we should be able to provide meaningful tanks v. other players. That is not currently the case. We should also be able to use our pets' ranged and special attacks effectively.
A word about encouraging CH and MCH involvement in the GCW and use of tamable pets in it:
In light of the more worthwhile tamables being made rare and the almost certain death pets face in PvP, I would like to see the permanent pet vitality loss issue revisited in the context of PvP. Just as equipment decay is being removed from PvP, pet vitality loss on death should be removed in PvP. I cannot emphasize enough that our tamed pets mean much more to us qualitatively and quantitatively than our droids or faction pets mean to us. Permanent vitality loss to our pets is not required in PvP since the master will be killed first and so we will suffer whatever penalty is extracted on our own deaths in PvP. Permanent vitality loss to tamable pets in PvP serves only to dissuade many MCHs from being involved in the GCW and dissuade many others from using pets in the GCW.
Alternatively, and only if a penalty on death of tamed pets in PvP is required, vitality packs healing 100% of the loss, insurance or cloning for pets would all be reasonable ways to keep a death penatly but allow us to avoid permanent vitality loss for our rare or valued tamed pets. However it is done, the removal of permanent vitality loss for tamed pets in PvP will assure a much greater involvement of CHs and MCHs in the GCW.